The debacle on Chicago's south side

When a government stubbornly and repeatedly refuses to accept responsibility for its obvious mistakes, can this lack of accountability trickle down to relatively trivial (though much more closely followed) pursuits such as the national pastime? Perhaps so, given the responses by those involved in Wednesday's evening's controversial ending to the Angels-White Sox baseball game.

In case you missed it, home plate umpire Doug Eddings clearly called out the Chicago batter on a third strike (in what would have been the third out of the inning), then apparently changed his mind after that batter decided to try and "sell" the idea that the ball had bounced before entering the Anaheim catcher's glove (replays clearly showed this not to be the case). As a result of this umpire error, the White Sox were awarded an extra out and a base runner, who later in the inning came around to score, ending the game.

These things happen in sports, but what has been especially appalling about the incident is its aftermath, in which the umpiring crew has followed a media & public relations strategy that seems to have been designed by the Pentagon:

• Eddings, now under intense media scrutiny (dwarfing media coverage of more important events, but that's another story), continues to deny his error (if rather cryptically), despite clear video evidence to the contrary (claiming "I had the ball bouncing" and insisting "I know I did my best job last night")
• The other umpires on the field, rather than deferring to Eddings by admitting that they were in no position to overrule their colleague based upon their viewing angles of the play, rallied to his support by corroborating his erroneous version of events
• Rather than concede that one of their own had blown a call on the field (and calling for appropriate discipline), the head of MLB umpires circled the wagons and kept everybody on message, reiterating Eddings' discredited claim that the ball had bounced, citing some secret evidence "in the truck" (to which the public is not privy) proving the ball to have changed directions before landing in the catcher's glove
• Seeking to deflect criticism, Eddings (and others following the same talking points) blamed the victim, suggesting that catcher Josh Paul must have been "confused" by the clear punch out (which Eddings did twice, calling the batter out) and the lack of any verbal "no catch" call (a widely-recognized convention among umpires), admitting only that his arm gestures for a third strike and an out might need some improvement

The only thing missing is a press conference in which the president upholds the official version of events, declaring "Eddie, you're going a heckuva job."

Shameless self-promotion, part 2

My recently-published essay "Missing the Forests for the Trees: Justice and Environmental Economics" is currently in competition for an Essay Prize from Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP). Glancing at the list of competing essays, I don't think that I would vote for mine, but it's nice to be in such good company.

How not to refute the natural lottery argument

From the National Center for Policy Analysis (a libertarian think tank which aims "to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector") on the natural lottery argument, as used to support the claim that "society should mitigate the results of a natural misfortune by partly socializing the cost of harms over which human beings have no control" (in its so-called "one stop shop for debate issues"):

The most direct response to the natural lottery argument is to deny the premise. True enough, it's not the unlucky person's fault that he was unlucky. But it's not your fault either. And it's not obvious why someone else's misfortune should give rise to a claim against your good fortune.

The premise in question is that persons cannot be held responsible (i.e. made to bear the costs of or granted exclusive entitlement to benefits from) for their natural endowments, and the above reply grants acknowledges half of this in granting that "it's not the unlucky person's fault that he was unlucky." From this premise, it does follow that "it's not your fault either" (as is acknowledged, these result from luck and so are nobody's fault), though not in the way that the above claim supposes. The only part of the premise that is being denied, then, is the aspect of moral desert that follows from good fortune: persons are asymmetrically held to be responsible for their good fortune (and thus entitled to it, against claims of justice based in the natural lottery argument) but not for their bad fortune.

One cannot have it both ways: either persons deserve the good or bad consequences that result from the "natural lottery" of their native endowments, or they do not. If they don't, they are no more entitled to their good fortunes than others are to their bad fortunes. The premise that is actually being denied in the above argument is the "control condition" that holds persons to be responsible for consequences that result from their voluntary acts and choices but not for those which follow from luck alone. While this reply to the natural lottery argument is not entirely inconceivable, it must somehow justify the claim (denied above) that it is the unlucky person's fault that he is unlucky, and that he therefore deserves the significantly diminished life prospects which follow (as the fortunate also deserve their significantly enhanced life prospects, and are thus immune to claims on behalf of the disadvantaged to minimize these unequal opportunities). Insofar as libertarians recognize this inequality of opportunity to be a problem (and most do not), I doubt that "the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector" can provide a better solution to it than the warmed-over Social Darwinism that is often invoked (though not, to the author's credit, above) in debates over the role of the state in promoting social justice.