Random observations / thoughts after observing the state legislature more intently for a week:
1. Legislators get a bum rap. They are, on average, far sharper than the median voter. Not even close. Many strike me as conscientious, decent, and principled.
2. The Bathroom Bill is compelling.
a. The current regime has 'worked' over time and across cultures.
b. Forget anatomy, men are different from women in myriad ways. Data on physical and sexual assault reveal huge differences. Men are more violent and far more likely to be predators.
Take a & b to arrive at...
c. Keep men out of women's rest rooms and locker rooms.
2b. The opposition to the bathroom bill surprises me....
a. They are pursuing a 'scorched-earth' strategy. They are asserting a right. Their opponents, engaged in the area of prudential judgment and public safety, are not given the benefit of the doubt. Rather, they are assumed to be bigots.
b. The comparison to the Civil Rights movement is laughable (see Bruce Springsteen and his use of 'Freedom Fighters'). Is 400 years of slavery and then years of Jim Crow remotely comparable to insisting that boys nad girls use separate bath and locker rooms?
3. What is up with the Bible bill? Is there any substantive benefit? Strikes me as profoundly stupid and unnecessarily provocative.
4. Twitter: I'm a newbie. Twitter is amazing. It is fascinating. It is also stupid and superficial. Perfect for our times.
a. On one platform we see a zillion distinct market segments (aka hashtag indicators). Charles Murray's 'Coming Apart' identified two distinct classes. Within those classes of people there are myriad segments. Everyone can live in his / her own bubble. That is a great challenge with respect legislating. We don't talk with one another. We tweet back and forth and hurl insults.
b. Is the addictive nature of social media not a spiritual challenge? I find it so. It is important to have time to think, to contemplate, to work things over in your mind. The plethora of 140 character tweets makes it harder.
Six percent of Tennessee's population is Catholic.
The Catholic bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee has weighed in on the 'Bible as state book' kerfuffle. He's agin' it. Not surprising. People are unaware of the history covered in this piece. The Protestant Bible (that would be the King James Bible) was used in public schools at least throughout the 19th century. Catholics objected, to that and much else. The tension explains why a parallel school system was created by Catholics.
Authentic Chirstians don't need a state endorsement of the Bible and it is unnecessarily provocative to non-Christians.
... and the implications for elected officials.
My lecture today, in media res...
"This is important with respect to macroeconomic policy. It is almost as important as whether Melania or Heidi Cruz is better looking."
Absent any chuckles, I probed. Turns out that only one student was aware (vaguely) of the Donald's Melania/Heidi side-by-side tweet.
College-aged folks are perhaps not the typical voter, but hard to underestimate the information set / (un)awareness of the median voter.
Unprecedented access to information is coupled with so many market segments. As Charles Murray pointed out in 'Coming Apart,' we don't watch the same movies, eat the same food, listen to the same music, watch the same news... as we did 30 years ago.
You know all this already, but it is often more important to be reminded than informed.
If you asked people in TN whether Senator Ramsey should hold hearings for SCOTUS nominee Merrit Garland how many would answer yes or no? How many would understand that the state senate has no role?
Does this shirt make me look fat? Regulating rest rooms when social norms are insufficient...
In Italian South Philadelphia, that area of the city
made famous by Rocky Balboa, there’s one thing you notice right away, the parking. It’s crazy… double parking all over the
place, parking in the middle of the road.
It’s all against the law, or against regulations, but no one gets a
ticket. The police don’t enforce the
regs?
Why not? Because, even as it appears disorderly, it is
regulated, by the people themselves. It’s
an old neighborhood. The people all know
one another. Many are related. They’ve managed to work it out. There is order of some sort and it works. In other words, the police allow them to
police themselves, because they can and they do. There is a common culture. There are social norms. Formal regulation is unnecessary.
It is when there aren’t social norms that problems
emerge and regulation must be imposed and enforced. Think about it. Do you need noise restrictions or quiet hours
in a college dorm? Yes, because the
collection of people doesn’t form a particularly coherent group from a cultural
standpoint. There are myriad views and
preferences when it comes to playing loud music.
When social norms are insufficient or break down, you
need regulation.
When it comes to using a rest room, it is governed
primarily by social norms, always has been.
Men and boys use one rest room and females have their own rest rooms. That was beyond question, so self-evident
that it was hard to imagine it ever becoming an issue.
That’s changed apparently. Some people want to use whatever rest room
they prefer and some local governments are accommodating that desire.
In response, some states have begun to address the
issue. Again, when social norms break
down, or become unreliable, regulation becomes more necessary.
Those who prefer changing the rest room regime, to
enable people to use whichever rest room they prefer, respond to such talk with
accusations of bigotry or at least insensitivity.
That’s unfortunate.
Such accusations don’t further discussion. They shut down discussion. It impresses me too that the charge of
bigotry doesn’t fit. The proposal is not to remove gender
entirely as a designation. No one is
suggesting the ‘mens’ and ‘womens’ signs be taken down. Why not? Because there is an implicit understanding that gender does matter in the case of
rest room use.
From my own perspective, it is not the transgendered
person who poses the primary problem.
Suppose a guy is at the Nashville public library with his daughter and
her friend. They go into the bathroom
and a perverted man exposes himself to them.
When accused and apprehended, can’t he just say that he was tucking in
his shirt? That’s not only acceptable
behavior in a bathroom, it’s what we expect.
He didn’t mean any harm he says… and goes on his way. That’s a public safety problem. Absent regulation, you can’t do anything
about that kind of a problem.
What of the situation of high school locker rooms,
where young guys or girls get fully undressed?
Wouldn’t mixing genders there present myriad problems? Doesn’t a girl or guy have a reasonable
expectation of privacy, based on gender, in a locker room?
So, the argument in favor of regulation is simple… social norms… the particular case of bathrooms
being segregated by gender has broken down.
The state then comes in and says… no, you can’t use any rest room you
want.
There is the small government argument that a state’s
regulation should not supersede the local regulation. That’s a question that will be addressed
soon, particularly as it relates to Minimum Wage legislation.
But, it’s worthwhile to consider some implications of
the thinking that suggests that anyone has a right to use any rest room he or
she prefers.
1.We don’t allow open carry in Tennessee. Some would like to see that change, but I’m
wondering how reasonable people would respond to an argument that sounds like
this… ‘I identify as a cowboy, carrying a gun is simply part of who I am…’ My guess is that most legislators would think…
‘that has nothing to do with it.’ We
ought to consider public safety and YES, social norms.
2.What
about education. The voucher bill failed
again this session. If we’re talking
about enhancing choice and human liberty, isn’t being able to redeem your
voucher at the school of your choice a bit more fundamental than being able to
go the rest room of your choice?
A final thing… there is a difference between
tolerating innocuous differences, even when they’re very eccentric, which we
ought to do generall, and accommodating differences when doing so compromises
public health & safety. All for
Now. Next time, local Minimum Wage
legislation.
Coursera, big producers of MOOC's (Massive Online Open Courses) has an interesting strategy as reported in today's Wall Street Journal and locally in the Tennessean where a pilot program involving many of the UT and Board of Regent's schools will be launched this fall.
We're seeing the emergence of a revolution in education. Changes in technology prompt such revolutions and revolutions imply the need to adjust and adapt. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the article in the Tennessean includes this...
The classes offered in Tennessee will cost the same as any other class and are open only to those enrolled in the schools offering the courses.
Insurance, properly understood, is purchased to protect the buyer or an interested party of the buyer against large, unexpected losses. Apparently catastrophic coverage only (high-deductible) is discouraged or forbidden in the new regime. Crazy. So, buying a high-deductible plan might expose you to a loss of $10,000 or so. Even if you don't have that kind of money on hand it is a rational approach to insurance. People borrow for all kinds of things, college education being an obvious area.
The employer-based model of health insurance - low-deductible, high premium - has served to distort our collective perspective when it comes to insurance.
