Rights being what they are...

There's a misconception that I want to address. You can see the evidence of it in legislative approaches to social problems all the time. It is the idea that "rights" are, or can be, in conflict.

A right constitutes proper authority, the power to make decisions and do as one pleases. It invokes higher law; it's something that is ordained by God or nature, not other people. Rights are, by definition, exclusive. Two individuals cannot claim a divine right to the same power or authority over the same property; if they do, one is right, the other is wrong. It's easier to understand when you consider a "right" as "the right," or the right thing to do. If course of action (A) is settled on as the right thing to do, then this is the same as saying all other courses of action are not the right thing to do. To bring this back to a more common application of the word, if an individual has the right to make decisions regarding a certain peice of property, then no other individual can claim the same right, unless the first person chooses to share it.

(Keep in mind, married folks, that wives and husbands only count as one individual).

The confusion arises when folks think of general rights as unlimited. They aren't. It isn't really accurate, for example, to say that you have a right to property. You have a right to some property unless you've been slacking, but of course you don't have a right to all property. You can't say that you have a right to free speech, because you don't have a right to stand in your neighbors house and scream shrilly after he's told you to be quiet. You have a right to some speech, some of the time, in some places.

Rights are limited like the borders of states; one ends where another starts. This lends itself quite well to one of my favorite phrases explaining the limitation of rights: "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins" (Richard Maybury).

There are a couple places where I've heard this erroneous argument used, and they are usually made in the context of justifying government intervention that encroaches upon actual individual rights.

For instance, you'll see immunization statutes that make a provision for exemption in situations where an individual has a bona fide religious conviction against immunization. However, many of these statutes specifically state that, in the case of an epidemic, this exemption will not be upheld.

This isn't, as some would suggest, a matter of competing or overlapping rights where the state has an right that is simply more important than the individual's. It would be silly to suggest that the parent has a right to not immunize in a given situation and that the state has a right to compel immunization in the same situation. Remember, you're appealing to a higher authority when you claim a right; God (or nature) isn't going to stand behind both opposing parties simultaneously proclaiming both to be properly excercising his authority.

It is a question of whether or not the individual does, in fact, have a right to adhere to their religious convictions in this situation at all. If they do, it can't be argued that a simple state interest outbalances a right. Rights, by definition, also trump interests. Take the scriptural example of the starving thief in Proverbs 6:30; his interest is acute and reasonable, but it doesn't negate the rights of the person he steals from.

To say that a right exists, but that it must be suspended or forfeited or encroached upon to serve even a pressing interest is a contradiction in terms. If I say this, then although I'm using the term "right," I'm actually assigning to the word the actual meaning "privilege."

"So what" you may say at this point. "What's the difference between saying that I don't actually have a right to do x and saying that I do have a right to do x but the government has a stronger right? Isn't the outcome the same?

Maybe, in some situations. The danger, though, rests in the assumption that arises when one incorrectly identifies the limitation of a right as an acceptable instance where a right is encroached upon. It is never proper, from a logical perspective or from a philosophical perspective, to say that it is ethically acceptable to encroach upon a right. That is exactly equivalent to saying that it is ethically acceptable to stop something from doing that God (or nature) has given them rightful authority to do. Instead, it is appropriate to identify the border of the dominion that God (or nature) established, and stop someone cold when they cross it.

A New Creation

I love the WashPost; it's a great source of opposition research, and a much more interesting read, generally, than the Washington Times. Check out this quote from this article talking about the impact of the recent Massachusetts election:

Republican Scott Brown's victory Tuesday in a Senate special election in Massachusetts blindsided President Obama and Democratic leaders, who had nearly reached the finish line on an ambitious overhaul of the nation's health-care system and were beginning to turn their attention to other challenges, namely creating jobs and lowering the deficit.

There's plenty I could discuss in just that sentence, but I just wanted to point out the author's use of a term that, despite having no basis in reality, gets bandied about by straight-faced politicians constantly. I'm talking about "job creation."

Here's the theory: A politician drafts a bill granting so many millions of dollars for the construction of some public works project. Jobs now exist for the folks working on this project, and they didn't exist there before. Job created, right?

Wrong! Job moved. The money (or at least the value of the money) used to "create" this job didn't appear out of thin air at the wave of a legislative wand. They took it from someone else, a taxpayer in most cases. And what would that taxpayer have done with it? They'd have spent it, bringing jobs about just as certainly as any legislator would have done. Dave Barry sums this up better than I ever could:

See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

There are two significant differences, however, between the kind of job "creation" that comes about legislatively, as opposed to the kind that comes about naturally.

First, the kind that comes about naturally is spread out over a large area, whereas the job "creation" that comes about legislatively tends to be focused in one area. That lends itself to good PR for the legislator; he can point to 500 jobs on a project in a particular area that weren't there before, whereas the 600 or so that would have happened without his help (but are now lost) wouldn't have been as easy to spot. He gets bonus points if the money that was used for those projects came largely from a constituency other than his own.

Next, the jobs that come about naturally are the jobs that people actually need to be done, whereas those that happen as a result of legislative decisions aren't the kind of jobs that people really need. This is always a pretty safe bet, because if folks did need these jobs to be done, they'd already have been paying folks to do them. Instead of Joe Citizen being able to use his own money to pay for the projects he actually wants, legislators help him out by building stuff like the bridge to nowhere and the Rock and Roll hall of fame.

It's the kind of freedom to make those choices that terrifies most legislators. Without their wisdom directing the common man, they think, who knows that kind of foolish use they'd put their money to. Just listen to John Kerry's reasoning on why tax cuts are a bad idea:

If you put a tax cut into the hands of a business or family, there's no guarantee that they're going to invest that or invest it in America. They're free to go invest anywhere that they want if they choose to invest.

Next time you hear someone tell you that they, or someone else, are about to "create" a job by taking money from someone (probably you) and giving it to someone else, put that person on your mental list of folks that you don't trust. Odds are they know that what they are saying is patent nonsense, but they hope you're dumb enough to buy into it.

Update: Here's another one.

It's Your Job!

Reading bills is generally an excercise in concentration. They're usually boring, and usually take ten times the words to communicate half the content that a normal person would use in even formal written conversation. So I won't fault you if you don't read this one.

I'll summarize the part that I'm interested in, though. This bill would require every licensed pharmacy in Missouri (you can't operate as an unlicensed pharmacy) to do the following:

1. Dispense any over the counter contraceptive or prescription drug in stock (when presented with a prescription), health contraindiciations aside and assuming the customer can pay.

2. If it isn't in stock, the pharmacy is required to order it expeditiously to sell it to the customer, or find the customer a pharmacy that can get it for them.

Quite a few states have introduced similar bills, and quite a few other states have introduced bills protecting the right of pharmacists or pharmacies to refuse to fill prescriptions when doing so would conflict with their religious convictions.

I hear two common arguments to support this kind of bill. First, proponents argue thatlaws like the one above are being put in place simply to keep pharmacists from imposing their own convictions on other people. No one, it is said, should be allowed to force someone else to submit to their own personal convictions.

That's a somewhat valid argument, I admit; problem is, as applied to this situation, it works in favor of allowing the pharmacist to refuse to fill the prescription. That's because when he refuses to dispense medication, he's not trying to force compliance with his own convictions. He's simply refusing to participate affirmatively. If he were to rip up the prescription slip, or slash the person's tires so they couldn't go elsewhere, then sure, he'd be imposing his convictions on the other person. But in this case, he's simply not offering his own help to the person in their venture to obtain medication. Not actively assisting someone is a far cry from actively working to stop them.

These laws do exactly what the proponents claim to be trying to prevent; they force the pharmacy or pharmacist to affirmatively engage in an activity that violates their religious convictions. These laws force the pharmacist to comply with the personal moral convictions of... the legislator.

"But it's the job of the pharmacist" you'll hear some people protest. "They shouldn't have taken a job dispensing medication if they didn't want to really do it!"

Er, no. It's obviously not legally the job of the pharmacist, or you wouldn't hear of these laws being introduced. And it isn't nominally the job of the pharmacist, either, since opening up shop as a pharmacist isn't a tacit guarantee that you'll dispense every medication known to man, just like opening a tire shop isn't a guarantee that you'll stock Firestone, opening a movie store isn't a guarantee that you'll keep Fight Club on the shelf (curse you, Winchester Movie Gallery!), and opening a grocery store isn't a guarantee that you'll stock IBC Cherry Limeade (curse you, Wal-Mart!).

Harms < Rights

The University of Maryland puts out a publication called the Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly. In the last issue, one Robin West waxed fearful of the dangers of homeschooling free from government control and restriction.

HSLDA already put out a decent response.

There are plenty of holes to poke in West's criticism, but I just want to mention one that HSLDA didn't address. Throughout her essay she voices skepticism of the existence of a right of parents to homeschool, primarily through excessive use of quotation marks. However, her secondary attack on the concept of a right to homeschool can be summed up in the following excerpt:

The main purpose of this essay is to criticize this “right to home-
school” that the religious parents and their lawyersand lobbyists have claimed, or created, over the pastcouple of decades. My criticism will rest primarily on the basis of the harms such a right might inflict upon the children so educated.

Never mind that most of the harms listed later are laughable. The lapse of logic that occurs here (the evaluation of a right by the weighing of possible harms) renders even serious harms irrelevant to her point.

Any right has serious potential harms. The right of a wife to make medical decisions for a husband, or for herself, even, leaves open a distinct potential for harm, intended or unintended. The right to keep and bear arms, the right to express one's opinions, the right to keep one's property, the right to one's person and property to be free from unconstitutional search and seizure all carry with them the potential for grave harm. That a right under review could result in harm or risk of harm to an individual is largely irrelevant to the determination of wether or not it is an actual right. What IS relevant is whether or not the excercise of that right would conflict with the already-established rights of others.

I'll give you an example. You have a right to self-defense; that means if someone begins to attack you, you can attack them in response to neutralize their attack. Is there a potential for harm in your excercise of this right? Sure! Are you encroaching upon the rights of your attacker? Nope!

There is an ongoing argument over whether or not children have a right to a public education provided with a humanistic worldview, a right to a curriculum that is free of Christian influence, etc., but West doesn't bother to develop that argument.

As an aside, even if harms DID trump rights, West's position would still be fatally flawed. That's because she only evaluates the potential harms of unregulated homeschooling, and ignores all of the real, observed harms of regulated schooling. Kids get killed, molested, beaten, bullied, emotionally abused, indoctrinated, and educationally neglected by the millions every day in public schools, but West has been trained to believe that this shouldn't count when evaluating the rightness of state-run education. She'd probably tell you that all that just shows that public schools need more money.

IRS plans to decide who you can pay to help you file your tax return

The Washington Post recently reported here and here on a new plan by the IRS to test, register and screen paid tax return preparers. I think the most enlightening quote in either article comes from IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman; "In most states you need a license to cut someone's hair...most tax-return preparers don't have to meet any standards when they sit down and prepare a federal tax return for an American taxpayer."

Whether he knew it or not, Mr. Shulman proposed a good analogy of the silliness of mandatory restriction of services. I've got a friend in West Virginia who can give a fine haircut, yet if she does so for one of her friends and gets paid in return, she's breaking the law.

This is patently ridiculous; giving someone a haircut is no more risky than shoveling their sidewalk or washing their car, and anyone should be allowed to assess the skill and honesty of their prospective barber. However, there are solidly invested lobbies involved, and for good reason. If anyone were allowed to set up shop as a part-time barber, it would cut down on the number of customers that full-time barbers would entertain. Serious part-time competition is effectively eliminated by a licensure requirement of at least 2,000 hours of courses and training.

Along the same lines, it should come as no surprise that H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt are fully on board with a requirement that the IRS test, register and screen paid tax preparers. I know at least two people who, for a fee, prepare the occasional tax return (the one I spoke to today mentioned that he's discovered errors in mainstream automated tax preparation software in the past). If they have to submit to stringent and time-consuming new regulations, they'll simply stop preparing tax returns. This measure will certainly cut down on the amount of competition big tax preparing companies face, so it's no wonder they are a fan.

As an aside, there are three more serious problems with the reasoning presented in these articles.

First, both articles (and the IRS) present as a problem tax preparers intentionally giving bad advice to clients for personal gain. That's a legitimate problem, but it isn't going to be solved by education.

Next, when asked if some of the genuinely mistaken advice from tax preparers is a result of the complexity of the IRS code, the IRS response is that "they don't have the data to answer that question." Well, duh. Of course it is. I, and most of the millions of people (snicker) reading this article are unable to prepare our own taxes because the tax code is ridiculously complex. When CPAs start getting confused by it, yeah, it's too complicated. That the IRS, though, is more interested in regulating tax preparers than simplifying their code comes as no surprise.

Finally, the IRS points to studies conducted in 2006 and 2008 where 60% and 89% of tax return preparers arrived at an incorrect bottom line. Notice a kinda large leap? Did preparers really get 29% worse in two years? Or was the discrepancy due to the unusually small sample size of 19 return preparers in 2006 and 28 in 2008? Don't those seem like kinda small numbers to use for a sample when the number of paid preparers is estimated at around a million?

If you use a part-time tax preparer, and he doesn't have the time to undergo competency testing and 15 hours of continuing education annually, then by gum you can't use him anymore.

On a final note, I think it's safe to say that the IRS can be viewed as an antagonistic agency to quite a few Americans, and the tax preparer as a line of defense. Why is it that the IRS gets to choose who represents us before them?