The Morality of Rioting

The Chav Spring?

Over the six or so years I spent (but not necessarily wasted) in graduate school studying ethics in my quixotic attempt to someday become an academic, I noticed some things that, over time, led to a disintegration of my faith in academic moral philosophers and what they had to say about moral matters.

One of these is the tendency among professional ethicists in their writings to deploy what I like to call the ethicist’s “royal we”. They do this on those rare occasions when they actually dare to make an evaluative moral statement (rather than just talking about the nature of evaluative statements in the abstract). Examples usually take the form of such locutions as “We all believe that it is morally right to X” or “We all believe that Y is morally wrong”.

Deployment of the ethicist’s “royal we” tends to occur in cases where the ethicist uttering it is either (i) not entirely convinced that everyone really does believe that Y is morally wrong, and so needs to bolster his claim with bandwagon rhetoric and a little group auctoritas, to cow his audience in to assenting, or (ii) he intends the “we” to refer to other like-minded people, who are usually affluent, white, articulate academics who are rarely troubled by the problems of the mass of the world’s people, and who most likely will assent to his claim in any case. Actually, he may not even intend his “we” to refer in this way; more often than not it is simply subconscious.

The latter case of the ethicist’s “royal we” can be quickly inferred where the ethicist employs some potted situational example to illustrate his claim that Y is morally wrong. Most often these examples will be horribly contrived and underdescribed, betraying a palpable lack of engagement with lived experience. If I bring up the term “trolley problems”, ethicists will know what I’m getting at. Besides contrived situations, they will also trot out those rather genteel examples that mostly concern the fraught etiquette of the faculty meeting or the proper measure of justice to be observed in the grading of student papers. These are examples that will evoke a nod of the head from the academic reader, but will leave outsiders simply bored or puzzled at the fussing when there are real ethical problems in the world.

In truth, these are rather minor sins against good moral philosophy, for at worst ethicists who indulge in such things as trolley problems and faculty meeting ethics simply fail to engage with the lived experience of many. They make themselves irrelevant, and at least their irrelevance is a kind of harmlessness. What they write and say will typically be ignored outside of academic circles on account of its sheer lack of utility. It is much more dangerous when an academic has an ethical opinion that does engage with the real world, but which is at the same time patently absurd, at least to someone who has not yet managed to have her moral sense smothered by breeding or education. The danger is that such ideas will be adopted by the general public on the basis of the utterer’s authority and putative good intentions. Bad ideas, you see, too often display a tendency to filter down from the educated to the less educated, a point to which I shall return.

This has added poignancy for me in light of the recent riots in the UK and an article on them by essayist Theodore Dalrymple. I knew sooner or later that Dalrymple would hold forth on the riots. For those unfamiliar with his writings, Dalrymple (a.k.a. Dr. Anthony Daniels) is a retired psychiatrist who spent much of his career working in prisons with the criminal underclass in Britain. He writes much about the moral bankruptcy of Britain’s poor, sometimes with acid wit, sometimes with despair, and occasionally with great humanity. Dalrymple sees Britain’s social degeneracy (across all social classes) as the end result of a sort of trickle-down effect, through which bad ideas that become fashionable among the intellectual and social elite are adopted (with predictable bowdlerization) by the lower strata of society.

To be fair, Dalrymple writes about the moral bankruptcy of elites as well. The problem, he says, is that bad ideas are relatively harmless to the affluent folks that adopt them. The affluent can afford to make a few mistakes in life without it destroying their long-term prospects. But those same bad ideas, when they filter down, can have devastating effects on the poor when the poor adopt them, or indeed when they are applied by the rich to the poor (or when the affluent have stupid ideas about the poor, which the poor then internalize).

If verbosity reliably tracked depth of knowledge, then the affluent would doubtless be the world’s great experts on what is good for the poor, since they seemingly have so much to say about it (while actually doing very little). Conservatives and liberals alike all have some pet theory for why the poor occasionally behave badly. Conservatives tend to blame it on the poor themselves, attributing it to laziness or a lack of moral fibre. This is, of course, simplistic. Yes, many poor people are lazy and, frankly, stupid. But many are not. There are some smart and hardworking people too who are poor. Virtue and hard work won’t always make one rich. And needless to say, one can be stupid and lazy and rich.

Liberals tend to have more elaborate theories about why the poor behave badly, ones in which ultimate responsibility lies with others, or with “society”. Such liberal explanations are likewise simplistic. However, a good liberal will rarely let truth get in the way of a good narrative and a chance to pat themselves on the back for their virtuous intentions and their costless charity. It is mostly such liberal theorizing that Dalrymple’s writings set out to deflate.

Dalrymple is often excoriated by progressives for being an elitist. Many of the reader comments accompanying Dalrymple’s recent column on the riots were hostile to precisely this perceived elitism. They are right in one sense: he is an elitist. But being elitist is not the same thing as being wrong. A mere label cannot invalidate an argument. And the label is a bit unfair, since it is applied to a man who has spent so much of his professional life among poor people, something that cannot be said of most of the progressives who are so quick to give us their armchair theories about them. The “elitist” label is also ironic because Dalrymple’s writings make clear he believes elites are every bit as immoral and intellectually lazy as the underclass they’ve spawned.

But I digress. Returning to the affluent and their very bad ideas. Among these is the notion that none of us is really responsible for our actions, and that poverty or “society” or genetics or brain chemistry or [insert pet theory here] is responsible for whatever bad things we do. When such ideas spread and become pervasive among all classes, immorality (let’s call it what it is) is excused. Indeed, it may even garner the evil-doer sympathy and respect, while his victims are ignored and forgotten. And because in such an intellectual environment the evil-doer rarely experiences the ill consequences that his actions would naturally earn him in a more moral society, he has little incentive to become better. He need feel no shame, because after all, his actions are not really his. In short, misguided liberalism in moral matters has us drifting towards a shameless society, or at least a guiltless one.

(Of course, human nature being what it is, there is cognitive dissonance here too. While we are quick to disavow our bad actions as the result of poverty, discrimination, society, Mommy-issues, and the like, we are equally quick to take moral credit for our good actions, and even for those happy events that put us in a good light but that are in reality the result of mere fortune. And there is the double standard effect: we are quick to blame others for their bad acts, while we excuse our own by attributing them to exogenous factors. But again, I digress.)

If we were to take liberal morality seriously and believe that none of our actions are really ours, we can safely predict that freedom as a political concept would likewise be demoted in our value system. Or else, we’ll value freedom (license?) for ourselves, while believing others should be controlled. In either case, the resulting society runs the danger of being very illiberal. Furthermore, is there not a strange tension between the liberal aspiration of liberty, and the liberal cant of deterministic non-responsibility for our actions? Even liberal liberty becomes deterministic: a sort of freedom to indulge the brute passions and desires that would control us like puppets if we let them.

In any case, returning to the UK riots, one might have predicted the mass outbreak of liberal hand-wringing from well-intentioned (and well-educated) folks who have been quick to “explain” (or “excuse” in my opinion) the rioters as poor down-trodden youth with no jobs or futures, as if the riots were a predetermined act of righteous protest. In my mind, those who have respect and good intentions for the poor should be very careful about resorting to this kind of quasi-deterministic “explanation” of (anti)social behaviour.

For one thing, it hopelessly confounds the descriptive and the normative. One implies causality when one makes a descriptive statement like “poverty leads to rioting”, but there is also a normative implication that such rioting is excusable, since we should have seen it coming, and since, in a sense, those who riot were “driven” to do so by supposedly intolerable conditions. The descriptive and the normative should be kept distinct. Even if it were indisputably true that poverty leads to rioting (it isn’t), this fact cannot entail the claim that rioting is therefore morally excusable. An action can be causally determined and still be wrong. Aberrant sexual drives may “cause” someone to commit a rape, but we do not on those grounds excuse the rape. I would condemn the rape and the person who committed it, and without resorting to the ethicist’s “royal we”, I hope you would condemn it too, otherwise I do not much covet your acquaintance. Those whose moral praise and blame are too dependent on the issue of causality will inevitably find themselves forced to excuse things they wish to condemn — and what is just as bad, failing to praise what is praiseworthy.

Also, once you go down the road of attributing people’s actions to exogenous causes, you begin to strip them of their moral agency. They may become mere objects of scientific enquiry, and (more ominously) maybe even objects of scientific intervention. Punishment, as atavistic as the concept may sometimes seem, is at least driven by the notion of there being some proportionality between misdeed and penalty. But when immoral conduct is instead turned into a disease, we may then be licensed to apply aggressive therapy to “correct” it. Perhaps this is a weak slippery slope argument, but it is something to consider. The fact is that, somewhat paradoxically, moral blame at least treats the person blamed as a person, as a subject rather than an object, as a “thou” rather than an “it”.

The other problem with “explaining” the riots as a protestant reaction to poverty and/or oppression is that the facts simply don’t back it up. There was a conspicuous lack of protest signs. Nor did the “protesting” seem directed at anybody who had done the “protesters” any particular wrong. They seemed more interested in getting their grubby paws on luxury consumer goods than in sending a message about poverty. Even if they were trying to send some kind of a message, the message likely didn’t get through to most people, who, misguided liberal intelligentsia aside, were rightly appalled at their conduct.

They were criminal looters. That is all. Let us not valorize their acts. As a matter of fact, they looted and burned down the shops and homes of people who were equally poor or only marginally better off. “Yes, but this was an irrational reaction to their own degradation,” I imagine the liberal will argue. “They were articulating, in their own way, the frustration they are experiencing.” This is very dubious. Irrational crowd action happens when a group gathered for some purpose gives in to drives stirred by the setting of the crowd, manifesting itself in mass acts of misdirected anger. The actions of these looters were something rather less spontaneous. These are people who got dressed up for the purpose in hoodies beforehand, and who cleverly coordinated their activities through social networking. Between the poverty and the action lies the intention, and it is the intention which ought to be judged. In this case, the intention seems to have been criminal, no more and no less.

Third, when we speak of “poverty” here, we should be clear with ourselves that we are talking about relative rather than absolute poverty. I doubt very much that the absolutely poor can afford the Blackberries these people used to coordinate their rampaging. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for those who are actually concerned for the poor, to attribute the kind of criminality we saw in England to poverty is to insult those millions of poor people in England and elsewhere who work hard, live upright lives of dignity and meaning, and play by the rules.

In truth, I don’t have a theory for why these people did what they did. Many were poor; some were not. The majority of the poor took no part in the mayhem. Thus, poverty alone cannot explain it. I care less about what caused the riots than I do about making sure that it is stopped. In the social sciences, as opposed to the physical sciences, it is often the case that what will stop something has little or no relation to what caused it in the first place. Even if poverty did cause the riots, there are other ways — quicker and cheaper ways — to stop it than fixing poverty. First of all, despite billions of pounds a year the British welfare state has thrown at the problem, poverty (in its relative sense) still exists and thrives in Britain. So it is not something that can be solved right away. And the solution will probably take something more innovative than simply throwing good money after bad. And how exactly do you give jobs to people who are simply not qualified educationally or possibly even morally to do them? You could offer them an education, but would they take it? As it is, many of them are either not qualified to do the work that many Eastern Europeans have willingly accepted, and they have dropped out of the (admittedly sub-standard) publically-funded education system.

In the meantime, people who have done nothing to deserve having their homes torched and their businesses looted have every right to expect the state to protect them. If the state cannot perform this one fundamental function, then woe to civilization, for we are doomed. It is time liberals spent more time sympathizing with the real victims of the rioting rather than with the rioters who victimized them.

Three Remedial Lessons on Morality

Many intelligent and extremely well-educated moral philosophers have said some of the strangest things about morality. I submit to you, dear reader, that this is often the outcome of the kind of abstract thinking that clouds sound moral sense. Let us think back to how we learned about morals, long before any of us went to university.

I can remember three lessons I learned about morality as a child that have stood me in good stead as I consider moral problems today, as a moral philosopher. They stand me in good stead as I consider the UK riots too.

Lesson One.
When my parents taught me that something was bad or morally forbidden, they used language that was not hedged or qualified, as that would only have served to confuse me. For example, when I was about four years old, I was with my mother in the produce section of the grocery store. I took a little loose piece of the green plastic material that separated the different kinds of fruit from each other. I have no idea why I did this. It must have struck my four-year-old fancy I suppose. It was of absolutely no value to anyone, and it was really a tiny piece. I may as well have stolen pocket lint, it was that insignificant. Nevertheless, my mother saw it and tore a strip out of me, because I had stolen it. I was taught that it is wrong to steal. Full stop. I was not taught that it is wrong to steal unless it is something nice or unless you are poor and can’t afford it. There was no “unless” for me in this lesson. The Ten Commandments are couched in similar absolutist terms, as are most criminal statutes.

Children generally first learn moral propositions in the form of such absolutes. Once we get a little older and wiser, we learn that these absolutes can sometimes have exceptions. But these exceptions are relatively rare, and it is still wise policy to think of morality in absolute terms, and to encourage others to do the same. It may be permissible to steal bread if you are starving to death (although even this has been debated). However, it is not okay to smash a window and steal $200 sunglasses because you can’t otherwise afford them. And yet, this is effectively what I’ve been hearing liberals claim it is okay to do when they excuse rioters on grounds of poverty. Put in these terms, we can see it is wrong. But frame the circumstances in bowdlerized social-scientific jargon, and we suddenly become inoculated against good sense.

Lesson Two.
When I was a very young child, I would sometimes throw my candy wrappers on the ground. My parents told me it was wrong to litter (again, notice the lack of an “unless” clause here). When I told them I didn’t understand why it was wrong, my parents told me that litter makes things ugly. They also asked me to consider what would happen if everybody littered. We ought to ask ourselves the same question with regard to the rioting and looting: What if everybody smashed shop windows and stole what they wanted? Or burned down buildings when they were angry?

Lesson Three.
When I was about five years old, I punched my cousin in the face because she was being bossy. I was punished for it, which I felt was a grave injustice, since she was asking for it. My mother told me I deserved to be punished because hitting is not the way to solve problems. More importantly, she told me to think how I would feel if she had punched me in the face. In retrospect my mother was (mostly) correct. At the very least, before you go punching someone in the face, you should do a little “in the other person’s shoes” thinking.

The rioters should have done the same before they decided to torch homes and loot businesses. Equally as important, liberals should do a little “in the other person’s shoes” thinking about the terror and loss the victims of this mass violence experienced before being so quick to “understand” the motivations of the supposedly downtrodden perpetrators.

Addendum

I’m aware that this post has long outrun your patience. However, I cannot stop myself from sharing a few of the appalling reader comments on Dalrymple’s column (with charming misspellings and bad grammar preserved for effect), if only to scare people back into moral common sense who would otherwise be sympathetic to the liberal sob stories. I would also encourage you, as a sort of homework exercise, to think about how the three moral lessons discussed above can be applied to what these readers had to say.

First, consider this chilling assessment by someone styling himself “Terminalcityman” who thinks that the police are just too judgmental when it comes to young people: “If were [sic.] a young, unemployed man in a place with that kind of finger wagging going on all the time, you’d through [sic.] a brick at a cop too given the chance.”

I certainly hope I wouldn’t. If I were young and unemployed (which I have been), that is absolutely the last thing that would be on my mind. I would be concerned about finding a job, at whatever pay I could find. That’s what separates morally decent people — whether rich or poor — from morally bad people.

Some of the reader comments contained a lamentable but entirely typical tincture of racism and xenophobia as well. And remember that I’m not necessarily talking about right wing neo-Nazis here. If anything, they’re misguided leftish bleeding heart types. Take the following comment by one styling himself “mg4011”: “A lot of the lower paying jobs are taken up by citizens of the European Union, many from East Europe. If the UK did not belong to the EU, businesses would have to hire locals. These young people in England have no choice, there is no work for them. So what do you do when your mind is not focus on something productive? You do RIOT [sic.]. The only to blame [sic.] is the GOVERNMENT.”

This is an example of the usual nauseating bleating about how hordes of Poles and other assorted Slavs are invading the UK and taking jobs away from decent British blokes. If the argument has any truth to it at all, it speaks volumes about the sense of entitlement among British youth. If a Pole can’t find work in Poland, he will emigrate to where he can. He might go to the UK and work at a job a British person would turn his nose up at. But according to this reader’s reasoning, when an Englishman can’t find work in the UK, rather than emigrate or accept a job at a lower wage, he’d rather burn and loot his own city. And, says this cretinous line of “argument”, he’s right to do so. Why? Well, because his “predicament” is the fault of the government, of course. As if it is the government’s duty to give everybody a job. And not just any job, but the job they want at the wage they want! (And to people who for the most part couldn’t be bothered to stay in school long enough to become even remotely qualified for such work.) This is infantile rubbish; there is simply no more charitable way to describe it.

Both the Pole and the Brit are presumably poor. And yet their respective responses to that fact are very different. One has a sense of the intrinsic dignity of work — at whatever wage — and has no expectation that someone else will provide his bread for him. The other only has a sense of entitlement. But what could ever legitimize such an entitlement except the dignity and moral worth of he who is entitled? The rioters’ very behaviour demonstrates that they are entitled to nothing. And the difference in conduct between the poor Pole and the poor Brit belies the canard that poverty simpliciter causes rioting.

The next line of argument is exemplified in the comments of those like “Ken in Paris”, who discounted the rioting as “mere” property damage. So a few houses burned down and some goods were stolen. Who cares? No real harm was done. Property is replaceable. And besides, insurance will cover most of the damages anyway.

I would advise Ken to do a little “in the other person’s shoes” thinking here, and ask himself whether he would be singing the same tune if it were his home or business that was burned to the ground by a bunch of thugs, possibly while he was still in it. Contrary to what Ken says, property matters. If I work my fingers to the bone to save up for years to buy a home, who is he or anyone else to say it doesn’t matter if a thug burns it down, and that I shouldn’t complain because at least it’s not my body or my life? It certainly does matter. A lot. Even if insurance covers it, dealing with the mess and the associated bureaucracy is no picnic, and in the long run insurance premiums will go up for those living in the neighbourhood, people who are not responsible for the rioting, but are more likely to be its victims. Contrary to Ken’s cretinous worldview, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody somewhere pays sooner or later. And there are things that insurance cannot cover, like photographs, heirlooms, perhaps an urn containing the ashes of a deceased loved one.

Jefferson and “Human Rights”: Some Thoughts

Now on sale, at three-fifths the regular price

I was reading Thomas Jefferson last week. Since I have admitted my visceral dislike of Jefferson before, you might well ask me why I would put myself through this. The answer is that as despicable a human being as he was, he was actually a very talented writer. Furthermore, his was the kind of genius ever-fruitful in ideational freaks and monsters, stillborn thoughts sent into this breathing world scarce half-formed. Such thinkers can make for breathtaking reading precisely because of their many fantastical and audacious errors. Jefferson was among the first of learned fools. As such, he is fit inspiration for Tea Party ideologues, who may find in his voluminous writings authoritative backing for just about any half-witted theory they care to march in support of. I’ll also grant Jefferson this much: despite the palpable idiocy of some of his ideas, he clearly took them seriously. He was not merely playing at ideas, which is why his Federalist enemies considered him such a dangerous lunatic.

Anyway, in my Jeffersonian journeying, I came across the following little gem from his Sixth Annual Address of December 2, 1806. It’s not actually one of his crazy writings, but it does say a fair bit in a short space about Mr. Jefferson’s (lack of) principles and the democratic “revolution” he led upon assuming the presidency in 1801. I reproduce it, followed by my annotations:

“I congratulate you, fellow-citizens [1], on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights [2] which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa [3], and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country [4], have so long been eager to proscribe. Although no law you may pass can take prohibitory effect till the first day of the year one thousand eight hundred and eight [5], yet the intervening period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice [6], expeditions which cannot be completed before that day.[7]”

1. I congratulate you, fellow-citizens
The speech is addressed to “THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED”. Washington would typically begin his addresses with a single reference to his “fellow-citizens”, and that would be all. Jefferson’s successor, James Madison, did likewise. John Adams was even more formal, directing his Annual Addresses to the “Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives”. By contrast, Jefferson is conspicuous in his habit of beginning almost every paragraph with addressing his “fellow-citizens”. This is likely a conscious affectation, an expression of his Democratic-Republican principles, setting him apart from his “monocratic” Federalist predecessors.

2. those violations of human rights
“Violations of human rights” has a peculiarly current ring to it. I have had difficulty pinpointing the first use of the term “human rights” (as opposed to, say, “natural rights” or “lawful rights” or “the rights of man”). One source tells me the term emerged sometime between 1785 and 1795, but fails to cite a source. Wikipedia does provide a source, but with a much later date of 1831. In any case, Jefferson’s is certainly a very early — if not the earliest — reference to “human rights”.

3. unoffending inhabitants of Africa
Jefferson’s concern here is with Africans in Africa. Nowhere in any of his Inaugural or Annual Addresses does Jefferson mention the Africans who were already in America, over hundreds of whose souls he was sovereign lord and master, and with whose fate he displays a cavalier disregard. He quite probably uses the adjective “unoffending” to both recall and refute John Locke, who in his Second Treatise of Civil Government justified the enslavement of enemies conquered in a just war, among whom he included Africans. Jefferson does not deny Locke’s argument, but only its inapplicability to the case of Africans. A small step forward I suppose. (Incidentally, Locke was a major shareholder in the Royal Africa Company, which was heavily involved in the slave trade, a fact of which he was cognizant.)

4. the best interests of our country
Whether it was or wasn’t in the best interests of the United States to ban the importation of slaves, it was certainly in the best interests of Jefferson’s home state of Virginia. With external supplies of slaves stopped, those states — like Virginia — that had a surplus of slaves stood to profit greatly by selling them to the new territories opening up in the West. With the African slave trade abolished, Jefferson’s own slaves would have a much higher market value. And being heavily indebted to British merchants, Jefferson badly needed the extra income that he could derive from breeding and selling his “stock” of slaves.

5. the year one thousand eight hundred and eight
Article I, sec. 9 of the Constitution reads: “The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.”  This clause protected the slave trade from federal prohibition for twenty years, until 1808. However, Congress passed a bill abolishing the slave trade on March 2, 1807, and Jefferson signed it into law the following day. It could not go into effect until January 1, 1808. The reference to “such persons” rather than to “slaves” was typical of the Constitution’s language. The most egregious example of this is Article I, sec. 2, the infamous “three-fifths” clause, which stated that representation in the House of Representatives was to be “determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” This grossly circumlocutory and Orwellian phraseology replaces the word “slaves” with “all other persons”. It also made a mockery of the term “person” as a legal concept.

6. prevent, by timely notice
I cannot but help wondering what form such “notice” took. Since the federal government would be unable to prevent importation of slaves for another year at least, what measures were to be taken in the meantime? Notices posted at ports? Advertisements in trade newspapers? A friendly warning from customs officials during port inspections? Jefferson’s recommendation here is willfully vague, which leads me to suspect he had no concrete plan for this. Or perhaps, as a believer in a weak executive branch, he thought such action fell more properly within the legislative sphere of Congress? After all, Article I, sec. 9 refers to prohibition “by Congress”.
 
7. cannot be completed before that day
By the nineteenth century, the middle passage of the Atlantic slave trade could take around six weeks, but this could vary greatly depending on the weather. However, the entire triangular trade route voyage would obviously take much longer.

Easy Divorce

The divorce industry?

In my previous post, I offered this little syllogism:


1.    The granting of enhanced administrative powers should generally be avoided.
2.    Activist government requires (almost by definition) enhanced administrative powers.
________________________
3.    Therefore, activist government should generally be avoided.


 I then outlined some rough and ready criteria for assessing whether activist government was appropriate or legitimate. There were five criteria, the violation of any one of which would, at least prima facie, be sufficient to invalidate legislation on republican grounds. The first two of these criteria are perhaps the most important, and yet they are probably the ones most often violated:


1.    Is there a problem, and can it plausibly be solved? (The second part of the question is intended to eliminate administrative wild goose chases, such as “the war on drugs”, “the war on terror” and “the war on poverty”. The first part of the question is meant to draw attention to the fact that something is not necessarily a problem just because an activist or an entrepreneurial politician says it is.)

2.    Is government the appropriate or best-placed agency to solve the problem? Or alternatively: Is there a robust and exclusive rational connection between the nature of government as such and the nature of the problem?


Conveniently, as I was writing that, a new provincial law came into effect in Ontario that illustrates my point. The law requires that couples who want a divorce must first attend an information session on alternatives to the standard legal methods of obtaining one. According to Chris Bentley, Ontario’s Attorney-General, “going to court and having a court battle in family proceedings can be enormously costly, take a lot of time and probably most significantly be very emotionally damaging to children and to the two individuals.”


No doubt his assertion is correct. For our purposes, we can take Mr. Bentley’s assertion as his statement of the problem for which he feels his legislation is the solution. So according to my criterion, our first step must be to ask, “Is there really a problem?” According to Mr. Bentley, the problem is one of expense for litigants, as well as emotional turmoil for them and their children.


Divorce horror stories abound. And yet, from what I can tell (admittedly not having been divorced myself), often much of the extra turmoil and expense associated with messy divorces can be attributed to the adult principals in the affair not behaving much like adults. Lawyers are expensive. One doesn’t need a government-mandated information session to figure that out. And it gets more expensive the more one chooses to make the process more difficult than it needs to be. Most of the people entering the process know all this, at least on some level. Any additional pain and expense they undergo is largely of their own making. The causes are natural human selfishness and pettiness, with an admixture of anger, resentment, betrayal, and desire for vengeance. These are natural human feelings that can overcome rational thought and make one undergo a litigation process no rational person would ever want to enter. But, again, I stress that the problem here is not ignorance of the fact that divorce is expensive and stressful. If anything, a forced information session might simply add another level of complication and humiliation to the process. This is especially true for those couples (and they do exist) who are rational, and who would otherwise manage to effect a clean break. As for stress on children, not every couple who divorces even has children. I don’t have statistics on this, but I’ll bet the proportion of divorcing couples who are childless is quite significant.


In short, if there is a problem here, it is mostly of a self-imposed and/or private nature. I don’t see an interest here that government must protect, at least where no children are involved. I see no economic externality which government must correct, and if harm is occurring, it is mostly self-harm. As such, it is not obviously a problem for which government interference is a desirable or effective solution.


On the other hand, it might be argued that the purpose of the government-mandated information sessions is to educate couples on the options for alternative and less painful methods of separating. They simply may not know that there are other options besides the traditional and expensive legal route. Again, I would reply that this might be the case. These people may profit from the information the sessions provide. But should they not be responsible for seeking this information out themselves? Why is it my and your duty to provide them with this? If they desire a cheaper and less painful divorce, they thereby have an interest and an incentive to seek it out themselves. If the horse is thirsty, it will seek out water and it will drink it. And if the horse isn't thirsty, although you can lead it to water... well, you know how the rest goes.


Besides the fact that the parties themselves should be responsible for making their own divorces less painful, there are at least two other reasons why the government should not be involving itself in this area. First, there are presumably professionals that specialize in alternative dispute resolution. They are the ones that would profit from people seeking divorce alternatives. Don’t they therefore have some economic incentive to educate the public, through advertising, just like any other business? Why must the government be responsible for bringing business to them? This legislation in effect subsidizes their industry. In fact, it is precisely this subsidy that leads me to suspect a certain degree of rent-seeking behind this legislation, a suspicion by no means allayed by the suddenness and lack of discussion surrounding its implementation.


Second, even if you believe there is a role here for government intervention, cannot the goal of public information be just as well-served by posting information on a website or sending a pamphlet to people who file for divorce, rather than forcing them to attend information sessions as if they were outpatient sex offenders or congenital morons?


This program will cost money: “The program is directed specifically towards saving time and legal fees for couples hoping to get divorced, he [Bentley] said – although he hasn't been able to quantify those savings yet…. The attorney general's office will spend an extra $5.3-million a year making the program mandatory at all courts, bringing the total cost of the initiative to $8-million a year.”


In other words, since it costs people money to get a divorce, this legislation spends taxpayer money to help them save money. Again, at the end of the day we’re talking about a subsidy, this time to divorce seekers in addition to divorce counsellors. In reality, it’s probably not a very wise or effective subsidy, since there are cheaper ways of providing the same service.


Let’s say that information pamphlets would cost 50 cents each to print (it’s probably a lot less). Since there are around 13 million people in Ontario, the $8 million that will be spent under the new legislation could instead ensure that every man, woman, and child in Ontario receives a pamphlet informing them about alternative dispute resolution. There would even be spare pamphlets left over in case you lose yours. A mass mailing could be done just once, rather than spending $8 million year after year. Heck, we could save some trees by having the pamphlet available as a downloadable pdf. And I suspect that the pamphlets would be just as (in)effective as the information sessions, but without the paternalism and hassle involved in the latter.


Some readers might not be impressed with these savings. After all, they might say that $8 million is a tiny fraction of Ontario’s overall budget, nothing to be concerned about. This is a common and fallacious line of argument, and it frankly drives me crazy when I hear it. By this logic, we could increase spending indefinitely, so long as each increment is a so-called “tiny fraction” of the budget. Eight million here, eight million there… At some point the budget will swell so large, that the $8 million becomes a tinier and tinier fraction of the whole, until one day we’re surprised to find ourselves bankrupt.


It should be added that some divorcing couples have good reasons for going the traditional legal route. Alternative options might not work for everyone. Forcing these people to go through this process seems, again, a needless and humiliating complication forced on them by a well-meaning but paternalistic government.


And we might reasonably question how “well-meaning” the measure really is. When I see measures like this that have so little justification, methinks I again smell the telltale stench of rent-seeking. As I demonstrated in my previous post, Cicero can be helpful in these situations. We should ask ourselves the same question he advised asking in his speech Pro Roscio, “Cui bono?” (“Who profits?). Put into current English, Cicero would say “Follow the money”. We’ve already noted that the legislation effectively involves subsidies to two different parties. One subsidy goes to couples seeking divorce; they are provided with information (at taxpayers’ expense) on how to cut down on their legal costs. Another subsidy goes to the alternative dispute resolution industry, which now has the government working in sales and marketing on its behalf. In this instance government is playing the role of carnival barker, but one that has the power to force you to see the bearded lady or the two-headed calf.


Here’s a better analogy: It would be as if the government forced potential car buyers to sit through a commercial for General Motors before they were allowed to buy a car. The commercial will, of course, tell them how wonderful General Motors cars are, along with how expensive and liable to breakdown the competitors’ cars are. The question is, will such tactics be effective? Some may be convinced to buy a GM car (and of those, some would have bought a GM car in any case, without the commercial). Others may be resentful at being forced to sit through the commercial and will refuse to purchase a GM car, on principle.


Is it asking too much to expect people in the market for a car or a divorce to seek out what they think is the best deal? Is it wise or desirable for the government to play consumer advocate? It is especially undesirable when the government clearly advocates for a specific brand or product, as the result of a process of rent-seeking by interested parties.


If there has been rent-seeking, I doubt very much it is coming from citizens seeking divorce. If there were a significant groundswell of average citizens who were sincerely asking for cheap and painless divorces, we probably would have heard more about it. This legislation was brought into force so quietly that it is more likely the result of lobbying by a less legitimate and more organized interest: the dispute resolution industry. Simply Google the terms “Ontario”, “alternative”, and “divorce”, and you will see that such an industry exists.


Finally, there might be a moral hazard argument here, although it would be a counterintuitive one. Let us assume that, speaking generally, divorce is a bad thing. By this I mean that we would rather that our society had fewer of them than more. We would prefer it if marriages were generally happy and divorces unnecessary. We take it as given that divorces involve emotional pain. As it stands, they also involve substantial financial expense. Let us further assume that some subset of couples are currently unhappy, but that under the right circumstances they could avoid divorce and remain married. Not all couples who are unhappy are destined to be unhappy, and not all couples who divorce need to divorce. In other words, there are currently unhappy couples who are faced with the choice of (i) working things out with each other and struggling towards a married modus vivendi with each other, or (ii) getting a divorce. These are couples who could go either way. Some will choose (i) and some will choose (ii). Now, what will happen if the government facilitates cheaper and less painful divorces? I predict that at least some of those couples who would have chosen (i) will now choose (ii). The divorce rate will probably go up, though admittedly not by a lot. More importantly, more divorces will happen that need not to have happened.


Of course, it could be objected that if (ii) is now cheaper and easier, this would undercut the original premise of the argument that divorces, being expensive and painful, are generally to be avoided. After all, if the divorce rate goes up, but people are happier than before, then no harm done, right? The moral hazard is no longer really a hazard, as such.


I suppose this depends on one’s view of marriage. If you believe that marriage is simply a transactional arrangement of convenience whose sole purpose is to provide utilitarian gratification to two parties (a sort of open-ended mutual financial and sexual prostitution contract), then naturally you might advocate that dissolving the contract when it is no longer of benefit to the parties should be made as easy as possible. Those who think there is something more to marriage than this might be uncomfortable with the idea that marriage should be too easily terminable. For the latter, easy divorce is a moral hazard and makes bad policy.


Whether you believe divorce should be made easy or difficult, one might still have reasonable doubts about the idea of being forced to subsidize what is essentially a private interest, and one can reasonably balk at the idea of government playing an activist role in such an interest.

Cicero on Rent-Seeking

Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 - 43 BC

In 63 BC a Roman tribune of the people named Publius Servilius Rullus proposed an agrarian law to redistribute land. Agrarian laws were not new. The tribune Tiberius Gracchus attempted such a redistribution in 133 BC, and his brother Gaius tried again in 123 BC.

It should be noted at the outset, that agrarian laws did not propose taking privately-owned land away from current owners and redistributing it. Rather, the idea was to take some or all of the ager publicus, the public land. These were lands belonging to the Roman state, usually acquired through conquest. There was often resistance to agrarian measures from the nobility, as many rich Romans had acquired the use of such public lands, whether through corruption or fraud, for very nominal rents. Having possessed such rights to these lands long enough, many of them naturally looked upon themselves as rightful owners, even though at law they were not. Any attempt to redistribute public lands seemed to the nobility like an attempt to dispossess them of their property.

It is hard to have any sympathy with these nobles. They had used the public lands to build up huge agricultural estates (latifundia) worked by armies of slaves, while small farmers who could not compete with them lost their lands and flocked to the city. There were many needy poor crowded into the city of Rome, and preventing something from being done to better their condition seems, well, churlish.

However, redistribution became a political program for ambitious politicians to use for party purposes. There was a so-called “popular” party (the populares) who agitated for better conditions for the poor. They sought to turn mass appeal into electoral success. Opposed to them were the “better sort” (optimates), a senatorial class of wealthy, propertied and powerful citizens who preferred to rely on their traditional auctoritas and their networks of dependent clients. In reality, the leaders of the populares cared little for the poor. They were mostly led by men who could just as easily have sided with the optimates if it weren’t for the fact that they saw opportunities in playing the role of “men of the people”. By way of illustration, the wealthy patrician Julius Caesar was a popularis. And Publius Claudius Pulcher, a member of one of the most illustrious patrician families of Rome, had himself adopted by a plebeian family and changed his name to “Clodius” (reflecting the plebeian pronunciation) so that he could gain election as a tribune of the people. A man as unscrupulous as Clodius could have little real sympathy with the urban mob. The mob was simply a political tool, an alternative route to political success.

(Most of the so-called “left-wing” parties in today’s Western democracies are little different. Having worked in government relations for awhile, I’ve met many of my provincial legislature’s supposed tribunes of the people personally. I can tell you that they are all charlatans, possibly peppered with a smaller number of outright sociopaths. Calling these left-wing politicians “Champagne Socialists” would be giving them too much credit, implying as it does that they actually have a political creed in addition to their merely personal ambitions. To be fair, the right-wing politicians I’ve met are no better; they just haven’t sunk to the same depths of hypocrisy in order to cloak their moral bankruptcy. But I digress.)

It was in this context of a struggle between populares and optimates that Rullus’ agrarian law was introduced. From the populares’ point of view the introduction of the bill was a win-win situation. If it was passed, then they would get their way and gain great popularity with the plebs. On the other hand, if the optimates managed to defeat it, they would in the process have to make themselves look very bad in the eyes of the people. Cicero, who was one of the consuls that year, dared to oppose the bill. He had to walk a tightrope in doing so. He did have some small sympathy for the plight of the poor, but as a novus homo (a “new man” whose ancestors were not nobles and had never held high office) he lacked a powerful familial political base and could not afford to alienate the nobility, upon whom he was dependent for political support. But he also needed the support of the people if he were ever to be able to win another election. For someone less skilled than Cicero at tightrope-walking, to oppose Rullus’ agrarian law might have been political suicide. But Cicero opposed it.

Why did Cicero oppose the bill? In short, because it was dangerously flawed. What’s more important, it was flawed in ways that are instructive to the modern reader who wishes to contemplate various government measures that propose to do good works with other people’s money.

To begin with, Cicero noted the great secrecy surrounding the crafting of the legislation. When Cicero heard that the tribunes were planning an agrarian bill, Cicero, as consul, claimed to have sought to aid them with his political knowledge and experience. After all, he said, doing something to help the poor was a good idea (here Cicero is walking that tightrope, portraying himself as a man of the people). His overtures were rebuffed. Obviously those responsible for the bill did not wish the consul to see what they were up to.

Once the bill was introduced, many flaws became apparent to Cicero. It called for provincial public lands to be sold off, with the proceeds to be put toward purchasing (more expensive) lands in Italy. Colonies of landless poor would then be settled on them. However, the numbers didn’t add up. Cheap land would be sold (probably at a discount) to pay for more expensive lands. And large and profitable latifundia would be broken up into smaller and less profitable peasant holdings. Besides the loss in productivity (to use modern phraseology), the difference in purchase price would have to be made up from the public treasury, thereby likely bankrupting the state.

There were other problems. The sale, purchase, and distribution of the lands was to be entrusted to an elected board of ten men — the decemvirs. However, the arcane and highly unorthodox process for electing the decemvirs provided for in the bill would virtually ensure that none but populares could become decemvirs, Rullus and his cronies among them. In other words, it was a highly partisan piece of legislation. It also stipulated that any candidate for the board of decemvirs had to present himself in person for election. This was engineered to exclude Pompey from standing for election, since he was off campaigning against Mithridates in the East. Pompey was perhaps the only person in Rome at that time powerful enough to stand up to any nefarious designs of the populares.

It was with regard to the decemvirs that Cicero smelled a rat. Several rats in fact. First, the decemvirs were to be given wide discretionary powers. They could buy and sell whatever public lands they liked, to whomever they liked, at whatever price. Heck, they could even sell it to themselves if they wished, since their decisions were final and not subject to veto. It was all a recipe for near-certain corruption and public fraud on a massive scale.

The powers granted them would allow the decemvirs to buy land for a song, either for themselves or their friends. What was worse, Cicero saw the spectre of tyranny looming. Since the decemvirs could distribute lands to whomever they wished, they could strategically settle all their clients in colonies, providing garrisons and bases for future military operations against the state:

“Did you, Rullus, think that we should hand over to you and your engineers of all these schemes the whole of Italy unarmed, that you might strengthen it with garrisons, occupy it with colonies, and hold it bound and fettered by every kind of chain? For where is there any guarantee against your establishing a colony on the Janiculum [a hill just outside Rome, across the Tiber], against your being able to press and beset this city by another? ‘We shall not do that,’ says he. First, I am not so sure of that; secondly, I am afraid; lastly, I will never act so as to leave our chance of safety to depend more upon your kindness than upon our own wisdom.” (Cicero, De Lege Agraria, 1.5.16, Loeb edition)

The wide discretionary powers the bill would give to the ten land commissioners amounted for Cicero to a perfect blueprint for anyone wishing to grab absolute power to do so, which is why Cicero repeatedly referred to the decemvirs as “kings”:

“And from the first article to the last, Romans, I find that the only idea of the tribunes, their only scheme, their only aim in what they [the tribunes] do is that ten kings of the treasury, the revenues, all the provinces and the entire republic, or friendly kingdoms, of free nations — in fact, ten lords of the whole world, should be set up under the pretended name of an agrarian law.” (2.6.15)

Despite the many problems with the bill, it must still have been no easy task for Cicero to sway the people of Rome against it, for many of those people stood to benefit from it, or at least they thought they would benefit from it. He was in effect attempting to stop a bill the purported aim of which was to give relief to the poor. What kind of monster can have anything against helping the poor?

It is this dilemma that has always caught my interest in this speech of Cicero’s on the agrarian law, a speech which in the opinions of many classical scholars is otherwise not among Cicero’s major works. It fascinates me because it represents a problem that is faced by political systems today: many measures are proposed by politicians that are popular, in the sense that they purport to help some group that seems to need help, or purport to be of personal benefit (at least in the short term) to a broad plurality of voters. To oppose such a bill is to court accusations of being in the pockets of plutocrats, or of hating the poor, or of not understanding what is in the interests of the people. It takes political courage to oppose something that appears prima facie morally unassailable.

Sometimes such measures are proposed with the best of intentions by well-meaning politicians. Sometimes, less often, they are proposed with a hidden agenda that is anything but altruistic or aimed at the public good. But even well-intentioned legislation may grant administrative powers that can do damage when wielded by others who are less public-spirited. A few years ago the previous left-leaning mayor of my city, David Miller, demanded that he be given “strong mayor” powers to deal with some of the issues the city was facing. At the time it was a very popular proposal among “progressive” types, but I thought it was a very bad idea. I believed Mr. Miller was not very adept at using the powers he already had, and that little good could come of giving him more. However, putting my personal political bias aside for a moment, I ask supporters of Mr. Miller to imagine that he had been granted those enhanced powers. They would now be wielded by his successor, the right-leaning Rob Ford, who is much-despised by Mr. Miller’s “progressive” fan base. The measure would have thus cut both ways.

I am more comfortable with the general rule of thumb that administrative powers be granted by the people only very grudgingly, and only where they are clearly delineated and limited. They are sometimes necessary, but they are always a necessary evil. From this rule of thumb I am led to a syllogism that must make my “progressive” friends scratch their heads at my retrograde political views:

1.    The granting of enhanced administrative powers should generally be avoided.
2.    Activist government requires (almost by definition) enhanced administrative powers.
_____________________
3.    Therefore, activist government should generally be avoided.

I use the qualifier “generally” because there will obviously be problems that require some kind of coordinated effort by government to solve. However, I have come to the conclusion that such contingencies are much rarer than many people seem to think. At least, I propose that we use something like the following very general test to determine the necessity and extent of government activism:

1.   Is there a problem, and can it plausibly be solved? (The second part of the question is intended to eliminate administrative wild goose chases, such as “the war on drugs”, “the war on terror” and “the war on poverty”. The first part of the question is meant to draw attention to the fact that something is not necessarily a problem just because an activist or an entrepreneurial politician says it is.)

2.   Is government the appropriate or best-placed agency to solve the problem? Or alternatively: Is there a robust and exclusive rational connection between the nature of government as such and the nature of the problem?

3.   Does the government action proposed as a solution involve minimal impairment of rights?

4.   Are the enhanced administrative powers required by the solution (i) clearly delineated, (ii) accountable, (iii) revocable, and (iv) proportional?

5.   If the enhanced administrative powers necessarily include the exercise of discretion, is such discretion minimized as far as possible?

I could probably add more, but that is a start. At the very least, Cicero would have said that Rullus’ agrarian law violates 3, 4, and 5. Depending on one’s view of the nature and causes of Rome’s urban poverty, it may have violated 1 and 2 as well.

Let us return to the tightrope I referred to earlier. Cicero had to avoid alienating the senatorial nobility. This he accomplished in the very act of opposing Rullus’ bill. However, he also needed to avoid alienating the populus, which was best accomplished by somehow positioning himself as a man of the people. As an extremely wealthy consul and member of the Senate, how was Cicero to pull off this latter task? His strategy was multi-pronged.

First, in pointing out the wide powers granted to the decemvirs under the proposed legislation, Cicero repeatedly deployed the language of kingship. He harped on the fact that the decemvirs would be kings in all but name, and maybe some day in name too:

“Thus I maintain, O Romans, that this admirable and popular agrarian law gives you nothing, but makes a present of everything to certain individuals; it holds lands before the eyes of the Roman people and robs them even of liberty; it increases the wealth of private persons and exhausts the fortunes of the State; lastly, the most disgraceful thing of all, a tribune of the people, a magistrate whom our ancestors intended to be the protector and guardian of liberty, is to set up kings in the republic.”(2.6.15, italics added)

To understand this rhetorical strategy, one must understand the Romans’ almost pathological dread of kingship. To be ruled by kings was alright for the peoples of Asia, who were natural slaves anyway as far as the Romans were concerned. But the Romans had overthrown their kings and founded a republic back in 509 BC. This made them free and therefore superior to other peoples. A Roman’s reaction to the word “king” was similar to — though possibly more visceral than — a modern American’s reaction to words like “communist” or “terrorist”. In short, Cicero was attempting to turn the tables on the tribunes of the people, by portraying them as agents of monarchy and himself as protector of the republic. In his references to kingship he was pressing rhetorical hot buttons.

Second, he acknowledged the poverty that many Romans were faced with, and affirmed a desire to do something about it, but not by the means suggested in Rullus’ bill. He even bestowed some praise on reforming tribunes Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, whose memory was beloved by many of the people, but was anathema to the optimates: “For, to speak frankly, Romans, I do not disapprove of every kind of agrarian law in itself…. I am not one of those consuls who, like the majority, think it a crime to praise the Gracchi, by whose advice, wisdom, and laws I see that many departments of the administration were set in order” (2.5.10). (It should be noted that Cicero was being less than honest here, for elsewhere in his writings he had little good to say about Gracchi.)

Finally, he adopted a line of argument that, in my opinion, does Cicero little credit, for it seems designed to pander to the people’s laziness. He argued that the agrarian law was a bait-and-switch manoeuvre that would take away from the people a privilege that they already enjoyed and replace it with something of lesser value. The people already received a free grain dole. If the agrarian law were passed, they would lose this handout and have to farm for their own grain instead. This seems a very base argument. If the people were disposed to respond favourably to it, then this might say as much about the people’s lack of integrity as it does about Cicero’s.

A more charitable view is that Cicero was speaking to an audience that had been dependent on the grain dole for so long that they wouldn’t know the first thing about farming a plot of land for their sustenance. Many may have been out-of-work artisans rather than farmers. A gift of land might have been of little use to such people. If this were the case, they would probably end up selling their allotments to landowners who could make better use of them. They would then end up back in the city, landless again, with no dole, while their lands wound up in the hands of the rich. This may be why Cicero was arguing that this scheme of the popular party would in reality be no help to the people, but was more likely to make them worse off, while the rich became richer in the bargain.

In the end, Cicero was successful. Thanks to his supreme rhetorical skill, he managed to walk the tightrope, portraying himself as a man of the people and the agrarian bill as a nefarious plot against the liberties and economic well-being of the poor. Cicero was the greatest orator of the age. Our orators are sad rhetorical punies by comparison. We could certainly use a Cicero.

Such quasi-agrarian measures are easy to find today. They are most commonly of three kinds. The first kind involves the proposed sale or privatization of public assets that are a net gain rather than drain on the public treasury. Such assets are often sold off in less than transparent deals without a competitive bidding process to parties who have connections with officials doing the selling, our modern-day Rulluses. As a case study, several years ago the university at which I work sold off a huge tract of its land — an endowment that had originally been granted to it by the taxpayers of Ontario — to a developer who, it turned out, was related to someone on the university’s board of governors. There was no Cicero to speak against it.

The second kind of modern agrarian measure takes the form of some proposal for tax cuts that will “help middle class families” or “create jobs”. Successive such bills make it into law, even though they have done nothing to help middle class families or create jobs. In fact, most of them were never intended to do these things. They were intended to enrich politicians and those who lobby them. Even worse, they are passed in the face of budget deficits, thereby bankrupting future generations who have no voice in the transaction. And again, there is rarely a Cicero to speak against them, because after all, who can be against middle class families or job creation?

The third kind comes in the form of various taxes, tariffs, and subsidies intended to help one economic party, usually at the expense of another. In these cases, government is put in the position of picking winners and losers in the economy, rather then being the representative of all. The “winners” that are picked are usually those who have lobbied hardest and given the most money or in-kind contributions to politicians (i.e. they offered the largest bribes, to call a spade a spade). The “losers” are those who either played by the rules and minded their own business or who failed to lobby hard enough or contribute enough money to those with non-market power.

These are all forms of rent-seeking. In this sense, much of Cicero’s De Lege Agraria can be read as an early contribution to the political economy of rent-seeking. Cicero, it turns out, was a proto-public choice economist, providing insights into non-market decision-making. In fact, the insights offered by Cicero are at the heart of much traditional republican political theory, so perhaps we ought to say that public choice economics is in reality a branch of republicanism. It may be anachronistic to call Cicero a public choice economist, but he was most certainly a republican, one of the greatest who ever lived.