James @40: What I take from your examples is that if a person commits a crime that directly conflicts with their job responsibilities, they should lose their job. I agree.
Wikipedia just told me that Team America PAC is all about the "illegal immigration" issue. So as Executive Director, Marcus Epstein had a special responsibility to not be racist. And so he should be fired. Sounds good to me.
Linkmeister @39, I think the "direct conflict" principle covers the Latrell Sprewell case too.
I hope I'm not threadjacking, but what about cases where "direct conflict" doesn't apply? What if Marcus Epstein hadn't uttered the hate speech? Drunken assault on a stranger is still pretty bad.
Tobias @36, I agree with your first sentence. People who influence policy will often run into this "direct conflict" issue if they commit crimes. But I don't agree with your second sentence. Just to take your argument to a ridiculous extreme (in the time-honoured tradition of internet conversations everywhere), your position suggests that if two janitors fight each other at a bar, and one of them works at a government building while the other works at a private corporation, the government janitor should lose his job because he punched his "boss" - a taxpayer.
I'm interested in the circumstances under which people should lose their jobs for crimes committed during their personal lives.
Indulge me with a thought experiment. Marcus Epstein is your personal assistant. He's a bright young man who does his job well. One day you pick up the paper and read in the police blotter that he was arrested for karate-chopping a random pedestrian and calling her a racial epithet. Do you fire him?
If you do not, how do you justify keeping a racist jerk in your office?
If you do, do you consider destroying his career to be a proportionate response to his offense? (The assault and hate speech was pretty bad, so this may not be a difficult decision. Can you imagine other, lesser offenses, that would make this decision difficult? Ideally, can you imagine an offense that sets off your "ick" response, but does not really merit derailing a career? How do you respond then?)
Assuming you decide to fire him: Do you now consider it your responsibility to read the police blotter every day to ensure that none of your subordinates have committed crimes?
Does the job matter? Does working for a politician make a difference? What if the offender works for the civil service, or for a private company that works for the government under contract? Does being paid by tax money require a higher level of moral uprightness?
To me this seems like one great big grey area. Some years ago, I was in this position. A subordinate was accused of an offense, never charged. My call whether to ask for his resignation or ignore it. I think I made the wrong decision. I've tried, but I've never been able to formulate a clear moral theory to answer these questions.
Heresiarch @49:
Democracy is not a system of determining facts. Your opinion doesn't matter in the slightest when it comes to whether the earth is getting warmer, or whether gravity exists. It is a system for collectively determining what society as a whole should do. It is dangerous to confuse the two.
I agree with each of your points, and they do not contradict my argument.
You are correct that it is important to distinguish between the value of opinions for determining facts, and for determining collective action. Failing to make this point was a weakness in my original comment.
Nevertheless: In a democracy, for the purposes of determining collective action, your opinion matters as much as anyone else's. If you think the majority is wrong about a matter of public policy, it behooves you to try to convince them of their error, not to change the system so that they can no longer influence the policy.
Saying that the herd should get out of the way and let the experts make decisions is antidemocratic. That isn't necessarily a bad thing; there are lots of arguments in favour of technocracy, and I think people mistakenly think of democracy as purely good. What's that Churchill line? It's the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.
Lila @31:
"Your opinion matters as much as anyone else’s"
"matters" does not mean "is useful" or "is correct".
"Your opinion matters as much as anyone else’s"
Actually, I think this is a necessary condition for democracy.
Mind you, I also think another necessary condition is "You have a responsibility to keep an open mind and engage in dialogue on substantive issues", which contradicts a lot of the earlier ideas.
Also, I think it's important to distinguish between "opinion" and "judgement". As I interpret it, anyone can have an opinion; professionals and experts have judgement.
The author's "item-subitem" format suggests that the subitem is a corollary or otherwise causally related to the item; that is, that "experts are just people with hidden agendas" necessarily follows from "all opinions equal". This makes sense in the larger context of the "Ignorance" section, but not in isolation.
As a complete package, the author's argument makes sense. But I think there are some babies in this bathwater.
In any job or school situation, my closest relationships are with the people with whom I go to lunch.
I'm convinced that eating a meal together is the only way to convince the caveman parts of my brain that the other person is part of the "tribe" (that is, the group of people who can be trusted around my resources). Look, caveman brain! The new caveman doesn't steal food. Now put the club down!
regarding Narcan: If you're really determined to get your hands on it, but don't want to take EMT courses, you could move to Vancouver and go to a harm-reduction overdose prevention course. According to this article they will hook you up with a Narcan kit after a brief training session.
Following up on: hiking.
I was on a hike with about twenty kids led by my father. While we stopped for a break, my brother wandered to a spot where the ground dropped off and started throwing pine cones to watch them fall, as young men will.
I imitated him, as younger brothers will. In order to be able to see the cones fall better, I scrambled down to a little ledge.
Two minutes later, my father called my name and carefully asked me to come back up. I looked down and saw my situation clearly for the first time: the ledge was very narrow and the "drop" was a 200 foot cliff.
When people say "the young think they're immortal", I think back to that day when a seven year old boy realized how very mortal he was.
I've often wondered why the justice system doesn't treat election tampering/rigging as seriously as murder or treason. Screwing with an election cuts to the heart of a democracy; I honestly don't see much difference between a clerk tampering with voter lists and a general staging a military coup.
Seeing as the Roman Empire reserved the worst judicial punishments for corrupt bureaucrats (something like sewing them up in a sack with a weasel and throwing them into a river), I don't really understand why "crimes against democracy" don't have exceptional punitive power behind them.
But then I remember that the Roman Empire isn't necessarily the role model for a liberal democracy, and the probable result of beefing up election-corruption punishments would just be political operatives on both sides trying to frame their opponents to get them disqualified.
But still, the U.S. has got to take the prize for electoral shenanigans. Why does it happen here, but not in other countries, and what can we do to stop it?
Guthrie @ #1: Here's an unverified reference:
Groueff, Stephane. Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb. Boston: Little, 1967. Page 352.
That is, I found an article that mentions the Fermi anecdote, and cites Groueff. But I haven't read the book myself, so I don't know how useful it might be.
Bruce @186, I'm guessing the accusation of sexism you're referring to is here, previously linked in #155. While I don't agree with Joanne that BB is being sexist, I think she proposed an interesting viewpoint.
What would our reaction be if BB scrubbed all mention of William Gibson from its posts and comments?
I think we'd be puzzled, and curious, but in the long run, there would be more amusement than indignation. What sense is there in pretending William Gibson doesn't exist? It would be funny because Gibson is bigger than BoingBoing. He's got more mindshare, or celebrity, or whatever you want to call it.
But BoingBoing is bigger than Violet Blue. Disappearing her seems like the big picking on the small. The imbalance in leverage of the two parties gives BB's actions the appearance of petty cruelty.
It's that emotional tone that I think may explain some of the reactions people are having. For some of us, it may seem like a trusted friend is acting like a bully and not giving us an explanation. Some of us may have an ingrained bias against powerful actors, and may see this as evidence that sure enough, everyone's a bastard when they get to the top. And some of us, sensitive to the intersection of power and gender, may see a powerful, 3/4 male blogging collective erasing a less powerful, female blogger from their archives as a sexist act.
I noticed that the Observer version has a few sentences which do not
appear in the original version. I'm curious, since I know next to
nothing about the real world editing process... where did those lines
come from? Do editors add material when they edit a piece? Does the
author approve the new lines?
Congratulations on a great piece.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 6 |
| 2008 | 7 |
Total: 13 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Andrew T:
Show all comments by Andrew T.