Peace vs Prosecution

I would like to share an LDS scripture with you, but first I want to give some background.

All around, I see people breaking laws or otherwise causing harm to others.  I am not talking about things like theft or speeding (ok, I see tons of speeding, but that is a different matter).  I am talking about things like doctors forcing or cajoling their patients into accepting treatments that are not in their best interest.  I am talking about housing providers ignoring laws requiring them to keep housing suitable for their tenants.  I am also talking about businesses cheating their employees deliberately or due to ignorance.  These things bother me.  I have a policy of social intolerance of bad behavior, but most LDS people seem to think that it is better to sacrifice their freedoms than to do something that could be construed as uncivil or otherwise not getting along with others.  The LDS religion teaches tolerance of the beliefs of others, but many act as if they believe this means they should tolerate harmful or illegal actions against them by others.  If you are LDS, let me correct your thoughts on this.  If you are not, feel free to consider what I am about to present anyway.

The LDS book of scripture called The Doctrine and Covenants (often abbreviated D&C) contains the following verse (D&C 134:11):

We believe that men should appeal to the civil law for redress of all wrongs and grievances, where personal abuse is inflicted or the right of property or character infringed, where such laws exist as will protect the same; but we believe that all men are justified in defending themselves, their friends, and property, and the government, from the unlawful assaults and encroachments of all persons in times of exigency, where immediate appeal cannot be made to the laws, and relief afforded.

Note that the first part says "We believe that men should..."  It does not say "can," "may," or even "are justified in."  It says "should."  This is Church doctrine.  While it is not explicitly worded as a commandment ("thou shalt"), it does use very similar wording ("shalt" and "should" are conjugations of the same root).  Now, I want to be clear here.  This is not just about getting what you are legally entitled to.  It goes much further than this.  If you read the rest of section 134, you will find more Church doctrine stating that members of the LDS Church (well, and everyone else) have a responsibility to uphold the just laws of the land in part by turning in people who break it.  Again, this is not just about getting what you are legally entitled to.  This is about enforcement of the law in general.  If you are mistreated by a doctor, and you choose not to take legal action against that doctor, you are allowing that doctor to mistreat others by your inaction.  If you choose not enforce laws requiring your landlord to keep your home or apartment rental in livable conditions, you are potentially allowing others to come to harm by your inaction.  If you do not report an employer who is cheating you out of overtime pay or who is otherwise cheating or harming you, you are allowing that employer to cheat or harm other employees.  Some of these people who are coming to harm because of your inaction may not even realize that they are being treated in a way that is prohibited by the law.

While I have found no LDS scripture stating this, in my personal opinion, when a person deliberately chooses to allow illegal or harmful behavior to continue, that person becomes complicit in that illegal behavior.  While the law is unlikely to prosecute if the behavior is ever reported by someone else, I believe that God will hold you accountable for harm that happens because you are too lazy or fearful to do your civil duty as stated in the above mentioned scripture.

Here I would like to admit that I am not perfect.  I have been in a few circumstances where I chose not to press charges against a doctor or a landlord, where, according to this scripture, I should have.  In both cases, I did not want to cause contention.  In hindsight, I should have.  That doctor has probably caused emotional harm to multiple patients since then, which I could have prevented.  I feel bad, and justifiably so, that I did nothing to prevent that harm.  Since then, however, I have made some better choices.  Long ago I mentioned this, but I will mention it again.  I once gained knowledge of a labor law violation involving a minor.  Even though I was not directly impacted by the violation, I chose to report it.  The employer was raided by the labor department, and evidence of the violation was found.  Fines were given (I do not know how much, but fines for minor violations can get into the tens of thousands, and the violation occurred multiple times).  That employer will likely never make that mistake again.  I am almost certain the employee who was harmed will never have that happen again with that employer either.  My action may have hurt one employer (who earned the harm), but it saved a lot of innocent employees from harm.  Also, by reporting the violation, I strengthened the law.  If violations of the law are never reported, it is almost as if the law does not exist.  By reporting a violation, I made it clear to those violating the law that they cannot get away with breaking the law without consequences.  A law that is not enforced is worth very little and does almost nothing to protect anyone, but a law that is enforced justly serves its purpose well.  My actions helped a law to be enforced that otherwise would have been useless (in that particular case).


Anyhow, any LDS person who believes that convenience and peace are more valuable than enforcing the law is a hypocrite.  Besides the above scripture, there are many LDS scriptures stating that even killing is justified when it is in defense of yourself, your family, your friends, your property, or your rights and freedoms.  Maybe the U.S. is a sue-happy nation where too many frivolous lawsuits occur.  Choosing not to press charges when lawsuits are justified will not improve the situation, and in fact, this act of giving up your legal rights and protections will actually make it worse for everyone.

Benefits for Children

According to this article child poverty has steadily increased in the U.S. over the last two decades, despite government programs and other non-profit efforts to improve the situation.  What everyone seems to be ignoring is adult poverty.

This increase in child poverty points to a bigger problem: Adult poverty.  Children are in poverty because their parents are in poverty.  Most of these relief programs focus entirely on the children, with little concern for the adults.  A few programs (like the Earned Income Tax Credit) take the entire family into account, but even many of those only do so incidentally.  This leads to several problems.

The first problem is that providing only for the children will only help the problem partially.  A program designed to help children that provides housing assistance will not provide enough to take care of all housing needs, because it does not account for the needs of the adults.  This results in the assistance being spread too thin.  Likewise, a program like WIC, which is designed to help only the children and the mother will be watered down when the father needs to eat as well.  A program that helps children who are in poverty, but not the parents is missing some essential things.

The second problem is that the mental and emotional impacts of poverty are not reduced significantly, if the parents still have to deal with it.  A child might go to a free preschool, which will benefit the child, but free preschool will not improve the ability of the parents to care for the child.  The child will still have to deal with being in poverty.  The child will still be impacted with the constantly high level of stress of the parents, and will likely learn poor stress management and decision making skills as a result.  Instead of having uneducated poor people, poor children will grow into well educated poor people.  Programs designed to help children in poverty are great, but some of the effects of poverty can only be relieved by helping the parents.

Besides all of this, it seems extremely hypocritical to be willing to help people until they are old enough that we feel comfortable blaming for their own problems.  It may be clear that children are not at fault for their problems, it is not always clear that poverty is rarely the fault of the adults either.  The recent recession has caused a shift in public opinion over this blame thing.  More people are beginning to realize that poverty is often not the fault of those who are in poverty.  It seems rather cruel to deny aid to people once they reach an age where they are no longer considered a child.  A child who grew up in poverty, with or without aid or assistance, is more likely to remain in poverty as an adult, through no fault of their own.  Reliving just the poverty of the children will do little to help the situation, because much of the problem is that parents in poverty are unable to teach their children how to avoid poverty (and this propagates through generations).  If we really want to help children to escape poverty, we need to help their parents as well.  The article cites studies and data that show that despite better education and many programs designed to help children in poverty, the poverty rate for children is increasing.  This is evidence that helping only the children is not enough.  We need to help the adults as well, or this problem is just going to get worse.  Why, if children have the right to live above the poverty level, can anyone think that adults should not have this right?

Pay for Unhired Volunteer Worker?

I just heard that President Obama and his wife are demanding pay for her, because she is the First Lady.  (Here is one source)  The President says that his wife works very hard as the First Lady and deserves to be paid for her work.  I want to analyze this claim to find the truth.

First, let's start by looking at my personal situation.  I am a computer scientist.  I develop computer programs for a living.  My wife works very hard taking care of our 4 children.  She also does a good deal of service for others when she has time.  According to the Obamas' logic, my employer should pay her for her work.  The work my wife has done was never solicited by my employer.  My employer did not interview her or hire her for this position.  Is it fair that my employer should pay my wife for her work?

The job of First Lady seems like a very difficult and time consuming job.  The fact, however, is that it is not.  The hardest thing the First Lady has to deal with is that she gets to spend less time with her husband, because of how hard and time consuming his work is.  First Lady is not a job title.  No one voted for Michelle Obama to do the work she is doing, she was not appointed to the post, and she was not interviewed or hired for the position.  In fact, the title itself means nothing more than that she is married to the President.  It carries no responsibility.  The First Lady has no responsibilities beyond the normal responsibilities expected of a spouse.  In other words, any work done by the First Lady in that role is volunteer work.  Volunteers do not get paid.  That is just the nature of the work.  If Michelle Obama is overworked, she can quit and go on vacation any time she wants, without any notice.  This is not a job.  This is a hobby.  If she is doing a huge amount of volunteer work, it is her own personal choice, and no one should be forced to pay her for her effort.  Sorry, but these are the facts.  Trying to force someone to pay for unsolicited work is just plain wrong.  If President Obama really wants her to be paid for pushing his political agenda, then he can pay her out of his own pocket.  (He gets a salary of $400,000 a year.  He can afford it.)

I am rather disgusted at our President.  We are still in what is supposedly the tail end of a recession (though there is little evidence it is going to end anytime soon), he is paid substantially more than a vast majority of U.S. citizens, our government is in enormous debt, and he is demanding that his wife get paid for her volunteer work that is primarily designed to advance his personal political agendas.  President Obama, if your wife is not getting paid enough for her volunteer work, she can quit.  I certainly do not want to pay for the labor of a person that was not even hired for the job, and I hope the rest of America is not so deluded as to disagree with me.

D&D for Old Folks

I have had a strong opinion on D&D and similar role playing games for some time.  Unlike popular opinion, my opinion is not a negative one.  Pen and paper role playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, can be highly educational.  When played in groups (group play is typical), they also improve interpersonal skills like communication and team work. When played properly (role playing as opposed to pure hack and slash), they also help participants to look at things from other points of view.  No computer game can compete with a face to face, pen and paper RPG.

There are some potential problems with role playing games like D&D.  Occasionally, we hear stories about people who have become hopelessly addicted to the game.  On even more rare occasions, we hear stories about someone doing something stupid that could be linked to their D&D game.  These almost always get blown out of proportion (these are nearly always mentally unstable people, and there has never been any evidence that D&D caused the poor behavior), but addiction is a valid concern.  Thankfully, there is no evidence that D&D or any other pen and paper RPG is any more addictive than similar video games.  In fact, because pen and paper RPGs require scheduling play time around the schedules of several people, most groups play only once a week to once a month (the exception is high school groups which sometimes play 5 days a week during lunch periods and tend to have higher addiction rates as a result).  People who play computer RPGs tend to play at least several days a week for a few hours, and many play several hours every day.  Addiction to computer games in general has become a big enough problem to get specialized attention from the medical field.  Addiction to pen and paper RPGs is so uncommon that people make a big deal about it when cases are discovered.  (Ok, so part of the reason for this is that more people play computer RPGs, but the point still stands.)

Now, to get to the point.  I have had this idea for over 10 years, but I have not really had time to do much about it.  I just read an article that reminded me of it and gave me a very good reason to discuss it here.  This article discusses seniors that gamble out of boredom.  Evidently, a significant percentage of U.S. seniors gamble because they do not have anything better to do.  Some claim they do it for the social interaction, however, upon observation, it is found that almost no social interaction takes place in the casinos aside from lunch time.  The rest of the time is spent gambling on very non-social machines.  The gambling itself offers no social interaction.  All of the social interactions occur during the trips to and from the casino and during meals.  In most cases, according to studies funded primarily by the gambling industry (red flag), most seniors gamble responsibly.  The problem I see is that they think they are spending their money on a social experience, but they are not getting the actual experience.  Besides the false advertising (casino ads typically show groups of people having positive social experiences, when in reality most gamblers are sitting at a machine, ignoring everything else), these people are craving social experience, but they are not getting what they need.  In the article, one person is quoted as lamenting that her generation did not invent something better for seniors to do than squander their money gambling.  She is wrong.  Her generation (or maybe the one directly before her) did invent something superior to gambling.

Most older people choose to gamble out of boredom.  When people get old, fun physical activity becomes difficult and painful, so the normal things younger people do for fun are either painful or even outright dangerous for older people.  The current older generation is not very computer literate, and thus the computer games with good long term value can be very difficult for them to learn.  They also grew up during a time when most social interaction was face to face, and they prefer that to the impersonal online interactions found in computer games.  My solution is Dungeons and Dragons (or any other pen and paper RPG).

Dungeons and Dragons allows people to try new things by proxy.  An 80 year old man may not have the physical capacity to travel much, but in an RPG, he can role play a 20 year old youth with very good stamina and strength.  Through his character, he can experience things and places that he cannot experience in person due to his age.  Even further, he can experience things through his character that no one can experience in real life.  Though it is often frowned upon, women can play male characters and men can play female characters (it also tends to be more difficult to role play characters that are a different gender from the player).  Further, addiction is less problematic for older people, in some degree, because they tend to be less susceptible to addiction, and because gaming addiction is far less likely to interfere with their lives.

Note that not all pen and paper RPGs are based on a fantasy environment.  A D&D-like modern RPG system exists called Modern D20.  Shadowrun is another RPG system that is futuristic (the genre is often called cyberpunk).  There are also superhero RPGs, anime RPGs, steampunk RPGs, and nearly any other kind of RPG you can think of.  And if you are worried about claims of a certain RPG being evil and demonic, the involvement of any brand of supernatural power (good or evil) is up to the DM (who hosts the game) and the players.  (D&D has some seriously evil monsters, however, it has a selection of monsters so large that the DM must chose a subset of them to use in the game.  In fact, a game heavy on role playing and light on combat might not include any of the fantasy monsters available for the game.)  Ultimately, the direction and content of the game is up to the DM and the players.  If they are really set on gambling, they could even play a game where their characters go on a casino road trip (a good setting for this might be the 1800s, when much of gambling was done face to face with a dealer and other players).  At least this way, the money squandered would be fake.

Old people, especially those in elderly care homes, do not have much to do with their time.  They often suffer from extreme boredom.  Many have taken up gambling as a hobby, because they think it will provide social interaction that they crave.  Unfortunately, it does not, and it costs money than many elderly people cannot afford to lose.  Role playing games are less addictive and far cheaper than gambling.  They offer a wide variety of possible social interactions.  They provide good mental stimulation and experiences that can not be had any other way.  With a good DM, even the learning curve is quite shallow (players tell the DM what their characters do, and the DM explains what happens in response; the DM can handle most of the rules).  I think that we could solve this gambling problem for elderly people by offering face to face, pen and paper role playing experiences.

Fair Pay

I believe I have expressed my opinion on this subject before, so I will summarize:  Any job that cannot pay enough for employees to live off of is not worth doing.

Minimum wage is starting to become a big deal again, as Obama pushes to have it raised by around 33%.  Fast food employees have started a movement to have minimum wage, at least for fast food jobs, raised by almost 100%.  Current minimum wage is almost half the poverty level (70% according to the government definition, but according to actual accurate data it is less than 50%).  If minimum wage is supposed to provide enough to live on, why has it not been raised sooner?

The Republican Party is largely to blame, along with many large businesses.  The claim is that raising minimum wage will put more people out of work.  This is probably true.  So, I guess they think it is better to let most of the population starve than to make businesses pay fair wages and have less workers but with fair pay.  Really, this is an unsolvable problem from this point of view.  I have already shown how a basic income would solve this problem, so I am not going to harp on that, but I would like to discuss how some large businesses are actually trying to do something about this problem.

I just read this article.  It discusses how some businesses are voluntarily raising their minimum wage.  (I would like to point out how absolutely disgusting it is that self interested businesses have recognized this problem before our government, which is supposed to be paying attention to our needs.)  Ikea recently announced an internal minimum wage of $10.76 an hour (to be implemented soon).  Gap is raising their minimum to $9.00 an hour and already has plans for increasing it to $10.00 an hour in the near future.  Costco already pays a minimum of $11.50 an hour, but the article says that bonuses bring it up to an average of $21 an hour.  Whole Foods also pays $10.00 minimum (with an average of almost twice that).  The last two mentioned in the article are fast food places.  Shake Shack and In-N-Out pay a minimum of $10.00 and $10.50 an hour respectively, with In-N-Out also providing vacation and retirement benefits.

None of these companies are doing poorly.  Costco says the higher wages pay off in productivity and lower employee turnover, and compared to Sam's Club, which does not pay fair wages, the evidence supports that claim (also note that Costco still manages to charge very low prices despite paying their employees around twice what Sam's does).  As far as claims that raising minimum wage will hurt businesses go, the evidence seems to prove the exact opposite.

It is probable that raising minimum wage will make unemployment worse.  This is a natural effect of the law of supply and demand.  When supply and demand are not a matter of life and death, it might be ethical to consider their impact before raising the cost of such an essential commodity as labor.  When it is a matter of life and death, it is not ethical to consider the problem entirely from an economic point of view.  Minimum wage is exactly one of these life and death cases.  Due to a number of different factors, our economy is incapable of providing enough work for everyone who wants it, and the consequence is that the U.S. is slowly sinking into widespread poverty.  There are many solutions to this problem, but they all require more than just changing minimum wage.  Businesses should be required by law to pay fair wages, and a minimum wage that pays $15,000 a year is not fair wages.  We need a minimum wage that pays more than the poverty level to have a sustainable economy.  Raising minimum wage should not even be a question, and if our government cannot see that, then they are not qualified to rule anything, especially not a large country.  Bickering about minimum wage and unemployment is a waste of time.  Once minimum wage is taken care of, we can start looking at other options to take care of the larger problem.  So long as people are relying on minimum wage as their primary form of support though, businesses and the government are morally obligated to make sure it is high enough to provide sufficient support.

I have multiple suggestions to solve the worst of our economic problems, and a basic income is at the top of that list (a basic income would also obviate the need for any minimum wage).  A wage cap would help take care of the supply and demand problem inherent in a minimum wage.  Even a more robust welfare system would help, though it would cost far more than it is worth, with the current needs based system.  Ultimately, we really are living in an unsustainable economy.  It is impossible for a business to survive when it pays less for its resources than they cost to produce.  Minimum wage was designed to solve that problem for labor.  It currently does a very poor job.

Facebook Experiments on its Users

http://national.deseretnews.com/article/1791/Why-Facebook-has-been-experimenting-on-you-behind-your-back.html

This article discusses an experiment Facebook recently did on a subset of its users.  It did not bother to tell anyone or even to ask permission.  It justified this by pointing out that its license agreement, which every Facebook user presumably agreed to when signing up for an account, includes some kind of clause, giving them permission to experiment on users.  Many people have become upset over this, and many have accused Facebook of unethical behavior.  Is Facebook really justified by their license agreement?

This goes far deeper than just experimental ethics.  The first question, which has been asked repeatedly but never answered, is, "Does clicking an 'I agree' button hold the same legal weight as a signature?"  Most software, when installed, asks the user to read the license agreement and click a button labeled something like, "I agree."  This is not a signature, and these extremely informal agreements have never been seriously tested legally.  It is reasonable to say then, that Facebook's license agreement does not actually hold any legal weight, and thus, no Facebook users have agreed to allow themselves to be experimented on in a legally binding fashion.  Otherwise stated, depending on the eventual ruling over what counts as a legally binding agreement, Facebook may have actually violated the law by experimenting on its users without legally binding permission.

The second problem is experimental ethics.  This is hairy to begin with.  The first question, which has been asked repeatedly, but never answered satisfactorily, is, "Is it ethical to conduct a deceitful experiment on someone, even with permission?"  This is problematic, because researchers frequently run into problems where they cannot tell the subjects the nature of the experiment without tainting the data.  The most benign form of this is placebo testing.  In this kind of experiment, the subjects typically know that they may be getting the real test drug or a fake drug, but they do not know which.  The point of the placebo (the fake drug) is to eliminate bias introduced when patients improve because they think they should (this is called the placebo effect).  This is widely considered ethical.  Now, the ethics problem comes in when the researchers do not tell the patients that they may be getting a fake drug.  Is it ethical to tell test subjects that they are getting the real thing when some are not?  This does not typically happen in drug tests, but it happens all the time in psychological experiments (the type of experiment conducted by Facebook).  Introducing too much information about the experiment can alter the behavior of the participants.  Because psychological experiments measure behavior, introducing behavior altering knowledge like this will often cause invalid results.  In other words, telling the participants too much information will alter the results of the experiment.  Sometimes, even telling participants that they are test subjects will alter their behavior.  Some researchers consider any deception unethical.  Others consider it unethical to experiment on people without permission, but they do not consider it wrong to withhold information or even lie about the nature of the experiment.  Legally, it is fine to withhold information (within reason; withholding information about risk factors is illegal), but experimenting on subjects without their permission is very shaky ground.  (Observing behavior without asking permission is fine, so long as surveillance laws are adhered to.)  Facebook's situation may technically fit into the ethical-to-ask-but-not-reveal-information area, if the license agreement holds, but there is one more factor that plays into Facebook's potential guilt.

The third problem is what constitutes agreement.  We have already looked at the legal aspects of agreement, but what about the ethical aspects?  Here is Facebook's third problem: Is it ethical to ask general permission to experiment on a person, or should permission be granted on a case-by-case basis?  According to Facebook, their license agreement includes terms allowing them to experiment on users.  While I have not read this license agreement, I can guarantee that it was not referring explicitly to the experiment conducted, and I am likewise certain that if Facebook conducts additional experiments, they will cite the same clause as permission for those experiments as well.  Is this right?  I have never heard of a case where a potential test subject was asked to sign an agreement to allow the researcher to involve him or her in every  experiment that researcher ever conducts (except in this case).  In fact, I strongly suspect most researchers would consider such a long term agreement highly unethical.  Typically, when a study is conducted (any study) involving people, the agreement signed by participants is exclusive to that study.  It does not apply to any other study past, present, or future.  If multiple studies are being conducted at the same time, and some subjects are participating in more than one, individual contracts are signed for each study.  This is both for legal and ethical reasons.  Facebook, on the other hand, has decided that a long term cover-all agreement is sufficient.  Legalities aside, is it ethical to ask people to sign agreements to participate in multiple undefined experimental studies, before the studies have even been planned?

In may opinion, Facebook has made a grave breach of ethics.  While I think that this should be illegal, we will ultimately have to let the law sort that part out.  My biggest problem with Facebook's experiment is not the experiment itself, it is the fact that Facebook required people to agree to participate in an unlimited number of arbitrary studies, as terms of its use.  These are not studies that were already well planned either.  If Facebook came up with some new study tomorrow, it could, according to its own logic, subject its users to that study without any warning.  What if Facebook decides to conduct a study on shifting public opinion (probably in its own favor)?  If you have a Facebook account, you have already consented to participate.  Really, according to the logic of Facebook's lawyers, Facebook could conduct "experiments" designed to change the results of elections, without any accountability.

I suspect a lot of people believe that this is not a problem, because Facebook would never do that.  Maybe this is true.  Consider, however, what happens when current Facebook executives retire or die.  You might trust Facebook now, but can you honestly say that you trust every person who will ever control Facebook (hint: if you say "yes," you are either an idiot or a liar)?  Are you willing to trust your mental health to a for-profit company who's primary goal is to make as much money as possible?  I am certainly not.

I think this incident may be a signal that we need some legal reform in the field of experimental science.  I am not advocating direct government involvement in all science experiments, but we need some serious public discourse on what is ethical and what is not, and then we need some legal reform based on the majority opinions coming out of the discussions.  It is already clear, based on the reaction of many Facebook users that many consider Facebook's actions to be unethical.  If the majority of voting age U.S. citizens agree, then it should also be illegal.  (I believe that public dialog is important though, to ensure that everyone understands all of the costs and benefits, so that they can make well informed decisions.)