I've been looking forward to continuing the discussion here on The New Workplace. Dan's recent post definitely advances the topic by identifying a number of key dimensions to the issue.

First, a response to his reflections.

I basically agree with all of his clarifications. As I said in the original posting, "The New Workplace can be seen as built on a foundation that is entirely consistent with Catholic values." It is this consistency that, to me, is its most exciting aspect.

Dan also rightly points out that there was considerable support for the free economy (my preferred formulation) in Centesimus annus. But this support was remarkable in that it was the first move away from the labor/management taxonomy that has limited the application of Catholic Social Teaching [CST] to the workplace.

In retrospect, I guess my criticism of CST as being "behind the times" applies more properly to the "conventional wisdom" promoted by less authoritative Catholic sources: the USCCB, various religious orders, social justice organizations, and certain Catholic universities.

But if John Paul II opened a new door in Centesimus annus, where does it lead? A few thoughts here follow, including responses to Dan's closing questions.

The Right to Organize
A core theme of CST is the right of workers to association. This right is generally expressed as a right to unionize: the means of organizing the workers is the union. In opposition to this right stands the authority of the company, or management, or more precisely a collective bargaining unit.

But, again, this common formulation is flawed if it is viewed as representative of the norm. A little statistical information would be helpful here.

According to the Census Bureau's analysis of firm size (see Table 2d), there were 5,657,774 companies in the United States in 2001. Of those firms, about 83%, or 5,036,845, had fewer than 20 employees! Moreover, about half of all workers were employed in organizations with fewer than 500 employees, and only about 20% of the workforce worked at really large companies (10,000 employees or more).

Fact of the matter is that the economy, like the ecosystem, is mainly composed of lots of small entities. Blue whales may be impressive and garner lots of press coverage in National Geographic, but Antarctic krill have more biomass. Likewise, more people work for small companies than large ones, even though the Fortune 500 dominate the pages of Business Week.

Crucially, then, in The New Workplace the company is the means of organizing the workers.No separate bureaucratic entity is required to represent workers. They represent themselves, and they know management by name, as individuals. They have the freedom to switch companies at relatively low cost, and this freedom of the individual is the ultimate empowerment device. It also keeps management in check: it's one thing if a worker quits at when your firm employs 100,000 people, but if the firm has just 5 employees, that one worker represents 20% of the workforce. That is a painful problem, and most successful managers will be very flexible in trying to prevent such a departure.

In The New Workplace, then, the company must switch from being the means of oppressing a worker's (singular) aspirations to the means of enabling those aspirations - or the worker simply leaves for another company that is more focused on their needs. It's the good side of the market: if you don't like the service, you vote with your feet.

Of course, this description might lead you to believe that it's a dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself system. But nothing is farther from the truth. In fact, people feel more affinity for companies in The New Workplace, because they embrace and promote values that are more in tune with their own. Membership in the organization becomes a point of pride and honor. For instance, I recently attended a luncheon honoring companies named "The Best Places to Work in Houston." The turnout was amazing, and this honor was clearly prized among the attendees.

In order for this to work, however, work-life alignment is required. I will have more to say on this in a moment.

More Is Not Always Better
There has been a tense relationship between profits (and wealth and riches) and CST for millenia. Of course, there are scriptural reasons (see line 24) for this tension. But there's actually more here than meets the eye.

In the conventional formulation, profit is the end of economic activity. Indeed, much of microeconomic theory is built on the assumption that profits (or, more precisely, the expectation of future profits) drive increased economic efficiency. And, there is strong empirical evidence to support these assumptions.

But The New Workplace takes a different view of this. And the basis of this view is a simple observation: more stuff is not always better.

Consider water. If you don't have enough water (think of the Gobi Desert), you die. If you have too much water (think of Noah's flood), you die. In between "not enough" and "too much" lies a point where your happiness is maximized - you have an amount of water such that any more or less water makes you slightly less happy.

Another example. If you don't have a car, buying a 1979 Toyota Corolla makes you much happier. It enables you to have more flexibility in your schedule, more job opportunities, and better utilization of your time. Then, trading in the Corolla for a 2004 Toyota Prius makes you happier, but your increase in happiness is probably not as great as your original jump when you bought the Corolla. If you then trade in the Prius for a Lexus, again you might be a little happier (and a lot poorer), but the jump isn't as big as earlier jumps. And so on, until you decide to trade in your Mercedes for a Rolls-Royce, then several Rolls-Royces, then a whole garage full of exotic cars. At some point - let's say at 1,000 cars - each additional car starts to decrease your happiness, since it adds to your burdens, but you have no additional time to enjoy it. More cars makes you less happy.

These effects are all specific examples of a general phenomenon. They can best be expressed in graphical form, in something I (completely immodestly) call the Linbeck Curve:



The idea behind the Linbeck Curve is that more stuff can indeed increase your happiness, at least when you don't have much stuff. But at a certain point, more stuff actually makes you less happy. And while this point is different for everyone, it still exists for everyone.

Now, in a market economy, stuff is generally convertible to dollars, so another way to express the Linbeck Curve is in the following manner:



So, the point here is that more money does not always make you happier. This seems trite and obvious until you realize that much of economics is built upon a different assumption.

However, this doesn't mean economics is wrong; only that the range of situations in which it applies is limited. You may notice that on the left hand part of the curve more-is-better. But as wealth grows, incremental happiness decreases, until it peaks. It is also worth pointing out that for most of human history, we have been stuck on the left hand part of this curve.

But the times, they are a changin'. The great problems of the future are related to having too much stuff, not too little. To take just one example: likely for the first time in human history, the number of people who are overweight (1 billion people) exceeds the number of people who are malnourished (800 million people) [source: United Nations].

On the other hand, the demographic trends are all pointing to a shrinking developed world, and according to some models global population will peak sometime in 2070. In fact, if past trends are any indication, that date is likely to get closer, and the peak is likely to be less than current projections.

I believe this change has been sensed by John Paul II, and his vision for the future - including his warnings to the developed world - focuses on the dangers of materialism and the centrality of the human person. These are two of the hallmarks of The New Workplace: it puts people at the center of the organization and it makes profits a measurement, not an end.

The New Workplace, then, exists to serve people - clients and customers, employees, and owners. But in order to fulfill this mission of service, it must provide something to customers for which they will pay more than it costs the company to produce: in other words, a profit.

But it is not profit-maximizing; it is happiness-maximizing. This simple notion leads to a dramatically different set of business practices, practices that make the organization both more robust and more human-focused.

Dan's Answers
There is much more to say on all this, but I need to bring this post to an end. I hope to explore more of this notion in future posts. For the time being, however, I should wrap up with answers to Dan's questions.

"But on what basis is the decision made as to what is 'best'?"
This question is simple to answer, but difficult to implement. In principal, the decision criterion is the maximum happiness for all involved. Note that this sounds very much like a utilitarian framework, but it relies on the philosophical notion of happiness, rather than the economic notion of utility, which is tied closely to consumption.

Because of the Linbeck Curve, it is possible that the correct answer is one in which personal wealth (and therefore my utility/consumption) should decrease. As an example: let's say I am near the peak of the Linbeck Curve, and the other employees are half-way up the left side of the curve. Then, let's say we invest in some equipment which doubles productivity, creating an economic surplus of $1,000,000.

The question is who should get this surplus? Eventually, of course, in a competitive market the customer will get all of it. But let's say we start off by cutting prices so that the customer gets half. What about the other $500,000?

Now, since I'm near the top of the Linbeck Curve, the marginal happiness I receive from incremental pay increases is small. On the other hand, if that money is split among the other workers, that may move them quite dramatically up the happiness curve. So more people would each be much happier, so if the company is happiness-maximizing, they should not give me much but should push those benefits downstream.

In the end, this judgement is prudential. But it is critical to have the correct mental framework for making such a judgement. I think the happiness-maximizing in light of the Linbeck Curve framework a good one to use.

"Creative work is always an end in itself, but we also work to secure the goods and virtues of family life. These goods and virtues must come into play when employee and management discuss how best to drive productivity higher, or else the ethical dimension of the work is diminished. Dad may be bringing home a big paycheck, and may be personally fulfilled in his work, but the time required to increase his productivity, the transcience it may involve for the family, may be a huge price to pay for the pleasure."

True, but we must make allowances for differences of temperment. I don't believe that all happy families are the same (with apologies to Tolstoy). We are all called to find a balance between fulfilling our responsibilities to God, community, company, family, and ourselves. But that balance looks different for different people, and even for the same people at different times.

I made a decision a couple of years ago to dramatically curtail my travel, so that I can be at home more during this part of my childrens' development. But that doesn't mean mine is the only effective model. I have friends who work on off-shore oil platforms for a couple of weeks at a time, but when they return home they have a couple of weeks off as well. Again, different strokes for different folks.

However, it is important that some form of alignment between God, community, company, family, and self takes place. This alignment is at the core of what we think of as integrity, or a sense of unity of person and mission. When we abandon fundamental integrity, and fall into the trap of playing roles, we take a step away from God's plan for us, a plan for our salvation.

"So, one important question is: how much of the ethical life beyond the workplace is The New Workplace able to accommodate?"

I think the most important aspect of The New Workplace is that it recognizes that there is more to life than work. Work is important, to be sure, but it does not lay exclusive, or even priority claim on our time, talent, and treasure.

But the question of "accommodation" gives away the game before it starts. The ideal is a model in which each sphere of our activity - God, community, company, family, self - reinforces and supports the others because they are all anchored in a share set of values and principles applied consistently in all facets in our life.

To be sure, this is an ideal which is difficult to achieve. But it is all but impossible if we treat each sphere of our life as independent and non-overlapping and therefore in need of "accommodation." Properly understood, they are all part of the same human person: self-reinforcing and force-multiplying. I should be a better father by being a better worker, and I should be a better person by being a better Christian, and so on. Failure in one dimension will always have an impact on another.

Indeed, instead of being separate "roles" that we "play," these spheres are simply dimensions of what it means to be a human person, and therefore must be considered in ethical and moral terms, which is why "happiness" is the correct metric for all of these considerations.

The real trick, it seems to me, is figuring out what it means to "maximize happiness" in any given situation. But that will have to wait for another evening. For now, it's off to bed...

First of all, a word of thanks to Leo Linbeck III, whose recent contributions to this Forum have been most welcome for their intellectual verve and incisiveness. His arguments against MacIntyre on not voting and against the UN on, well, just about everything, are right on target, but what I want to do here is continue the interesting discussion about work that he brought up in his last post. Leo is right that this is an issue that those outside of business schools seldom if ever discuss. No doubt, this is in large part due to ignorance of the issues. I know that is so in my case. So I'm grateful for Leo helping to bring me up to speed on "The New Workplace," and for inspiring the following reflections.

Leo sees Catholic social teaching as behind the times when it comes to recognizing the advantages of The New Workplace. I, however, see recent Catholic social teaching as an ally in the cause of putting, as Leo says, "the human person at the center of the process [of work]"; of "unleashing human creativity"; of putting others (the customer) ahead of self (employees and owners). In short, of making human dignity and liberty the guiding principles of economic activity. True, a central theme in the Church's social teaching in the first part of the 20th century, especially in Leo XIII's Rerum novarum and Pius XI's Quadragesimo anno, was the protection of the rights of labor against the incursions of management. On this issue, the Church's promotion of labor unions was of key moment. And true, the protection of labor and the promotion of labor unions still plays a part in the major economic encyclical of John Paul II's pontificate, Centesimus annus. But there is also a lot more going on. Consider, for example, the following passage from section 42 of Centesimus, in which the pope responds to the question of whether, given the collapse of communism, capitalism should now serve as the economic model of developing (and, presumably, established) economies:

"The answer is obviously complex. If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a "business economy," "market economy," or simply "free economy."

This passage seems to confirm, no doubt in very general terms, many of the virtues Leo finds in The New Workplace. Clearly there is approval of the market model. And the emphasis upon worker creativity and employee responsibility for the means of production seems to jibe with the intelligence, creativity and flexibility demanded of employees in The New Workplace. Stock options-for-performance would be just one way to give employees, not just responsibility for, but even partial ownership of, the means of production.

So if The New Workplace is more congruent to the dignity of the human person than The Old Workplace, then the Church's positive regard for the market and for human responsibility and creativity in work should be seen as encouraging the achievements of The New Workplace.

Yet what I take to be the most important theme in recent magisterial teaching on economics is sounded in the passage in Centesimus that immediately follows the one cited above:

"But if by "capitalism" is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply [to the question of whether capitalism should serve as the economic model] is certainly negative."

Throughout John Paul II's writings on economics, he constantly returns to this theme of circumscribing the economic sector within the ethical and religious. My question is (and I offer it as a question and not an objection; I'm not informed enough to object), how effectively does The New Workplace circumscribe work within the ethical and even the religious? Leo makes the claim that the positive ethical dimension of The New Workplace is clear. And he seems to be right that the new relationships he talks about--e.g., the focus on pay for performance rather than zero-sum negotiation, the focus on individual rather than collective benefit programs, the focus on intelligence rather than compliance--do seem to promote qualities of prudence, courage, and justice to which human liberty is ordered.

But more needs to be said about the relationship of The New Workplace to those aspects of the ethical and religious that exist outside the workplace, principally the family. In talking about productivity, for example, Leo writes that "The key is [for employee and manager] to work together to find the best way to drive productivity higher." But on what basis is the decision made as to what is "best"? If the criterion is simply an increase in productivity and earnings for both management and employees, then there still may be ethical drawbacks. Creative work is always an end in itself, but we also work to secure the goods and virtues of family life. These goods and virtues must come into play when employee and management discuss how best to drive productivity higher, or else the ethical dimension of the work is diminished. Dad may be bringing home a big paycheck, and may be personally fulfilled in his work, but the time required to increase his productivity, the transcience it may involve for the family, may be a huge price to pay for the pleasure. And it isn't enough to say that if an employee can't satisfy all his needs and desires with one employer, then he is free to take his 401K and negotiate a better deal with another. For that kind of fluidity in market relations oftentimes has a negative impact on the family and the wider communities with which that family is involved. It keeps us from joining bowling leagues, for example. So, one important question is: how much of the ethical life beyond the workplace is The New Workplace able to accommodate?

Daniel McInerny

The past 30 years have seen a revolution in the concept of work. This revolution is centered in the United States, and has earned very little comment in the academy outside of business schools despite its broad and deep impact on hundreds of millions. Indeed, it is one of the most profound changes in human organization in modern times.

Let's call the result of this revolution "The New Workplace." There are a number of characteristics that define it:

~ A focus on productivity rather than wages. Managers have come to learn that wages are immaterial in and of themselves. They are like a partial baseball score: Cubs 4. They only tell half the story, and you can't tell the outcome without knowing the other half. There's a big difference between Cubs 4, Red Sox 2 and Cubs 4 Astros 8.

The key is productivity (or its inverse, unit labor cost). If worker 1 is paid $20/hour and produces 100 widgets, while worker 2 is paid $10/hour and produces 20 widgets, the intelligent manager will prefer worker 1, even though his wages are higher.

What this means, from a manager standpoint, is that you can afford to pay more for better people. What it means, from a worker standpoint, is that if you produce more your manager can afford to pay you more. The key is to work together to find the best way to drive productivity higher. Higher productivity leads to higher wealth for all involved, so long as the benefits are shared.

~ A focus on flexibility rather than capacity. The old model for organizations was command-and-control. Managers told workers what to do, and they did it. And if workers didn't like it, there was nothing they could do about it. Simple, right?

Problem is that this is a very static view of the world. In reality, technology is constantly changing - and always has been. The flexible organization can adapt to change much more quickly, and can be more profitable in the long run, even if it lacks the capacity to compete on unit cost with a larger player.

~ A focus on pay for performance rather than zero-sum negotiation. Profit sharing, gainsharing, stock options, and piecework have all grown in comparison to the old unionized compensation structures. Rather than taking the state of the industry as a given and negotiating to get as much of the economic rents as possible (the archetype of this approach being collective bargaining), employees are given incentives to perform that are aligned with those of shareholders. Human capital and financial capital work together to create value, and then divide the benefits between customers and themselves.

~ A focus on individual rather than collective benefit programs. This is perhaps the most profound change of all. In the past 20+ years, Defined Contribution pension plans (e.g. 401(k) programs) have grown dominant, while Defined Benefit plans (e.g. old-style pensions) have withered away.

This change has had two astonishing impacts. First, it has allowed talented employees to leave for more attractive opportunities and take their pension with them. This has, in turn, contributed to a better allocation of human capital across the economy - people work where they can add the most value - while simultaneously removing the "golden handcuffs" that often kept unhappy employees stuck in unproductive jobs for decades, all because they couldn't afford to leave their pension behind.

Second, it has put increasing pressure on managers to be responsive to their employees, or the employees will simply quit and go to work for a more empathetic and responsive employer. This change has, in turn, caused a dramatic increase in manager effectiveness, with all of the corollary benefits.

~ A focus on intelligence rather than compliance. The flexible organization demands employees who think. It is impossible to be effective in a flexible organization if you people who are unwilling to think and act independently.

Taken together, these and other supporting trends have transformed work. They have made it more productive, more value-creating, more satisfying (both intellectually and morally), and more fun.

In fact, these factors are self-reinforcing: an intelligent organization is a more flexible organization, which is a more profitable organization, which is a higher-paying organization, which is an organization that provides better benefits and management, which attracts more talent to increase the intelligence of the organization, and so on. A very virtuous circle.

And yet Catholic social teaching has been stuck, for the most part, in the old model. For instance, it is remarkable how much effort has been expended by Catholic thinkers and writers on union issues. Now, I am fairly pro-union, but the reality is that the industrial organization model that gave rise to the need for and power of the unions is no longer relevant. The concept of a handful of powerful companies controlling the economics of an industry, and therefore the need for employees to organization in order to better negotiate for their portion of the rents, well, it's so old-fashioned it's almost quaint.

The reality is that all industries compete for people, not just a few companies. People can pick up and move to another city at the drop of a hat. People switch jobs an average of every four years. Employers that underpay employees end up with very high turnover, and that drives up unit labor costs at a rapid clip.

So the market has been a much more effective means of managing wages than collective bargaining ever was. It creates a more productive allocation of human resources, which leads to higher productivity, which leads to higher wealth. That is why union membership has steadily eroded, not because of any political hostility. In the absence of a monopoly (e.g. government), a union is far more expensive and far less effective than employees voting with their feet.

And, yet, Catholic social teaching clearly favors a "negotiated" approach to human resource allocation, rather than a "market" approach. In one case, the jobs and companies are fixed, and any economic rents created a split on a negotiated basis. In the other case, prices attract labor and capital to companies, and the entrepreneur attempts to keep the two working together in order to satisfy the need of a customer.

The irony is that The New Workplace can be seen as built on a foundation that is entirely consistent with Catholic values. It puts the human person at the center of the process. It focuses on unleashing human creativity. It puts others (i.e. the customer) ahead of self (i.e. employees or owners). It is a system built on human liberty and human dignity.

It is time for us to bring Catholic social teaching on organizations into synch with the real world experience of millions who work because the want to, not because they have to; because they are enriched by work, by because it makes them rich; and because it fulfills their destiny, not because it fills their pantry.

In The New Workplace, you don't have a job; you have a vocation.

Seems like this blog would be a natural place to explore the current state of the United Nations. After all, it is hosted by the Center for Ethics and Culture, and the UN is certainly an institution worthy of attention.

This attention is especially important for Catholics, since the UN is often viewed by the Vatican, particularly the Secretariat of State, as a preferred venue for projecting influence in foreign affairs. The Curia, over the past few decades, has placed an enormous amount of political capital behind the UN, in the hope that it can be harnessed as a force for good in international affairs.

Alas, the UN has rarely reciprocated. In fact, it has often led the charge against a variety of issues of high importance to Rome, especially on abortion and population.

But I digress. The issue here is the ethics and culture of the UN, not the Vatican. And on this issue, I am afraid that there is growing evidence that the UN is a corrupt and incompetent organization. Let's look at a few recent examples:

1. The Corruption of the "Oil For Food" Program
There has been much written of this scandal of late, and there is much yet to be discovered. The essence of the corruption is that Saddam Hussein used money from the UN-managed "Oil For Food" (OFF) program to buy influence on the UN Security Council in the run-up to the non-vote on Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

Essentially, the scheme was for Saddam to issue vouchers to people of influence to purchase oil at a discount under OFF, so that those people could resell the oil on the open market, and pocket the difference. It appears now that as much as $11 billion was siphoned off in that way, and those people of influence included Benon Sevan, the UN bureaucrat who was in charge of the program, and Kojo Annan, son of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. It also appears that there were a number of large beneficiaries in France, Russia, and China. (For comparison, consider that Halliburton has alleged to have bilked the US government for "only" about $128 million, or around 1% of the OFF corruption – and likely to be repaid at the end of the day.)

The details remain murky at this time, and there are a number of ongoing investigations. However, sufficient evidence has emerged to make it very likely that such corruption was widespread.

The money corruption, however, pales in comparison to the political corruption. The money, it appears, was used to buy protection on the UN Security Council. Many of the powerful interests in France, Russia, and China who were benefiting from OFF were using their influence to build opposition to the US-led coalition in the Security Council.

In other words, the UN bureaucracy abetted the rigging of the Security Council in 2003. For shame!

For more coverage of OFF, see many of Claudia Rosett's articles in the Wall Street Journal, especially "Oil-for-Terror" on 28 April 2004.


2. The Footdragging During the Darfur Genocide
One of the principal rallying cries for the creation of the UN was "never again" on genocide. The horror and shame of the Holocaust helped build support for a supra-national organization that could help prevent future genocide.

In fact, the UN has generally failed in this area. The purges and mass murders in Russia, China, Cambodia, Uganda, Rwanda, and Serbia were met with hand-wringing (at best) and complicity (at worst) on the part of the UN.

This shame continues even today, in the Darfur region of the Sudan, where thousands of predominantly Christian Africans have been beaten, raped, and slaughtered by the Janjaweed, a brutal Islamicist militia force. These roving marauders have been ignored (at best) and actively supported (at worst) by the Sudanese government. USAID has estimated that 350,000 people or more could die in the coming months.

Yet the UN has done nothing except issues "strong statements" and weak resolutions while the crisis deepens.

For more information on the Darfur crisis, check out www.savedarfur.org and the Darfur section of the Human Rights Watch website.

3. The Prostitution of the UN Commission on Human Rights
The UN sponsors a series of commissions, and these organs of the bureaucracy have grown steadily more cancerous. A prime example is the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR).

This commission has been noted by UN Watch as having some of the most repressive regimes among its member. For instance, at this time, for example, the UN Commission on Human Rights includes representatives from Cuba, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria – all of them noted abusers of human rights. At a critical period during the run-up to the Iraq war, Libya was elected chairman of the UNCHR, despite a three decade history of abusing civil rights.

This sort of systematic abuse of UNCHR to allow tyrants and despots to have influence over the investigation of and elimination of human rights violations is unsupportable and damages the credibility of the UN

For more information on the UNCHR, go to their website. For news coverage at the time of Libya's election to chairman, see this BBC news article.

----------

These are just three examples of recent vintage, but there are many more. They indicate a level moral decay at the UN that makes ongoing support from the Vatican something of a scandal.

How many times throughout history have we seen Catholic institutions make the mistake of aligning themselves with some secular regime in the hope of using the regime for good purposes, only to see the Church herself compromised by such an alliance?

It is time for the Vatican to re-evaluate its cozy relationship with the United Nations, and push forcefully for a house-cleaning and bureaucratic reform.

In fact, given the deep decay in the UN, at this point wouldn't we be better off with a new organization made up of countries dedicated to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

This is the real question about the future of the UN and international cooperation. And it deserves an answer.

When I first looked at the CEC website, I happened across an article by Alasdair MacIntyre The Only Vote Worth Casting in November. Knowing Prof. MacIntyre's formidable reputation as a philosopher and writer, I am probably heading for certain humiliation by fisking his article. But what better way to start my involvement on this blog than with imposed humility?

So it begins.


"When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither."


This is not a serious argument. At best, it is a straw man. At worst, it is self-contradictory. Are there two choices or three? It would seem that there are at least three choices: Republican, Democrat, and Neither. (Actually, there are many more choices: Green, Libertarian, etc. and Neither, but let's set that aside for the moment). There's lots of criticism of the first two choices, but virtually no examination of the third.


"And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives."


This is a remarkably naive statement. It appears that the fundamental objection here is to a two party system. The various groupings of issues which comprise the policy platforms of the two parties are the result of a series of votes, negotiations, and compromises that are inherent in any democratic system. Would having 20 parties be better than 2? How about 200 or 2,000? Wouldn't more parties simply result in negotiations and compromises in the legislative vs. the electoral process?

Prof. MacIntyre appears to completely misunderstand the process that has just taken place in the US. No "false choice" has been "imposed." No one has "arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives." That power was granted to the "framers" by those who choose to participate in the process – party members and voters.

I am not active in party politics, but I know many who are, in both parties. It's a lot of work. They spend hours working out policy issues and negotiating differences internally to reach consensus. That is how the alternatives are framed. My job as a voter is to select from among the alternatives.

If Prof. MacIntyre is disappointed with the results of this process, perhaps a more construction reaction would be to engage in the process, or propose a realistic alternative. That is the true "duty" of a citizen in a free country. The "duty to withdraw" is not.


"These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement."


If so, it is only because they are straw men. If they are taken seriously, they seem to invite easy contradiction.


"But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility."


Ah, received wisdom. Ingrained at that. Again, the apparent distain for democracy and the democratic process is palpable. But I digress.


"But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush's conservatism and Kerry's liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target."


This statement is breathtaking in its confusion. The only vote worth casting is a vote against the system? But isn't the system a democratic system? And isn't the democratic system a voting system? So the only worthwhile vote is to not vote, which is a way of voting against voting?

The logic here would confuse Godel.


"Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions."


Uh, they answer the questions we ask. We, the People. If we don't care, we don't ask, and they don't answer. If we care, we ask, they answer. We ask, they report, we decide. They work for us. It's called democracy. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else that has been devised.


"What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish. These two sentences, if fully spelled out, amount to a politics. It is a politics that requires us to be pro-life, not only in doing whatever is most effective in reducing the number of abortions, but also in providing healthcare for expectant mothers, in facilitating adoptions, in providing aid for single-parent families and for grandparents who have taken parental responsibility for their grandchildren. And it is a politics that requires us to make as a minimal economic demand the provision of meaningful work that provides a fair and adequate wage for every working parent, a wage sufficient to keep a family well above the poverty line."


So, to be pro-life, we have to support universal healthcare, welfare, and the minimum wage. Oh, and we have to reduce the number of abortions.

This kind of moral equivalence blurs the distinction between 1,300,000 dead children each year (an Iraq war every month), and the impact of an additional $1 in the minimum wage. Sorry, no comparison.

Again, I am not a partisan political guy. But it seems to me that the reason that the Republican party has been in ascendancy over the past two decades (including the Clinton years, when the Democrats became more like Republicans) is that people realize that the Democratic "solutions" to poverty hurt the poor. It's that simple. To wit:

Raise the minimum wage: the poor are hurt because there are fewer entry level jobs that create career pathways to higher, sustainable wages.

Universal healthcare: the poor get stuck in the crummy national health system, while the rich buy their own healthcare outside the system.

Welfare: the poor get stuck in a cycle of dependency and hopelessness that demoralizes and degrades them. The rich feel their responsibilities are satisfied with the payment of their taxes (if any).

And so on. The point is there are many different policy options we can explore, and their impact on the poor is not well understood. There are reasonable and "pro-poor" or "pro-life" positions on each side.

The same is not true for abortion on demand. It is clear and settled. There is no moral other side.


"The basic economic injustice of our society is that the costs of economic growth are generally borne by those least able to afford them and that the majority of the benefits of economic growth go to those who need them least."


Excuse me, but this is flat out wrong. The basic economic fact of our society is that we are virtually all economically better off than our parents. And that was true for their parents as well. Economic growth imposes no aggregate costs – it is a positive sum game. We live longer and healthier life, earn more, work less, have a cleaner environment, and get more for our money.

To be sure, there are local disruptions and misallocations, and in a country of 300 million we can find some really sad cases, but with our system does a good job of minimizing these impacts.


"Compare the rise in wages of ordinary working people over the last thirty years to the rise in the incomes and wealth of the top twenty percent."


Let's do that. According to the US Census Bureau, between 1967 and 2001, the ratio of the 80th percentile (top 20%) income to the median (50%) income went from 1.66 to 1.98. So, yes, the top 20% income grew faster than the median. A little faster. About 20%

But more interesting is the fact that median income grew, in real terms (i.e. adjusting for inflation), more than 30% during this time. The 10th percentile (lowest decile) income grew even more: 43% in real terms.

But most interesting of all, during the period from 1979 to 1988, 85.8% of the lowest income quintile increased 1 or more quintile. In other words, the notion of a fixed group of "ordinary working people" is false, at least in the US. Our flexible labor system has enabled an enormous surge in practically everyone's well-being over the past 30 years.


"Compare the value of minimum wage now to its value then and next compare the value of the remuneration of CEOs to its value then."


On CEO pay, Prof. MacIntyre finally makes a point we can agree on. The ratio of CEO pay to average pay in public companies is way too high, and is unsustainable in my opinion. That is why my pay is limited to not more that 6 times the average wage in our organization.


"What is needed to secure family life is a sufficient minimum income for every family and that can perhaps best be secured by some version of the negative income tax, proposed long ago by Milton Friedman, a tax that could be used to secure a large and just redistribution of income and so of property."


A better system would be the FairTax, which shares some of the negative income tax aspects of Milton Friedman's proposal.

I challenge Prof. MacIntyre to defend the notion that a large redistribution of income is just.


"We note at this point that we have already broken with both parties and both candidates. Try to promote the pro-life case that we have described within the Democratic Party and you will at best go unheard and at worst be shouted down. Try to advance the case for economic justice as we have described it within the Republican Party and you will be laughed out of court."


Really? My observation is the opposite. Members of these parties are very engaged and generally open to discussion (to varying degrees, of course), despite their portrayal in the media. Perhaps Prof. MacIntyre would not be so despairing if he relied on primary research, rather than secondary sources such as the mainstream media. The parties are actually filled with lots of good people, struggling with making our nation better and stronger.


"Above all, insist, as we are doing, that these two cases are inseparable, that each requires the other as its complement, and you will be met with blank incomprehension. For the recognition of this is precluded by the ideological assumptions in terms of which the political alternatives are framed."


Do not mistake disagreement with blank incomprehension. The argument is comprehended, but fallacious. The two cases are indeed separable. They are not required as complements. Abortion, simply put, has priority. If two candidates held the same position on abortion, the other factors come into play. In this election they did not. That may be a painful fact to pro-life supporters of the Democratic economic positions, but it is a fact nevertheless.


"Yet at the same time neither party is wholeheartedly committed to the cause of which it is the ostensible defender. Republicans happily endorse pro-choice candidates, when it is to their advantage to do so. Democrats draw back from the demands of economic justice with alacrity, when it is to their advantage to do so. And in both cases rhetorical exaggeration disguises what is lacking in political commitment."


My sense is that such compromises of principle are actually quite rare, limited to situations such as the recent Pennsylvania senate race and the Clinton presidency. In the vast majority of situations, Republicans choose pro-life candidates when they have a choice, and Democrats choose pro-union candidates when they have a choice. My sense is that Prof. MacIntyre here uses rhetorical exaggeration to disguise what is lacking in real-world examples.


"In this situation a vote cast is not only a vote for a particular candidate, it is also a vote cast for a system that presents us only with unacceptable alternatives. The way to vote against the system is not to vote."


One wonders in what circumstances Prof. MacIntyre could ever support a candidate for public office. If a candidate was anti-abortion, supported universal healthcare, unlimited welfare, extremely progressive taxation, but opposed a high minimum wage, could he support such a candidate? Could he support such a system?

Or put another way: has there ever been a candidate that Prof. MacIntyre could have voted for, given these criteria? John F. Kennedy was aggressive in supporting the Vietnam War – surely that should be a pro-life disqualifier?

And if the "system" has never once turned out an acceptable candidate, is choosing not to vote sufficient? Aren't we compelled to press for real change, rather than the lazy, resigned pathway of staying at home on election day?

No, our system may not be perfect, but at the end of the day it works. It allows for spirited, hard-hitting debate on important issues, and we end up with relatively moderate and stable forms of government which allow for enormous human liberty and progress. It even allows people like Prof. MacIntyre not to vote.

The perfect is indeed the enemy of the good.

As a new blogger, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Leo Linbeck III. I am a husband of 16 (almost 17) years, father of four (three born and one unborn), CEO of a company that manages a number of operating businesses, Adjunct Professor and teacher of MBAs at Rice University, general partner of a pre-venture life sciences development company, Vice Chairman of the Institute for Advanced Study in Musical Theatre (an arts think-tank aborning), and occasional writer and speaker.

My friend, Dan McInerny, upon hearing of my current activities, opined that I should find a better use for all of my free time, such as participating in this blog. Of course, how could I argue? So here I am.

I want to thank Dan for including me in this blog, and I hope that my efforts here will cement my reputation as an inveterate troublemaker.

I am not an academic, although I respect and admire the academy. I ask for patience and fortitude if I stray into areas above my pay grade. However, I am a firm believer, following Newman, that "the energy of the human intellect 'does from opposition grow;'" and I hope that any offence I give will be quickly forgiven, as it is most certainly not my primary object.