January 2022 - Values Added

Toolbox: Polite and Impolite Arguments

January 25, 2022January 25, 2022 Brent Leave a comment

“Toolbox” articles delve into a new way of looking at values, with a view to using these techniques in future articles.

What are the values that drive political discourse in liberal democracies? As outlined on this website, people operate, to varying degrees, according to six moral values:

care/harm (it’s morally right to help people and wrong to hurt them);
fairness/cheating (outcomes should be equitable and/or proportional to contributions);
liberty/oppression (freedom is a moral good);
loyalty/betrayal (people have special moral responsibilities to those in their group);
authority/subversion (it’s morally right to follow those in positions of authority); and
sanctity/degradation (some actions are inherently corrupting and dirty, and therefore, wrong).

Given that these six values are important to people, you might guess that all six could help justify policy choices. Perhaps your average politician would rely on one central value to make a point, and then bolster that idea with appeals to the others. For example, imagine an American civic leader from the 1960s advocating for the end of Jim Crow and saying the following:

The Rude Tourist Effect

January 18, 2022January 15, 2023 Brent Leave a comment

Which country exports the worst tourists? Although you might not like to admit it, you probably have an answer to this question, and it’s likely based on your personal experiences of travelling. Luckily, statisticians have conducted the polls, crunched the numbers, and come to the shocking conclusion: there is no consensus (although Japanese tourists appear to be overwhelmingly well-liked). In South-East Asia, Chinese and Australian tourists have the worst reputation. But Chinese tourists are relatively well liked in Europe, where it’s the Russians who are most disliked. Germans also hate the British, while the British intriguingly rate other Brits as the worst. In South America, it’s the Americans who are loathed. On a more positive note, this BBC article from 2009 suggests that Canadians are some of the best tourists. Yes, it’s more than a decade old and the data is probably unreliable, but I’ll lean into my patriotism and claim that this study is undeniably accurate.

A well-travelled reader might notice that tourists seem to be most unpopular in countries where they are numerous. There’s probably something to this, although I don’t have any hard evidence. It makes sense. Opinions of tourists are probably based primarily on a few, well publicized negative events, and more tourists means a greater chance that there will be some idiot who does something improper.

Values in the News: Of Jabs and Djokovic

January 11, 2022January 15, 2023 Brent Leave a comment

Note: I had promised readers three articles on misinformation. They’re still coming, just in two weeks. I wanted to talk about this issue while it was still in the news.

Tennis has been an inexplicably major forum to debate social issues in modern times. The Battle of the Sexes, where Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs, was a landmark moment in the feminist movement. Serena Williams’ 2018 blowup at an umpire prompted serious introspection about the double-standards of decorum that people hold for male versus female athletes. In 2021, Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open to protect her mental health, an event that led to a more open discussion of mental illness among athletes. However, as far as I can tell, there has never been a controversy in tennis over public health guidance and immigration law.

Until now, that is. On January 5, 2022, top-ranked tennis player Novak Djokovic found himself in detention after his Australian visa was denied. In the days leading up to his arrival, there was an explosion of public anger about his intention to compete in the Australian Open. See, Djokovic is unvaccinated against COVID-19, and Australia is experiencing its first major wave of COVID-19. The country had previously avoided the worst of the pandemic through strict border controls and tight lockdowns, which proved to be extremely disruptive to the lives of average Australians. Melbourne was under lockdown for 262 days in two years!