On Being Moral When All About

Thinking about judging people in the past for their action or inaction on moral issues, such as slavery, somehow I got to Rudyard Kipling's poem "If", which is about maintaining one's independence of others and circumstances.

The bottomline is that change and independence is hard to do.  Hard individually--think of everyone who tries to lose weight and fails, who tries to break a drug addiction and fails, who tries to stop smoking and fails.  Hard as a society--both liberals and conservatives can and do point to social problems they'd like to change, whether crime, divorce, homelessness, inequality; problems they have tried to and failed to solve. 

Discrimination in Lending Markets

 NYTimes reports on the Paycheck Protection Program, which it seems black business owners were more likely to get loans from online lenders than local banks. Although there's been publicity and concern about artificial intelligence algorithms being biased, apparently in these cases they may be less biased than the banks.  (The bias in algorithms would result from training the AI app using data which was produced by biased non-AI systems, like training an app to assess beauty by using pictures of whites.)

While the report described by the Times is on black businesses, it easily relates to black farmers, including som issues which I may have touched on in the past. Back in the dark ages of the New Deal the precursors of the Farmers Home Administration were authorized to fill a financing gap, to provide loans to farmers who were credit-worthy but had been unable to get loans from local banks. Even before then the Farm Credit system was set up in the Wilson administration for the same purpose. 

The Congressional Research Service has an overview of the farm credit situation.

The Downside of Government Programs

 As a liberal and retired bureaucrat I support government programs.  

But I need to recognize their downside, which relates to the "last mile". When a government sets up a program, it needs to make a connection with the customer/client/citizen who will benefit or whose conduct will be regulated. I've written before about our problems with making that connection.  But I've been writing from a government-centric viewpoint, saying that for example the Treasury has a hard time getting funds to support renters and prevent evictions out.

What about the perspecitve from the "man on the street", as we used to say? There's many problems--off the top of my head some are:

• the person may be "off the grid":''
• without a mailing address (i.e., homeless or on a reservation, etc).
• not have a landline or cellphone
• not have electricity
• the person may be on the grid, but not on the "social-government" grid:
• not interested in the world, not following news, etc.
• not receive information shared by friends or relatives
• the person may be in a position to receive information but:
• doesn't have the initiative, the time, the energy, the ability to research and make a connection 
• is reliant on a caregiver or guardian who's not conscientious
• is suspicious and must be educated and/or sold on the program.

Bottom line--how much effort do we expect government or NGO's acting for the government to expend in order to overcome the hurdles. My impression in the old days of ASCS, SCS, and FmHA was the different agencies had different expectations in dealing with their farmers.  

Even in the best scenario it's likely some people will fall through the cracks, meaning a government program always increases inequality between groups.

[Update: this isn't a government program but the principle is the same--as the article describes, most people are not aware of this alternative abortion option.]

"Gifted Students" and Rural Schools

 New York City is going to phase out its schools for gifted and talented students.  That stimulates discussion on social media, discussion which is largely among the educated classes who might lean Democratic.

It strikes me as an instance where the elite discussion unconsciously disses rural areas. In such areas the schools are smaller and the opportunity to do enhance instruction for gifted and talented students is constrained.  So to rural ears the discussion seems tone-deaf and irrelevant.

Vaccine Mandates

 I gather from this post in the FSA Facebook Group that the issue of complying with the federal vaccine mandate is controversial. I ran across a post somewhere today which indicated the actual process of implementing the mandate was going to take a while.  

I wonder whether with the delta surge declining will the administration actually go through with it.  It sounds as if even when implemented there would be a drawn-out process for penalizing anyone who didn't get vaccinated, so it may become a dead letter. We'll see.  In the meantime there's a lot of angst out there, and it may be creating conflict in small offices where there's strongly held divergent opinions.   

We who support the Biden's position need to remember the human costs of how it's implemented. 

Nondelegation Doctrine

 Volkh Conspiracy has a guest poster writing on the "nondelegation doctrine", the idea that Congress should grant power to the executive only with strict guidelines.

For anyone interested but too lazy to go to the Reason magaizine, here's my comment:

1. “Major policy decisions”? Do we know what that means? There’s a standard of economic impact of $100 million for regulations–but that’s been unchanged since it was first adopted in the 1970s in relation to inflation concerns, not policy.

   Arguable the USDA/Trump decision to spend billions from the Commodity Credit Corporation was a major policy decision. But it wasn’t particularly controversial, because it was too esoteric and there were no significant opposing voices to make a fuss. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/01/21/trump-tariff-aid-to-farmers-cost-more-than-us-nuclear-forces/?sh=4fe7a4966c50

   I suspect the operational definition is an issue about which there’s a big fight between the parties and/or interest groups. I think the reality is such issues don’t get resolved in legislation, just kicked down the road to the faceless bureaucrats who can be blamed if they screw up and/or offend people.

   Reply 

Motivated Reasoning and Farming

The TV weather this morning showed rain moving into southern California.  One of the blogs I follow is Foothill Agrarian, written by parttime sheep rancher and extension service employee.  His most recent post was on fall, his favorite season, and the complicated planning he and his partner needed to do to plan for the upcoming year.  The main complication was/is the prospect of rain or continued drought which impacts the forage available which impacts the health of ewes which impacts the lamb crop...etc. etc.  So the prospect of rain, though I'm not certain exactly where in California he's located, likely cheered him.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago another farmer I follow on twitter was concerned over the inability to harvest and store rain, given the rains which were dominating the weather in NY.  I remember the years on the farm when we faced that problem, meaning we had to buy hay during the winter and/or buy molasses to put on the hay which we got in the barn only after it had been rained on (cows didn't like to eat such hay without the addition of molasses).

Back in the days when ASCS operated a disaster payment program IIRC the yields we used would be determined by averaging past years' yields, but dropping the bad years.  That to me reflected farmer optimism--the normal yield was always better than the straight historic average of yields. Now I see it as a reflection of what humans do: use motivated reasoning to support their desired outcome.

The Prevalence of Scams

 A rule of thumb: whenever there's money on the table, or "new frontiers" of opportunity, there's people who will exploit the opportunity.

Recent examples:

Apparently R. Kelly had a big entourage.  Other big shots, stars in various endeavors, have their own entourages, including the former guy.

People have been selling fake covid-19 vaccination certificates.

Several reports of people scamming the various pandemic-related stimulus programs. 

Pushimg the Envelope--CCC

 The former guy pushed the envelope of governmental laws and norms across the board.  That included the use of the Commodity Credit Corporation authority in ways which I think were unprecedented.  He mostly escaped criticism and legal challenges because there was no one, no group whose interest would be served.  Farm groups were receiving dollars. Conservatives were blind to Trump's efforts. Members of Congress responded to the interests of their constituents. Good government groups mostly aren't interested or informed about agriculture and USDA.

It seems the Biden administration is following in Trump's footsteps, judging by their announcement of using CCC for what to me seems like a grab bag of goodies.

The Strange Case of "Identity"

 Read, or skimmed, Julia Galef's book, The Scout Mindset.  I'd recommend it.  But what I want to write about is the mystery of "identity". The last part of the book covers how "motivated reasoning", or the "soldier" mindset as she calls it, is tied up with our sense of identity. Her repeated references to "identity" got me wondering when it became so important.

When I was young, I knew my identity was white, Scots-Irish/German, Protestant, farm boy from upstate New York. Child of John and Gertrude, sibling of Jean, with stories of ancestors immigrating to the US. But I don't recall feeling my identity was in question.  

Is it possible that these older sources of identity have faded away as society has changed and market capitalism has evolved so Americans and Brits worry more about identity and start to find it elsewhere?  Google Ngram viewer has been improved since I last used it; you can now search texts in languages other than American and British English.  When I used it to search for use of "identity", it started to be used much more around 1960. 

The pattern was similar for British English, but not for French, Spanish...