rhetoric

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February 8, 2012

Reason and Rhetoric in the Digital Age

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Cary Sherman did his job as chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America and submitted a column for publication in the NYT opinion pages bemoaning the sudden demise of the House and Senate bills that would have greatly amped up copyright enforcement and facilitated pre-trial injunctions shutting down websites potentially subject to enforcement.

On the substance, the population thus far unburdened by IP law can still stand for some hearty and honest debate, a brief outline for which follows for a few paragraphs.  But this blog frequently turns attention to public discourse, civic participation, and the general level of earnest reasoning put into lawmaking.  Sherman’s column touches those themes, and I’ll look into that after this brief SOPA intermission.

The most interesting provisions for civic debate are (1) the definitions at sec. 103(a)(1) and the (2) the preliminary injunction provision at sec. 103(c)(5). (I’m using SOPA’s provisions).

Existing copyright law generally uses a litigation scheme of copyright owner against copyright violator. SOPA allowed enforcement against a new group: sites “dedicated to the theft of US property.” That notion seems uncontroversial, so it is the definition of that phrase, at sec. 103(a)(1), that deserves good discussion. Such a site, says the bill, is “primarily designed” to violate copyrights (seems reasonable), or has little purpose other than violating copyright (a little more hazy), or “marketed … for use in, offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates” violating copyrights (hmmm?).

That last prong of the definition–marketed for services that might enable copyright violation–is I think the bone of contention for most folks opposing the bill, as a great many social media sites allow people to post originial, derivitive, and copyrighted work without pre-screening.  Easily, a lawyer could argue that fits this definition of sites “dedicated to the theft of US property.” It seems to me alot of good debate is to be had, in any event, on (1) whether we want to allow enforcement against copyright infringement facilitators and (2) how to define such actors.

And what to do with them? That is another ripe topic for debate – such as whether courts should be able to allow a website to be shut down prior to the trial that determines whether the site fits whatever definition we settle upon for sites “dedicated” to IP theft.

My sense is that about 99% of the debate could be had over those two sections. The techies can cover the remaining 1% by providing points and counterpoints on the merits of enforcing against domain names rather than an IP address to obtain copyrighted data on a particular server.

But, back to Sherman. It is predictable that the RIAA head would present an argument in favor of more stringent IP enforcement. What I found more interesting was an argument he promised in the first sentence: “how the democratic process functions in the digital age.”

Parsing out the meta-arguments regarding civic participation and social policy from the his arguments attached to SOPA/PIPA, I got this:

Hyperbolic sloganeering hinders sound public policy-making, particularly when injected by corporations with an ability to reach and sway a large audience.

And here are some of what I glean as his preferred norms, with his specific arguments in quotes:

  • Civic choices should be based on reason rather than rhetoric (“We need reason, not rhetoric, in discussing how to achieve it.”);
  • Companies purporting to provide information without bias should not be allowed to present an opinion (When Wikipedia and Google purport to be neutral sources of information, but then exploit their stature to present information that is not only not neutral but affirmatively incomplete and misleading ….);
  • No one sector in american economy should be allowed to drown out another perspective (“Get enough of them to espouse Silicon Valley’s perspective, and tens of millions of Americans will get a one-sided view of whatever the issue may be, drowning out the other side.”);

and

  • It is problematic that people can so easily spread a civic meme without being experts on the underlying issue (Sure, anybody could click on a link or tweet in outrage — but how many knew what they were supporting or opposing?).

 

I couldn’t agree more with what I’ve interpreted to be the basic normative assumption in Sherman’s argument.  (And I’ll be interested if someone has a conflicting interpretation – just remember to strip out SOPA, et al).  Indeed, I would be forever grateful if the Sunday morning shows and cable news anchors began their analysis of political talking points with whether they were hyperbolic, reduced to slogans, or injected into the public conscience by unduly influential corporate spending or unfair (let’s call it) pulpit-advantage.  Indeed, the civic necessity of education is, in my mind, to cause citizens to enter knowingly and thoughtfully into policy decisions affecting them and their fellow citizens.

Each of the four specific points could be the subject of some interesting debate.  I can imagine good arguments all around.  Reason seems preferable; but rhetoric, sometimes, can reach through the reasoning of self-interest for certain common goods.

Bullet two is a bit of a mess.  Companies like Google can certainly provide neutral search results and still submit a message of its own.   (And a quick note on the substantive argument – Google and Wikipedia, insofar as their webpages sent a message, are not the infrastructure providers with the ability to speed up or slow down particular content that advocates of net neutrality wish to keep neutral).

Sectors interested in particular policy tend to be more tuned to bills affecting them than the general public that might eventually be affected by the policy.  Lots of good government groups try to rectify that problem, for bills and subsequent agency regulations.  My gut cheers Sherman’s call for broader participation; but the fourth bullet point tempers that enthusiasm.

Because we undoubtedly do want some expertise going into policy and regulatory decisions.  How to balance the desire for public input and accountability with the real need for technocratic competence?

A glance at the comments section under Sherman’s column offers little hope that folks want to thoughtfully confront these broader themes of “the democratic process functions in the digital age.”  Still, I’ll stay tuned.

 

 

 

November 29, 2011

stimulating obfuscation

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If you are cheering for Hayek in the tireless economic wrestling match of Keynes v. Hayek, and if you are a political writer employing your words toward an end rather than simple description, then when an opportunity to present a citeable fact arrives, you use it.  That type of opportunity often arrives in the form of Congressional Budget Office reports.  Because CBO reports tend to include projections which in turn tend to offer a range of projected outcomes, lesson #1 for the politically-minded economic theorist is to use the portion of the projected range most favorable to the argument at hand.  Lesson # 2 is to create a headline to your article that presumes no one will read the underlying report.

Several headlines this past week provide glowing examples of the latter lesson.  The CBO issued its latest statutorily required report giving an ongoing and often changing economic analysis of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009′s affect on outputs and employment.

According to the Washington Times and Investor’s Business Daily, the news is this, respectively: “CBO: Stimulus hurts economy in the long run” and “The CBO Quietly Downgrades Obama’s $825 Bil Stimulus.”

According to Jay Bookman at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Daily Kos blogger, the news is this, respectively: “CBO reports stimulus package was a major economic success” and “CBO Gives Thanks to the Stimulus.”

The Washington Times article offers the best example of lesson #1:

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday downgraded its estimate of the benefits of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, saying it may have sustained as few as 700,000 jobs at its peak last year and that over the long run it will actually be a net drag on the economy.

I suppose the lesson for the thoughtful audience of political speak is to raise a yellow card at any reference to “as few as” or any other variant suggesting a range.  Here, the Washington Times used the low end of the range of employment created, on average, during 2010 – the range was between 700,000 and 3,300,000 people.    (Another lesson for the political rhetorician facing a thoughtful crowd: aim to use the ‘opposing end’ of an estimate, and use it as a concession proving the point – like, ‘even if so and so’s best numbers come true, we’d still have such and such problem.’)

Here, anyway, is how the CBO director summarized the 2011 third quarter:

Using such analysis, CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the third quarter of calendar year 2011 compared with what would have occurred otherwise:

  • They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 0.3 percent and 1.9 percent,
  • They lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.2 percentage points and 1.3 percentage  points,
  • They increased the number of people employed by between 0.4 million and 2.4 million, and
  • They increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 0.5 million to 3.3 million. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)

And here’s the full report – it’s not long.

Finally, I need to dispose of a lingering aftertaste left from my local paper, which today wrote:

 In many cases, that is, the stimulus may not have “created” jobs so much as shuffled them around.

This is backed up by research done by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Northern Virginia. Researchers there found that in three out of five cases, businesses receiving ARRA money hired people away from other jobs, rather than giving jobs to the unemployed.

When a person leaves a job, in many instances the left-behind job becomes vacant and refilled.  Thus, an employed person leaving a job for another job still creates a job opening.  That’s common sense, but Jon Chait nicely spelled it out a few months back.  The editors at the Times Dispatch, predictably not readers of Chait, are sadly also not patrons of common sense.

 

November 11, 2011

who’s in control?

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Sometimes a politician’s talking point perfectly capture the underlying intent to deceive.  Actually, that happens a lot.  A bit more rarely, such a talking point also captures an interesting point about civics and popular perceptions.  It happened yesterday, when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said that the FCC’s net neutrality rules are “a stunning reversal from a hands-off approach to the Internet that federal policymakers have taken for more than a decade.”

(1) In a nutshell, the net neutrality rules forbid internet providers from favoring some content providers over others.  So, for instance, Verizon can’t take a bunch of money from Disney and send along blazing fast ABC programming to your monitor while non-Verizon-paying video producers get throttled.  Rather, internet providers must blindly provide equal access to the highway without special lanes for the paying preferred.

(2) It’s been widely discussed lately that resistance to “control” is at the heart of both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, the former concerned with government control and the latter concerned with corporate control.

(3) Hutchison asserts that prohibiting companies from making deals with each other (resulting in faster or slower websites for those of us downstream from the deal-making) is harmful government control.  It is doubtlessly correct that the FCC is exercising some control.  But her comment is in a contextually, and horribly incorrect tunnel of vision looking only at the sphere of companies making deals.

(4) The rules, pretty clearly, do much more to keep control from happening than to allow control.  Net neutrality is basically a mandatory Autobahn.

(5) Thus, Hutchison very ably demonstrated the problem of rhetoric in the dearth of context.  In this case, not many folks were fooled.

 

August 11, 2011

creationists

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“Job creators” is GOP code for rich people, sometime specifically those making over $250,000.  One generally finds the phrase used in something like the following: the last thing we need to be doing is raising taxes on job creators; or, we shouldn’t threaten job creators with new regulations.

The non-codified meaning of a “job creator” is any person that creates a job.  Of course, jobs are not created by people they are created by demand.  People certainly make decisions regarding who to hire and how much to pay them.  But without a duty to perform, there is no job to be done.  Owners and hiring managers can have as money available to them as they want; they will not hire unless there is unmet demand.  The real creation, then, occurs when anything happens that creates the need for paid work.   Restaurant patrons, book buyers, students, litigants, and patients are job creators.

To be sure, people making over $250,000 create jobs because they, too, usually have to pay for goods and services.  But, then, so is everyone else a job creator.   The person making $0 is a job creator when he turns up in an emergency room and gets treated (there’s the job) by a physician that is then paid with tax money (there’re some more jobs – tax collectors, fund administrators, and hospital administrators).

In any event, I searched the news for some quotes to back up the first paragraph’s claim.  Turns out there’re quite a few folks out there irked with the “job creator” talking point.  Some just want to point out that lower tax rates for top income-earners doesn’t create jobs.  Fair enough on the economic point.

But, more to the accuracy of “job creators,”  Robert Friedman wrote a column in The Hill touting the job creation of new businesses:

“Tax cuts for job creators!” It is a rallying cry echoing these days from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. For Republicans in Congress it means never raising taxes on the wealthiest 2 percent of the population. The White House, meanwhile, is considering a general reduction in payroll taxes for all.

Both scenarios, however, miss the real job creators: new businesses under one year old and typically unincorporated, which have added an average of 3 million net new jobs a year to the American economy. That’s more than all other categories of business combined, according to recent studies by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

And Mary Sanchez at the Kansas City Star argued that real job creators are those in the middle class:

This middle class is a vast middle tier of those who work to live, and strive to work a little harder to get a little more in life. Middle class people may save, but they don’t accumulate enough wealth to live off. Almost every buck they get, they spend.

That point matters: Spending creates jobs. In our economy, middle class consumers are the real job creators. Depress their income, and you depress employment.

We’ll never get around to holding politicians truly accountable unless this fuzzy middle demographic — a massive one as a potential voting bloc — gets wise about where it came from in the first place, and how it foundered.

The great prosperity of the American middle class in the late 20th century didn’t just magically transpire. The important groundwork was laid by the federal government via investment. Consider what the creation of the federal highway system did for developers and builders who created our suburban communities and all of the businesses that followed. Or the impact of the GI Bill on so many people who returned to the workforce after World War II.

…Much today is made of the massive federal deficit. I have a way we can solve that: more jobs. More jobs mean more growth, more tax revenue. But America’s job creators — middle class consumers — are tapped out. Business owners can’t hire until they have consumers to sell to. That leaves the job of stimulating demand to the government. Time for government to lay the groundwork for our future by investing in our middle class.

These arguments suffer from the same error in the GOP talking point–identifying one segment of the economy as the real job creators.  Friedman’s new businesses are obviously the part of business that will create a bunch of jobs, being that they are new and in need of staff.  And, just a guess here–new business start, fail, start up again, and fail more often than old business; so more new businesses exist each year creating jobs that may or may not last.  But while businesses, whatever the newness, literally do the hiring, the jobs are not there without demand.

Ms. Sanchez gets to the point that demand within the economic system is the trigger to job creation.  But it is a disservice to clarity to begin the analysis of how to stimulate jobs with a favored segment of society already in mind.  The actions and decisions of rich people, middle income people, or low income people may have varying and more or less important roles in the sprouting up of a new job to be done; starting the discussion with one segment of income in mind, though, distorts one’s holistic economic thinking.  Demand often stems from folks in the middle class buying things.  But, as mentioned above, it also stems from rich and poor people getting sick, and the people at the end of the causal chain of demand might not do the paying.

 

 

May 24, 2011

There are bigger things than the deficit

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I’m reminded today that being tone-deaf and being a Representative are, ultimately, mutually exclusive attributes.  I reckon Rep. Cantor isn’t actually representative of the desperate people of Joplin; but, I’ll think of them, and of my disdain for ideological blinders, while I vote against him in 2012.

 

February 22, 2011

postbellum rhetoric

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In the midst of some research, I came across these passages that struck me as particularly effective rhetoric.  The paragraphs come from a speech that former (and future) Governor Vance gave at UNC.  It’s 1866, and he’s urging the audience to conform to the post-war world of increased federal power.  Here, he’s trying to rally up some enthusiasm for rebuilding and moving on.  The last line in the first passage sounds like something reporters would grab and use for headlines.

An officer leading his men into battle, himself going first and charging home upon the enemy, with the high and lofty daring of a hero, rallying his troops when they waver, cheering when they advance, applauding the brave and sustaining the fainthearted, bearing aloft the colors of his command, and struggling with all the strength and spirit of manhood, resolving to conquer or to perish, is esteemed one of the noblest exhibitions of which man is capable. We thrill and burn, as we read the glowing story, and exhaust the language of praise, in extolling his virtues. But not less glorious, not less worthy the commendations of his countrymen, is he who in an hour like this bravely submits to fate; and scorning alike the promptings of despair, and the unmanly refuge of expatriation, rushes to the rescue of his perishing country, inspires his fellow citizens with hope, cheers the disconsolate, arouses the sluggish, lifts up the helpless and the feeble, and by voice and example, in every possible way, urges forward all to the blessed and bloodless and crowning victories of peace. It is a noble thing to die for one’s country: it is a higher and a nobler thing to live for it.

…

In the discussion and progress of political questions, you will mostly find that there are practically three divisions of the people, though there generally appear but two. Two of these occupy the extremest opposite positions, whilst the third, usually denominated conservative, stands between. This class generally exceeds either or both of the others in numbers, and in the character and worth of its leaders. Could it always rule, whilst there would certainly be less of progress, there would yet be less of civil commotion, and far more of true happiness. But strange to say, though in a majority, this class is seldom in power; for paradoxical as it may appear, the extremists are nearer to each other than to the intermediate class, and generally combine to overcome it. It is, moreover, a well known defect of popular governments, that they are prone to mistake the zeal and earnestness of the extremists for sound policy, which contributes further to their triumph. The cooler wisdom of the conservative statesman is generally appreciated after the mischief is done. Those bold and striking qualities, so apt to captivate the young and enthusiastic, in war and in politics, are mostly dangerous to good government. And yet mankind have been ever eager to be deceived by them. Even history, stern and dignified, lends itself, perhaps unconsciously, to the damaging delusion. Whilst page after page paints the glories of the hero who plunged his country into war, and brought desolate on to the doors of his people, a few brief and passing lines suffice for the sagacious statesman who has honored his humanity by preventing slaughter. It is to some extent so, in the nature of things. The great deeds done are tangible and real; the great calamities avoided are only in the mind, and we cannot fully grasp them. Just as the sublime description of Dante’s Inferno, with all the powers of the most vivid imagination, fails to inspire an idea of torture half equal to that which we feel by holding the finger for one moment in the blaze of a candle.–But if history could be differently written, and were it possible to set against what this great man has done, charged with the misery which he inflicted, that which another greater and better man has not done, credited with the suffering which he has spared his people, how different would be the verdict of posterity! and how naked would many a popular hero appear! Alas, alas! why will civilization permit its true heroes to sleep in forgotten graves, while marble and bronze celebrate the virtues of those whose greatness consisted in their power to inflict wretchedness?

 

June 8, 2010

Blaming BP is bad for the environment

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Think on the following two causal scenarios:

(1) By chance, this accident occurred at a BP rig. However, the fact that a drill unleashed a methane patch is something that happens inevitably when drilling for oil. Better protection may , but not necessarily, prevented the explosion.

(2) This was BP’s fault. The company should could have avoided the methane, and a rig with proper equipment would not have exploded.

Of course, it matters a great deal to determine the truth of whether one of these, or something else, is the cause. However, perception matters a great deal when one remembers that so many of our environmental laws were passed reactively rather than prospectively.

Scenario 2 places the blame on BP and, I’d predict, result in legislation tightening the regulatory watch over oil wells. While seemingly an improvement, that policy reaction would give an aegis of safety and do nothing to nip the real problem in the bid.

Scenario 1, if perceived, would go much more against the offshore drilling that the Nation had, previously, been much more inclined to support. The policy reaction would tend toward long term progress in our enegy sources (ie, away from oil).

It will be interesting to watch which interest groups push the various blame-scenarios.

 

April 27, 2010

Few Tracked Mind

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I reckon Smart Main Streets have been the blog topics de rigeur of late, but they just keep coming up.  Not to be outdone by smart’s most recent blip, Main Street ruffled across the news today with the President’s continued White House to Main Street tour.  Helpfully, the Columbia Missourian put out an interactive map of what = Main Street.  So far, it’s farms, energy companies, and community colleges.

 

April 22, 2010

more smart

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I hate to be Scrooge McAndrew, but I must continue the smart rant I made a few posts down (the phrase “smart ___” is done).  While I love the substance, I hate the lingo in this IBM/Columbia partnership to prepare students for the post-carbon jobs market.  The initiative is called, painfully, “Smarter Students for a Smarter Planet.”  And the ‘smarts’ are abundant in the discussion.  At least the Columbia professor proves my point on the overuse:

“We call it ‘Smart X,’ because right now you’ve got the smart city stuff, but eventually we’ll have smart medical practices, smart law, and so on, and we need everyone working together on these challenges,” McGourty says.

 

April 20, 2010

Rhetorical Question: What is Main Street?

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In his biography of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Ellis locates in Jefferson’s intellectual persona the “‘once upon a time’ character” of his interpretation of history*. Ellis used that theme while discussing A Summary View of the Rights of British America and in the Declaration of Independence. Quickly, the gist is that once things were as they should be, and now they are corrupt. In Summary View, Ellis writes, Jefferson evoked an “elaborate and largely mythological version of English history” wherein the Norman Conquest corrupted society with the notion that all property belongs ultimately to the king.

Ellis says this about Jefferson’s frame of mind while writing Summary View:

But the appeal of the Whig histories derived from something more than rhetorical or logic power. They were influential precisely because they told a story that fitted perfectly with the way his mind worked. Their romantic endorsement of a pristine past, a long-lost time and place where men had lived together in perfect harmony without coercive laws or predatory rulers, gave narrative shape to his fondest imagination and to utopian expectations with deep roots in his personality. The Whig histories … put into words the visionary prospects he already carried around in his mind and heart.

I thought about Ellis’s description of Jefferson’s once-upon-a-time-ism today. It came to me when I heard a politician talking about helping Main Street rather the Wall Street. (No link is needed, you hear a variation on that theme often enough.) The Main Street evocation is an interesting and vague rhetorical device. I wonder if Main Street, like Jefferson’s pre-Norman Britain, is mythological.

What does a politician mean while evoking Main Street? A small town? The dead center of an old city?

My hunch is that ‘helping Main St’ is a rhetorical nod toward populism. But it is lazy and irresponsible. I think ‘Main St’ is a stand-in for the central, downtown commercial road in a small to medium sized city. On it are several small businesses owned by residents of that city. To protect that would require some massive state or federal government intervention into local governments’ zoning and economic policies. Is that what the Main St protectors suggest? Or, perhaps, a constitutional amendment affecting the commerce clause, and allowing state and local protectionism against big box invasion?

Another rhetorical possibility is that ‘Main St’ refers to the idea of middle class, suburban living – work at an office park and trips to Home Depot, Walmart, Target, Lowes, Olive Garden, and TGI Fridays. (such an evocation makes no sense as big boxes don’t normally fit on the smaller ‘Main Streets,’ but we’ll leave tht aside.) Protecting Main St can only mean, in that sense, protecting the people, because those establishments are owned and run by ‘Wall Street.’ Given, they employ local citizens; but, again then, the rhetoric must logically refer only to the people, not the businesses.

Ultimately, it is unclear and potentially meaningless to make political hay of protecting Main Street. Rhetorically evoking Main Street is an attempt to do what Jefferson did with his utopian freedom-loving ancient Britain. It is apparently, weirdly enough, part of human nature to think things were better back when. When you got your shoes shined on Main Street, secured a contract with a firm handshake, and never sued anyone. The reality of which is all hogwash. It works though, I think, because we want that Main Street.

Main Street evocations fall into the category of interesting rhetorical maneuvers that bring the audience’s attention to how it wants things to be. The problem with it is that it is beyond unspecific, it is deceptive. I would love to live in Mayberry, but last I checked downtown is mid-gentrified and there’s a Great Clips where Floyd’s used to be.

*He mentions this as being what folks call Whig history; but, I thought that was the sense that history has led up to a more perfect present, which is quite different from what the upcoming quote suggests, so I’ll leave aside for now what Ellis means by Whig history.

 

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