Charitable Giving in a Classical Liberal State

In a free and open society one cannot escape profiting from others’ misfortunes when one gives to charity. This may be thought to be immoral especially if the charitable act is obviously motivated by self advancement. Yet others may say that charity is immoral because it somehow denies self-interest, which they deem to be the foundation of a free and open society. Both opinions may have grim implications.

By a free and open society I mean a liberal society with a liberal state. A liberal state is where the community recognised the natural trait of man that he does not like to be told what to do by others. Man is left alone to be guided by his own wit and feelings as long as this does not interfere with others’ freedom to do the same. This means that in this state one is reasonably protected from coercion of others. There is a place for a central government but its major functions are limited to protecting the personal private sphere of individuals from coercion and reducing transaction costs. Reducing transaction costs means reducing cost of trade. This may mean reducing cost of risk of trade by enforcing contracts, or creating standards like a measurement system. The society in such a state still looks after the needy by mandatory contributions from the rest. So there is some coercion and personal private sphere of individuals do overlap. But such provisions are only the minimum which ensures that coercion is minimised. This prevents extreme hardship of fellow man and also protects the general society from acts of desperation (e.g. food riots etc.).

In such liberal state one may not be forced to contribute to help the needy beyond stopping starvation. This means that if one does contribute to charity it is more likely to be a show of genuine, and more importantly voluntary, compassion.

At this point it may be said that because the individual is left to be guided by his own wit and feelings he most logically is actually guided by self-interest. This is because this is most likely to ensure the individual’s survival. However such thinking forgets that the individual is still a human. He is not just interested in his material well being. It is natural for men to derive pleasure from helping fellow man. Denying people from giving charity for the reason that it is against their own interest is thus contradictory. In a free and open society people will always do what is in their self interest, but that may also be interest of others. But charitable contributions may also benefit individuals in a more direct way.

A voluntary contribution to charity in a liberal state will obviously improve one's standing in the community. This is because the gift to the needy will be more likely to be a genuine show of compassion and mercy if one does not obviously boast about it. Naturally man values those who are willing to help him and ask for nothing back in return. However the receiver of charity may be less impressed by the gift if he found out that the charitable contribution was made for selfish reasons, like trying to improve his standing in a community which values selflessness. At the very least if one gives to charity only to improve his standing it is no longer compassion. At worst one may say that one is in fact is profiting from someone else’s misfortune. Profiting from someone else’s misfortune is in fact deemed unethical for selfish reasons. People generally would like to be treated by others as they would reasonably treat others. Thus a person in need would expect help instead of someone profiting by others by his position. This is why people think profiting from other’s misfortune is so unfavourable. Not because it hurts anyone but because if they themselves were in a position of need they would like to have had help instead of no particular gain for themselves while someone else was gaining something. One may characterise it as envy of someone else’s profit.

It must be noted that this is all somewhat of an oversimplification. People would be able to, to a large degree, judge when charity is genuine and when not. Certainly people would be able to tell if someone was boastful of his actions. Cultural norms will also have influence on when someone ought to help someone and when not.

Thus profiting from someone’s misfortune is not necessarily ‘bad’, at least from a materialistic point of view. It does not hurt the giver or the receiver but benefits both. The giver profits from his increased standing in the community. The receiver’s position is obviously helped out because of the hand out. This kind of an improvement where both parties benefit while no one is made worse off is called Pareto-improvement. However there is still the question of ethics. If one does not realise that demanding the stopping of profiting from someone else’s misfortune is in fact selfish one may still feel obligated to try to stop it. One may then argue that the state should concern itself to make the situation more ethical.

One possibility is banning all charitable giving. This would be impossible to enforce. People would still find a way to give to others. More importantly a ban on charity would be unnatural as it interferes with a basic natural trait of man to show compassion and mercy, whether for selfish reasons or not. This solution seems to be even more unethical (whatever that means) than the unethical situation it is trying to resolve.

A more reasonable solution may lie in making all charitable giving secret. This would mean that the giver no longer has the incentive of raising his own standing in the community. This would make it appear that some of the selfishness has been gotten rid of. Of course the giver may will still profit because he is fulfilling his own desires to give. So he is still ripping some profit. However if the incentive of raising one’s of standing is lost many people would stop contributing to charity and many needy would be worse off. It is also somewhat questionable if forcing people to make their contributions secret is in itself all that ethical. This is because this measure restricts people’s freedom (of basically boasting) while it does not stop any imposition on others’ personal private sphere which is the only excuse for restrictions of individuals in a liberal state and society. This solution may end up hurting the poor and the needy for the benefit of allowing a few moralists to sleep easier which seems a poor trade off.

Another possibility may be to allow the state to take from the well off and give to the poor like Robin Hood did. But forcing people to give in such a way is hardly ethical and constitutes robbery. This solution looses all traits of compassion and mercy and imposes on the natural freedom to choose not to give. This solution seems to be most unethical. From a materialistic point of view it does benefit the poor the most because the state can rob the rich to a very large extent and make the poor as rich as it pleases.

A theoretical solution may be to stop people from thinking selfishly or to make people stop regarding mercy and compassion as a virtue. This would require a vast social engineering project which of course would impose on individuals’ natural make up. This would be tyranny.

It seems that there are no ethical solutions to the unethical situation where one profits from another’s misfortune but falsely calls it compassion. All the solutions seem to be even more unethical. It seems that the best thing to do is simply let people be people and let them make their own judgment what is ethical and unethical, what they should do and not do.

On Writing

Ideas are the most powerfully creations of men. Ideas send men to the deepest oceans, the highest mountains and inspire infinite other feats. But ideas come from the mind. No one can look into another man’s mind. The only way for an idea to have any influence on anything apart from its creator is for this idea to be communicated to others. A man can tell and show another his ideas. But what exactly one says is usually forgotten, even by the speaker, in a blink of an eye. Speech is not a good way of communicating ideas over vast distances of continents and the even bigger distances of time. To make others know one’s ideas hundreds of centuries after one’s death and in yet undiscovered lands one must write them down.

Writing is an immense challenge. Ideas in a piece of writing may be referring to realities of the writer’s World which are totally alien to the reader. Competency of a writer thus must be judged on whether the reader understands what the writer is trying to say. The most general rule of writing thus must be to make the written text independent of any circumstances and conditions which are particular to the writer. In other words, written work has to be timeless.

This is not denying that some writing may have the purpose of only informing someone who is well aware of the situation and is in close proximity. An SMS text message to a friend saying “I’ll be late” does not require any explanation of why or how or anything else. But this particular area of writing is not concerned with communicating sophisticated ideas. The area of writing we are concerned with is the communication of complex thoughts which inevitably requires the quality of timelessness.

In my experience the method of making a piece of writing timeless can be broken down into 4 parts 3 of which are interrelated:

1) Contents – knowledge of the subject matter
2) Structure of the text
3) Language of the text
4) Pier review – get someone else to read it

The writer must fully know what he is writing about. He must be intimately familiar with all the exceptions, counter arguments and all other aspects of an idea down to the most trivial. If the writer doesn’t have this knowledge then the last three parts of good writing outlined above are useless. This is because the last three parts deal with sculpting knowledge into something other can understand with the use of writing. If the knowledge is not there in the first place, there is nothing to sculpt.

The second part of making a piece of writing good is structure. The writer must have a general plan of his work before he writes the first word. Just like a war leader does not launch an attack without clear understanding of his objectives and the ways of achieving them a writer does not start spewing out sentences in the hope that someone will understand him. A writer must have a plan of how he will lead the reader through to the conclusions the writer wants the reader to have. The actual plan will always be inseparably from the subject matter. No two plans will be identical and in some cases may be utterly different. But in general all good plans of texts will lead the reader to what the writer wants them to be lead to. One of my professors once used an analogy I thought illustrates this concept of structure perfectly. He said that one should make points of explanation in one’s essay seem like links in a strong and heavy chain instead of fragile glass beads on a thin string.

The writer is now ready to write. The writer must not lose track of the fact that he is trying to convey ideas. This means that the language he uses to express these ideas should not hinder the reader from understanding them. Rhetorical garnish can easily obscure the ideas which are being expressed and end up misleading the reader. To avoid this writer must stick to a minimalistic approach. The language used by the writer should be neutral. It should not have a meaning in itself. The meaning is in the content of the text and not in the language used. He must cut out everything that can be cut out. The writer must be on a constant hunt for smaller and simpler words and sentences. This may mean spending hours puzzling over each sentence and trying numerous combinations but it is well worth the effort. However, this zeal to cut may lead the writer to cutting out most of the meaning too. To combat this tendency the writer should keep the text concise but not at the expense of clarity, and keep the text clear but not at the expense of conciseness.

After these efforts the writer may feel that his text is as good as it can be. This may be true but he cannot be a fair judge to this. He must submit his text to review of others. The more people read the text the more mistakes may be pointed out that the writer, who is after all only human, may have missed. Another point is that the writer is ultimately writing for others to read so he needs to make sure that others understand his text.

At the end, only time can say whether a text is well written and achieves the aims of the writer but the guidelines outlined certainly will increase the chances of success of the writer.

On the Virtues of Gay Marriage

We do not treat people equally because all are equal. We treat people equally because all are different. These differences make everyone so valuable. One cannot exactly know how a person thinks or what experiences he has had thus one will never predict what kind of contribution that person can make to society.

In order to allow a person the maximum scope within which he is able to exploit his knowledge, talents and ambitions, and thus contribute something, law treats everyone the same so everyone has a level playing field. Arbitrary rules which elevate some while dragging other down are avoided. Discrimination and privileges are frowned upon. However this does not mean in any way that one must automatically like other people. Not liking someone is subjective and arbitrary. It dictates how one treats others in private personal relationships but it should not prevent one from recognising a person’s contributions.

In modern society there are few areas of life where illiberal discrimination still exists. Slavery has been abolished, women have been set free and given the vote, and justice no longer recognises a colour of a man, at least not in Europe and not in theory in USA. Since enlightenment we have been free to think. But even though most battles have been won by liberalism the war is not over. Probably the last area where prejudice and lack of respect for freedom of men still exist is in sexual orientation. Gay marriage is an example of a much wider fight for freedom of people to love who they truly love and not be coerced to betray their real feelings. It is also a fight for those feelings to be tolerated and accepted as just as valid as feelings of other people. Many argue against gay marriage because they do not want this tolerance to be allowed. Liberty, as it turns out, has enemies of all political creeds. Lets examine of the main arguments against gay marriage and by extension against gay rights.

Marriage, in a strictly utilitarian sense, is the commitment of two people to a lasting relationship and a signal to the rest of the world, predominantly to the state, to treat the pair as a unit. This manifests itself mostly in taxation, housing rights and other administrative policies.

As it stands right now marriage mostly remains a privilege of the heterosexual. The majority discriminates against the minority of homosexuals in dictating that they are not allowed to be recognised as married. But this fails to recognise the possible contributions same sex couples can make to our society. This discrimination is also silly, entirely arbitrary and dangerous.

In order to avoid sounding religious and dogmatic some may argue along the utilitarian path and say that the original point of marriage was to provide more stable conditions in which to raise children. This pre-dates all religious thought by the virtue of happening at the dawn of humanity, before superstition and other cognitive side effects created the idea of God. The argument says that same sex couples are incapable of having children so there is no point in gay couples having marriages. It is true that same sex couples cannot reproduce. Same sex couples can however adopt (another topic of gay rights movement) and provide a loving and carrying home just as often as heterosexual couples, as proven by research. Does this not mean that providing same sex couples an opportunity to marry will result on average in even better home for their adopted children? Don’t gay marriages encourage same sex couples to adopt unwanted children and provide them with a loving home and thus benefiting society? It seems that from a utilitarian point of view same sex couples provide a net benefit, especially to orphans.

One must recognise that extending the definition of marriage to same sex couples does not in any way damage the marriage between heterosexual couples. How can it? homosexual couples are not going to climb through the window at night and steal heterosexual couples' marriage certificate. Does extending the definition of marriage result in heterosexual couples losing their love or affect their marriage? Obviously not. Imagine a situation in a heterosexual relationship where one partner, lets say the husband, tell his wife “honey, same sex marriage now is allowed, I don’t think I love you anymore. We have to split up.” Of course this is ridiculous. Discriminating against same sex couples on these grounds is not rational. It is a whim, a silly opinion, it is arbitrary.

Saying that we ought to have discrimination in one arbitrary area of life and have equality in all other areas of life may result in loss of all equality. If we can arbitrarily discriminate in one area of life, why not two areas? How about three? How about all of them? This is what arbitrariness is. The slippery slope to loss of equality before the law is thus established.

It seems to me that by following the liberal principle of equality before the law and thus extending definition of marriage to same sex couples will result in more equality before the law and a clear benefit to society. It will not result in anything catastrophic. How can recognising love and commitment between two people be a bad thing? One is perfectly entitled to dislike the gays, but why try to coerce them, or prevent them from doing good for the rest?

Women and Men in the Army

The British Army tests the physical ability of its soldiers differently depending on soldier’s sex. This is both arbitrary and dangerous. It certainly goes against any feminist view that men and women ought to be treated equally.

The reason for this discrimination is the clear difference between physical ability and the capacity to improve this ability of an average man and average woman. It is thought that physical tests may be made fairer by setting the standard to be achieved by women lower than the standard to be achieved by men. This seemingly creates relatively the same difficulty level. This method tests for relatively the same level of effort from the test subjects at the expense of testing absolute physical ability. For example it is thought that if an average woman can run slower than an average man she has to put in more effort than the man to achieve the man’s ability to run. But if the required standard for the woman is lowered by the difference between average man and average woman, the female test subject will be tested for the same amount of effort. The woman no longer has to achieve same absolute level of fitness, but only a relative level of fitness.

This is entirely arbitrary. There are women who are taller than certain men. This gives a certain advantage to the taller women in relative tests. The taller women need to show less effort than the shorter man to pass the tests. But the tests look for a certain level of effort as explained earlier. This implies that one should take the height of test subjects into account and also discriminate by height. However this creates problems. All individuals are different in most aspects. To truly create a fair test that tests the effort of an individual one must create a different test specifically tailored for everyone. This is impossible. It is entirely impractical. The main reason however is that effort is not really quantifiable and thus subjective rather than objective. One cannot measure the absolute level of effort or the relative effort in relation to other test subjects. Thus it seems that to try to test effort will always remain arbitrary, a matter of an opinion not based on any fact. This is not fair to all involved because in the pursuit of trying to test everyone to the same standard of effort all end up being tested to different, somewhat random, standards. The only way to test objectively is to hold everyone to the same easily measurable standard and thus test everyone in the same test with the same requirements for passing the test. This of course will test the absolute level of fitness not the effort someone puts into their fitness training or the effort put in on the day of the tests. But this is better.

The nature of the job of a soldier stays the same irrespective of the sex. All rifles, grenades and ammunition weigh the same. When a female soldier picks up a rifle that rifle does not readjust its mass accordingly. The nature of war dictates that absolutes like the absolute ability to carry a weight or run or fight determines the winner or loser. By testing sexes differently the British Army denies this nature. Different pass criteria in physical tests seem to imply that the enemy will fight female soldiers differently from men. This is self evidently not true.

I do recognise that in certain situations a female soldier is required. An example of this may be to help another female rape victim, who clearly will be feeling particularly uncomfortable around male soldiers. Another example is that in certain cultures women were brought up not to interact with males and thus will be only willing to communicate with female soldiers. My argument does not concern these responsibilities however. I am only talking about pure combat troops.

To really be fair and not arbitrary the British Army should have equal test for everyone. This will also help to test for the absolute readiness of a soldier to fight. An enemy soldier will try his best to kill British soldiers all the same irrespective of sex of that British soldier. The army should not think in terms of women or men. It ought to think in terms of soldiers. If that soldier passes the single absolute physical test the soldier is fit for duty, if not than soldier is not fit for duty. Of course this will result is less women passing physical tests and thus having less women on the battlefield fighting. But this is irrelevant, whoever can do the fighting better should do the fighting. This may be a woman or a man if she or achieved certain levels of ability.

Civil Unions instead of Gay Marriage

One may think that civil unions for the gays are marriage in all but name. The gays have equal rights. But if they have equal rights in all but name, why not name these rights that which they are, i.e. marriage?! The reason if course is that they do not enjoy equal rights.

They also do not enjoy equal consideration by the majority of people. The recent California ballot initiative, Proportion 8, to define marriage as between man and woman and to limit marriage to such an arrangement has shown this. The initiative was passed by the majority. The majority of people do not like gays (mostly derived from the bible and other religious intolerances and nonsense not from some fact). This fight the gays are fighting is not about marriage, it is about much wider want of being accepting as equals. If gays were equal to other people in the eyes of the public there would be no arguments about them being able to have equal rights, like a right to marry.

One can only treat everyone equally by applying the same standards and rules to everyone. When one singles out a group or individuals and applies different rules and standards one is discriminating, one is not treating that group equally. Some would argue that it is possible to treat the gays equally yet somehow keep them separate. They propose to keep marriage for normal heterosexuals and civil unions for the gays but to have the civil unions grant the gays the same rights as marriage grants to heterosexuals. This would be exactly the same as the racist Jim Crow laws that kept the blacks separate but equal. Since the gays have done nothing wrong except to be born the way they are, singling them out and preventing them from doing something is treating them not equally. Preventing someone from causing damage or injury is justifiable. But what are the gays being prevented from doing exactly? They are prevented from expressing love and commitment to that love and to have this recognised by society. It seems strange to deny people to do this.

Second Amendment and Liberal Democracy

The 2nd amendment of U.S. constitution seems to allow Americans gun ownership. Some argue that 2nd amendment is necessary because it is a safeguard against government tyranny. This argument strikes me as false.

It seems to me that a government that cannot steer itself towards liberty through the use of checks and balances but instead has to be coerced by its gun-touting-populous away from tyrannical rule is not worth having. The argument for gun access to safeguard liberal democracy is an argument against liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy’s nature is self-sustaining, through peaceful measures and voluntary agreement of all. Faults of government are exposed by the free press, by other branches of government and punished by an independent judiciary where appropriate. The system has accountability and oversight. To say that liberal democracy can only be sustained by an armed and angry mob is to deny this nature of liberal democracy. But this nature is undeniable. Liberal democratic process is flourishing in many places around the World where gun ownership is curtailed or even banned. Example of UK comes to mind.

The argument for ownership of guns to protect liberal democracy thus flows from faulty premises, namely that liberal democracy is sustainable only through gun-touting-mob. A separation of arguments for gun ownership and maintenance of liberal democracy is called for.

Kremlin's power

All power in Russia is concentrated in Kremlin. Duma (the parliament) acts like a rubber stamp because it is controlled by the Kremlin’s party. The regional governors are appointed by Kremlin. There exists a thin but very powerful and rich layer of military, intelligence and mafia types which is well connected with the Kremlin. This is the layer controls most business and has involvement with almost all national activities. However this layer in no way opposes the Kremlin but is fully subservient. Corruption allows this layer some independence in its activities.

This form of government can be seen as nonhereditary monarchy with all nepotism and cronyism which monarchy implies. Ironically this is exactly what Perestroika wanted to get rid of and the communist revolution before that. It seems that no matter what the common Russian people do, they end up with the same government but under a different political banner. From the Czar to the General Secretary of the Party to the President, all men who rule Russia have ruled it using the same methods. Namely using absolute or near absolute authority to suppress any opposition to achieving goals, which of course are chosen by them alone.

This happens because there are no checks and balances on power in Russia. In other countries long histories of institutional development produced very robust mechanisms to spread power around and to add accountability to every institution. When someone gets into power they are not really in power. They are simply in charge of one of the institutions. Rules and good ethic is enforced by other institutions. There is no free reign. In Russia the opposite is true. Whoever has the power has freedom to do whatever he pleases.

This is somewhat of a medieval way of governing. In the long term it is nowhere as productive or kind to its citizens as a system with more accountability.

This reason for this state of affairs seems to be that Enlightenment never took root in Russia. In other countries ideas of Enlightenment grew into liberalism and democracy. This was accomplished by gradual change rather than revolution. It is impossible to come to conclusive understanding why Enlightenment never took root. But what is true is that Russia needs to start to develop these institutions as soon as possible for its own sake and for the sake of the World. Unfortunately there is no reason why this should happen now or in anytime in the future.