.

An Origami Heart folded from a US one dollar bill

I find it very bizarre that during a time of economic upheaval the Globe and Mail is running a series on “Giving.” Is Charity the answer to our economic woes? Some seem to suggest that it might be. For example, Ed Clark, CEO of TD bank (whose salary rose by 9% last year, while inflation is at 3% according to the consumer price index) said:

“We live in a market economy,” which means that paying executives less than the market rate will make it hard to attract the cream of the crop, he [Clark] said.

“Personally what I’ve always said is… what you do with your pay matters. You can solve this problem on how you behave personally in terms of charitable donations and things like that, and try to reconcile that dilemma.” (Source).

Clark believes the problem of CEO pay would be difficult to address directly (by lowering or limiting it), or we would not be able to attract “the cream.”^[1] So the solution is for CEOs to act charitably.^[2] Again, a similar refrain to the Globe section, I linked to above.

This suggestion seems problematic to me. There is a moral difference between equality achieved through rights (as a matter of what we are owed as persons) and equality achieved through charity (as a matter of the beneficence of others). Immanuel Kant discusses the danger that charity poses to the self-respect and dignity of the recipient in The Metaphysics of Morals.  Although I have some quibbles with Kant’s discussion in these sections, I think it is right in the broad outlines.

Immanuel Kant

Kant argues that certain forms of social inequalities might have effects on self-respect by putting some at greater risk of being humbled because of their social position.

When Kant discusses the ways that rich benefactors should behave toward the poor who receive their aid in The Doctrine of Virtue (Part II of The Metaphysics of Morals) he seems uncomfortable with the threat this situation poses to the dignity of the poor. He suggests that rich benefactors “should hardly even regard beneficence as a meritorious duty on his part” and that benefactors “must also avoid any appearance of intending to bind the other by it [the act of charity]” (Metaphysics of Morals 1996, 202; AK 6:453).

Kant argues that although we have an obligation to help the poor, “our favour humbles him making his welfare depend on our generosity” (Metaphysics of Morals 1996, 198; AK 6: 449). In these passages Kant directs his attention to the wealthy and suggests that they should take great care when giving to the poor so that the poor are not humbled by this charity.

I agree with Kant that charity is dangerous because it often requires the recipients to act as humble supplicants. I also find charity to be a problematic way of benefiting others because it allows the wealthy “benefactor” to decide on behalf of the poor which charitable actions are in their interests, rather than allowing the poor to decide for themselves what is in their own interests. Recent research into “defensive helping” demonstrates that this is indeed a dangerous situation, since privileged groups tend to “help” oppressed groups only in ways that perpetuate that very oppression (and in ways that are different than how they would help members of their own group).

My quibble with Kant is that once he recognizes the dangers of charity he pays insufficient attention to these dangers. For example, although he recognizes the injustice of wealth, and that charitable giving creates a morally hazardous situation, he does not require something other than charity to meet the needs of the poor. But receiving need not be humbling. Indeed, recent research shows that many Americans who receive government aid are not even aware that they are receiving this aid, and therefore are not humbled through this receipt of assistance nor do they feel beholden to those who assist them.

Rather than relying on individual charity, which is indeed humbling, we could instead arrange our societies so that we all contribute to each other’s welfare as the result of collective organization. This is not humbling.

Protesters on the Bridge

This is the second post in a series of posts I am writing in response to some inane commentary about #OccupyWallStreet. I am beginning with a response to Sally Kohn’s Piece “Follow No Leader” but will add to the discussion as I read more inane commentary from journalists who seem content to point out their own incompetence and call this “reporting.” I am not singling out Kohn’s piece because I think she is incompetent and other journalists are competent. Instead, I chose her piece as representative of a genre.

I don’t see this post as a defense of the movement as much as it is a criticism of journalism.

The sections I examine are as follows:

1. I Demand One Demand

2. Leaderless Clearly Means Pointless (This post)

3. They are Middle Class the Hypocrites!

4. Those “Smelly”  ”Jobless” Hippies Should Just Try Harder if They Want to Succeed

5. Focus on What They are Wearing

6. Are Journalists Simply Incompetent?

Bibliography:  Link Round-Up of Decent Places to Follow the Protest

In the first post, I argued that the demand for one demand is forgetful of history. Once we recognize an injustice it is easy to identify that injustice as the demand (in retrospect). But at the time an awareness of a new form of injustice is developing the sense of outrage is usually amorphous, because we don’t yet have words or concepts to name that injustice. Usually there are a series of smaller demands that only later seem to be related to a single goal. “I have a dream” that we will be taken to “the promised land” is not exactly a specific demand. In retrospect, once we have a name for the injustice we can see how the “disparate” demands are actually “one demand.” But that only happens over time.

In this post I want to look at the criticism in the mainstream media that seems to say that if there is no leader, then the movement cannot have any point. Once again, this criticism was raised in response to the G20 protests in Toronto, but once again, all it does is point to journalistic incompetence.

2. Leaderless Clearly Means Pointless

One of the main criticisms of the new kind of activism that eschews leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King is that without a leader the media cannot figure out what is going on, so clearly nothing is going on (they mistakenly conclude).

As was the case with the demand that there be one clear demand, this only shows that old-style media reporting cannot keep up with new-style activism. I agree with the journalists that it is probably more difficult to get a “sound bite” from a movement with no leader charged with producing such sound bites in their inspirational speeches.

I wrote before about why reducing arguments to sound bites in the media is harmful, but here is another shot. In philosophy we teach students that they must criticize the premises, or the connection between the premises and the conclusion. They may not just attack the conclusion. The reason we teach this is that if all one does is attack the conclusion one has “contradicted” the speaker, but one has not argued against the speaker. By reducing arguments to sound bites, as journalists have recently been doing, all we get in political discourse is contradiction. We don’t get any argument. If this seems confusing, watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ “Argument Clinic” sketch.

The complaint that there is no leader of the movement really boils down to a complaint that this makes the job of the journalist difficult in a way it used to be difficult before journalism gave up. If there is no leader, then journalists will have to research and think about possible reasons for a protest rather than reducing the argument to a “sound bite” which is even worse than reducing an argument to a conclusion.

So, let’s see how this operates in an actual article. I have been working with  Sally Kohn’s Piece “Follow No Leader” so let’s stick with that. Kohn goes on to write:

Indeed, the group calls itself a “leaderless resistance movement” and claims inspiration from “our brothers and sisters in Egypt, Greece, Spain, and Iceland.”

One of the downsides of anarchists is they tend to oppose most forms of organization—including their own. Rather than the usual “we’re all in this together” sense of purposeful community that propels meaningful protests, Occupy Wall Street felt like the political equivalent of a rave; it made recent uprisings across the globe seem like a trivial fad. (Source)

There are actually two points here. The first is “There is no leader, so who am I supposed to interview?” part which is just journalists whining that the way they were taught to do their job no longer applies (and thank goodness for that, since the “sound bite” was destroying discourse). The second complaint also lacks substance; it boils down to the claim that without a leader there can be no sense of community.

This second claim is a ridiculous claim. It ignores the fact that having a leader can also undermine community. One of the reasons that modern activist movements avoid leaders results from complaints in previous movements that having a leader excluded some voices and some experiences. For example, some Black feminists have argued that the civil rights movement was a movement for Black Men’s rights but neglected Black women’s rights. Similarly, Black feminists complained that 1960s feminism was a movement for White women’s rights, but it neglected the rights and issues that were important to non-white women. Having a leader can undermine a sense of “we’re all in this together” just as much as (and possibly more than) having no leader does. Kohn is simply not paying attention to who counts as someone who does not feel that a movement is “all in this together.” That is her problem, not the problem of #OccupyWallStreet. The complaint that movement leaders often overlook the needs of the most marginalized among their groups is actually well-documented within peer-reviewed scientific literature. When I can be bothered to link it up for the lazy journalists, I will do so.

Kohn suggests that comparing #OccupyWallStreet to Egypt trivializes the Egyptian revolution, but here we should ask whether this is really true. For example, who was the “Leader” of the Egyptian revolution? When was this “leader” identified? Before or after the success of the Egyptian movement? There were leaders in retrospect, but as far as I saw there were no “leaders” at the time. This is what the internet gives us that was not there before the internet: the opportunity for organizers to organize without being killed or identified as easily as Dr. Martin Luther King was. One of the advantages of modern leaderless activism that is enabled by the internet is that it prevents us from having a clearly identifiable “leader” who can then be assassinated in an attempt to end the movement (whether this assassination is at the hands of a “deranged” individual, as in the Dr. Tiller case, or a genuine government action really is of little consequence. What matters is whether there is an assassination or not).

Finally, what is wrong with the fight for justice feeling like fun? Seriously? I believe that a lot of the movements in the 1960s felt like fun. They also felt scary. But gaining rights for a group/cause previously excluded should be fun. It is the “fun” of confronting the unknown, and working to clearly identify previously obscured injustices that can keep us motivated to learn about injustice.

Before I end this post I want to look at one last aspect of Kohn’s article that is ridiculous on this “leaderless” criticism.

In other words, part of the “collective” in the collective-art form of protest comes not just from a loose association of strangers marching on the street but intentional, cultivated communities. That’s why, for instance, Internet “organizing” has been effective at rapid-response, mass mobilizations but not the deeper, sustained work of movement building. There’s a qualitative difference in what’s achieved through on-the-ground community organizing. (Source)

This just shows that Kohn has no idea what internet activism is. We can, and often do, feel community with others not just because we interview them face-to-face (as is stock and trade for journalists) but also because their stories have been told in a compelling way. Authors who write novels, for example tend to make us feel a part of the “collective” not by going face-to-face and interviewing someone, but instead by imagining being in their place.

So guess what, journalists, your method of creating epistemologies is not the only method. It might in fact not be the best method. Stop pointing at your own failures and blaming them on someone else. Do some reading, I assure you that it is possible to sort out what this movement is about, even if there is no leader. It does not trivialize Egypt. It continues to legitimize Egypt and the kinds of causes they were fighting for.

Bibliography: Link Round-Up of Decent Places to Follow the Protest

This is more or less my “Bibliography” section. I am not involved in this movement in any way, but I found it pretty easy to figure out what they are doing and why they are doing it just by reading the internet. This is exactly the same way that I was able to sort out what was going on in the G20. If you read and can research, then you can figure out the movement. It is simply not that difficult. Granted, I do have advanced degrees and these degrees were aimed at teaching me how to research. But come on journalists, I am sure you can do better! I believe in you!

Hey journalists, did you know that most protest movements set up websites these days? Here is the one for Occupy Wall Street. If you go on the website and spend say 1/2 hour a day listening to what the protesters are saying you can more or less piece together why they are protesting. It is one of the pretty amazing things about the internet. There is actual information on it!

The New York Observer seems to still understand what it means to report on something rather than just spouting some unfounded and unresearched opinions.

I found a second journalist who seems to understand what is going on: Jim Hightower “Something Big is Happening.”

The AnonOps blog where Anonymous reports their take on the protests.

The Anonymous site “The Plan” where they describe what their plan is, and have a bunch of quite amusing videos about the protest.

The Adbusters discussion of the occupation, which includes the original call to occupy and a live feed covering the protest.

And, there is always the method of following the Twitter Hashtag #OccupyWallStreet

Occupy Together is the website where affiliate groups from other countries and regions post about their actions in support of OccupyWallStreet. The “one” goal seems to be to occupy everything. Oh, hey, it says so right on their websites…

Ok, now that you know what modern info dissemination is all about, I am sure you journalists will stop screaming “I am incompetent” and wearing this like some kind of badge of honour.

I don’t see this post as a defense of the movement as much as it is a criticism of journalism.

The sections I examine are as follows:

1. I Demand One Demand (this post)

2. Leaderless Clearly Means Pointless

3. They are Middle Class the Hypocrites!

4. Those “Smelly”  ”Jobless” Hippies Should Just Try Harder if They Want to Succeed

5. Focus on What They are Wearing

6. Are Journalists Simply Incompetent?

Bibliography:  Link Round-Up of Decent Places to Follow the Protest

This list will grow as I read and run across new inane commentary in the media. Guess what journalists, I am an oldster, well out of my 20s, I earn well over $100K per year, and not only can I figure out why there is a protest, but I also think the protesters have a legitimate point.

1. I Demand One Demand

This part of the argument against anarchist activist movement implies that if there is not one clear demand, then the movement has no purpose whatsoever. One demand, or there is no coherent demand. Indeed, this requirement that there be one single demand seems to be one that the activists themselves have taken on as a legitimate request, since the poster for the Occupy Wall Street movement asks “What is our one demand?” Asking for a single demand is not a legitimate request, and occupiers should resist the request rather than embracing it. The reason that it is illegitimate has to do with the difference between considering a movement in its inception, versus reflecting back on a successful movement.

Kohn demonstrates this criticism when she writes:

But the Occupy Wall Street protests seem, tactically and optically, like an end in themselves—for the protesters, the self-expression and disruption of the protest is the point. For grassroots organizations like those in the New Bottom Line, protest is a means to an end—a tactic they employ to get the system to recognize the entire community’s needs and demands. It’s the opposite of anarchy—an appreciation that to challenge autocratic power, we must build the power of those who have been targeted and marginalized, those who are together organizing for an alternative vision. (Source)

Kohn does not think this kind of amorphous protesting has any tangible effects, and she contrasts this with what she considers to be effective organizing:

If you want to see the difference between effective organizing and pantomime, compare Occupy Wall Street with the New Bottom Line coalition, a group of community organizations that have put together protests across the country to demand that big banks put back into our economy what they drained from communities. (Source)

But later in the article Kohn cites the civil rights movement as a positive example of organizing (see point 4 below). By putting these two aspects of her argument together, I am supposing that Kohn believes the civil rights movement had a coherent message and a single demand.

If this is indeed what she believes, then her analysis is shockingly naïve. It is true that the civil rights movement had a single demand: “end racial oppression.” But it is not true that there were no sub-arguments that went into this demand.

In order for racial oppression to end, a number of sub-oppressions had to end as well (and we are not there yet so this work is not over).

The civil rights movement did have the single demand to end racial oppression, but this demand included a number of sub-issues:

• End educational segregation
• End Jim Crow laws
• End unequal job opportunities based on race
• End the barriers to equal voting rights for Black Americans
• End unequal policing of Black neighbourhoods (the Black Panthers)
• Equal respect for Blacks

From what I have read by the activists who are involved in organizing the Wall Street occupation, they, too, have a single demand: “end economic injustice.” Just as with the Civil rights movement, this one specific demand seems to break into more specific demands:

• The economic system of advanced capitalism has lead to environmental disaster; we need urgently to address the environmental crisis. The environmental crisis is an issue of economic injustice because climate change affects poor countries more than rich countries and it affects poor individuals within rich countries more than it affects rich individuals within those same countries (this effect is well documented, I will add research when I can be bothered to look it up for the lazy journalists).
• Economic inequalities are now affecting the government. The government of the United States is no longer a government “of the people, by the people” because of the influence of corporate dollars on the election process.
• Advanced capitalism has no concern for women’s rights and undermines women’s equality. Since raising children is not a “profitable” endeavour and one is not paid for one’s participation in this activity, any economic system driven by salaried employment is going to disadvantage those who do caregiving work. (Here is an example)

There are more specific demands, but it seems to me that most of them are tied to the economic injustice of advanced capitalism.

It is not surprising that unfettered capitalism might lead to these kinds of economic injustices. When Adam Smith first described a theory of Capitalism in The Wealth of Nations, he argued that there were some things that a Capitalist system would never be able to adequately address. He said we needed governments to look out for these things. Among them were precisely education, health care, taking care of the poor and the tendency of capitalism to lead to a concentration of wealth. To counter these aspects, he suggested there should be taxation and that wealth should not be inheritable and that the state should look after the health care and educational needs of the population.

Kohn’s analysis is naïve because it neglects the fact that it is always difficult to identify injustices. It is only in hindsight that we can pick a clear message from the disparate actions that go into large-scale movements for social justice. Yes, now that the civil rights movement has been widely successful, we can identify all of their specific requests (end Jim Crow, End Segregation, Legislate Equal Opportunity, etc.) as requests that relate to a single goal (end racism and racial oppression), but at the time a movement is developing this is usually far from clear to those observing.

True, Movements for social justice have always coalesced around an issue. But at the time the movement began it was rarely clear (especially to those outside of the movement) what the “one demand” was.

One important thing to note about this section is that it is clear what the civil rights movement was demanding. But this is only clear in retrospect, once we have already undertaken a pretty extensive analysis of what constitutes “racism.” It was not at all clear at the time.

“I have a dream” that we will arrive at “the promised land” is not a specific demand.

Bibliography: Link Round-Up of Decent Places to Follow the Protest

This is more or less my “Bibliography” section. I am not involved in this movement in any way, but I found it pretty easy to figure out what they are doing and why they are doing it just by reading the internet. This is exactly the same way that I was able to sort out what was going on in the G20. If you read and can research, then you can figure out the movement. It is simply not that difficult. Granted, I do have advanced degrees and these degrees were aimed at teaching me how to research. But come on journalists, I am sure you can do better! I believe in you!

Hey journalists, did you know that most protest movements set up websites these days? Here is the one for Occupy Wall Street. If you go on the website and spend say 1/2 hour a day listening to what the protesters are saying you can more or less piece together why they are protesting. It is one of the pretty amazing things about the internet. There is actual information on it!

The New York Observer seems to still understand what it means to report on something rather than just spouting some unfounded and unresearched opinions.

The AnonOps blog where Anonymous reports their take on the protests.

The Anonymous site “The Plan” where they describe what their plan is, and have a bunch of quite amusing videos about the protest.

The Adbusters discussion of the occupation, which includes the original call to occupy and a live feed covering the protest.

And, there is always the method of following the Twitter Hashtag #OccupyWallStreet

Ok, now that you know what modern info dissemination is all about, I am sure you journalists will stop screaming “I am incompetent” and wearing this like some kind of badge of honour.

If capital punishment disappears in the United States, it won’t be because voters and politicians no longer want to execute the guilty. It will be because they’re afraid of executing the innocent.

This is a healthy fear for a society to have. But there’s a danger here for advocates of criminal justice reform. After all, in a world without the death penalty, Davis probably wouldn’t have been retried or exonerated. His appeals would still have been denied, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison, and far fewer people would have known or cared about his fate.

This argument interests me, because it is generally raised as a weakness of Utilitarianism. One of the objections that is supposed to show that Utilitarianism is an inadequate moral theory is that by Utilitarian reasoning, it would be fine to execute the innocent if this lead to the “greater good” (for example by dissuading crime in general).

In Douthat’s argument Execution is playing a kind of Utilitarian role. It is considered ok to kill some prisoners, because it reminds us to care about the standards of evidence invoked against other prisoners. This seems like terrible reasoning to me.

He then writes:

Simply throwing up our hands and eliminating executions entirely, by contrast, could prove to be a form of moral evasion — a way to console ourselves with the knowledge that no innocents are ever executed, even as more pervasive abuses go unchecked. We should want a judicial system that we can trust with matters of life and death, and that can stand up to the kind of public scrutiny that Davis’s case received.

OK, I agree that we want a judicial system that we can trust. But I don’t think the costs of that system is that many innocent peple should be put to death.

What I find particularly interesting about this video is the way in which Sir Michael Parkinson cannot seem to get off the topic of Helen Mirren’s body. In fact, though her body is not that voluptuous and she is not dressed in a particularly revealing way.

One of the best/worst parts happens 1:33 when Parkinsons says “You are ‘in quotes’ a serious actress.” Mirren calls him on it. Then he asks if her equipment will hinder her pursuit of becoming a serious actress. She makes him spell out what he is trying to hint at. It is marvelous.

Basically, Parkinson’s argument amounts to the idea that there are no serious actresses because all actresses will have breasts. But Mirren won’t let him get away with it.

Parkinson is just so condescending and Mirren manages to make him look like a fool. It is great. She has such poise and even though he is being rather vulgar she manages to keep her composure.

The early video is significantly different from a more recent interview, after Mirren has played the Queen:

Now that she is older he seems to have more respect for her. His respect might also be related to her accomplishments as an actress, and the fact that explicit sexism is less acceptable these days. But I think it is also related to her age. After all, the first video from the 1970s starts not only with a discussion of her “equipment” “assets” and “figure,” he also mentions her acting and she was already a talented actress. So I think her age has something to do with it as well.

In my experience this is one of the big benefits of aging as a woman. When I was younger I did sometimes encounter Parkinson-type sexist comments, although they come in more subtle forms these days. Someone once told me that I “seem really stupid” but then if you talk to me it turns out I am “really smart.” This is a Parkinson-type comment, because the only reason I could seem stupid before one talks to me is if one is assuming that women are stupid. I don’t get these kinds of comments as much now that I am older. So I actually like aging, and I do not want to retain my youthful appearance forever, as the commercials tell me I should.

Pen Canada's poster of Dawit Isaac

I just attended an event put on by Pen Canada to raise awareness about a group of Eritrean journalists imprisoned since September 2001. The journalists were merely reporting on events, such as student protests, which the government did not like. The Eritrean government felt the journalists were only “reporting the bad” which gave power to their enemies. So they were imprisoned and have been held in shipping containers for the last ten years. The shipping containers can get as hot as 50 degrees Celsius in the day. The series of talks made me think about how those who fear the enemy outside their boarders, so often end up with the enemy within.

For more you can read the article in the Toronto Star.

Dawit Isaac, you are remembered.

Act Mouthwash

But, I believe that it is also important to notice when commercials get something right. I saw a commercial for ACT mouthwash for kids last night (Edit: um, I mean on August 28) that I think does a lot of things right. [Edit: I have actually been sitting on this post since August and periodically searching the internet for the commercial. The commercial has never appeared. Rather than just keep waiting, I have decided to now publish this post. Perhaps whomever is in control of marketing at ACT will have an alert set for posts that mention their product and will then realize the importance of putting your shit out there for comment. Sure, some of the comments will be bad. But others will be good. If they ever get around to posting their commercial--free airtime, ahem--then I will update this post with an embedded video, or at least a link. Until then, I hope the description is enough to allow you to get the gist of why the commercial is good. Since they don't have this ad on the internet, I suppose it is also an example of advertising done wrong]

First, mom is the authority in this commercial even though she does not appear in the commercial. That is not so unusual for commercials about products to be used within the home. But this mom’s authority is based on the fact that she is “the dentist.” Her authority is based on her education and achievement outside of the home rather than on her role as homemaker. Now, there is nothing wrong with being a homemaker, and I do believe that  one gains a great deal of knowledge and expertise through performing that role. But, while some women are homemakers, other women work outside the home. In most commercials you don’t see this. What you see is mom in the home. I am not arguing that there is something “better” about being a dentist than being a homemaker. The argument is about what commercials represent and fail to represent; this commercial is good in my opinion because it represents women in a way that is rare for commercials. I think broadening representations of groups of people is good, and this commercial achieves that.

Second, the father and the children in the commercial seem to really respect mom (even though we never see mom on screen). A second problem for the way that many commercials represent gender is that they tend to make men look like idiots when they are doing anything related to childcare, cleaning, or homemaking. In this commercial dad is taking care of the kids, and everything seems to be going fine. There are no disastrous messes for mom to clean up when she gets home; the kids seem happy and well-cared for; dad has just bought groceries and he managed to get the product his wife asked him to buy and this is portrayed respectfully. The commercial does not call his manhood into question because he listens to his wife (there is no hint of the “pussy whipped” trope, which I hate). In short, the commercial manages to show the dad respecting the mom without also making the dad seem like an incompetent idiot. Sarah Haskins has a great spoof from her Target Women series on the “Doofy Husbands” theme from commercials:

I think this ACT commercial [that I cannot show you, ahem] is better than most at diversifying the representations of gender in the media. It portrays a mom with authority and competence in non-domestic spheres and a dad with authority and competence in domestic spheres. There are still some things in this commercial that are not very diverse; for example, it remains heteronormative by representing a heterosexual couple (though perhaps “mom” is a guy since we never see mom). But all in all, I think it succeeds at broadening the normally stereotypical gender representation in advertisements.

[Update: My Brother and Sister in law actually know something about marketing and advertising and they answered my question at the top about why a company would not put their ad on YouTube. Apparently there are sometimes copyright or distribution agreements that forbid it, other times there are royalties negotiated between the company and the advertising agency and/or the actors. These negotiations might also forbid putting the commercial on YouTube because then the agency or actors won't get paid the royalties for those views.  My brother in law writes, "It might also just be simple oversight." Thanks for the info!]

Books

Utilitarianism is basically the moral view that in order to judge whether an action is good one should consider the consequences and then evaluate whether the act provides the most good to the greatest number of people. (It is more complex than that, as you can see from the description at this link, but the nuts and bolts are as above).

This summer I began a new job as an assistant professor at a university. I was thinking about which textbook to order, and I applied a kind of utilitarian reasoning to my selection process. I began by reading the texts and I selected only those that I thought would do good by providing educational benefit to the students. After this process there were three texts that were about tied in terms of educational benefit.

Next, I thought about how I could make the students happy, and decided they would like a low-cost text book. So I went on amazon and looked up the price of the three texts. One was around $90 and the other two were around $40. This narrowed it down to two, and the selection between them really would have resulted in probably a more-or-less equal amount of benefit at lowest cost to students, so I selected the one that had a faster shipping time (1-2 days).

I also support local bookstores and so I ordered the text to a local bookstore so the students could have immediate access to the text without having to wait for the shipping time.

In my reasoning I was trying to maximize the good for everyone involved. The publisher would sell a few hundred copies of the book, the local bookstore would have a few hundred sales, and the students would experience educational benefits and cost savings.

Imagine my surprise when my students informed me that the book cost $75 from the local bookstore! I thought:

“What? How is that possible? Why are the textbooks so expensive?”

So I called around to find out what was going on. How could the actual consequences of my action be so different from the consequences I intended?

Well, it turns out that SOME/MANY publishers will charge the bookstores (and therefore the students) MORE than retail price for required college and university texts. They know they have a captive market and so they nearly doubled the cost of the book.

To make matters even worse, the publisher will then hold back their supply of books from online stores such as amazon and chapters. So now when I go to the amazon site to see how long it will take to ship the book, it says it will ship in 4-6 weeks. This is when the class is half over and so will be too late for many students.

Philosophers often suggest that the unpredictability of the consequences of our actions provides an objection to utilitarian approaches. They say that it is not fair to hold someone accountable for consequences they could not foresee and did not intend. I could not have known how much the publisher would charge, so it is not my fault that the students had to spend so much money.

But this objection neglects that I can take responsibility in a different way: Now that I have greater knowledge I can alter the expected effects next year. For example, I asked whether ALL publishers charge double the retail price for required texts, and I found out they do not all do this. I also received a tentative listing of publishers who do not do this (from people’s vague memory). So, in the future I will only order textbooks from publishers who do not gouge students in this manner (Broadview press was mentioned as an honest and fair-dealing publisher by a number of professors, so I think I will give them a try).