October 2021 - Values Added

Wicked Problems: U.S. Gun Control (Part 2)

October 26, 2021December 3, 2022 Brent Leave a comment

Last week, I began a discussion on firearm ownership in the United States and outlined how many gun control activists are struggling to make in-roads with about half of Americans. Of course, I wouldn’t be writing about this issue unless I thought it had something to do with values (this is Values Added, after all).

In this article, I’ll conclude this brief exploration of U.S. firearm politics by outlining the three values (other than Care) that form the moral basis of the opposition to gun control. Then, I’ll look at how gun control efforts can be tailored to minimize the violation of these values.

Liberty (i.e. freedom and autonomy are moral goods)

It’s no secret that American culture is uniquely enamored with the liberty/oppression value, as evidenced by strong libertarian representation at all levels of U.S. government, a group which is made up of are some of the staunchest opponents to gun control. Unrestricted gun ownership tends to harmonize with the Liberty value in two ways. First, the Liberty value asserts that individuals should be free to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t hurt others. It follows that gun ownership should be unrestricted, and only the improper use of guns should invite legal sanction.

Wicked Problems: U.S. Gun Control (Part 1)

October 19, 2021November 13, 2022 Brent 1 Comment

Values analysis is an extremely powerful tool in the hands of the policy analyst. We have already seen how it can help develop better advice, improve program design, and illuminate the complexities of contentious policy questions. And values analysis can do so much more: it can also help to develop novel policy packages – ones that may even be more effective than the same old solutions we tend to default to. To prove it, let’s dig into one of the most contentious issues for our neighbors to the south: gun control.

It’s no secret that gun violence is a major public policy issue in the United States. Rates of firearm-related deaths are higher in the U.S. than in any other OECD country, a rate eight times higher than in Canada and nearly 100 times higher than in the UK. Worse still, gun violence soared in 2020 and 2021, perhaps signaling the end of a multi-decade decline in violent crime. As of 2021, 72% of Americans believe gun violence to be either a “very big problem” or a “moderately big problem.”

Values and Political Views

October 12, 2021September 22, 2022 Brent Leave a comment

As mentioned in my exploration of moral foundations theory, there are six moral values that people feel. But everyone doesn’t weigh every value equally. Some people may believe the Care value is the most important, but others may disagree. If you’re interested in learning about your values, I recommend taking the Your Morals online survey, which has been completed by hundreds of thousands of people to support research. It’s like a personality test; it’s fun!

Studies like this have led to important scientific findings. Most prominently, political views have been found to be correlated with different sets of moral values. So far, three “moral palettes” – different weightings of the six values – have been tracked:

Values in Policy Analysis

October 4, 2021November 13, 2022 Brent Leave a comment

In 2018, the Indian ascetic G.D. Agrawal died on the 111^th day of a hunger strike protesting the continued pollution of the Ganges River. Mr. Agrawal had subsisted for over one hundred days on only honey, lemon, and water, and in his final week of life he gave up all sustenance, including water. Although hunger strikes are a common part of public life in India, deaths are relatively rare, a fact that illustrates G. D. Agrawal’s intense commitment to his goal.

Mr. Agrawal certainly had a point. The Ganges is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, and this has direct negative impacts on the health and safety of the millions of Indians who depend on the river. The water is filled with dangerous bacteria that kill thousands of Indians a year, and water-borne diseases in the Ganges river-basin cost Indian families an estimated $4 billion a year. Even worse, the bacteria are becoming resistant to standard anti-biotics. Anti-microbial resistance, as this phenomenon is known, has been called a slow-motion pandemic, with the potential to cause 10 million deaths by 2050. The next global health disaster could be evolving in the polluted Ganges right now.