Tag Archives: ethics

Revisionist History and Political CYA

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Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Congress from Michigan’s 7th Congressional District William Lawrence has been busily deleting politically inconvenient social media posts he’s made in the past. The smaller problem is that his deletions are nothing other than a coward’s attempt to revise his history. It’s the smaller problem because such revisionism is widely spread and all too common, even though that in no way legitimizes the misbehavior.

The larger problem here concerns those deletions and his rationalization of them. The deletions include posts pushing for such things as

police and prison abolition, called for nationalizing fossil-fuel companies to end their production, attacked moderate Democrats, and argued for a “fundamental overhaul” of the Constitution.
…
“f**k” the nuclear-family home and calling it an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society,” envisioning “a world of free and open migration,” and calling to “Abolish the Senate.”

That’s about as un-American as it gets. His rationalization, though….

Lawrence said that he currently does not support defunding the police or open borders despite what his earlier posts suggested.
“Like many millennials, I’ve done a lot of thinking out loud on the internet[.]”

That’s an illustration of Lawrence’s dishonesty. He spoke from his heart in those since-deleted posts. His deletions and his rationalizations are nothing more than him covering his political behind. What concrete actions has he taken, after all, to illustrate, if not demonstrate, his alleged evolution of his thinking?

“AI is Satanic”

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That’s what the headline on the WSJ article claims. The headline misleads, as the article itself goes on to say.

Experts call…tendency of machines to excessively agree with and flatter their users AI sycophancy. Vance chose spiritual terms. “I think that’s kind of satanic.”

Certain behaviors of AI can be satanic; that does not make AI satanic.

The larger issue for me, though, is what AI gets used for. It certainly can be abusive—or satanic, in the extreme—if it’s used wrongly, and misusing it can be done subtly enough that the user might not recognize the abuse. Vice President JD Vance (R) cited a friend who used an AI package for marital advice and got back validation of his own selfishness. Children have used AI packages for advice and have been led to suicide.

Those are uses of the tool, though. AI also has been used to good effect for business moves, to identify patterns in complex and/or noisy data, to point ways toward disease controlling chemistry.

 

Even where AI sycophancy leads to failure, even egregious failure, though, it’s not that AI is misbehaved or satanic, it’s that its human programmers have programmed the sycophancy into it through flawed programming and flawed testing.

AI in itself is just another tool, neither good nor bad intrinsically. It’s necessary to discriminate between the tool and what the tool gets used for. Build the data centers, and get training in how to use it. Then take care in its use, just as is necessary for any other tool, whether a power saw or a firearm.

An Illegal Strike

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Teachers strikes are explicitly illegal in Washington, but so far that State’s law men and women, at both the State and city level, have lacked the integrity to enforce their law. Thus, Seattle’s children are in danger of being deprived, yet again, of their access to education: the teachers of Seattle’s teachers union voted 91% in favor of striking and are set to walk off their jobs before the current school year starts.

There are two responsible answers to this move, if the union follows through, and both of them should be carried out. One is to fire for cause every teacher who goes on this illegal strike. The other is to decertify the teachers union for carrying out the illegal strike.

There are no other legitimate alternatives. The fact that the State’s and city’s managers have kowtowed to teachers unions in past illegal strikes presents no excuse for letting the union and those of its members get away with its illegal action this time. All acquiescing would do would be to demonstrate, once again, the intrinsic dishonesty of those in the State’s and city’s government.

Update: It appears the school district and the teachers union have reached an agreement. Apparently, the union is getting 9% in guaranteed salary increases, plus added school staff, but no added teachers on anything else to improve the children’s academic performance.

Illegal Aliens and CDLs

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The Federal government is finally cracking down on illegal aliens with commercial driver licenses and the schools that “train” them. The latter cavalierly ignore the grave danger to life and property—to say nothing of the businesses’ cargo that those illegal aliens are hauling around.

It’s good that the Federal government is finally moving seriously to reduce the number of illegal alien CDL holders and the risks to us Americans and our businesses that those illegals represent.

It’s not enough, though. Government isn’t the only player here, nor should it be the primary. Businesses that engage shipping companies to move their goods from port, factory, farm, retailer to stores, factories, assemblers, and end users have their own part to play in this. They should require those shipping companies, as a condition of doing business with them, to certify that they have no illegal alien CDLs on their payroll.

The Left and many of their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians like to talk about noblesse oblige in the context of rationalizing their drumbeat of imposing punishing taxes on the Evil Rich. A broader and far more legitimate onus is characterized by patriotisme oblige. It’s time for businessmen who are Americans to act like it, and to act on it.

Progressive-Democrats as Taxmen

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There is a way for the Evil Rich to provide for their heirs in a remarkably tax favored, if not tax-free, way—private-placement life insurance, a customizable insurance contract that allows unlimited investments to grow tax-free. The contents would go to the beneficiary(s) on the account creator’s death as a death benefit, and so be free of income taxes at that point, also. These accounts were designed that way explicitly to encourage folks to provide for their dependents. The tradeoff is that the account must be under the control of an independent account trustee of some sort; the account creator cannot have even influence over how his money is invested within that contract. The mechanics of how this works isn’t relevant to this post. The outcome, though, is.

In one relatively extreme case, one Rich Person’s account, set up in this way,

could [could, mind you; the account’s manager may make bad or unlucky investment decisions] one day be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he won’t have paid a dime in ordinary-income or capital-gains taxes on their growth. He can take withdrawals or loans against the policy’s cash value but generally doesn’t expect to tap the proceeds. When he dies those will go to beneficiaries income-tax-free in the form of a death benefit.

Enter Progressive-Democrats with their hatred of the wealthy and their jealousy of the wealthy’s success and their demand to confiscate other people’s money, especially that of the so hated rich.

Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) has introduced legislation that would separate these insurance policies from traditional life insurance, making those earnings and losses taxable to the policyholder as they are earned each year.
“We cannot have a bunch of ultrarich tax dodgers abusing its special tax treatment to set up tax-free hedge funds and shelter mountains of cash[.]”

It’s abuse to follow tax law? And: why can’t we have successful people take advantage of the government’s tax law to take care of their families? Never mind that. The Evil Rich Man cannot be allowed to pass his good luck on to his dependents. He owes Government and must pay the Progressive-Democrat government’s vig.