Jiro
15hr ago
Not only would I not count Communist "elections", I'd point out that if Communist countries had had genuine free elections, most of them would be gone pretty fast. Which makes all the deaths caused by them attributable to not having universal suffrage.
Of course, this means that even counting Germany, the deaths from not having suffrage exceed the deaths from having it (especially if you count the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as starting WWII and making some of the deaths the fault of lack of suffrage.)
Jiro
18hr ago
I'd say most of the same things for voting. Specifically, the only people who shouldn't be allowed to vote are people we don't trust with much of anything. Which isn't that controversial among the general public, but for some reason it is among rationalists.
You can't build a Constitutional test that is just your imagination of what some hypothetical people might think.
All laws are going to require some amount of common sense to apply. "What do (sincere) people think" is an inherent part of having laws.
People have gotten this stupid idea in their brain that the spending clause authorizes literally any spending that the government chooses to do.
If you think that the government shouldn't be funding media anyway, then ask the question on a more general level: Could the government claim that anything whatsoever counts as the press, and then apply freedom of the press to it? Could it do so for religion or speech, for that matter? If the government could not apply those to anything whatsoever, why wouldn't similar reasoning prevent them from considering the Price Force to be like an army or navy?
Jiro
1d ago
This is nothing but an argument from personal incredulity.
No, it's an argument "people don't think that". It is possible to observe people and draw conclusions about what they might think. "People don't think this" isn't an argument from personal incredulity.
No.
Yes. The government can spend money on lots and lots of things. Consider that the government actually has things like the Voice of America, subsidies to NPR, etc. The Price Press isn't all that different from that.
Jiro
1d ago
An Air Force is not sufficiently like either the army or navy to count, so it isn't authorized. Yes, the government could lie and say that it is.
Pretty much nobody could sincerely claim that the Price Force counts. A huge number of people could sincerely say that the Air Force counts. The object level is important.
That's not how Constitutional grants of authority work.
Creating the Price Press is something the government can do using its ordinary powers. The free press clause isn't granting it authority at all.
The free press clause only comes into effect when the government tries to shut it down.
Jiro
1d ago
I believe I still remain ignorant as to whether you think the establishment of a Price Force is authorized by your reasoning.
A Price Force is not sufficiently like either the army or navy to count, so it isn't authorized. Yes, the government could lie and say that it is.
There is no freewheeling grant of authority to establish a Price Press
But there's a freewheeling rule which says that an already existing press gets freedom of the press. So once the Price Press exists, freedom of the press applies to it. Laws or orders that shut it down are unconstitutional.
If the history of the Price Force is unrelated to the army and navy, and the functions it performs are unrelated to the army and navy, then it wouldn't count. Sure, the government could disingenuously claim it's similar when it isn't. There's no way to stop that.
That perhaps the only consideration is whether or not the Price Force has equipment that needs to be maintained.
That example was once we've decided it's an army or navy, we need to figure out which one it's more like. You don't do this from scratch.
Also, I'll bring up freedom of the press again. You've said that you didn't think freedom of the press should be treated this way--radio and TV count as the press (and speech) even though the founders didn't include them. So how do you solve the same problem that you have here, for freedom of the press? If the US government tomorrow declared there to be a Price Press which involved the government paying money to subsidize one political party, would this practice be immune to being shut down for any reason since that violates freedom of the press?
If the government declared Marxism to be a religion, would it fall under freedom of religion?
Jiro
2d ago
I gave you several decisions. "Funding", "authorized" and "the president counts as commander in chief" applies to both the army and navy, so we don't need to decide. "Has a 2 year funding limit" doesn't apply to the navy; it reasonably is because the navy has equipment that needs to be maintained, which would also apply to the Air Force.
At any rate, it doesn't matter. I agree that it's not possible to give a logically tight reason that explains whether the Air Force counts as an army or navy in every single situation. But I wouldn't call this a problem. The fact that you can argue whether it counts as an army or navy, and that there's sometimes no definite answer, doesn't mean that the Constitution allows you to do anything whatsoever with it. "Has to be treated like the army or navy" is still a serious restriction on what it's permitted to be.
Jiro
2d ago
Same answer. We decide whether it's more like the army or navy for the purpose of being authorized. As both of them are authorized, the answer is easy: it's authorized either way.
Jiro
2d ago
You can only confirm someone's checking account balance for sure by looking at the balance. But you can find evidence for the size of someone's checking account by doing things other than looking at it. If someone claims to have a hundred million dollars in his checking account and I notice he doesn't live like a rich person, and doesn't have a job that could earn a lot of money, etc., I haven't proven for sure that his balance isn't that. But I have found Bayseian evidence for it.
Jiro
2d ago
Then at least try.
If I try, you'll argue whatever example I give, even though whether I am right or wrong about the examples is irrelevant.
But sure.
If the government can fund an army and a navy, then when the Air Force is invented, we decide whether it's more like an army or navy for the purposes of being able to fund it. Fortunately, the government is permitted to fund both, so this is easy: the government can fund one.
The army is funded in 2 year intervals and the navy isn't. We say "well, the navy has ships that require maintenance and shouldn't be destroyed after a 2 year period just because we're at peace. The air force has planes that are also expensive and require maintenance, so it is more like a navy than an army in this regard and does not need to be funded in 2 year intervals".
On the other hand, the President is described as the commander in chief of the army and the navy. When you try to decide whether the air force is more like an army or navy there, you notice that the army and navy are treated the same way--he's commander in chief of both of them--so regardless of which one an air force is more like, the president is commander in chief of it.
Jiro
3d ago
There are no such additional distinctions for terms in 1A.
I'm not sure what you call a "distinction" but they certainly used terms that are not all-inclusive. If you're going to say there's freedom of the press, the term "press" doesn't include everything.
Where would be the part of your hypothetical Constitution where they distinguished between two separate things?
Saying something about the military implicitly distingushes between military things and non-military things. If the Air Force only became part of the military later and you are using your "after the fact" standard, then the Air Force would not be part of the military at the time the Constitution was written.
So, uh... which category does the Air Force fall into, given the distinction above? I keep asking this question, and you keep not answering it. Is it an Army or a Navy?
I don't know. You could make arguments for either one. I'd readily agree that we can't prove for certain which one. Some interpretation is inevitable here. But not an unlimited amount of interpretation.
Jiro
3d ago
We can just look at the text and see how they made significant additional distinctions for one and not the other.
Exactly what distinction did they make? They certainly didn't say "the bill of rights applies to things that are sort of like what we wrote, but everything else is absolutely literal".
I don't think your two meanings make a difference.
Yes they do. There's a difference between "long after the Constitution was written" and "long after we invented the thing we're asking about". At any rate, the problem is that if you mean "after the Constitution was written" you have no choice but to be arbitrary. If the Constitution just said "the military" you could claim that the Air Force only became part of the military after the Constitution was written, so this is still after the fact and "the military" should be read so as not to include it. There's nothing that could possibly have been put in the Constitution that by your standard wouldn't allow someone to say "you can't count the Air Force, that's after the fact".
We have specific rules (that are different) for Armies and Navies. Which set of rules applies to the Air Force?
You ask yourself "in what ways is the Air Force similar to an army and in what ways is it similar to a navy. Do what is appropriate based on the similarity."
As I noted, this isn't a perfect process. People may disagree on which is more similar or exactly how to apply a rule meant for the army or navy. But it's not unlimited discretion either; there are things that this just doesn't allow.
Jiro
3d ago
I explicitly agreed above that what we call it after-the-fact seems irrelevant.
"After the fact" is a vague term and can mean two things here:
- We only started calling it that long after it existed (we suddenly called the Air Force the Flying Navy so we could interpret the Constitution in a convenient way)
- We started calling it that immediately as soon as it existed, but long after the Constitution existed. (we always called it the Flying Navy)
"It doesn't matter if we called it the Flying Navy all along" implies the second meaning. And with that meaning, deciding that radio and TV count for freedom of the press is also after the fact. Even if the Constitution had said "the media", it would still be after the fact, because we didn't decide that they are media until they existed, which is long after the Constitution existed.
You don't seem to have engaged with it.
"The scenario with obvious bad consequences is above my pay grade" is not really something that can be engaged with. And as far as that's saying anything at all it sounds like "the Bill of Rights shouldn't be interpreted that way but the reference to armies and navies should". Which seems like arbitrary gymnastics to me--surely if you want to be literal, you should be consistently literal.
Jiro
3d ago
We have specific rules (that are different) for Armies and Navies. Which set of rules applies to the Air Force?
You figure it out, by deciding which one it's more similar to based on the Founders' intentions. Obviously this process has some uncertainty, and it leaves room for decisions that may ultimately be arbitrary. But it doesn't leave unlimited room; you can't just say "it doesn't mention the air force so we can't have one at all", just like you can't say "television doesn't involve any printing presses. It obviously doesn't count as the press."
This is an after-the-fact naming convention, trying to shoehorn something into the Constitution that isn't there.
By this reasoning if by some quirk of English we had actually called the Air Force the Flying Navy and not just made it up, the Constitution would allow an air force after all. This can't be right either.
And you haven't really addressed freedom of the speech/the press, and I think that's a much bigger problem for your idea than the Air Force is. Do you seriously think that the government should be free to censor radio and television all they want until we pass a Constitutional amendment that covers them?
Jiro
4d ago
It's not in there in the same way that radio, television, and the Internet are not in freedom of speech or the press. Do we really need to have a new amendment just to keep the government from censoring the radio? The founders thought that the categories they were using were exhaustive, even if the future proved that to be wrong.
A proposed amendment could even use more generic language
How would that work? Remember, your idea doesn't go by wording--if the air force were called a Flying Navy that wouldn't make a difference. So no matter how generic the law made the category, you could always claim "this new thing isn't enough like the category they described, so it isn't included". Suppose the Constitution said that freedom of speech applies to all communications media. When radio was invented, you could still say that the Constitution doesn't apply to radio. Sure, the words "communications medium" now include radio, but we're not going by words, we're going by meaning, and the Founders clearly didn't mean to include radio.
Jiro
4d ago
Rules are bad. They're literally symptoms of problems rather than solutions to them. You cannot fix every loophole - you can only get rid of the type of person who would exploit a loophole.
Closing loopholes affects bad actors on the margin. Yes, someone who's sufficiently determined can find loopholes in almost anything. Buit it can be easier or harder to find loopholes, and it can be easier or harder to get those loopholes past that subset of judges who are actually fair.
The second amendment has probably done quite a bit for the right to bear arms even though state and Federal government constantly finds loopholes ro work around it.
Jiro
4d ago
The founders did seem to think that there was a meaningful difference between Armies and Navies, naming them separately rather than some unified term and including entirely separate clauses addressing particulars of each.
Sure, but that seems to substantially agrere with the person who was using "gymnastics".
Michael responds to this post here. His reply is difficult to summarize, but if I understand it correctly, the key claim is that an independent Air Force is permissible under the text of Article I so long as the "powers" it exercises can legitimately be considered either "Army" or "Navy" powers.
If you aren't sure which one it comes under, that's different from not thinking it counts at all. It seems unlikely that the founders would think the Constitution doesn't allow for an air force at all just because you're not sure exactly which thing it's most similar to.
Jiro
4d ago
A couple examples just to give you a sense of some of the gymnastics that are required.
I don't consider this gymnastics. It's like saying that freedom of the press applies to television. The founders didn't have television and the Constitution doesn't say anything about television. But you can guess that if someone had magically told them about television, they, or at least a substantial portion of them, would have said that television counts. So you read "press" as including television. Likewise, you should read "army" or "navy" as including the Air Force.
It's true that the Air Force can do things that the army and navy don't, but it's also true that television can do things that printed newspapers can't. That's not really a reason to say that television doesn't have freedom of the press. Also, the exact terminology is irrelevant; if we had by happenstance of language called the Air Force the Flying Navy, that wouldn't change anything.
(Notice that "if they had heard of it, would they count it?" is not the same as "they hadn't heard of it".)
Jiro
6d ago
This one isn't inherently silly. Sure, pointing to the name is stupid, but Ra's al Ghul is clearly a Fu Manchu imitation complete with daughter. And the fact that he was created by people with a good record dealing with other races doesn't mean they can't be wrong when it involves Asians.
This is unremarkable and no reasonable person seeks revenge for war.
This is not true. And Gazans (and people in honor based and tribal societies in general) tend not to be reasonable people anyway.
Jiro
9d ago
Israel is creating thousands of boys every week who want nothing more than to fight back against Israel — because they just saw soldiers shoot their grandmother, or shoot their little sister, or kidnap their brother, or maybe Israel bombed their entire family, or maybe they were mistreated, or maybe their cousin is starving.
You'll notice that this argument applies to shooting enemy soldiers just as much as it applies to civilians. By your reasoning, Israel shouldn't shoot any enemy soldiers because it creates thousands of boys who saw their brother or father or uncle or whoever get killed by the Israelis, and who want revenge.
Also, notice that bombing Nazis didn't create more Nazis. Why? Because Germany was saturated with Nazis already. Boys who saw their relatives killed were already steeped in Nazi propaganda and probably would become Nazis no matter what you did. If for some reason they didn't, they'd just get drafted anyway.
Jiro
9d ago
Revealed preference here is related to switching costs, not to which someone would prefer in a vacuum.
Jiro
9d ago
Flooding Gaza with food would lead to Hamas taking it all, selling it to Gazans, and destroying that part that they can't sell.
It's not as if having excess food means that the food goes to people who need it. Hamas is just as capable of taking excess food as they are of taking necessary food.
People get upset about restricting voting rights because in the real world, doing so has a really bad record.
Voting is also used to keep other people from doing things to you. I suppose you could say that is still pointing guns, but it's the self-defense style of pointing guns. Everyone who wants to restrict the franchise on this basis talks about using the vote to take from others. Using the vote to keep bad things from being done to you usually gets handwaved away.
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