A landscape of brown hills and far off mountains framed by the entry of a cave

Beyond Our Cave

July 26, 2026July 22, 2026Leave a comment

July 26, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

For the past few weeks I have been writing about the political polarization of voters based on where they live. Last week I wrote that voting behavior depends on our prediction of how a particular candidate or party will affect our own well being or that of our family, our community. A choice is the result of a prediction. A vote is a choice. Those who vote for a Republican candidate are making different predictions than those who choose a Democratic candidate. To understand the polarization in this country, I want to understand the prediction process itself. How much information do we need to feel like we have enough knowledge to make a prediction? That depends on many things – the circumstances and the consequences of making a prediction.

The Pool of Possibilities

The future is an infinity of possibilities. We cannot gather enough information in the present to flawlessly predict the future. What do we do? Take a small sample of the present and trust that that small sample will reliably represent the future. But how do we decide the size of that sample? Some voters meticulously research candidates and issues before voting. Some people vote by the dominant political party that represents their interests and values. However, in states that allow citizen ballot issues, there may be no clear party line. Some voters rely on a media source to do the research and make recommendations.

Some cities were large enough to support two daily newspapers. The editorial board of one newspaper would present a conservative position on candidates and citizen initiatives. The other newspaper would present a liberal perspective on candidates and issues. Some people grew up learning only one perspective because their parents subscribed to that newspaper. People who moved to a city soon learned which of the two perspectives aligned with their personal values. The newspapers did the work of filtering all the information.

The Media Jungle

From 1970 to 1990, the circulation of daily newspapers peaked at over 60 million, almost the same number as the number of households in the country. By 2020, estimated circulation was about 25 million. Here’s a chart from Pew Research (Source).

In addition to local and national news, the newspaper had that day’s TV listings, the daily weather forecast, and the results of yesterday’s sports games. Readers checked their horoscope, read cartoons and played the games in the back pages of the newspaper.

Today, digital algorithms serve up news sources and content that engages a reader. We are like donkeys endlessly walking in circles, powering a flour mill as social media dangles a carrot to keep our attention. Like cute cats? Here’s more. Like hearing about Trump’s latest outrage? Here’s more. Before we show you that, here’s a commercial.

The General and the Particular

A President has a relatively small impact on the personal circumstances of most voters. People often vote based on their prediction of whether a particular candidate will be good or bad for the country as a whole, or an industry. Gallup conducts two separate polls for opinions on the general economy, the Economic Confidence Index, and people’s individual financial circumstances, the Personal Finance Survey.

The Economic Confidence Index plunged into negative numbers at the onset of the pandemic and was still negative on the eve of the 2020 election. Sentiments recovered somewhat shortly after Biden took office, then plunged again as inflation climbed to 9% in the summer of 2022. As inflation declined, those polled grew more optimistic. On the eve of the 2024 election, that index was still negative and voters elected Donald Trump, who promised to restore economic confidence. However, a few months after he took office, Trump initiated his “liberation day” tariffs. Public sentiment and the stock market both fell in response. While the stock market recovered, people’s confidence has not. Confidence in the economy is now lower than when Trump left office in January 2021 (Source).

What about people’s personal financial circumstances? In a poll conducted during the first quarter of this year, a third of those polled were “very worried” that they would not have enough money for retirement. Another third were “moderately worried.” Sixty percent of respondents were worried that they could not cover medical bills in case of a serious illness (Source).

Party Loyalty

Some people make voting easy. They vote for each candidate from one of the two dominant political parties. Researching the electoral platform and record of each candidate can be time consuming. Also, many voters do not pay a lot of attention to politics until a few months before an election, so this strategy is practical. Mike Rosen was a conservative radio talk show host in Denver until 2016. His experience working in Washington helped him understand that party politics drove the legislative machinery. Party cohesion, power and connections gets legislation passed. Party affiliation is more important that the merits of individual candidates. Because of that, he endorsed a voting strategy of “party over person.” Having to choose between two dominant parties makes prediction much easier. Each party constructs a brand from a platform of policies meant to strengthen attachment with current members and to attract newcomers.

Attachment

As social creatures, we instinctively seek attachment. Branding is a marketing strategy that promotes attachment between consumers and products or voters and political parties. The Republican Party brands itself as the party of low taxes and low regulations. It promotes larger military spending, which helps support local communities in the southern states where Republican support is strong. The Democratic Party stresses equality and fairness for all. They promote programs which assist lower income families in urban areas where housing and other monthly costs are relatively high. Both branding strategies rely on predictions of the future. Elect our candidates and the future will be better, each party says.

Religion

Religious conviction relies heavily on predictions of the future. The Christian religion evolved from its Jewish roots but stressed individual salvation in contrast to the Messianic culture of the Jewish people that predicted a group salvation. Religious and political affiliation manifests the human desire for attachment. It is understandable that one or both dominant parties would incorporate religious sentiments into their brand.

In the mid-19^th century, the Democratic Party promoted expansion of the country into the western lands occupied by Indians and held by Mexico. Expansion of land was necessary for the expansion of slavery, a cornerstone concept championed by the party. The party justified expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny, an idea that the U.S. had a divinely ordained mission to spread Christian and republican government throughout the continent (Source).

In the past several decades, the Republican Party has absorbed a diverse group of Christian conservatives and evangelicals into the fold. The party has endorsed policies that outlaw abortion and same sex marriages, supported exemption from laws that conflict with one’s religious beliefs, and the rights of religious schools.

Postdiction

The past, particularly the ancient past, is almost as hidden from us as the future. We sample our present circumstances and often invent origin stories to explain the present. We speculate on the creation and composition of the cosmos, the formation of our world, the Earth, and how what is came to be. These speculations are like predictions but they come after the fact. Perhaps we should call them postdictions.

Organized religions promote an attachment to certain origin stories, claiming a divine authority and imprimatur on the opinions, values and interests of that religion’s congregation of believers. There are many religions and religious sects but only two political parties to absorb those congregations.

History

We are a politically divided country because the framers of the Constitution glued two different countries and cultures, north and south, together. Historians note the many dichotomies and contradictions of those founding documents. Thomas Jefferson penned the words “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, but owned 200 slaves. Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution itself contained a fugitive slave clause, recognizing and treating human beings as property like domesticated animals (Source). That same declaration grounded government in “the consent of the governed,” but excluded women, blacks, Indians and poor white men.

Although the founders valued liberty and private property, many states allowed the imprisonment of debtors. Governments protected creditor rights above the property rights of farmers. Creditors were usually from urban areas. Debtors, mostly farmers, were from rural areas. From the beginnings of our country, there was a propensity for voters to sort themselves into two interest groups, rural and urban. Because we have a “winner-take-all” election system, this naturally leads to the formation of two political parties. A proportional representation system of elections gives formal recognition to marginalized communities. In our country, minority interests must work within either the Republican or Democratic parties.

Errors

Our actions today represent our predictions of the future, but our predictions aren’t always accurate. How do we cope with the errors of our conclusions? That’s something I want to take a look at next week, and I hope to see you then.

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Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash

A crystal ball outside on the ground. Inside the ball is the reflection of a lake and trees

Different Predictions

July 19, 2026July 16, 2026Leave a comment

July 19, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

In last week’s post, I ended with a promise to explore our political polarization. We are divided not only by values and ideologies, but by population density. Some of us prefer less density and less regulation. Those who live in a small town may have a limited choice of dining, shopping, health care and entertainment. There may be only one movie theater with one screen. In rural areas, the land doesn’t sit there as a space for human homes, businesses and institutions. The land works. It provides food for human or animal consumption. It provides trees, minerals and other resources. Its mountain peaks reach into the skies to collect water from the clouds, channeling water down the slopes to the valleys below. In these areas, the human community is a part of the land. People live with the land.

The U.S. Census Bureau has long distinguished rural and urban areas by population density. Recently, they have included outlying areas with low population density whose economies are tied to a nearby metro area. The distinguishing characteristic is that 25% of residents commute to a metro area for work (Source).

In dense urban areas, people live on the land. The human community dominates the land. Grass and trees serve as a spiritual refuge for humans, and a habitat for birds and small mammals. Land is space for human designs of concrete, asphalt and lumber. People who live there appreciate the availability of choices in most areas of their lives. They tolerate the regulatory environment needed to manage the frictions between neighbors. They are accustomed to a diversity of cultures and religious traditions.

In the small east Texas town where my mother grew up, there were churches of a variety of Protestant sects. In less than a mile on the main street of the town, there was a Methodist, Baptist, Christ the King and Presbyterian Church. That’s all the variety that people needed in that community. Those who attended an Anglican or Catholic church could drive almost an hour to Dallas on Sunday morning. My mother could not remember meeting a Jewish or Muslim person until she moved to New York City after World War 2.

Different Outlooks

The residents of rural and urban areas have different sensibilities and outlooks on life. They may share values and ideologies, but they place a different emphasis on those values when they vote. In rural towns, change is slow and the residents are suspicious of new developments. In many rural towns, there aren’t enough job or educational opportunities for young people. Many move to urban areas, where they must become accustomed to a faster pace of life. They try on new ideas, music, and other diversions. They become part of social groups that may seem alien to their parents. They question the choices and morals of the political leaders their parents voted for. A recent study by Pew Research shows that younger voters under 30 vote more heavily for Democratic Presidential candidates. Those over 60 favor Republican candidates (Source).

Density Signpost

Several studies in the past twenty years have found that population density is a significant factor predicting party affiliation. It’s not a direct cause of course, but it represents important differences in economic and social circumstances between urban and rural environments. After reading several papers on this topic, I’ll rely on a paper by Trevor Brown and Suzanne Mettler (2024) (Source). The paper is openly available and the authors reference a lot of other papers on the topic. Brown and Mettler note that, until 2000, there was not such a clear partisan divide between rural and urban voters. Here’s a chart from their paper to show the wide divergence in voting patterns in the past two decades.

The chart shows the percentage of voters, urban and rural, who voted for the Republican Presidential candidate. In the year 1996, there was only a 3% difference between urban and rural voters. In the 2020 Presidential election, that difference had grown to 21%. What happened?

Multiple Causes

There are several causes that account for the behavior of an airplane in flight, and human beings are a lot more complicated than airplanes. Different authors have highlighted a number of causes. Those in areas of higher population density are more educated. Not smarter. Just more educated. They work at jobs that require more education, or a degree becomes a filtering mechanism in a competitive job market. Job growth in rural areas has been stagnant. Those in urban areas have higher incomes but have higher housing and living costs. As already discussed, there is a greater variety of religious institutions, and less social pressure to embrace any religion.

Brown and Mettler pointed to some studies that stressed rural “consciousness, identity, or values,” but that didn’t explain the urban-rural divergence in political sentiment of the past three decades. Some authors cited the resentment that rural voters might have for urban voters who impose their priorities on everyone. However, this is not a recent development. In the 1960s, voters in rural upstate New York voted Republican. Voters in the urban area that included New York City voted Democratic. For decades, Colorado voters in the Front Range east of the Continental Divide have voted Democrat, while those in the western part of the state and on the eastern plains voted Republican. Perhaps readers will have similar experiences of longstanding urban-rural divides in other states.

A Shift in Outlook

Many election analysts have struggled to explain the change in voter sentiments before and after an election. Just prior to the 2016 election, Gallup asked voters for their assessment of the economy. 81% of Republican voters thought the economy was getting worse. Soon after Trump won the election, only 44% of Republican voters felt the same way. Among Democrats there was a similar shift, although not as extreme (Source, McCarthy & Jones, 2016). In the weekly Gallup surveys over the following weeks, Republican confidence improved while Democrat’s outlook declined. A similar shift happened before and after the 2024 election. Some analysts have termed the phenomenon partisan perceptual bias. A better term might be partisan prediction bias.

We Predict

We are creatures who must survive on our ability to predict. Unlike a cat, we do not have fast reflexes. To navigate our world, we must predict the motion of others. We get more comfortable driving a car as we learn to make many predictions in a short period of time. Secondly, we are social animals. To survive, we must learn to read the feelings and intentions of others to anticipate how they will act.

Vote Forecasting

Writing in the Public Opinion Quarterly, Andreas Graefe (2014) noted that asking people to predict an election winner was very accurate. She analyzed vote forecasting surveys from 1932 to 2012 and found that the majority of respondents correctly predicted the outcome 89% of the time (Source).

Notice that these forecasting surveys are different from voter intention surveys that ask people who they intend to vote for. These kinds of polls are probably the most reported on. For these kinds of polls, analysts must apply several statistical techniques to align the characteristics of their polling samples more closely with the characteristics of all voters in an electoral region. Sometimes they simply do not make the correct adjustments. Surveys prior to the 2016 election accurately predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the national popular vote. However, the national popular vote does not determine the winner of the Electoral College vote. Analysts misweighted the survey samples in several swing states, which delivered the winning electoral votes to Donald Trump (Source).

Gut Prediction

Asking voters how each of them will vote takes a lot of statistical tweaks to achieve an adequate level of accuracy. Asking voters for their gut predictions of the winner turns out to be quite accurate without those tweaks. When researchers ask people for their opinion on the economy, I think what many people respond with a prediction. Those predictions are based on our perception of our personal circumstances, local and national conditions. We filter those perceptions by ideology, values, and our previous experience. What pops out is a binary prediction of a likely winner from each of the two dominant political parties, not an assessment of the broad economy.

Why do people make such different predictions? Next week I want to look more closely at the components of our prediction process. And with that, I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Brad Switzer on Unsplash

Notes:

Brown, T. E., & Mettler, S. (2024). Sequential Polarization: The Development of the Rural-Urban Political Divide, 1976–2020. Perspectives on Politics, 22(3), 630–658. https://doi:10.1017/S1537592723002918

Graefe, A. (2014). Accuracy of vote expectation surveys in forecasting elections. Public Opinion Quarterly, 78(S1), 204–232. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfu008

McCarthy, J., & Jones, J. M. (2016, November 15). U.S. economic confidence surges after election. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/197474/economic-confidence-surges-election.aspx

The Ethosphere

July 12, 2026July 9, 2026Leave a comment

July 12, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I wrote about the ethosphere with a promise to expand on that this week. There are four interlocking areas that consistently affect our daily lives: economics, sociology, politics and the law. Each is interconnected by a system of ethics. Economics, sociology and politics concern the flow and distribution of power. The law is the rules by which those flows occur. Politics is the struggle over who gets to write the laws. Sociology is about the people who are affected by the distributions of power. Economics is the study of resources and their flows. Resources include capital, land and labor. Each of the other three areas governs the owners of resources and the flows.

A college student with an emphasis in either one of these four areas could probably design an interdisciplinary program that uses theories from one course of study to understand issues and events in other areas. For instance, a good understanding of the regulation of industrial pollution explores each of these areas.

Election Decisions

Many election issues are best understood if we look at each of these aspects. Let’s say there is an affordable housing issue on the ballot. We may not have the time or energy to do as much homework on the issue as we would like. Prompting an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude with these four aspects of the problem can help us. Here’s a prompt I put in ChatGPT: what are the economic, political, sociological and legal aspects of an election issue like rezoning for more affordable housing?

The two page response from ChatGPT began with: Each discipline asks different questions, uses different methods, and emphasizes different values. It went on to list the positives, negatives and unknowns from each of these four perspectives. Finally, it listed the central concern from each discipline. Sociologists are concerned about the effect on communities and social groups. Economists ask whether a policy will improve efficiency and affordability in the local housing market. A political scientist will ask who makes the policy decisions and ongoing administrative rules. A lawyer might be concerned with a ballot initiative’s compatibility with the state constitution. You might say that this is too much information, but it’s rare that we consider all aspects of an issue. Usually, there are one to three factors that are important enough to help us make a decision. The AI program is a reminder list.

Distributing the Gains from Productivity

If we have grown up with a set of rules, we may think that there is something natural about those rules, that there is some underlying principle. However, if there were clear and consistent principles of the distribution of profits, for example, our courts would not be busy. Let’s consider tools that increase worker productivity. The owner of a small construction company buys a tool that will help an employee become more productive. With the tool, the employee can do 25% more work in the same period of time. Who gets to keep the profit from the additional productivity? The employee, the employer, or a split of some sort?

The Constraints of the Market

If the employer paid for the tool then the employer decides, but that decision is subject to constraints. If the labor market is competitive, the employee may capture the majority of the gain in productivity. If a tool pays for itself in a month or two, it is likely that other employers will buy such a tool, then offer higher wages or benefits to an employee.

If there are a lot of companies competing for business, then a business might pass on the productivity gains to the consumer in lower prices. If a company is trying to expand, it might offer more return to investors or partners. In each of these cases, the distribution of the productivity gains responds to market conditions.

Human Capital

In the first example, the employer bought the tool. In this second example, the employee buys the productivity enhancing tool. The most common example is some educational training beyond high school. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly earnings for an employee with a bachelor’s degree was $1530 in 2024, $600 more than the median for workers with only a high school degree (Source).

What is an employee’s total investment in that four year degree? Economists at the New York branch of the Federal Reserve estimated the total cost, including the opportunity cost, at $180,000 per year (Source). That total included $30,000 in direct costs per year, and governments contributed student aid of about $15,000 per year. An employee has invested a whopping $720,000 in that four year degree, more than most people invest in their home. That same study estimated a 12% annual return on investment.

Federal and state governments have contributed about $60,000 total in aid over a four year period. Where did the student aid come from?General taxes. Is this charity for college students? Not so. Over a 40 year working career, an employee with a four year degree pays back the initial public investment with higher taxes. In 2009, researchers at the RAND organization estimated a worker with a four year degree contributes about $160,000 (in 2002 dollars) more in payroll taxes over a lifetime than a worker with a high school degree (Source). In 2024 dollars, that’s $284,000, almost five times the initial investment using government taxes.

Students are Capitalists

Most students do not think of themselves as capitalists. Like the employer who bought the tool, a student makes an investment in their own human capital and this affects their future earnings on average. The principle of distribution seems to be that whoever invests the capital, whether it is money, or a combination of one’s labor and money, gets to keep the majority of any additional profits from the increased productivity.

The Economic Policy Institute compiled federal productivity data since 1948 and calculated that workers have captured 60% of labor productivity gains in higher compensation (Source). What is not visible is the relative shares of investment by employees and employers.

The Distribution of the Gains From Invention

When an employee or group of employees invents a new product or process, current law holds that the product or process belongs to the employee(s). Here’s the text of an opinion in Banks v Unisys (2000): “The general rule is that an individual owns the patent rights to the subject matter of which he is an inventor, even though he conceived it or reduced it to practice in the course of his employment. There are two exceptions to this rule: first, an employer owns an employee’s invention if the employee is a party to an express contract to that effect; second, where an employee is hired to invent something or solve a particular problem, the property of the invention related to this effort may belong to the employer” (Source). Naturally, businesses work hard to draw up ironclad employment agreements to secure those intellectual property (IP) rights. The default legal principle may be that the creator owns the patent rights but a patent is a form a long term capital. A business survives by securing that capital. Legal principle is simply an obstacle to be overcome.

AI Competes with Human Capital

If an employer buys a tool for an employee, the tool is portable. Another employee can use it. A college education is regarded as human capital, but it is capital that is non-transferable. The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has fundamentally altered this aspect of human capital. ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI machines have been trained on the writing of millions of people. AI agents reduce knowledge to a series of connections between words, then compute the probability of those connections. They do not always understand context, but they don’t call in sick, take holidays or want healthcare insurance. AI may not replace the human brain’s ability to synthesize knowledge into new paradigms but it can replicate a lot of the work that people depend on for their livelihood.

The Constraints of Democratic Government

Conventional economic models treat government mandates like minimum wage, sick and overtime policies and safety regulation as outside the market. Those who favor laissez-faire economics want to minimize those kinds of policies. Why? Government policies usually do not respond to changing market conditions. Secondly, they create incentives for businesses to avoid those additional costs by hiring people “off the books,” or treating them as subcontractors even though the workers perform their duties under the direction of the employer.

In a democracy, however, politicians are very much a part of the market. They must appeal to voters. They must compete for political donations. They must align with other politicians to get anything done. To exclude them is to ignore a vital component of the marketplace. Politicians get elected by promising to fix problems. Fixes come in two varieties: repair and restore. Populist Presidents like Reagan and Trump chose the restore option. They appealed to voters by promising to undo some of the policy fixes of past decades. Other politicians like Bernie Sanders promise to implement existing solutions on a broader scale, like Medicare-for-all, or solutions that have been tried in other countries.

The Weaknesses of the Price System

The price system cannot manage large imbalances of supply and demand. During the Gilded Age in the late 1800s and in the first decades of the 20^th century, eastern cities were crowded with an influx of European immigrants. There was a plentiful supply of workers willing to work for low wages to survive and gain a foothold in their new country. Jacob Riis documented the appalling housing conditions in New York City at that time (Source). The free market system encouraged landlords to offer the least living space for the most money that the new immigrants could afford. In many businesses, human labor was an indistinguishable commodity. Business owners maximized their profits by offering low wages and few worker protections. Tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 alerted the general public to the inhumane working conditions that many people endured (Source). These events aroused a public demand for reform and regulation that marked the Progressive Era from 1900-1929 (Source).

The Demand for Regulation

The more dense an urban area, the greater the desire for regulations. In a densely populated area, people make choices that have an impact on their neighbors. Freedom of choice is limited by our neighbors’ freedom of choice. Land, drinking water and proper sanitation are, by their nature, limited resources. The free marketplace and the price system cannot manage naturally limited resources. Those who want to minimize the number of regulations they have to live with should move to a less crowded area. Many people do. Over time, that migration has created two sets of voters: those with a preference for less density and less regulation, and those whose tolerance of their neighbors and greater regulation is balanced by the advantages of an urban area.

I hope to see you next week when I explore that polarization.

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Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Effective Governments

July 5, 2026July 1, 2026Leave a comment

July 5, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I wrote about the system of rent control in New York City as one of the many ways in which government interferes with a utopian model of laissez-faire economics. I had written that post earlier in the week and was surprised when the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) voted to pass Mayor Mamdani’s proposal to freeze rents on rent stabilized units in the city for the next two years. This policy was similar to the old system of rent regulation known popularly as rent control. This week I want to look at several ways that government controls the price of essential commodities and services.

The Federal Reserve is an independent government agency that indirectly sets interest rates for all credit in the United States. This includes mortgages on homes, car loans, and credit cards. Higher interest rates increase business costs and businesses raise retail prices to their customers. Or do they? This is a debate among economists. The Fed raises interest rates to curb inflation, or the change in prices, not fan the inflationary flames. The theory is that higher interest rates will curb the use of credit, and push business costs higher. Interest is a factor of production that competes with other factors of production, namely labor. A reduction in the use of credit should lead to a lower demand for goods and services, prompting businesses to slow down their hiring and wage increases. That model fits the new car market where demand responds to price changes. That is not the case for goods and services that we buy each week.

Consumers pay higher monthly charges for rent, utilities, and food. Higher interest costs increase costs for landlords, leading to higher rents. Grocery stores pay for their food inventory with short term credit so higher interest rates put upward pressure on their costs and consumer prices. Farmers depend on credit so higher interest rates increase commodity prices, reduce farmers’ profits, or both. Electrical utilities finance all their capital improvements so higher interest rates increase utility bills each month. Unlike the market for cars, demand for these essential goods is inelastic, meaning that demand is rather insensitive to price changes.

Production costs and prices for new cars are affected, but demand for new cars does respond to price changes so this provides a counterbalancing effect, reducing the price increases. However, since people hold onto their vehicles longer, this reduces the number of used cars available for sale. Because the price of used cars is less than new cars, the demand for used cars increases. Both supply and demand factors increase the prices for used cars.

In setting interest rate policy, the Federal Reserve pays closer attention to a measure they call the Core CPI, the Consumer Price Index without volatile food and energy costs. They do this to gain a sense of underlying inflation trends. Here is a chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics comparing different CPI measures as of May 2026 (Source).

Rising gas prices after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran produced a spike in gasoline costs which accounted for most of the huge increase in energy costs. The Fed’s target inflation rate is 2%, below either the All Item CPI (red), or the Core CPI measure (lime). Because of that, the members of the Fed’s interest rate setting committee, the FOMC, will lean toward a policy of rising or at least steady interest rates. This will put further pressure on consumer sentiments, reducing the number of consumers who can qualify for home mortgages and car loans, even as higher gas prices effectively tax consumers.

Consider a small business whose employees make service calls. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC and home repair businesses typically consume a lot of gasoline. In addition, they frequently use a short term line of credit to carry their accounts receivable. Higher interest rates and higher gas prices are squeezing these kinds of companies from both directions. The same for farmers and ranchers who use a lot of gas and short term credit.

Interest rate policy affects all businesses and consumers but especially redistributes wealth among different businesses and consumers just as effectively as a policy of rent regulation does in New York City. Donald Trump’s decision to be led by the nose into Israel’s long running feud with Iran sparked a sharp rise in the price of gasoline. This effectively redistributed wealth from the working class, the blue collar trades, and rural folks to the weapons manufacturers and bankers who profit from war and a higher deficit. It’s an especially cruel blow to rural folks who voted for Trump. His comment that he doesn’t think about the effect of the war on the finances of everyday folks was an indication of the contempt he holds for working people (Source).

The government subsidizes a lot of perishable foods, influencing the pricing and availability of milk and dairy products, fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, eggs and seafood. It does this largely through subsidies for animal feed, disaster assistance, crop insurance, and USDA purchases of food for public nutrition programs. A person who favors a policy of minimal government interference in markets may not realize that the price of their eggs is influenced by government programs which help to lower consumer prices.

The most government subsidies are channeled to commodity crops like corn, wheat and soybeans. Fruit and vegetable farmers complain that they receive far less subsidies for their crops than the growers of these crops. The subsidies for corn used to produce high fructose corn syrup have led to a sharp rise in obesity and higher healthcare costs (Source). Lower prices for fruits and vegetables would lead to greater consumption and might reduce the obesity epidemic. Subsidies for one type of food producer, the growers of commodity crops, redistributes wealth from tomato farmers in California to corn farmers in Iowa.

SNAP benefits, known as food stamps, provide food assistance to low income households (Source). Those who favor a reduced role for government may be accused of lacking compassion for others, particularly children. They argue that such programs are not the role of the federal government. Let the states create, administer and fund such charity programs. However, those states with the highest percentage of low income families don’t have the resources to fund such programs. One in five households in New Mexico, for example, qualifies for SNAP benefits (Source). The national average is one in eight households. This is the irony of need. Those with the greatest need have the fewest resources. How a society handles these resource contradictions are central to its character.

Economists of the late 19^th century forced a separation between the disciplines of economics, sociology and political science in order to understand economic principles better. Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall, and Francis Edgeworth were some of the leaders of this movement away from the complicated socio-political analysis of economics of Marx, David Ricardo and the Ricardian Socialists of the mid-19^th century. The social, political, economical and ethical aspects of our daily lives are bound together in what I will call an ethosphere, the how of engaging with others in a society. Studying just one aspect in isolation leads to faulty conclusions.

Some economists and pundits treat the government as an actor outside the marketplace because it has taxation and police powers that other members of society lack. A corporation has unique features and powers as well. We don’t treat corporations as alien to the marketplace. The question is not whether government should take an active role in this ethosphere. It can’t help but take an active role. The question is the type of role it takes, not how active it should be. An effective government creates programs of redistribution to solidify political support among the various factions of a society. These programs increase a government’s capacity, build its legitimacy among its citizens, reduce the frictions that lead to civil war and help a government survive.

Next week I hope to explore the four components of the ethosphere. Hope to see you then.

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Photo by Ayush Kumar on Unsplash

Market Distortions

June 28, 2026June 26, 2026Leave a comment

June 28, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I wrote about different types of authority, and whether authority without responsibility is legitimate. From last week: “Through its legislative authority and police power, a government controls the terms of contracts between private parties. It grants licenses to individuals and companies to conduct business. It sets rules that contracts must follow. Those contracts govern the distribution of wealth within a society. Does a government have an accompanying responsibility to ameliorate the economic outcomes from those contracts?”

A utopian economic model popular with some libertarian economists is laissez-faire economics. In this model, government has a limited role in commerce, but what are those limits? The term acts as a signaling device between pundits rather than a precise economic doctrine. Economists prefer to discuss the balance between market failures and government failures. Market failures occur when market participants don’t pay for a benefit or inadvertently cause harm. Pollution is a frequently used example. Let’s turn to government failures.

In his seminal work The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that governments provide essential institutions for commerce. These include defense, a court system to adjudicate contracts and protect property, provision of public works, a system of weights and measures, a reliable money to conduct business, and the granting of patents and copyrights. Smith supported public education, a controversial idea in the late 18^th century. He thought it would improve the labor pool and civic life. He thought there should be few regulations and few, if any, programs of redistribution to people or businesses. He was very critical of grants of monopolies, which stifled competition and retarded commercial improvement.

Governments inherit a legacy of past arrangements, property rights and commercial licenses that were doled out by a king or some other royalty after a conquest. The island of Manhattan in New York City is some of the priciest real estate in the world. During the reign of England’s King Charles II, the English navy seized the island from the Dutch in 1664. The king granted the land to his brother, the Duke of York (Source). A common practice was to subdivide the land and sell it for money, or to secure key political allies. Our economic system is built on a legacy of colonial conquest and monarchical power and privileges.

A company may owe part of its fortune to its ownership of a key parcel of land in a harbor port like New York City. That ownership is based directly or indirectly on a conquest and land grant. These past arrangements have created economic advantages for some private parties who leveraged those assets over decades, then sold them to other private parties. Those advantages may have seemed right and fair several centuries ago, but standards of fairness change with the passing of generations, and each generation must deal with the legacy of those past arrangements.

Governments protect the transfer of property rights down through the generations to maintain a stable and predictable economic and legal system, the backbone of a flourishing society. Long lived governments like the City of New York inherited an authority of several centuries. They have an accompanying responsibility to rectify the unequal outcomes that have arisen from those ancient arrangements. Denying that responsibility diminishes their authority in the eyes of those they govern.

Naturally, those that benefit from those advantages fight to keep those benefits. They believe their wealth was entirely deserved and promote ideologies that champion the virtues of accumulated wealth. Descendants inherit the authority over the assets but reject any responsibility for the circumstances under which those assets were accumulated. Our legal system accommodates the inheritors of wealth because the rules were written by the inheritors.

When governments try to correct those inequalities of income and circumstance, they often make a mess of it. Frederich Hayek (1899 – 1992), a Nobel Prize winning economist, pointed out that market prices carry a lot of information that coordinates production and distribution. Government redistribution schemes distort that information system. To achieve their goals, governments can not access enough information to make prudent decisions. Inevitably, they distort the private marketplace and investment decisions. It’s a matter of opinion whether corrective redistribution programs do more good than harm to the people they are designed to help.

Prices in a market system provide both information and benefits that we take for granted. Let’s consider a textbook example of rent regulation in New York City. 1.6 million people live on the island of Manhattan in an area of 22 square miles. That’s a density of 73,000 people per square mile (Source), more than four times the density of Greater Tokyo. Brooklyn has 38,000 residents per square mile. Naturally, there is a strong demand for housing and this puts upward pressure on prices and rents. For many working families, housing costs can consume 50% of income, far above the 30% recommended threshold. I grew up in the city and left in my 20s because living costs were too high.

For over a hundred years, there has been some form of rent regulation in the city. Under the old systems, known collectively as rent control and phased out in 1969, rents were often frozen. Landlords skimped on building maintenance and tenants were reluctant to push too hard for repairs or improvements in case the landlord used that as a reason to do upgrades which terminated the apartment’s status as a rent controlled unit.

The Rent Stabilization program was created in 1969 and replaced the older rent control systems that had been in place for fifty years. There are more than two million rental units in the city and slightly less than half are rent regulated. Almost all of those units are under the new rent stabilization program. Unlike the older rent control program, annual rent increases occur without landlords having to apply to a government agency.

In a market system model, supply and demand regulate prices. In the Rent Stabilization program, a government agency called the Rent Guidelines Board sets a cap on these rent increases (see note below). The Board must review thousands of data points on the costs of providing housing to determine a reasonable percentage cap for rent increases (Source). In a market system, thousands or millions of people make choices that influence the price of the goods and services they buy.

Several economic studies have concluded that rent regulation reduces housing supply. An investor can’t simply buy an older building, move the old tenants out, demolish the building and build something new. Rent stabilized buildings have guaranteed lease renewal so it is very difficult to move the old tenants out. Rent regulations dampen investment in new housing. Even though new buildings are exempt from rent stabilization, policies can change and investors can not be assured that a newly constructed building will remain exempt (Source).

Rent stabilization reduces the turnover rate. Tenants remain in their rent stabilized units regardless of a change in their job location, income, or family size. This encourages mixed-income neighborhoods but the benefits of the program flow to high income families who don’t need the financial assistance. Critics say that housing vouchers would better target needy families.

Under a free market system, prices respond as people make choices to balance their income and needs. Given the cost of living in New York City, why don’t more people move to Clifton, New Jersey? The city has a population of 90,000, a density of only 8,000 per square mile and it’s a 35 minute drive from Manhattan. Housing prices are modest and the city gets a good rating at Livability.com. Why isn’t the free market system inducing more people to move from NYC to Clifton? The fact that prices and quality of living are not attracting more people indicates that the housing market has characteristics and constraints that place it outside of the free market model.

People buy more than square feet when they buy or rent a home. A home is an essential part of daily life and each family’s home package is unique. They purchase a housing package of resources that include job opportunities, schools, churches and other social institutions, transportation, shopping, green space, hobbies and entertainment, and networks of other people. A family may spend $3000 a month for housing in a city with adequate public transportation so that they do not have to spend $1000 a month on a car and gas to get to work, school and play activities. Another family spends $2000 a month for similar housing but has additional transportation costs that add $1000. Both housing packages cost the same.

When some pundits criticize rent regulation as government interference, it is important to keep in mind that, in those cities with rent regulation, the physical home is a small part of the entire housing package. One time when I visited my brother who lived in Manhattan, we went deep sea fishing during the day then attended a riverboat concert that night. We took public transportation and spent about $300 (2026 dollars) combined, including meals. That seems like a bargain but we need to add in the cost of apartment rent in Manhattan. Access to all the amenities that the city has to offer comprises the entire housing package and is capitalized into the cost of housing. That’s why rents and housing prices in New York City are so high.

Secondly, the free market model is a distortion of actual free market dynamics because most markets have frictions and ancillary benefits. When economists build their models, these frictions and benefits are assigned a Greek letter and added to the equation. Present day governments must negotiate a long history of entitlements and endowments that were themselves a distortion of the free market. With authority comes responsibility. When pundits complain about government distortions of the market, ask yourself if a government program is distorting the market more than the model itself. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Kaleb Nimz on Unsplash

Note: On Thursday evening, June 25, the Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to freeze rents on units with 1 and 2 year leases. This is the first time in the 56 year history of the rent stabilization program (Source).

Which Authority?

June 21, 2026June 19, 2026Leave a comment

June 21, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I looked at schisms in religious and political organizations. I ended with the speculation that many of our disagreements ultimately are about authority. I want to take a look at the various types of authority we recognize, and what characteristics they share. Secondly, what is the relationship between authority and responsibility?

Most cultures recognize a parental authority derived from the responsibility that a parent has for a child. Religious tradition claims that parental responsibility and authority come from God, not the state. However, states claimed a responsibility under the doctrine of parens patriae, a Greek term meaning “parent of the country.” Therefore, the state had a duty to protect anyone, particularly children, who could not protect themselves. In 1962, a seminal paper published by Kempe, M.D. et al (Source) identified a clinical condition of physical abuse in young children that the authors termed battered child syndrome. Doctors and hospitals became more likely to report suspected child abuse to local authorities, and legislatures passed laws mandating such reporting

On the other hand, many jurisdictions regarded the home as a private sphere. Police were reluctant to actively intervene in cases of suspected domestic violence (Source). Litigation and activism by women’s rights groups prompted legislatures to adopt laws that criminalized domestic violence, rather than treating it as a private family matter. As we can see, the spheres of authority are not clearly defined and clashes over authority are frequent in human societies.

Governments at all levels claim a political authority, a right to make and enforce laws in its role as the parent of the country. Authority is not power but authority can be imposed by power. Monarchies and theocracies base their claims to authority on God, not the people. In a democracy, a government’s police power is based on the consent of the governed. In a multi-layered system like the United States, governments often clash over jurisdictional authority.

A central debate divides the electorate. Through its legislative authority and police power, a government controls the terms of contracts between private parties. It grants licenses to individuals and companies to conduct business. It sets rules that contracts must follow. Those contracts govern the distribution of wealth within a society. Does a government have an accompanying responsibility to ameliorate the economic outcomes from those contracts? Half of the population says yes, and advocate social programs that address inequalities of circumstances. Half of the electorate says no. The government may make the rules but has no responsibility for the outcomes. Question: is authority without responsibility legitimate?

Legal authority is derived from political authority, but is concerned with applying the law rather than making it. It is the least responsible branch of government in our country because many judges are unelected and are not held accountable to the public. Often there is not a clear distinction between applying the law and making law. Lawmakers often write laws using imprecise language so that they can reach a consensus. Judges must interpret such language, and are accused of making law when some people don’t like their interpretation.

However, even when a law or constitutional amendment is clearly worded, judges have been unable to resist a secret desire to write law through their interpretation. Let’s call this an authority by implication, by implied meaning. Here’s an example. The 14^th Amendment states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” In the 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court interpreted that language to create two sets of citizenships with distinct rights (Source). Citizens of the United States had one set of rights. Citizens of the State had a separate set of rights. Does the 14^th Amendment state any such thing? No. Does that language imply that there are two separated sets of rights? Implied meanings are personal and quite arbitrary. Did the framers intend to give the judiciary both arbitrary power to draw their own implications and lifetime tenure? These are the essential characteristics of kingly power. After a seven year war of independence against the British King George, they decidedly did not grant such a power. The judiciary grabbed that power.

God is a convenient source for authority claims, because God can accommodate many different claims to truth. Clergy claim a religious authority based on sacred texts like the Bible, or Qur’an, or on some divine revelation. Why do church institutions feel the need to claim authority? Ultimately, they want to convince others to submit to their authority. The philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) rejected claims by any institution that it had unquestionable authority over human thought, morality, or values. His targeted Christianity because of its influence over European morality, but his criticism extended to all religious, moral and political systems that claimed control of the human mind.

Clergy often link religious authority with moral authority, claiming that objective morality is impossible without God. Early Christian leaders like Augustine and Aquinas taught that all moral laws are derived from God. Of course, the classical Greeks would have disagreed, but Christian teaching has long rejected secular principles and virtues. More recently, the evangelist preacher Billy Graham preached that, without God, everything was permissible. Without God as a foundation for morality, actions cannot be judged right or wrong. Right actions are simply social and personal preferences. There is an obvious contradiction here. How can a subjective belief in God create a foundation for an objective morality? Religious believers are practiced at embracing contradictions. Never let a contradiction get in the way of a religious claim to truth.

Expert authority may be based on a practiced knowledge or it may be based on nothing more than the recognition of other practitioners in a certain field. For several thousand years, the theory of humors was the bedrock of the medical practice. First proposed by the Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460 B.C.E. – c. 375 B.C.E.), the theory claimed that disease was an imbalance of four humors in the body. Bloodletting was a common practice to rebalance the humors. The theory was flexible and could be used to explain any outcome. If the patient got better after bloodletting, that demonstrated the truth of the theory. If the patient died, as in the case of President Washington, it was because the humors were too far out of balance. The effectiveness of bloodletting was not tested until around 1820, when it was shown that bloodletting was either ineffective or harmful for most diseases. How did experts get it wrong for two millennia? They relied on an authority based on tradition.

Many of our institutions depend on managerial authority, derived from the hierarchy in an institution. Examples include corporations, universities, and military organizations. A manager with little experience in a field may override the experience and knowledge of employees that he manages. The problem is particularly acute in the federal government. After a change of the executive, political appointees are put in charge of a large department based on their loyalty to the President or fundraising ability rather than knowledge critical to the successful operation of the department.

Linked to managerial authority is economic authority. Employers, lenders, and property owners control economic assets, investment and job opportunities. As a recent example, Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane, supported an economic authority that proved to be as powerful as the authority that the United States claimed as a military hegemon.

We can classify authority by its justification. There is an authority by force, which needs no justification. Might makes right, as the saying goes. Even those who use force to impose their authority often make some of the other justifications I have noted above because force is an expensive tool to implement a regime of command. Authority by consent enlists the cooperation of those subjected to that authority and requires fewer resources. Expertise, tradition, political, moral and religious justifications are often woven together in a packagethat helps defeat challenges to an institution’s authority. In our daily disputes, we can keep an eye out for these combinations of justifications to help us unravel competing claims. And, with that, I hope to see you next week.

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The Schisms

June 14, 2026June 10, 2026Leave a comment

June 14, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This week I want to write about the divides within human organizations, particularly our political and religious institutions. I’m trying to understand what there is about us as social beings that causes these splits. Typically, a fundamental issue comes up that cannot be resolved and a congregation will split over the disagreement. Are these ideological splits inevitable, a product of the human temperament? Let’s look at some historical examples and see if we can see some common elements.

Soon after the founding of our country, two political parties formed with fundamental differences about the role of the federal government. The Federalists favored a strong central government, following the sympathies of Alexander Hamilton, President Washington and John Adams. The Democratic-Republicans wanted a weaker federal government with stronger state and local control, a type of governance favored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. What started as a political dispute has now grown into separate philosophies about the role of local institutions, including the family, in our lives.

In Islam, the Sunnis and Shia split over the leadership of the Muslim community. The Sunni believed that the community should choose its leader from among qualified companions of the Prophet, leading to the selection of Abu Bakr as the first caliph. The Shias believed that succession after Muhammed’s death in 632 C.E. should remain within the Prophet’s family and that his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, had been designated as his rightful successor. What began as a political dispute gradually developed into distinct religious traditions. Over time, Sunni and Shia Islam evolved different views about religious authority, leadership, and certain theological questions.

In the ancient Jewish community, the Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed over the source and interpretation of religious authority. The Sadducees accepted only the written Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) as authoritative. The Pharisees accepted the written Torah but also believed in an Oral Torah—a body of interpretations and traditions passed down alongside the written text. Because the Sadducees’ authority was tied closely to the Temple, its destruction in 70 A.D. caused their movement to disappear. An oral tradition allowed the Pharisees to adapt religious law to new circumstances and eventually became the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism.

Their disagreement reminds us of the disputes between Christians who insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible and those who understand the Bible as story, as allegory, as poetry. We can see elements of this dispute in our current debates about judicial interpretation and analysis. The Sadducees rejected any doctrines that were not explicitly stated in the written Torah. Textualist judges believe that legal analysis must be firmly grounded in and confined only to the text, and its meaning as they understand it.

The first followers of Jesus were Jewish. They attended synagogues, observed Jewish law to varying degrees, and regarded themselves as part of Judaism. Some believed Jesus was the Messiah that Jewish tradition had long spoke off. However, some followers began to regard him as divine, provoking a clash with Jews who believed in strict monotheism. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Rabbinic Jews rejected claims that Jesus was the Messiah or divine. By the middle of the second century, many Jews and Christians regarded themselves as separate communities.

Over the centuries, frictions over papal authority grew between Greek-speaking Christians in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and Latin-speaking Christians in Western Europe. The bishops in Rome, the center of western Christianity, claimed universal jurisdiction over Christians everywhere. Bishops in the east believed that they should govern together as equals. This is similar to the disagreement between the Federalists and anti-Federalists at the Constitutional Convention. The Federalists wanted a strong centralized structure. The anti-Federalists wanted a confederacy of equals. In 1054 C.E., the bishop of Rome, also called the pope, and the bishop, or patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other. Western churches called themselves Roman Catholic. Eastern churches called themselves Eastern Orthodox.

The historical examples so far have been ideological divides over authority. Who gets to be boss? It surprises me that these persistent divisions in human society have similar characteristics to playground disputes. A fundamental feature of loosely organized games is the lack of authority, an anarchy that is central to the relations between countries. If the players do not agree to a higher authority, then disagreements are inevitable.

In the 16^th century, Martin Luther challenged the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church and Christianity divided into Catholics and Protestants. Catholics believed in the authority of priests and bishops to interpret the Bible, and salvation was through these intermediaries. Protestants advocated for a more collegial structure in which believers and local churches had the final authority to interpret the Bible. Salvation was directly from God. This echoes the political disputes over the role of the central government in American society, and the schism between the eastern and western churches. Throughout Europe, Protestants and Catholics fought a series of bloody civil wars without resolving these conflicts. Whole countries went one way or the other. Many European countries in the south went Catholic. Those in the north went Protestant.

In 19^th century France, republicans and conservatives argued over the role of religion in the educational curriculum. In 1881- 2, the Ferry Laws made primary education free, compulsory and secular. Republicans believed that the curriculum should foster loyalty to the French Republic, not the Catholic Church. Conservatives, monarchists, and many Catholics maintained that religion was essential to moral education, and the integrity of society itself. Secular schools could not instill the principles that built moral character. The dispute concerned the identity of France itself. Would it be an orderly society grounded primarily in Catholic tradition or one organized around less clearly defined republican and secular principles?

In the 19^th century, American Methodists divided over slavery. Northern Methodists opposed slavery, while southern Methodists believed slavery was compatible with Christian principles and the Bible. After a hundred years, the two branches reunified in 1939. Divisions over same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay clergy led to another split. Underneath these disagreements lies a major dispute among Protestant Christians over the interpretation of the Bible. Should sacred texts be understood through historical tradition and the plain meaning of the text, or should interpretation be guided by changing social and cultural circumstances? There is a similar dispute among judges as to the proper way to interpret the Constitution and the law.

Disputes over ideological matters can mask a dispute over authority. Take the case of the Methodists and slavery. In Colossians 3:22 and 1 Peter 2:18, the apostle Paul encourages slaves to obey their masters. Does that mean Paul endorsed slavery or is he advising a behavior within a relationship that was common in the old world? Pro-slavery interpreters argued the former. Abolitionists argued the latter contextual understanding. Slavery contradicted the central message of Christianity, that all people were equal before God and could be saved. Why did this drive the Methodist congregations apart? In many southern churches, Jim Crow laws mandated that enslaved people sit in segregated sections of the church. Northern churches had no such restriction.

Hidden within that tangle of claims and arguments is a question of authority. Whose rule wins? Who is the final interpreter, the decider of what the Bible, or the Constitution, or the Quran means?There is none. Organizations are glued together by forced or voluntary consent. To secure ratification of the Constitution, the framers agreed to add the First Amendment. This separated the government’s power to enforce consent from the voluntary consent of religious belief and association.

The natural tendency of human organizations to fracture leads to a profusion of beliefs and practices. Ideas evolve as living creatures evolve. They adapt to a changing social, economic and cultural environment. Conservatives naturally resist institutional change but it is inevitable. Progressives want to engineer institutional change but such change must happen in response to changes in the environment of a human society. That’s why so many proposed changes seem forced.

There is no newspaper titled Our Daily Disputes but that is the news. Knowing that most conflicts in our lives are really about authority, and who gets to make the rules, can help us understand our own feelings. I hope to see you next week.

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Road Construction

June 7, 2026June 6, 2026Leave a comment

June 7, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

I am recovering from hip surgery this week. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Alexey Taktarov on Unsplash

A man in a red parka stands on a snow covered hill looking at jagged mountain peak ahead of him

The Visible and Invisible

May 31, 2026May 30, 2026Leave a comment

May 31, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

One of this summer’s biggest movie releases is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the story of a military commander returning to his home in Greece after the Trojan war. When he encounters several dangers on the trip, Odysseus prays to the Greek goddess Athena for help. For much of human history, we have tried to leverage invisible powers to help us get what we want. These invisible powers were capable of work. We prayed to invisible beings for love, for rain, for relief from sickness and pain. Roman families prayed to their household gods, the Lares, for protection of their home and other favors. The Jewish people were the chosen people of their god.

Gods were not neutral. They took sides in battle. Gods had to be placated. If our side lost, it was because our sacrifices, our rituals had not pleased our gods. If our side won, it was because our god was more powerful than their god. Catholics and Jews shared the same God, the same Old Testament, but differed on the belief in the divinity of Christ. Jews had to be punished and persecuted. Catholics and Muslims shared the same God, but Muslims had an entirely different text, the Koran, and a prophet that Catholics did not recognize. The Catholics launched several crusades to defeat the Muslims. Protestants and Catholics had the same god and the same sacred texts, but a different hierarchy, and different worship rituals. Each side believed that their way of worship was right and warred against each other throughout Europe.

The Age of Neutrality

The realm of the natural was visible, capable of being perceived by our senses. Phenomenon not accessible to our senses was the realm of the supernatural. In 1644, Evangelista Toricelli showed that the atmosphere had weight. We were like crabs out of water, walking beneath an ocean of air (Source). The invisible was no longer the realm of the supernatural. A few years later Otto von Guericke showed that the weight of the air could be used to lift objects. For the first time in history, an invisible being could do work, and the word force was repurposed to include these “gods” of nature. A few decades later, Newton published his theory of gravity in 1687. These natural gods like gravity were neutral. The god of gravity treated everyone the same. These natural forces were more reliable, more predictable than the supernatural gods. In several more decades, Thomas Newcomen developed an efficient steam engine. People were learning to bring the invisible forces of heaven down to earth, ushering in the First Industrial Revolution (Source).

Social Exchange

As physical scientists explored the exchange of energy in physics, chemistry and biology, social scientists began to investigate exchanges of the invisible among people. In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, an analysis of the production and exchange of goods among people. Money cannot be consumed yet it has value, an invisible quality. A pound of flour can be consumed but only as an ingredient in bread. It’s value is latent. In Part 1, Chapter 4, he wrote about the diamond water paradox. Water is far more useful to people than diamonds, yet the exchange value of water is much lower than that of diamonds. To help resolve the paradox, Smith developed two notions of value, value in use and value in exchange, and noted how unrelated the two values could be.

Value is a property as invisible as a god, its existence and effectiveness only apparent by its manifestation in the natural world. Value in use was a functional value, the ability of a commodity like corn to satisfy some human want. That function was only possible through transformation by people. The land had to be tilled and sown. The crop had to be weeded, harvested, and stored. Many foods needed a final transformation to make them palatable or digestible. While it was difficult to measure a property, the costs to realize the functional value of a commodity could be measured. In those days when humans or animals did most of the work, the chief cost of a commodity was human labor.

Value in exchange could also be measured by human labor, since this was the most common tradeable value that people had. Smith, David Ricardo and other early 19^th century economists developed a labor theory of value as a solution to the riddle of the diamond water paradox. In the latter half of that century, the increasing use of machines in production tested the logic of that theory. Karl Marx was such a fierce adherent of the labor theory of value that he regarded any contribution by machinery or capital as an exploitation of labor.

Marginal Analysis in Economics

Marx introduced an edifice of historical, political and social relations that obscured the fundamental economic principles of exchange. In an effort to concentrate solely on the economic aspects of the marketplace, economists like Jevons, Edgewater and Marshall introduced the idea of marginal usefulness, or the value of one additional unit. Value was situational, determined by supply and demand, and based on individual preference.

How did these economists resolve the diamond water paradox? Water was vital to a human being, but when there is a good supply of it, an additional glass of water has little value. Because diamonds are scarce and convey a prestige highly valued by people, an additional diamond may have high marginal value.

Scarcity and surplus determine the price of a good. The seller of a loaf of bread does not price his product based on the wage or earnings of his customers. Buyers and sellers have a shortage or surplus of a good and want to maximize the usefulness of the next unit of that good or service. These economists, called marginalists, rejected the belief that there was any value infused in a commodity. The only measure of that value was the price.

Political and Social Theory

For more than a century, marginal analysis has been the dominant theory of economic study. Can it be used to understand political and social relationships? Perhaps not. It has some disturbing implications. Despotic governments are governed by marginal thinking, the idea that human value is based on a person’s usefulness to the ruling regime to maintain its power and control. In a liberal ideology, political rights are grounded in the theory of natural law, whose chief proponent was the 17^th century philosopher John Locke. People are imbued by their creator with certain inherent or natural rights that are inviolable to a government.

A marginal analysis of personal and social relationships treats people as means to satisfy our ends. The philosopher Emmanuel Kant wrote “So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as only a means.” People had an intrinsic worth in their own right. But this view is not grounded in anything other than an agreement among people that humans have worth. Their suffering has meaning. Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, laments the fact that people on one side of a conflict struggle to even acknowledge the suffering of people on the other side. We are so invested in the about the righteousness of our actions that we lose sight of the intrinsic worth of those on the other side of a conflict.

The Sacred and Humanist

People of faith claim that the natural world must be connected to the supernatural to have any meaning. Without a belief in a creator God, they claim that morality is ungrounded. Human life has value because we are creatures of God. The Constitution was divinely inspired, a work of the Christian God.

Humanists believe that people have a responsibility and capability to act ethically without a belief in supernatural gods (Source). That responsibility is based on our innate sense of compassion. That capability is born of our rationality. It is up to us, not some invisible gods, to shape the meaning of our lives. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Keywords: marginal, economics, categorical imperative, value, religion

Blurb: The gods of our ancestors have vacated heaven and now live among us in a myriad of forces and energy.

A painting of a beach with a curve of water on the left edge of the painting. A lone figure clad in black stands in the distance.

Work of Art or Sacred Text?

May 24, 2026May 22, 2026Leave a comment

May 24, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

In her last interview, author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt said that Americans regard their Constitution as sacred text (Source). “There are no natives here. The natives were the Indians. Everyone else are citizens. And these citizens are united only by one thing and this is true: That is, you become a citizen in the United States by a simple consent to the Constitution.” Arendt was speaking of those, like her, who immigrated to America. For those born in the United States, even that consent is not a prerequisite to citizenship.

Is the Constitution sacred and what did Arendt mean by that? Former Justice Antonin Scalia was famous for his remark that the Constitution was “dead, dead, dead” (Source). Scalia believed that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed forever at the time it was written. In later remarks at Princeton University, he clarified that he favored an enduring rather than a living Constitution (Source). Scalia meant that the meaning of the Constitution was enduring. In his book Reading the Constitution, former Justice Stephen Breyer regarded the intention of the framers as enduring (p. 262). Breyer gave more weight to a law’s purpose and consequences in deciding the merits of a case before the court, rather than the text itself (p. xvi). I will call that intentionalism.

Scalia advocated a judicial interpretation he called originalism, an approach that tries to understand the original meaning of the text. Scalia’s method involved reading the Constitution as though it were a statute. In a speech he gave to students at Princeton University in 2012, Scalia said “When we read Shakespeare we use a glossary because we want to know what it meant when it was written. We don’t give those words their current meaning. So also with a statute — our statutes don’t morph, they don’t change meaning from age to age to comport with the whatever the zeitgeist thinks appropriate.”

The word naughty in Shakespeare’s time meant wicked or immoral, a moral condemnation. We use the word to describe someone acting mischievously. The word in his current usage does not convey moral condemnation. Of course, the English language was in a state of great transition during Shakespeare’s time. The meaning of the words in the Constitution have changed relatively little since 1787. A soldier carrying a flintlock rifle and an M-16 rifle are both bearing arms, the phrase used in the Second Amendment. Due to advances in gun technology and manufacture, the scope of that phrase has changed. The M-16 can be set to fire more than one shot. Did the framers intend to include any weapon that can be carried by a person, no matter how powerful and destructive it can be?

A Constitution is written using broader terms. A statute is written with specific terms and often contains definitions of those terms. Here is an example from the Colorado Revised Statutes: “Each eligible individual who is partially unemployed shall be paid a partial benefit. Partial benefits shall be in an amount equal to the eligible individual’s weekly benefit amount for total unemployment, minus that part of wages payable to the individual with respect to the week that is in excess of fifty percent of the individual’s weekly benefit amount…” (Source). Terms are defined as in “’Benefits’ means the money payments payable to an individual with respect to his unemployment. The different classifications of benefits are set forth in section 8-70-110” (Source).

Let’s look at Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, one of the more specific sections in the Constitution. “No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.” At first glance, the language might seem precise, but there are a lot of details missing. How shall the Representative substantiate his age? Birth certificate by a state agency? Eyewitness sworn before a local judge? A document signed by a registered midwife? If citizenship was not granted at birth, how should the Representative certify citizenship? A federal document attesting to that fact? What if there is a line entry in a federal register attesting to such citizenship, but the document itself was lost in a fire? Is that enough documentation? Does the qualification for state residency vary with the regulations of each state? These details are handled by statute or agency regulation, not by a Constitution.

Unlike statutes, the U.S. Constitution has few defined terms. James Madison objected to the insertion of the term “general welfare” in Article 1 of the Constitution because the term was imprecise. Others at the Convention responded that it would be up to future generations to determine what the phrase meant. Scalia and other textualists attach their own meaning to words, then claim the meaning they favor was the original meaning of the word. When historians show evidence to the contrary, textualist judges rarely defend their research.

The Constitution is like a landscape painting by James Whistler (Source). It is imprecise. Many details are missing. The painting is an invitation to come inside its borders, to explore its mood, the people and objects within that rectangular frame. A statute contains the details involved in constructing that painting. These include the kind of paint, it’s source and mixture, the quality of the linen for the canvas and how it should be primed. Constitutional text contains the vision. The supporting statutes are the instructions for implementing that vision. Textualist justices like Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and, to a lesser extent, Clarence Thomas treat Constitutional interpretation as though the Constitution was a paint-by-numbers hobby kit (examples here). Because it is not, the justices simply write in their own numbers on the canvas, and claim that the founding generation wrote in the numbers.

In the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller opinion, Scalia treated the clause in the Second Amendment regarding the militia as a prefatory or incidental clause. The right to bear arms was not connected to service in the militia, Scalia argued. Why did the framers put that clause in? Scalia admitted that the “structure of the Second Amendment is unique in our Constitution” but found some examples in state constitutions (Source). This is the ploy of originalism. A jurist can dig through any number of historical documents until they find something that supports their interpretation of a text. They ignore all other historical evidence that contradicts their opinion, then pronounce that their opinion is grounded in the original meaning of the text.

In the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion, Justice Alito wrote that the word abortion was not in the text of the Constitution (Source). Therefore, it was not a protected constitutional right. In the 2010 Citizens United v FEC opinion, former Justice Kennedy was not an originalist but found that money as a funding source for speech was protected under the First Amendment (Source). The First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” The framers could have written “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom or funding of speech,” but didn’t. Justice Kennedy and the conservatives on the Court rewrote the Constitution they way they would have done it if they had lived two hundred years ago. That is a radical, not a conservative, approach.

The framers used general language in the Constitution to state principles, not regulations, so that future generations could instantiate those principles in evolving circumstances. The process of amending the Constitution, as set forth in Article V, was arduous. Surely, the framers did not intend that a few men on the Supreme Court could effectively amend by the Constitution by reinterpreting it. The framers never intended to give away their power to the judiciary. To do so would have been irrational. In Marbury v Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall claimed the authority to decide the meaning of the Constitution, effectively executing a judicial coup of the legislature and the executive. Neither President Jefferson nor the Democrat-Republicans in Congress challenged Marshall. They were too involved in negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase completed two months after Marshall’s decision. Why did the framers give life tenure to judges? They never intended the judges to have Constitutional authority.

The Republican led Congress has abdicated their power and authority to the courts and to the Executive. It is time to restore the primacy of Congress, the representatives of the people. In Federalist #51, James Madison wrote “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates” (Source). Legislative supremacy was a long tradition in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. By its nature, a legislature has several internal controls. The Executive and Judiciary do not. Why? Those two branches were never meant to become as powerful as they have. It is time for the Congress to undo that. That is the why of the problem. The how is a matter of deliberation but the how is not possible until both parties in Congress can agree on the why. On that note, I hope to see you next week.

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Image: Beach Scene by James McNeill Whistler, 1896. Public domain (Source)

Innocent Investor

A helpful understanding

Beyond Our Cave

Different Predictions

The Ethosphere

Effective Governments

Market Distortions

Which Authority?

The Schisms

Road Construction

The Visible and Invisible

Work of Art or Sacred Text?