Great Article on Merit by Kwame Anthony Appiah: Do we really want to run a society based only on merit?

Affirmative Action Again: Do we really want to run a society based only on merit?

Harvard University is back in the news.  They are asking to consider race as one of the factors used in determining admission.  An Asian-American group is asking Harvard to stopping using race in the admissions.  

Harvard philosopher and ethicist, Anthony Appiah, argues that,  we many want to give out society's rewards based on more than just merit.  

Appiah in the Guardian

So, I am not doing justice to this great article but I am going to try to summarize.

The article does not take the standard approach of questioning "What exactly is merit ?" instead it considers what society would look like if everything was based on merit.  Appiah is arguing that societies develop hierarchies to efficiently distribute resources.  During the 1500-1900, ruling hierarchies were based on family ties and connections. In the 1900, we switched to merit based approaches. Merit maybe be good for assigning people to specific occupations. However, it also decreases the overall happiness in society, because of the contempt of the "winners" have for the "losers".  No one can ever understand the true value of a individual. Instead we must make it possible for every individual to flourish.

Appiah proposes "an alternative vision, in which each of us takes our allotment of talents and pursues a distinctive set of achievements and the self-respect they bring."

An interesting aside, is that the "winners" (merit or otherwise) do everything in their power to assure their children are also winners including rigging the system or endowing their kids with money, education, and opportunity.

More from International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Convention

If you want to see where Policing is going, check out the “International Association of Chiefs of Police” (IACP) convention in Orlando.  Besides golf and hospitality suites, the convention was packed with new technologies like body cameras, robots, flying drones and expensive data-driven, AI-enabled, integrated, autonomous decision support systems. And loads and loads of salesmen.

If there was one theme, it’s that body cameras are here to stay, so let’s figure out all the repercussions on policing: from evidence, to PR and personnel issues.

A search of the session topics at the convention included homelessness(6), hate-crimes(3), juvenile enforcement and custody(3),  harassment and Discrimination(11) and Public Trust(70). Community/Police relations had the highest number of sessions at 102. Post-Shooting Personnel Support had 16 sessions.

The good news is that not every session was a sales job.  There were serious topics covered by real researchers. Important sessions included “Improving Clearance Rates for Serious Crimes,” “Improve Employee Accountability by Building Employee Trust” and “Me Too, Now What: Shifting Social Norms in the Workplace and Leading the Way.”  Also see “History as a Foundation of Building Trust and Legitimacy: Civil Rights and Law Enforcement” and “Body Cameras: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”

Body Cameras and the International Association of Chiefs of Police

Body Cameras for All Police Officers

Laquan MacDonald was killed by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke.  The key piece of evidence was a video showing MacDonald posed no threat to the officers and was walking away from the officer who killed Mr. MacDonald at the time of the shooting. 

Chicago Tribune has story of the conviction

CNN Story on other non convictions

After the verdict, we wondered why there was no universal call for all Police Departments to use cameras in their daily policing routines. What might stop the implementation.  It's certainly not the cost.

Axon Body 3

We looked closely at the Axon (Taser Int'l.) Body 3 camera which features high resolution, low-light camera with 4 microphones and a real-time data link.  They also have software, evidence.com, that records the videos and provides cataloging and redacting services. It is expect to list at $700 dollars.

International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)

We also wanted to look in on the convention.  The conference website is here.

If you want to talk about someone who has close to unlimited spending authority, its the chief of a police department.  The money is flowing in from all sources.  Grants, programs, local budgets and confiscation all support spending on the latest equipment by police departments. The vendors came from all different areas.

There would big vendors like Accenture, Harris Corp, Hitachi, IBM, Panasonic and Uber.  And small vendors like Gunbusters, a gun and evidence pulverizing company.

Lots of clothing and equipment vendors for bullet proof vests, rain and safety gear, shoes and accessories.  A niche where a Chief would have purchasing influence was represented.

There were a good number of training vendors focusing on implicit bias such as the Institute of HeartMath.  Police skills "degrade" over time so they purchase a lot of training.  But most of the training was for basic police skills.

Here are some interesting statistics about the number of vendors by category

Aircraft                                                               4 Vendors
Equipment                                                        84
Communication Equipment                             39
Education and Training                                    85
Investigation/Surveillance/Detection               77
Less-than Lethal Weapons                               17
Mobile Technology                                          89
Professional/Consulting Services                    49
Software                                                         112
Robots and Unmanned Vehicles                      12

It is nice to see a large number of education and training vendors.  Police departments have big budgets for training. However, only a few of the education vendors focus on better community relations.

Seventeen of the vendors offered less-than-lethal weapons.

We are a little scared by the number of software vendors and consultants at the show.

And finally there were a couple of Chinese equipment manufactures.

JIANGSU ANKEY ADVANCED MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY CO.,LTD
Wenzhou Hongda Police Equipment Co., Ltd. 
Shenzhen DCW Electronic Technology Co., Ltd.
Guangzhou Yakeda Outdoor travel products

What we are reading in late September and early October 2018

What we are reading in late September 2018

In case you missed it, Donald Trump, received a lot of help from his father in the form of tax-evading gifts. Donald and Fred Trumps Tax Schemes

Fred Trump used GRAT (Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts) and low balled real estate appraisals to avoid large amounts of inheritance taxes as he passed assets to his kids..  GRAT let you "freeze" the value of an asset and transfer the asset to your kids after take some annuity income from the assets. Any appreciation passed to your kids. 

Tech company founders typically put their company shares in a GRAT for their kids right before a company issues an IPO.

Did you know you know that in 2016 you had a 5.45 million lifetime exemption from estate and from gift taxes. The Trump's tax cuts and jobs act to $11.2 Million estate and $11.2 million for gift taxes per person.

Obama tried to change or close the GRATS loophole in 2011 and again 2015 as a way to raise revenue for the budget but was blocked by congress. Obama and GRATS.

Bloomberg reports a tiny chip implanted in SuperMicro motherboards gave Chinese spy's access to top US corporations. Here in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Finally, we, here at the Evil Black Economist, have long advocated a balanced immigration policy tied to the economic plight of poor people in the US (including existing immigrants).  Immigration drives down wages for poor people in the US.  And the US has no industrial policy to shift workers into new jobs.

A Business Week commentator has a similar idea. Here in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

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