A Reasonable Man   

I'm in the process of switching web hosts. Hopfully this won't cause much of a disruption.

There's a "temporary" problem publishing from Blogger, so I'm putting files up here manually.

Hopefully, this will get resolved shortly.

I recently received an envelope in the mail with no return address information on the outside. It did have large letters reading:

YOUR CHECK ENCLOSED

Intrigued, I opened the envelope and found a solicitation to contribute to this organization for the provision of arts and crafts kits to hospitalized american veterans.

Along with the solicitation was a check made out to me (or "the bearer") for $2.50.

The letter begins with:

I've enclosed a $2.50 check for you.

But, I assure you we can't afford to be giving money away.

And the letter ends with:

Of course you can cash the $2.50 check that I've enclosed. But my hope and prayer is that you will return it along with a generous donation of $5, $10, $15, $25 or even $50.

The check appears to be valid, and has no indication that cashing it would obligate me to anything.

I'm currently not interested in donating to this charity (for reasons that I don't think are relevant to this post).

My question is: Should I cash the check?

Would it be wrong to cash the check? I don't bear any ill-feelings for this organization, so I wouldn't be cashing it to punish them for wasting my (or others') time. I think the check (if it's good) is a clever way to get people's attention. I think the $2.50 amount was chosen because it's large enough to be interesting (you can buy a couple of McDonald's double cheeseburgers with it), but small enough to be easy to dismiss as not worth bothering to cash, or easy to feel cheap or dishonorable about causing this charity to incur this cost.

But, on the other hand, I did give the letter my attention. And, I had no agreement with this organization about what I would or should do with the check. It was an unsolicited offering. What's wrong with cashing this check that was freely given to me?

Should I be Kantian and consider whether I'd wish for everybody who was uninterested in contributing to cash his check? Or, should I just consider whether I think my life would be better if I cashed mine vs. not cashing mine? Should my answer change if the check was for $250? Or, should I adopt a single policy and implement it a hundred times if I get the opportunity?

Right now, my inclination is to cash the check, but I'm open to arguments to why I shouldn't.

I think that a large part of the gulf between leftists and libertarians is about our different conceptions of the nature of equality (and inequality) and what policies follow from these conceptions.

Today, there's a great Cato Unbound article on the subject: When Inequality Matters by David Schmidtz.

I think that this is an issue that everybody who's interested in political philosophy should think seriously about. I like to believe that if that were to happen, many more people would come to accept a more libertarian framework. Perhaps there are fundamental differences among people's psychologies that prevent this...but everything Schmidtz wrote makes sense to me.

I'm also eager to read the replies that should be coming in the next few days.

HT: Will Wilkinson

Update: Tom G. Palmer has written a very good reaction essay in which he continues where Schmidtz left off and considers the prior moral question of which inequalities are ours to arrange, and some of the common errors that people make when justifying state action to redistribute wealth.

Speaking of Palmer, don't miss Jonathan Rauch's article about the heroic work Palmer is leading to expose classical liberal works to the Arab world (Iraq in particular).

Ok, not exactly .

But she is supportive of a teacher who was disciplined (10-day pay loss), for denying a student's request to use the bathroom. The student suggested he'd use a wastebasket in a closet, then. She said "Go ahead" (not thinking he'd really go through with it).

He did. :-)

Listen, I'm sympathetic to the difficulty teachers can have maintaining the attention of a roomful of involuntary captives. I say: "Too bad!" It's not an excuse to treat them worse than prisoners of war.

If you don't like the job, get a better one.

Althouse says the teacher just made a "judgement call" that the kid didn't really need to go. She is, as all teachers are, completely incompetent to make such judgements for other people. I think it's a horrible abuse of power.

Perhaps, it was a common abuse of power when many of us were students.

But, it's abusive all the same.

I've been busy recently and haven't had the time to blog much.

So, I thought I'd just enter a quick post with my thoughts on some recent events. These probably won't be very surprising.

Google and China: I don't see that Google deserves most of the criticism it has received for its google.cn site. Yes, it's somewhat restricted, but it isn't a tool of repression and people in China are better off with it than without it. Google seems to have carefully considered the ethics of the project and made a defensible decision that they should go ahead and pursue it.

Cartoons of Mohammad: Absolutely ridiculous reaction by rioting Muslims. They shouldn't expect others to conform to their rules, and they can't prevent others thinking badly about Islam by reacting like a bunch of idiots. I'm sure that many have been manipulated by those seeking to exploit this incident, but they shouldn't be so easy to manipulate.

Cheney Hunting Accident: I'm baffled why this was such a hot story. It's obviously unfortunate for those involved, but I don't think it tells us anything interesting about Cheney. Certainly nothing bad.

David Irving Conviction: Idiotic. Yes, he's a jerk and he made horribly wrong historical claims. But, open societies must tolerate the peaceful expression of unpopular opinions. His conviction belies the claims that the muslims who urged censorship of the Danish cartoons didn't understand the nature of european freedom of expression. They did understand it: Some "offensive" opinions are punished, and some aren't.

Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Steelers for winning their fifth Super Bowl.

It was a pretty good game.

There were some close calls, but I think most of the major ones were ruled correctly. Neither side played their best games, but I think the better team won.

I did think it was classy of the Seattle players that I saw interviewed to aviod the bait offered up to place the blame for their losses on the officials. They agreed that they made mistakes, and that the Steelers made more big plays and fewer mistakes, and deserved to win today.

I haven't commented on the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections because I wasn't sure how to interpret it.

Was it a vote for more extreme terrorism, or a vote against known corruption?

Will Hamas use its new power to expand its attacks on Israel, or will political and economic realities force it to moderate its positions, recognize Israel, and discourage terrorist acts?

What does this mean for the prospects of democratic reforms elsewhere in the Middle East?

Fortunately, we can read Natan Sharansky's opinions. He understands these issues better than most.

Some key excerpts:

No, the real difference for the Palestinians was that a Fatah-run Palestinian Authority was rightly seen as a corrupt and feckless organization that had done and would continue to do nothing to improve Palestinian lives, whereas Hamas was untainted by corruption and appreciated for providing real social services.

With the vote being a choice between corrupt terrorists dedicated only to themselves and honest terrorists who are also dedicated to others, is it any surprise that Hamas won by a landslide?

...

The world must base their support for this new regime on two ironclad conditions. First, Hamas must explicitly abandon the goal of destroying Israel and renounce terrorism. Second, it must dedicate itself toward building a free society for the Palestinians.

David Friedman is one of those people whose writing I love to read because he's really smart, and very talented at expressing complex ideas clearly, and controversial arguments persuasively.

The Machinery of Freedom is a classic, and a favorite of mine. I also remember enjoying reading his Usenet posts years ago.

If you haven't checked out his blog yet, then you should.

Today, he had pretty good post about unschooling.

I thought the President's speech was pretty good. But, maybe that's because I set my expectations so low.

I liked much of what he had to say (e.g. the war, Hamas, tax cuts, open markets, new supreme court justices, cutting failing programs and earmarks).

He did propose some new, stupid, spending programs (e.g. more government research on energy and battery technology, more school teachers, AIDS treatment), but they seemed more modest than the outrageous programs of past years.

I was disappointed by the foolish call for bans on research and trade related to human cloning, and embryos.

I guess Bush made it clear that he's steadfast about the war, recognizes that he now has less political capital to promote ambitious new programs, and still pays lip-service to the concerns of the religious right.

So, all in all, there was some good and some bad.

But, it could have been a lot worse.