Money

Currency:
To start off, there does not have to be any notion of a standard paper or metal currency, whether it's fiat or backed by precious commodities such as gold, to tell this story. Why? The value of goods and services is largely determined by supply and demand, and even without an official currency as a reference to value transactions against, the value would still be expressible. A currency merely provides a standard against which to measure the value of transactions, and as such, it is a way to facilitate communications and transactions more efficiently. The value of a paper printed dollar does not lie in the paper or ink (or in the supposed backing by precious commodities), it lies in the communication of a transfer of goods and services; it is understood that the dollar represents some amount of past productivity that has yet to be compensated for (in the sense that there is no material benefit to the holder of a dollar until the dollar is exchanged for something else). Currency is like an IOU, and we just shuffle these IOUs around in exchange for goods and services. But if currency is like an IOU, then why not just use IOUs and forget about currency? In other words, why not just use credit instead of fiat money to facilitate our transactions? For private entities, if they issue too many IOUs (as if they were printing their own money, in a sense), then there is a real worry about the IOUs being redeemable in the future; if there's great difficulty in redeeming an IOU, then the IOU loses its value and possibly becomes worthless. It would be nice if there was an entity that could issue IOUs and guarantee that they will always be redeemable. The federal reserve does just that by issuing fiat money and regulating it with interest rates. How is fiat money issued? Through purchases, of course! So that I don't confuse things, from now on I will use the terms "currency" and "credit" to distinguish between transactions that don't have an associated interest and those that do, respectively.

Interest:
When the federal government (or the federal reserve) buys something, it can either use currency it has on hand, it can buy it with its own credit (what some people call "printing money"), or it can buy it with private credit (i.e. treasuries/bonds), and if it does the latter, the government becomes more indebted. Should we worry about the government being able make good on these debts? If the debt functions just like fiat money, then having more outstanding debt just means that there's more liquidity in the market, which could potentially have a large effect on the velocity of transactions and thereby economic growth. But debt typically has a rate of interest associated with it, which is potentially quite burdensome if too much of it is accumulated. At very low interest rates, government debt should be seen as nothing more than extra monetary liquidity, not much different than fiat money. As interest rates on government debt climb higher and higher, the debt functions less like money and more like a risky investment venture. Why risky? If there's a high demand for the debt, then the price of the debt increases and the interest on it decreases. If there's a low demand for the debt, then the price of the debt decreases and the interest on it increases. The level of demand is inversely correlated with the (perceived) level of risk. At little to no risk, and a corresponding little to no interest rate, debt functions very similar to fiat money. But if that's the case, then why wouldn't an investor just keep the money instead of loaning it to the government? Well, money just lying under a mattress tends to lose its value slowly over time due to inflation, and the little bit of interest on the debt helps to maintain the purchasing power of the investment. But the real reason to put money in an extremely low-risk investment vehicle is if the risk of all other investment vehicles exceeds an entity's risk-tolerance (or if it just wants to diversify and hedge its investments). The main point of this section is that credit at little to no interest is not much different than fiat currency, and it wouldn't matter if the actual currency had a hard standard or not, because the credit would still function as fiat currency.

Inflation:
A discussion of money is not complete without mentioning inflation/deflation. If inflation is zero, then what you can purchase with a dollar tomorrow is the same as what you can purchase with a dollar today. If inflation is positive, then you can purchase less tomorrow than today with a dollar. If inflation is negative (deflation), then you can purchase more tomorrow than today. Zero-percent inflation intuitively seems like it should be the most fair for everyone since regardless of what you decide to do with your money and when you do it, the money should have the same, constant utility (or purchasing power): you will be able to buy the same amount of stuff regardless of when you decide to buy it. Pragmatically, though, it turns out that zero inflation could potentially be a very bad thing. Why? It turns out that when private entities enter into deals with each other and sign contracts, they get locked into commitments that could potentially be very long-term. If there is deflation, then it makes sense for entities to save their money instead of spend it because that money will be worth more in the future than it is now. If many entities start saving money instead of spending it, then liquidity is removed from the market, the velocity of transactions slows down, demand for products and services decreases, and thus there is a pressure to reduce supply. But if entities are locked into contracts, it becomes very difficult and disruptive to try to reduce supply. Conversely, if there is inflation, then it makes sense for entities to spend money today instead of saving it. If many entities spend instead of save, then liquidity is added to the market, the velocity of transactions increases, demand for products and services increases, and thus there is pressure to increase supply. Increasing supply is much easier than reducing supply because it involves forming new contracts rather than getting out of old ones: it's always easier to make new commitments than to break old commitments. This dichotomy between inflation and deflation leads to effects such as "sticky wages", which is an empirical observation that wages tend not to decrease; if we hypothetically disallow wages from decreasing, then deflation would lead to huge unemployment since workers would have to be fired in order for companies to adjust to the changing market. Because deflation is much more problematic for long-term contracts and obligations than inflation, having a zero inflation target is extremely risky: random fluctuations in the economy would lead to deflation quite frequently, which would disrupt markets considerably. For this reason, even though zero inflation seems like it should be more fair, a positive rate of inflation is better for market stability. How much inflation is ideal, though? That depends on a lot of factors, and there's no best rule of thumb, but we can note that if there is a lot of outstanding debt in the private sector that is becoming difficult to pay back, then a higher rate of inflation may be desirable as it will slowly reduce the value of the debt burden over time. If private debt is not very burdensome, then a lower rate of inflation might be better (as long as it's not too close to zero). Public debt might matter too, but governments with their own currency have a theoretically unlimited credit line (again, people call it "printing money"), so it's unclear to what extent public debt should be taken into account when considering an ideal rate of inflation.



The following are relevant:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/noah-smiths-sanity-requires-that-he-stop-reading-steve-williamson-foundations-of-monetary-theory-weblogging.html
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/money-is-just-little-green-pieces-of.html
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/things-that-arent-bubbles/

Purpose

Let's say we have an alien artifact, a black box, and we want to know what it is for. Did the aliens build it to sit on, if they can sit at all? Is it a piece of artwork, a sculpture perhaps? Is it a container, and is there something in it? Does it have any value to aliens at all, or is it just a waste product? These questions are all asked with a creator in mind; something created this black box to satisfy some purpose. In this sense the black box has a purpose (as given by the aliens), but is that purpose somehow intrinsic to the black box?

Let's say the aliens 'created' the black box to be fuel for their spaceship. The purpose of the black box is thus to be a (very specific) kind of spaceship fuel. However, the aliens, as far as we can tell, are dead and gone, and their spaceships are no more. We can have no idea that the black box was ever used for fuel, unless we ourselves develop that as a use for it. Until that happens, what is the use of the black box to *us*? Most likely its purpose would be like that of the pyramids: a great mystery to study and to base stories and artwork around. If we were able to reverse engineer it exactly, to what purpose would we consign it?

What if no one ever discovered this artifact, and it was left for the rest of eternity in obscurity? Would it still have a purpose? What if aliens never even developed it, though it was technically possible for them to construct, and if they had, it would have been used as spaceship fuel? Would the metaphysical form (qua Plato's Forms) of the black box intrinsically have as its purpose use as fuel, or would its intrinsic purpose be something that we imagine aliens would use it for?

We could find any number of uses for the black box. Perhaps it even has several 'best' uses. If we find a use for it, isn't it satisfying a purpose we give to it? If we sit on it, aren't we giving it the same purpose as a chair? If we eat it, aren't we giving it the same purpose as food? If we suppose it has a creator, aren't we giving it some unknown or hypothetical, intentional purpose of that creator?

Intentional purpose, actually, is redundant, because purpose cannot be void of intention. Purpose must always be with reference to a 'whom'. Some thing has a purpose as given by someone. Absent an agent to consider it, an object has *no* purpose, ie there is no intrinsic purpose of an object. Even if aliens did create the black box with some purpose in mind, the black box does not have that purpose without aliens (or other agents) to consider it.

Basic agents, such as monkeys, may find a purpose for the black box, say as a crude sort of shelter from the elements. More inferior agents, such as birds, may use the black box as a nesting place. Descending to the pits of agenthood, uses can be found for the black box, and purposes thus accrued by it. At the very cusp of agenthood, where intentions are as basic as can be possible, the 'use' of the black box will be correlated to the 'use' (or perhaps a 'use') of the agent, and their 'purposes' towards that mutual utility will also be correlated. Thus the evolution of agenthood is facilitated.

What *is* the purpose of the black box? Its purpose is whatever you can (or imagine you can) use it for. Use it well, because you only have one!

Coercion to Gain Information

Is coercion, for example torture, good for getting information, and if so, is it even desirable? I make a distinction between 4 kinds of people: the ignorant innocent, the ignorant guilty, the knowledgeable innocent, and the knowledgeable guilty.

The ignorant innocent is the trivial case. The vast majority of people fall into this category, and it is clear that coercion in this case is both futile and ethically undesirable.

The ignorant guilty are those who have committed a crime or atrocity, and yet they possess no knowledge of the information that is being sought after. Criminals and villains know most of the details of their own actions, but most likely don't know anything about the details of unrelated actions and their perpetrators. Coercion in this case will at best yield information about a subject that is unrelated to the subject in question, and that information itself will be totally useless without further context. Coercion is this case is futile and undesirable.

The knowledgeable innocent are those that have done nothing wrong, and yet they possess knowledge of the information that is being sought after. Family members and associates of criminals and villains may know the details of the actions and perpetrators in question without otherwise having any connection to them. Coercion in this case may yield all the information about the subject in question. It's interesting to note that in the US it is not legal to coerce the accused to incriminate themselves, but it is legal to coerce in a limited manner a material witness to testify against the accused. However, with regards to interrogation techniques, it is clearly unethical to use the more severe interrogation techniques against the innocent, and a case can be made that all attempts at coercion in this case are undesirable.

The knowledgeable guilty are those that have committed or aided the action in question. They presumably know most of the information that is being sought after. Coercion in this case may yield all of the information in question. For the moment, we'll assume that all types of coercion are ethically acceptable in this case (that's a pretty big assumption).

The first task when detaining and interrogating people should be determining which of the 4 categories the detainee falls under. That's a difficult task in itself. In the US criminal justice system, all criminal detainees are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law by a jury of peers due to a preponderance of evidence indicating guilt. And because of that fact, coercion of the accused is strictly prohibited. With regards to non-US citizens detained in a foreign country, normally international law, specifically the Geneva conventions, sets the standards of how detainees should be treated. However, for the moment we'll assume that the detainees in question don't fall under the protections of the Geneva conventions due to some technicality or other (another big assumption). So barring any rule of law to dictate how detainees are placed into one of the 4 categories, it must be done on a case-by-case basis by the captors, without specific training or infrastructure and without broad oversight.

Let's make another large assumption that the captors are able to completely determine which of the 4 categories each detainee falls under, that they're able to tell when a detainee is innocent or guilty and whether or not they possess specific desirable knowledge. Let's also assume that they play it ethically safe and just interrogate those that are both guilty and knowledgeable. Now, there is a chance that they could get all of the information they hope to get from this filtered-down subset of detainees, but there's also a chance that they don't get any information at all, and still another chance that they get information that is either completely useless or full of deception. When considering these possibilities, it is instructive to remember other historical instances of extreme coercion, such as during the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition used extreme coercive techniques usually resulting in death to get the information they wanted, but in the end, it was really irrelevant what the accused knew/believed or what they related to their captors. Given the intractability of determining the veracity of information acquired through coercion, it is ethically difficult to justify coercion in this case.

Let's make one more enormous assumption that all information gathered through coercion is correct and useful, and let's also assume that the information in question is so important that it could mean the difference between the destruction of the Human race and its survival. Is coercion, extreme or otherwise, ethically and morally justified in this case? In this fantastical case, it might very well be justified, but look at the assumptions it took to get here: the detainees don't fall under US-national law, international law, or international treaties; the detainees are perfectly categorized; only the guilty and knowledgeable are interrogated using coercive techniques; all the information gathered through coercion is correct and useful; the information is not only life-or-death vital, it is vital on a catastrophic level; and the biggest assumption of them all, that coercion, extreme or otherwise, is ethically and morally justified. If any of these assumptions are wrong, then there are serious ethical problems with using coercion to gain information. To me, that's enough to say with confidence that all forms of coercion to gain information are at base unethical and undesirable.

Choice

You're shopping at a grocery store, looking for toothpaste, and you come across a wide selection of brands. Which do you buy? You read in a respected journal that brand "A" cleans teeth the best, brand "B" is packaged in a way that grabs your attention the most, brand "C" comes in assorted, delicious flavors, brand "D" comes with a toothbrush, brand "E" is the cheapest, brand "F" is the most recognizable from advertisements, and brand "G" is the most conveniently located on the shelf.

Every single brand has a chance of being chosen by you, determined by your priorities at the time of purchase. Let's say this time you just want to limit the amount of time you spend shopping, so you grab the brand that's most convenient, brand "G". After using brand "G" for a couple weeks, you come to regret your hasty decision, and resolve yourself to purchasing a better tasting brand next time. But on your next occasion to buy toothpaste, you find yourself hurting for cash, and so you decide to buy the cheapest brand, brand "E", instead of the tasty brand "C". When you get home, you find a coupon in the newspaper for brand "C" that would have made it the cheapest, and you say to yourself "if only I had checked the paper before I went to the store, I would have bought the brand that I had originally resolved to get, brand "C", and saved more money in the process!"

Your homosexual life-partner hears your exclamation and quips that you must not have been as resolved as you thought you were, since a decision to buy brand "C" was apparently contingent on it being discounted. You're in an argumentative mood, so you answer that you have "free will", and thus you can change your mind on a whim if you so decide. Your partner looks at you skeptically and states "if whim is the basis of your decisions, how can you claim credit for their actuation?" You don't quite understand what your partner is getting at, and the message is communicated with celerity by your expression. Your partner sighs and says "why did you resolve to buy brand "C" in the first place?" You answer that it was because you wanted something that tasted better than the last brand you bought. Your partner notes that there is nothing whimsical about that determination.

"Let's try a thought experiment," says your partner. "Let's say there are two brands of toothpaste to choose from, and you want to buy one of them. Which do you choose? If there are reasons for your choosing one brand over the other, then your decision making is supervenient to those reasons. If there are no reasons for your choosing one brand over the other, then your decision making is supervenient to whim or chance. In either case, your decisions are supervenient to external forces, and thus you have as much control over your circumstance as a rock has over its."

You stare blankly for a bit, and then you venture "are you comparing me to a rock?" Your lover smiles and says "I don't love you for your intellect!"

The value of being Human

People are special. More than merely intelligent, people are able to form strong and varied social bonds with one another for the benefit of society and the species as a whole. People have the capacity to see things as Good and Evil, which is complimented by a depth of emotion and feeling that has no equal in the rest of the animal kingdom. People have the ability to know things beyond their senses and perceptions, to explore the infinitude of 'what if', to reconstruct the past and predict the future in a limited scope. This penchant for understanding 'causes and effects' allows people to solve immediate and forthcoming problems using a variety of different methods and approaches, which in effect gives people a strong sense of free will. But most remarkable of all are the imagination and creativity of people, producing beauty of thought and expression in all aspects of life. This is why people are proud to be human, and why their vanity obscures and dominates their humility. This is the true value of a person.

But what specifically is the source of all of these aspects of humanity that people value? The body as a whole is a great tool and instrument for manifesting these aspects, but people have surpassed their raw physical abilities through technology, to the point where the body is now considered to be physically limiting. The body is still wonderfully useful, but not truly what people care about when appreciating another person (except in the areas of aesthetics and physical competition).

Ignoring personal arbitrary biases, what people care about are personalities: what people believe, what values they hold, and what choices they make. Personalities are influenced by the body to some extent, but they are more tightly influenced by other personalities. All personalities interface and communicate with the world through minds (and souls, if you want to add unnecessary widgets that don't have any additional explanatory power). In fact, personalities can't exist without minds, though they can exist with severe physical handicaps and limitations. It is our specifically human personalities that we value, not our specifically human bodies based on our specifically human genetics.

So, if we value someone at all, it is because of these human characteristics as manifested through their personalities. If an entity was not genetically human, but it still had the personality traits that we care about in humans, shouldn't we still value that entity as we value a human? Shouldn't we value that entity as 'human'? Suppose we were able to create, through breeding or engineering, a species of dog that had human intelligence. Wouldn't we be morally obligated to give them the same consideration and respect that we normally only hold for ourselves? This is the point where the 'soul' widget finds a use, in asserting the uniqueness of Humanity, so that even if an entity were to match the most important aspects of Humanity, it still would be deemed inferior. 

What if we took a small society of humans and started to selectively breed them for traits that were more canine, including personality? Let's say we did that over millions of years. These humans, at that point, would most likely resemble dogs and behave like dogs, but would they still be privileged with a soul? At what point during this genetic transformation would they lose their soul, if they were to lose it at all?

For a less time-consuming and more plausible example, let's say we took a human embryo and removed a chromosome, and did it in such a way so that the embryo would survive and be carried to term. That's a pretty drastic change in genetics, but it still came initially from the product of a man and a woman, and we didn't kill the lifeform, so if it ever had a soul, presumably it would still have one. If we continued to breed the new species with a soul, we could use the same trick to create another genetically regressive species with a soul. What if we used that trick all the way down to a single celled organism? Then all sorts of new creatures of the world would be descended from Adam and Eve, and have souls.

One could make the argument, I suppose, that the original embryo had a soul, but then it was forcibly removed by changing the genetics. This would be, in effect, murder, with the soul probably going off to heaven because of its pure innocence, even though no physical death was involved. So the embryo, though technically alive, would now be soulless  But what if we have a change of heart and put the chromosome that we took away back? Behold, a miracle! The embryo has a soul again!

Clearly, it is futile to try to determine the conditions for soulhood, for there are too many variables to take into account, too many ways in which the genome of a soul-bearing human can be cleaved. It would be difficult and ultimately immoral to base appreciation of an entity on soulhood. Personality is something that can be measured much more easily, and is a better indicator of what we truly want anyway.

If personality is our litmus test for humanity, then what do we say about the human embryo, or fetus, baby, or toddler? Are these early stages of human life somehow less 'human' than the adult stages? That is the implication, and that is the stance that must be adopted if personality is to be valued above all. If we consider only personality when determining whether an entity qualifies as a human, then it is quite obvious that a genetically human embryo is not a human in any of the senses that we care about; it has no personality, and thus has no value except in potential. Consider another genetically human entity that has no value or potential, my finger. I could chop off my finger and it would not change my personality appreciably. The value of me as a person does not lie in my finger. In the case of an embryo, there is no person to value.

Does an embryo have a soul? Does my finger have a soul? Where does the soul reside if not in the mind? The embryo is not a person, literally or figuratively. If a soul is claimed to reside there, then it must be claimed to reside everywhere. Abortion at this stage of the game is not murder; it's not even immoral. When the fetus develops a nervous system, that's when the line between person and non-person starts to get fuzzy.

The Gender of Souls

If souls do exist in a Judeo-Christian sense, do they have a gender? The popular belief is that "all men are created equal". This could mean many things, though obviously it does not mean that all men (and women) are literally equal. It could mean that all people are physically human, or it could mean that all people have human minds and souls, or it could mean both.
 
Are souls, then, equal, or is there some intrinsic difference between the souls of men and women? If there is no difference, that souls just happen to be attached to bodies with gender but don't actually have one themselves, then when two people bond spiritually, it is a genderless bond in the eyes of God. If this is the case, then homosexuals can be married in a spiritual sense.
 
But what if there is a spiritual difference between the souls of men and women, what if souls do have gender, and only souls of opposite gender can join in spiritual marriage? This would seem to be a strong case against gay marriage except that there's no guarantee that the gender of someone's soul will match the gender of their body.
 
It is impossible for any of us to be sure that the gender of a person's soul matches the gender of their body. In fact, there are many fringe cases where a person is born with the reproductive organs of both genders, and other cases where a person has neither. Does this mean that their soul is similarly botched and confused? If we allow that the gender of a person's soul does not necessarily match the gender of their body, then physically homosexual people can be spiritually married in the eyes of God.
 
The only perspective that would refute God's sactioning of gay marriage is the perspective of souls with gender matching precisely bodies with gender. If you happen to be one of the fringe cases, that's tough luck, life isn't fair (even though you're supposed to be as equal as others in the eyes of God).