tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post1674486871684991426..comments2024-03-15T17:06:31.642-05:00Comments on The Piety That Lies Between: A Progressive Christian Perspective: Ridicule in Public Discourse: A Limbaugh CorollaryEric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-36178403401193156342012-03-14T14:51:47.530-05:002012-03-14T14:51:47.530-05:00Bernard,
Do I remember correctly that you have a ...Bernard,<br /><br />Do I remember correctly that you have a degree in economics? My own acquaintance with economics, such as it is, comes primarily from years of teaching business ethics--but it struck me as I was reading Landsburg's blog post that by bracketing externalities in his argument there, Landsburg was bracketing something utterly essential for making any thoughtful judgments in this case--which in an important sense is all about externalities. And to say that Fluke deserved nothing but ridicule because she failed to offer an economic argument in terms of externalities, even though her testimony called attention to relevant facts that could serve as the basis for such economic arguments...well, yeah, the most charitable thing I can say is it was a sloppy post, and that in cases where real people are being seriously verbally abused, one should be especially careful not to be sloppy when deciding to side with the abuser.Eric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-38173521095757614642012-03-12T17:06:11.450-05:002012-03-12T17:06:11.450-05:00Hi Eric
Is it also worth pointing out that the st...Hi Eric<br /><br />Is it also worth pointing out that the style of contract being analysed here, an employer/insurance/company/employee insurance relationship, has almost none of the hallmarks of the market situation envisaged by economists in their utility maximisation theories (which have of late taken something of a hammering from discoveries in behavioural psychology)? So, as you point out, the third party role of the employer becomes crucial, as does the fact that what is being purchased is essentially risk cover, the marginal costs of which are a matter for actuarial calculations rather than production costs, plus the absence of anything like the competitive conditions required for a market to clear in an optimising manner. <br />So, even if he were right to give precendence to economic arguments, his assumption that there are no relevant externalities here couldn't be more wrong. In fact, this market is almost all externalities, and the author is guilty, if nothing else, or seriously bad economics. <br /><br />Perhaps if the sadly inflammatory sexual element were removed, and we considered if the same arguments he promotes would still hold up if employers chose to exclude anti-depressants, asthma inhalers or nicotene patches, the silliness of his case would become clearer. Or maybe Mr Limbaugh would be quick to claim massaage rights from the asthma sufferer, now that they have the breath for it, or a kiss from the non-smoker, now that their breath has cleared.<br /><br />BernardBernard Beckettnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-38000871261986945472012-03-12T16:49:23.965-05:002012-03-12T16:49:23.965-05:00Final remark: The key reason that Roman Catholics ...Final remark: The key reason that Roman Catholics have for resisting the contraception mandate is not itself an economic reason at all. It's a view about the implications of natural law. Their natural law theory implies that contraception violates the natural law insofar as it impedes the function of organ, preventing it from achieving its "natural end." Since they understand health in terms of this natural law perspective, contraception is damaging to bodily health--and THIS is a key reason why they don't want to pay for health insurance coverage that covers contraception. To do so would be to be complicit in harming the health of their employees in the name of helping to provide for their health care.<br /><br />If Fluke's reasons for wanting a contraception mandate are illegitimate because they aren't economic ones, then the Roman Catholic reasons for opposing a mandate are equally illegitimate. My view is that in public deliberations, there are a range of reasons, emerging out of pluralistic conceptions of the good, that somehow need to be balanced against one another in decision making. And treating economic reasons (and the controversial ethical theory that undergirds giving it pride of place in decision-making) as somehow enjoying trump power over all other reasons isn't the way to find that balance.Eric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-2069892411883925422012-03-12T16:39:36.327-05:002012-03-12T16:39:36.327-05:00Landsburg second argument (on which I think the fi...Landsburg second argument (on which I think the first really depends) is less explicit, but it amounts to this: If a reason to support a contraception mandate isn't an ECONOMIC reason--that is, the kind of reason that economists consider and take seriously--then it really isn't worth considering. When he said Fluke gave no reasons worth considering, what he meant was that Fluke gave no economic reasons worth considering, and that (at least on this sort of issue) economic reasons are the only ones that should be taken seriously. <br /><br />This may seem like an uncharitable reading of Landsburg's post, insofar as all he says explicitly there is that the reasons given by economists should be given more weight than those given by, for example, doctors, since economists have a framework for thinking about "all the effects" of a policy, not just selected ones. But the fact is that Fluke's testimony can readily be seen as offering reasons worth considering if one has a broader view of "reasons" than "economic reasons." What Landsburg effectively points out is that economics assumes the truth of a controversial moral theory--utilitarianism. What he doesn't do is consider the controversial nature of this theory, and as such is able to pretend that his economic reasons have an objective validity that one can't pretend to if one recognizes the controversial theoetical underpinnings of such a decision-making framework. The sad corrolary is that he can't take seriously reasons that are rooted in a different theoretical framework than his own.<br /><br />For example, the ethics of care and Kantian deontological ethics offer robust alternatives to utility-maximizing ethical theories; and from both theoretic frameworks, I suspect Fluke's testimony would turn out to provide more relevant considerations for decision-making ("reasons") than Landsburg's utility-mazimizing framework allowsEric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-29844383106783160662012-03-12T16:38:16.315-05:002012-03-12T16:38:16.315-05:00So--Browsing through Landsburg's site, I'm...So--Browsing through Landsburg's site, I'm finding that he has now explicitly laid out a line of argument for dismissing Fluke's testimony <a href="http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/03/09/letter-to-a-reporter/" rel="nofollow">in correspondence with a reporter</a>. In this correspondence, he essentially argues that he was warranted in setting aside Fluke's testimony as ridiculous on the basis of two arguments. <br /><br />His first argument is roughly this: the coverage terms of health insurance policies reflect negotiated compromises between individuals and insurers, each of whom has interests that they want reflected in the terms of the policy--and third party tinkering with the outcome of those compromises can be justified only if third parties are substantively affected by the nature of the compromise. That one side is unhappy with the deal is never itself a reason for a third party to intervene. For Landsburg, Fluke's testimony is just a case of people being unhappy with the compromise--and he thinks this point extends even to Flukes testimony about polycystic ovarian syndrome, the fact that the birth control pill is used to treat it, and that people with this medical condition end up going untreated when employers won't allow policies that cover contraception. All of that's apparently just a person complaining they don't like their end of the deal--and, thinks Landburg, that someone doesn't like a deal is never a reason for third party intervention.<br /><br />In fact, this argument misses an important point: The fact that insurance is offered through employers means that employers enter into the negotiations as a third party--the constraints on contraception coverage are the result of this third party butting in with religiously-motivated interestst that wouldn't otherwise shape the course of the negotiations. If insurance weren't provided by employers in our system, this wouldn't happen. And getting insurance out of the hands of employers seems a good idea. But given that this isn't going to happen, the next best thing may be for another third party (the government) to step in. But that point is secondary to a deeper problem with this argument, which is really a problem with Landsburg's second argument. <br /><br />-->ContinuedEric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-63574230083229671402012-03-12T14:51:17.679-05:002012-03-12T14:51:17.679-05:00Anonymous,
Thanks for the link. Landsburg makes ...Anonymous, <br /><br />Thanks for the link. Landsburg makes some important points, but I think distinction needs to be made that Landsburg doesn't make. Specifically, there's an important difference between considering objections to one's own argument and considering affirmative arguments for a conclusion at odds with one's own.<br /><br />For example, Landsburg consider the following: "It is cheaper to foot the bill for contraception than to to foot the bill for childbirth." He dismissively calls this "the worst conceivable argument." But when you read on, you find out that what he's considering is this claim as a basis for a general mandate to include contraception coverage in health insurance policies. He argues that this is a poor reason by itself on which to justify such a mandate.<br /><br />I couldn't agree more. If you're going to defend the contraception mandate, you have to do a lot better than that. But the very same claim was used by me in the above post, as the basis for a criticism of (my attempt to reconstruct) Landsburg's (undeveloped) argument for dismising Fluke's testimony as ridiculous. That argument rests on the claim that if I pay for a health insurance policy that covers contraception, I am in effect paying for other people to have sex. But if contraception is cheaper than health coverage for pregnancy and childbirth--and if, as the evidence I've looked at indicates, the result is that total health costs are lower when contraception is covered--you can't claim that I am paying for other people to have (protected) sex. The reason is simple enough: If adding contraceptive coverage to my plan has no effect on my premium, or lowers it (or at least makes it such that the insurance company should lower it since it saves them money), then other people's contraceptive coverage is having no impact on what I pay.<br /><br />I suspect that in many of the cases in which people have invoked what Landsburg calls "the worst conceivable argument," they are invoking the cost-saving feature of contraception as the basis for criticizing a seriously dubious premise of his attack on Fluke--NOT as the basis for an affirmative argument for a contraception mandate. By treating every invocation of this premise as if it were the latter, it becomes easy for Landsburg to sweepingly dismiss a range of different dialectical uses to which the premise can be and has been put. <br /><br />Most significantly, he can dismiss those who soundly use it to challenge the correctness of one of his premises by lumping them together with those who unsoundly use it to justify a contraception mandate. <br /><br />Now I'm not sure that he deliberately sought to avoid a telling objection to his own reasoning by treating it as something else, or whether he just didn't want to consider objections to his own argument--instead focusing purely on arguments for a contraception mandate. But the way in which he presents his material--laying out statements as if they were arguments (at best they'd be premises in an argument, the strength of which would depend on more than just the highlighted premise)--lends itself to a kind of sweeping dismissal of more than ought to be sweepingly dismissed.<br /><br />It's as if the following exchange occured: Landsburg argues that Fluke's position is ridiculous based on (A). A critic says, "(A) is false, because (B)." And then Landsburg retorts, "(B) can't be used as a basis for concluding (C)!" <br /><br />Well, maybe not. But (B) may very well refute (A) even if doesn't imply (C)--and at least many of Landsburg's critics who invoked (B) were trying to refute (A), NOT make a case for (C).Eric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-40800479178410240912012-03-12T14:10:23.763-05:002012-03-12T14:10:23.763-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Eric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-63207530414997939542012-03-12T12:40:33.412-05:002012-03-12T12:40:33.412-05:00http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/03/05/contrace...http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/03/05/contraceptive-sponges/<br /><br />Landsburg does go through in more detail and address the arguments made for and against contraceptive coverage.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com