Month: September 2005

Diaster Ethics 2: Three Moral Situations

Someone noted the tension that exists in part 1 of this series between three different statements in the Catechism. The first is the fact that sometimes we are obliged to pay money for the goods we need. The second is that sometimes it is okay to simply take the goods we need. And the third is that the government has a right to regulate the right of private property for the common good.

The Catechism doesn’t resolve this tension by telling us when these different statements are applicable, but as I thought about it, I think I may be able to clarify matters a bit. I’d like to propose three different types of situations. Let’s call them Type A, B, and C.

Type A situations exists when the market is functioning normally, or at least when it is capable of functioning adequately. In other words, it is not a situation of market failure. In this situation, even if prices have spiked and people are under strain as a result, basic human needs are still being adequately met. (They are never perfectly met.)

This is the type of situation we want to be in, and in Type A situations you are morally obliged to pay money for the goods and services you need or want to have.

Type B situations exist when the market is no longer meeting basic human needs adequately. In this case, the government’s right to regulate private property becomes operative and some form of government intervention is warranted.

This is a less desirable situation than Type A because the government is nowhere near as efficient as the market in routing resources to where they need to be. The government simply does not have the knowledge that the market as a whole does.

The situation is analogous to that of the Blogosphere vs. one of the major media outlets. It doesn’t matter how much info CBS had; their handful of flawed employees simply couldn’t compete with the distributed knowledge of the Blogosphere, which was incredibly efficient in ripping apart a story that CBS wanted to push.

In a similar way, a handful of flawed government officials can never compete with the distributed knowledge of the Market when it comes to efficiently routing goods and services. When governments try to do this, they fail. As I said last time, that’s why Communism failed (and continues to fail).

Experience thus teaches that we don’t want to be in Type B situations. Government interventions in the market needs to be as limited and infrequent as possible–or at least that’s my opinion.

In reality, there is considerable room for divergence of opinion on this point. One reason for this is that there is no objective definition of what counts as meeting basic human needs "adequately" or even what basic human needs are. There is a tremendous grey zone in which different individuals can have different opinions about when government interventions are warranted.

That’s what politics is for.

When one is in a Type B situation, the general duty to obey the law means that one has an obligation to go along with the way the government is handling things. For example, if they have imposed a price cap on a service you offer (like renting hotel rooms), then you have to go along with that. If they have issued ration coupons to citizens then you have an obligation to only use the ration coupons that are legitimately yours (i.e., you can’t steal someone else’s; though you could trade things to get the coupons you want).

The goal of the government’s actions in a Type B situation should be to get us back into a Type A situation as swiftly and smoothly as possible so that individual initiative can again replace govenrment intervention, in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity.

Type C situations occur when one cannot pay for what one needs and in which the government and other agencies (e.g., church relief organizations) cannot be counted upon to supply it either. In Type C situations it becomes morally legitimate to simply take things (or at least certain things) that one needs, and this is not the sin of theft. It also should not be classified as the civil crime of looting.

Type C situations are obviously the least desirable of all, for a great variety of reasons (among them the sheer danger that one is exposed to in having to take things against the will of their owners).

These three situations can all exist simultaneously in a country.

Right now, much of the U.S. economy is in a Type A situation. There are, however, some parts of it that are being run in a Type B manner, including parts of the city of New Orleans. In other parts of the same city, Type C situations exist.

How to handle oneself morally in a Type C situation is a topic of its own.

That’s the subject of the next post in this series.

Disaster Series

A bit of lunchblogging.

I’m getting enough queries about different moral aspects of the Hurricane Katrina situation that I’ve decided to do a series on the ethical principles that apply insituations such as this. I know that this is something a lot of folks are wondering about.

As the posts of the series will make clear, it often isn’t easy to determine the moral course of action in particular situations, but I’ll do the best I can to try to apply Church teaching and broader moral theology considerations to some of the situations that arise in the wake of disasters like this one.

Since questions on this are of interest to Catholics generally, as well
as other Christians and even non-Christians, folks around St. Blog’s
might want to give the series some coverage.

The first post in the series has already appeared. I’ve renamed the post below on price gouging as

DISASTER ETHICS 1: PRICE GOUGING.

More to follow.

The Combox Bishop

Attention, St. Bloggers! Did you know that your bishop may be reading your blog? Jamie of Ad Limina Apostolorum found out that an off-the-cuff remark he made about the Bishop of Colorado Springs had a wider audience than he expected:

"If you posted this…

"'[Bishop Michael] Sheridan, by the way, is a hulking beast of a man, with shoulders as broad as a gorilla and a frat boy haircut, and a glance that lets you know he could kill you in less than three seconds.’

"And got this in your comment box…

"’Jamie, It was great meeting you in the hotel lobby at WYD. I really must have intimidated you. Of course, I could kill you in three seconds — but I never would. Is a frat boy haircut a good thing?

"’+MJS

"’Bishop Michael Sheridan Homepage 08.29.05 – 2:53 pm’

"Would you be worried?

"P.S. I got an email from one of his staff today, who just wanted to assure me that it was Bishop Sheridan who posted to my blog. He’s proud of his bishop for being ‘hip’ enough to post in a combox."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Disputations for the link.)

I always thought it would be cool if a bishop joined St. Blog’s Parish. We have priests and nuns, so why not a bishop? And I was right. It is cool to have a bishop in the parish, even if only for a brief visit.

Now, who do we apply to have an episcopal ordinary assigned to St. Blog’s? 😉

Name Changes?

A reader writes:

I’m a fairly recent convert, and I have a question about baptismal and confirmation names. From what I understand, an infant is given a name at baptism, usually a saint’s name.

Frequently this is the case. Current Church law only requires that the name not be "foreign to Christian sensibility" (e.g., if you wanted to name your kid "Lucifer" or something). See canon 855 on that.

This name is also the child’s legal name (usually the first name).

Usually, but there’s no law requiring that.

Let’s say that a boy is named Peter Terry Brooks after St. Peter. Is St. Peter considered the boy’s patron saint at this point?

It is customary to regard saints who share one’s name as one’s patrons. However, one can turn to any saint one wants and ask for his intercession.

At confirmation some years later, that boy can choose another name for a patron saint, say St. Luke.

He can do this, but canon law does not require him to take a new name at confirmation.

Now, is this really a new name he takes, or does he only have St. Luke as a patron saint?

If you take a new name, you take a new name. It may not be recorded anywhere (e.g., in diocesan records, in your county courthouse’s records, by the Social Security Administration), but it’s a new name. It also would be customary to regard St. Luke as a patron if one takes the name "Luke" at confirmation.

Could that boy call himself Peter Luke Terry Brooks or Luke Peter Terry Brooks?

He could call himself either, or he could simply say "My confirmation name is Luke" without trying to fit it into any particular order with his other names.

(Would this make any change in their legal name, or would a legal change need to be done through the government?)

Confirmation names have no bearing on one’s legal name under civil law. One would thus not need to contact the government.

Would the child now have two patron saints?

Yes. At least that is how it would customarily be regarded.

 

This all came to mind after reading your "Jimmy vs. James" post a while back, and thinking about my own confirmation.

No prob! Glad to be of help!

Incidentally, all the above also goes for taking religious names (e.g., if a person named Albert joins a religious order and takes the religious name John then in religious life he’ll be called "John" and be regarded as having St. John as a patron, even though his drivers license and social security card will still say "Albert." This kind of situation can–and has–caused some priests problems since 9/11 with all the new security measures).

Disaster Ethics 1: Price Gouging

A reader writes:

I’ve really been enjoying your series on money and Star Trek, I’m hoping that in the wake of the disaster in LA that you might also touch on the issue of "price gouging" (which I don’t think is going on).

Which comes to my question.  Is there such a thing as price gouging from the standpoint of Catholic ethics?  People think that hotel rooms going from $75 to $200 overnight is wrong, but I don’t think they know the point behind prices.  But are there instances where there could be genuine "gouging?"

First, let me say that the following is NOT an analysis of how things are right now in the areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. What I’m about to sketch are some principles, but I am NOT saying that these do or don’t apply to the situation in the Gulf states. What the situation is on the ground there is still unclear. We still don’t even know how many people have been killed, much less could I say anything about the economics of the area–besides urging people to SEND AID (see the bottom of this post for into on how to help the disaster victims).

At the moment there are reports that there is a generalized law and order breakdown that call into question the degree to which the local economy is functioning. We can only do what we can to help and pray that stability will be restored soon.

I am not aware of any magisterial documents that use the term "price gouging." (Googling the Vatican web site doesn’t turn up any.) However, here’s what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say:

2409 Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others is against the seventh commandment: thus, deliberate retention of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another.

Though the term "price gouging" is not used here, the same basic idea seems to be present.

Note one element of what the Catechism says, though. It speaks of "forcing up prices." I’m not sure of all the different kinds of circustances that might happen. I suppose that it happens if a manufacturer were to start deliberately making less of something that was in demand due to a hardship. For example, if in a middle of a famine, a farmer decided to grow less food in order to drive up prices then that would be "forcing up prices by taking advantage of the . . . hardship of another."

But that’s not what we’re talking about in the case of a hurricane and hotel rooms. In that case, a hotel owner isn’t forcing up prices. The natural price point for the hotel rooms changes due to factors beyond the hotel owner’s control (i.e., the fact that a hurricane has rendered many homes unusable).

He would be forcing up prices if he decided, for some reason, not to rent all of the rooms he had in order to make more per room. For example, if he said: "Well, I’ve got 200 units I could rent, but I’ll close up 100 of them so that only 100 will be available for rent. Then I’ll make more on those 100 rooms." And he likely would be right: He’s make more per room with only a hundred rooms available for rent since the overall number of rooms available for rent in the city would be less.

It seems to me, though, that what such a manager did would be rather short sighted. First, while he would make more per room by doing this, it is not at all clear that he would make more money overall. In general, the market functions most efficiently and people will make the most money if they don’t do things like this. They may mistakenly think that cutting back production (or refusing to rent certain rooms) in order to cause a price spike will make them more money, but this may not be true.

For example, if the natural price point is $100 per room if the owner has 200 rooms to rent, he would make $20,000 a night for those 200 rooms. But if he closes half his rooms and that pushes the price point up to $120 per room (there still being a lot of other hotels that aren’t arbitrarily closing their rooms, so the natural price point doesn’t rise that much) then he’ll only make $12,000 a night for his 100 rooms in rent. He thus actually stands to make less money by forcing up prices.

Second, the motel owner who refuses to rent half his rooms in the wake of a hurricane is taking an awful risk that people will realize what he is doing. If they find out (and they are quite likely to find out; hotel staff know what rooms they’re not renting or cleaning, and they’re likely to talk) then at a minimum he will earn the severe displeasure of everyone who learns of this. He may find his business harmed for years afterward. He may find it harmed even sooner. He may have people simply force their way into his units and refuse to pay anything for them (and police are not likely to evict them given all the other pressing needs of the crisis). If he handles that situation badly, he may even find himself lynched.

So it seems remarkably foolhardy for someone to try this, but he would at least be trying to force up prices in order to take advantage of the hardship of others, and thus he would be sinning.

Let’s consider the more common situation, though: A hurricane rips through an area causing untold human suffering and in the process it wipes out or otherwise makes temporarily unusable many of the homes in the area. In this circumstances, people have several options: (a) sleep outdoors, (b) sleep in an emergency shelter like a sports stadium or school gym or homeless shelter, (c) stay with friends or relatives, or (e) rent a hotel room.

Obviously having a hotel room is preferable to options (a) and (b), and for many it is also preferable to (c). There is thus increased demand for hotel rooms. But since hotel rooms can’t be built overnight, the increased demand is met with a constant supply. When that happens, prices rise.

But in this case it’s not the hotel owner that is forcing up prices. The hurricane did that by destroying a bunch of homes. It was the hurricane, not the hotel owner, that changed the natural price point for a hotel room.

Could the hotel owner–out of the generosity of his heart–charge less than the new natural price for a room? Sure he could! But note two things:

1) At this point the hotel owner is being generous. It isn’t greed to charge the natural price for something in current market conditions. It’s generosity to charge less than the natural price of a thing. He thus might be generous in order to help out folks who would otherwise have difficulty paying for rooms.

2) It’s not clear that this generosity of the hotel owner would actually help that many people. It might even cause overall harm. Why’s that? Thomas Sowell explains:

Those who got to the hotel first would fill up the rooms and those who got there later would be out of luck — and perhaps out of doors or out of the community. At higher prices, a family that might have rented one room for the parents and another for the children will now double up in just one room because of the "exorbitant" prices. That leaves another room for someone else.

Someone whose home was damaged, but not destroyed, may decide to stay home and make do in less than ideal conditions, rather than pay the higher prices at the local hotel. That too will leave another room for someone whose home was damaged worse or destroyed.

In short, the new prices make as much economic sense under the new conditions as the old prices made under the old conditions.

It is essentially the same story when stores are selling ice, plywood, gasoline, or other things for prices that reflect today’s supply and demand, rather than yesterday’s supply and demand [SOURCE].

This is a situation that I may one day face, personally. California doesn’t have hurricanes, but it does have other disasters (earthquakes, fires, mud slides). A couple of years ago, the fires were closing in on the area where I live, and I came within minutes of evacuating. I had my pickup packed and everything.

At that time, QualComm Stadium was being used as an emergency shelter, and I might well have gone there. It would have been better to sleep on a mat in the stadium than in a building that was burning down around me, but it would have been better yet to sleep in one of the hotels down the road from the stadium. (The stadium is right next to "Hotel Circle" in San Diego.) If I learned that the rooms in Hotel Circle that normally go for $100 a night were now going for $300 dollars a night, I’d have to ask myself: "Is it really worth it to me to pay the money to sleep in one of those rooms, or would I rather keep my money and sleep here in the stadium for a few nights?"

Personally, I’d probably have chosen the latter and roughed it in the stadium, but there are many people who might have special needs that I don’t have (e.g., a person in frail health who needs a room and bed more than me) and who would be willing to pay for it. The jump in prices that deterred me from renting the room thereby opened it up for someone who felt they needed it more than I did and who was willing to pay the price to get it.

Of course, rich people are more able to pay for such rooms than poor people, but then the rich aren’t likely to stay in an area being devastated by fire or hurricane or what have you. If I were rich, I’d probably try to get transport out of the area altogether and stay in a hotel where the prices were lower rather than pay for an expensive one in the city center.

Further, imposing price caps (voluntarily or by government mandate) so that people who aren’t rich can more easily afford the rooms also will prevent people who really need the rooms (as opposed to those who could sleep in the stadium or with friends and family or even out of doors) from being able to get them since they’ll just fill up quicker with people who don’t have that high a need for them.

The market mechanism in most situations is thus still the best method for determining the allocation of goods and resources. It’s not perfect, and in fact the market can break down so much that the ordinary rules regarding property rights are morally suspended. The Catechism notes:

2408 The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner. There
is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to
reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in
obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for
immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at
one’s disposal and use the property of others.

In sufficiently extreme circumstances, the government might even step in and declare marital law and commandeer hotels, prioritizing who gets the rooms on a needs basis. The Catechism also acknowledges:

2406 Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.

But much of the time it would be hard for the government to do as good a job as the market in determining the most efficient use of resources. That’s why Communism failed.

One therefore shouldn’t be too quick to seek a government remedy to a difficult situation. It is possible that the government solution may be better than what the market would produce, but usually this is not the case. The market tends to be more efficient than the government.

To sum up:

  • While the Church doesn’t seem to use the term "price gouging," it does recognize that one can immorally force up prices to take advantage of others’ hardship.
  • This is not the same thing, though, as having the natural price point of a resource change due to a disaster.
  • It is not greedy to charge the new natural price of a thing, but it is generous to charge less.
  • Doing so may help some but may not help the right ones since it may prevent those who need the resource more from getting it since others may fail to conserve the resource if prices are kept artifically low.
  • In certain and extreme circumstances (which we haven’t fully explored) one can simply take what one needs without it being stealing.
  • The government has a right to regulate the exercise of private property rights, but there must be caution in this area because the government usually isn’t as efficient as the market.

All that being said, I have no idea what the economic situation is at present in the areas hit by Katrina. I simply hope that people will continue to pray for those harmed by the hurricane and that they will do what they can to help them directly.

SEE HERE FOR INFO ON HOW TO DO THAT!

British Teachers Tolerate The Other F-Word

Some f-words are nicer than others, according to one British school. While it is terrible to use the word failure because such a dirty word may sting youthful egos, damaging them irreparably, The Other F-Word is A-OK… unless you use it more than five times in a single class, that is. Perhaps tired of being disciplinarians, the instructors at this British school will themselves bite the soap and "tolerate (although not condone)" a "limited" use of the f-word that your mama would have, or should have, cleaned your clock for using in her presence:

"A secondary school is to allow pupils to swear at teachers — as long as they don’t do so more than five times in a lesson. A running tally of how many times the f-word has been used will be kept on the board. If a class goes over the limit, they will be ‘spoken’ to at the end of the lesson.

[…]

"’Within each lesson the teacher will initially tolerate (although not condone) the use of the f-word (or derivatives) five times and these will be tallied on the board so all students can see the running score,’ [assistant headmaster Richard White] wrote in the letter [explaining the policy].

"’Over this number the class will be spoken to by the teacher at the end of the lesson.’"

On the bright side, some Brits do see a problem with the policy:

"Tory MP Ann Widdecombe said the policy was based on ‘Alice in Wonderland reasoning.’

"’What next?’ she asked. ‘Do we allow people to speed five times or burgle five times? You don’t improve something by allowing it, you improve something by discouraging it.’"

GET THE STORY.

And the education establishment wonders why homeschooling is so popular.