Noah Tesfaye The Black Bourgeoisie: The Chief Propagators of "Buy Black" and Black Capitalism Noah Tesfaye Introduction Following the murder of George Floyd, there was a resurgence in a phrase all-too-common in the recent US political zeitgeist: “Buy Black.” Instantly, Black businesses received an overwhelming outpour of support as many non-Black people sought performative or material actions to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Centering the narrative and vision behind these ideas of “Buying Black” was not only affluent white people but the Black commercial media and the Black bourgeois at large (1). Amidst claims to defund and abolish the police, wealthy Black people called, as rapper and activist Killer Mike said in reference to Atlanta, “to not burn your own house down” but to instead support Black businesses and seek justice righteously (2). In this press conference with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the stark contrast between the masses of Black people who own little to no land in the city and the select few bourgeoisie celebrities who proclaim “Buying Black” as a liberatory practice for Black people was evident. Therefore, developing a framework of a political economy of racialization allows us to view the racialized motivations of capitalism to diversify and maintain power with a critical lens. For instance, revolutionary scholar Cedric Robinson attributes the origins of racism to “the ‘internal’ relations of European peoples” (3). He maintains that racial capitalism arose from “the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society [that] pursued essentially racial directions” (4). There is a vested interest in subverting claims of Black liberation by the Black bourgeoisie to build up the “myth and propaganda of Black buying power,” as Jared Ball coins in his book of the same title, to maintain their capitalist interests. It is through the collective efforts of the Black bourgeoisie to propagate Black capitalism that they accept the continued exploitation of working-class Black people. A Relevant History to US Racial Capitalism To develop a political economy framework of racialization and examine how Black people have assimilated into capitalism, it is imperative to center the conditions of Black Americans more broadly today. First, we will look at how race has played a role in the justification of the exploitation of Black people in America. Then, we will investigate how wealthy Black people have been able to exploit these conditions to further perpetuate such inequality within a racial capitalist hierarchy. Race is integral to understanding the economic position of Black people, not just because of the way Black people arrived on the continent but also in the legacy of government policies that have contributed to the economic segregation of today. As a result, Black people have next to no wealth in the United States; by 2053, it is estimated that median Black household wealth will be zero (5). The asset that many Americans often associate with wealth-building is buying a home. However, for decades, Black people have had little access to affordable housing and loans at market interest rates. Established in 1933, the Home Owners Loan Corporation institutionalized abstract criteria, such as “desirability,” to fulfill a loan (6). Furthermore, “the HOLC’s actions attributed property values to the racial or ethnic identity of residents then helped codify it into a national housing policy” (7). This resulted in the creation of domestic colonial projects through restrictions on the purchase of real estate and allowed for the “economic serfdom of Negroes by its reluctance to give loans and insurance to Negro businesses” (8). Meanwhile, mortgage lenders redlined neighborhoods by deeming populations as having “detrimental influences,” as a means to justify offering conservative loans with bad terms or no loans at all to Black people (9). Practices executed by the HOLC as well as state and local legislators to justify redlining also expanded into the creation of what is known as the “ghetto tax,” whereby grocery and convenience store items in inner-city communities were sometimes more expensive and sold under exploitative installment plans (10). It is not just that the economic conditions of Black people have been poor or fraught with challenges, but that with that context and contrast, a vision of “Buying Black” is hollow. Today, instead of focusing efforts towards highlighting the much higher risks Black people have faced concerning eviction since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black bourgeois have asked Black people to build and support Black business (11). Origins of Black Buying Power & Black Capitalism The origins in this rhetoric about Black capitalism and “Buying Black” in more modern examples are not from Black Americans but from the US government. Corporate America, in conjunction with the Black bourgeoisie, further developed the rhetoric of Black capitalism to exacerbate racial inequality. As discussed in Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, it was the Nixon administration that began to prop up this vision for Black capitalism as a means towards suppressing radical movements. The author Marcia Chatelain notes that “[i]n lieu of supporting critical civil rights protections for fair housing and school desegregation, Nixon promoted legislation that provided business loans, economic development grants, and affirmative action provisions on federally contracted projects as a means of suppressing black rage and securing black endorsements” (12). Amidst Nixon’s efforts towards building his Southern Strategy and winning the 1968 presidential election, he ran on the premise that Black capitalism would ensure racial equality (13). Yet, due to the logistical restraints of there being so few Black entrepreneurs along with the clear intentions Nixon had in stifling revolutionary activity, Black capitalism was, from the outset, designed to selectively help Black people (14). What is more surprising than the Nixon administration seeking to subvert and crush Black radicals is the way in which wealthier Black people began to propagate Nixon’s agenda. As fast-food restaurants were being established in areas where Black people were offered franchisee licenses during the 1970s, Black “franchise pioneers believed that business would save the day and the days to come for their people” (15). Franchise owners were complicit in letting the federal government and those in control of capital across the country use the support of their businesses as a justification to divest from public programs and instead invest in less accessible resources. In the 1980s, Black fraternities and sororities, one of the more prominent symbols of the Black elite class, even went so far as to partner with McDonald’s on an advertising campaign commercial called the “Fraternity Chant” (16). If corporate America could get the Black bourgeoisie to more openly endorse and support policies centered around Black capitalism, instead of seeking people’s programs or organizing with Black liberation groups such as the Blank Panthers, US racial capitalism could persist. Significance of Race to Studying the Bourgeois There is no shortage of books, New York Times articles, or 60 Minutes segments on the racial wealth gap. Texts like How to Be an Antiracist or articles that imply that racial inequality is simply a matter of a “battle between the souls of America” do not adequately address, with nuance, the Black bourgeoisie’s influence on upholding racial capitalism (17). Rather than seeking to identify how and why these conditions continue to be perpetuated, many point to “the government” or “Republicans.” As Cedric Robinson theorized, race has been integral to capitalism since its foundation. Due to the development of neoliberalism in the US and the heightened sense of individualism in a consumerist society, Black neoliberal politics manifests into upholding the status quo of American politics rather than taking significant measures to directly address inequality. Amidst the advancement of globalization spearheaded by the Clinton administration, the Black working class was abandoned even further due expansion in the prison industrial complex, aided by the passing of the Crime Bill of 1994. This, in conjunction with the rise in the commercialization of hip hop and mainstream Black art writ large, helped propel Black individualism to its prominent position today as an antagonism to the “superpredator” attitude the likes of Hillary Clinton and other politicians had for Black people. Black people can also utilize and exploit racial capitalism to their benefit at the expense of others. To really understand how Black people continue to be exploited and disincentivized from seeking collective organization and liberation, we must look beyond Black entrepreneurship, Twitter, and Black real estate Instagram pages, for these are individualized success stories within racial capitalism. In their article “Black Politics & the Neoliberal Racial Order,” Michael C. Dawson and Meghan Ming Francis attempt to trace through the ways in which Black people have assimilated into neoliberalism and diversified capitalism. As they see it, Black neoliberalism emphasizes “self-reliance, excessive consumerism, and individualism” (18). To buy into capitalism, Black people must shed their traditions in collectivism and community-building. Neoliberalism demands Black people to concede grassroots organizing and to instead make the most of society as it is currently constructed. That became the central mindset and rhetoric espoused as the Black bourgeoisie began to take shape. Former President Barack Obama once equated “raising one’s children, paying a decent salary,” and other private, voluntary acts to “marching” (19). Rather than proposing Black people seek to remedy the conditions they face, the same conditions that are routinely echoed throughout mainstream media, Obama implied that mere existence was a form of fighting for one’s rights. This is an example of individualizing systemic oppression; instead of calling to dismantle the entire class system that exploits poor Black people, the Black bourgeois would rather make poor Black people feel as though they are largely responsible for their class position. Obama is asking Black people to focus on their own immediate conditions as a form of struggle, instead of demanding for a greater fight for Black liberation because that call protects his class interests and not poor Black people. The Black Bourgeois and their Propaganda What makes this development of Black neoliberalism so insidious is how “neoliberalism often allows small segments of communities to be helped through community/voluntary action and activists’ searches for best practices and policies” (20). The emphasis here is “small segments.” It is not that a Black business would not benefit from more financial support as we saw in the summer of 2020, but the larger ramifications of supporting Black businesses can only go so far when correcting for centuries of irreparable harm done to Black people in and by America. Black people can and continue to receive small wins amidst the continuously shrinking wealth within the population as a whole. If Black people are truly building power and seeking to create cooperative businesses that sustain communities instead of cultivating resources within capitalism, corporations would not advertise or publicly support Black businesses like they have since June. Are we supposed to presume that Oprah or Tyler Perry or any prominent members of the Black bourgeoisie are unaware of the centuries of inequality and believe that “Buying Black” will be a substantive fix for the plight of the Black masses? No. It is not to say that wealthier Black people are acting completely with malicious intent; however, Black bourgeoisie members collectively are helping sell and deliver this Black capitalism, “Buy Black” propaganda to the masses of working-class Black people. They continue to perpetuate and oftentimes expand on rhetoric that upholds Black capitalism by blaming individuals for not working hard enough or not being smart enough to make more money. “The Story of O.J” by JAY-Z, a song released in 2017, breaks down how Black people are not building enough wealth and how Jewish people spent money on real estate while Black people would spend it at the strip club. The song in short “is a metaphor for opportunities wasted due to poor individual choices and is meant, as Jay-Z has said, to be more than just a song, saying that it is really about ‘... we as a culture, having a plan, how we’re gonna push this forward...’” (21). In reality, “The Story of O.J.” symbolizes revisionist Black history - of the centuries of exploitation Black people have faced. As JAY-Z continues to profess that the only means towards freedom is to flip buildings, buy paintings, and “Buy Black,” his words limit the scope and imagination of the masses for a politic beyond the present conditions. Even if JAY-Z is from a working class background and he was lucky to attain massive success with his music, his current class conditions prevent him from adequately calling for more substantive changes to correct for centuries of Black inequality. To a similar end “the expressed ‘plan’ is to eschew politics in favor of a sole focus on economics, Black capitalist economics with buying power as a central philosophy as the ‘only hope’ for freedom, and all presented as progressive, pro-Black, empowerment messaging” (22). If there exists any chance to adequately analyze the US through a comprehensive political economy framework of racialization and come up with solutions to free people of such dehumanizing conditions, it must be with the consideration that even those of oppressed backgrounds can uphold racial capitalism. The Black bourgeoisie has shown through their actions that they are not interested in engaging substantively or seeking to liberate the masses because they themselves have become comfortable with the comforts of capitalism evenwhile the rest of their “people” suffer. Looking forward Black radical organizers in America today are not “interested in making capitalism fairer, safer, and less racist. They know this is impossible. Rather, they want nothing less than to bring an end to ‘racial capitalism’” (23). The policy proposition that rose to prominence again this summer, in spite of uprisings and more imaginative visions for a just world, was instead to “buy Black” and “support Black businesses.” It was through the likes of Killer Mike, Beyoncé, and other members of the Black bourgeoisie who touted such demands rather than stand in line with the movement-building going on in the streets. Rihanna, for example, benefits from Black capitalism because her consumers consider supporting her business as “woke” even as it is financed and backed by white capital. “Buying Black” can act as a means not just towards individualizing the ends of this policy plan, whereby the owner of a particular business will reap the benefits of sale, but it also individualizes the way that we as citizens need to behave. We are asked to consume and spend more rather than create and collectively stand together. It is not that the Black elites are unaware of the conditions that working-class, poor Black people face, but rather they collectively have sought to propagate this vision of “Buying Black” as a means to an end to centuries of state-waged war against Black people - an end for which there is no economic policy that could help the masses. There is a reason why James Warren coined this group in 2005 “The Black Misleadership Class.” The Black bourgeoisie traffic misinformation and are purposefully complicit in the continued strife of the masses of Black people in the United States. If we hope to build a political and economic vision for a world where Black people are no longer exploited, oppressed, marginalized, or silenced, it is crucial that we seek to contextualize both the race and class position of Black people within American society to then mobilize against the Black bourgeois and against US racial capitalism. If history is anything to go by, we must be prepared to stand and organize together, collectively, against the Black Misleadership Class to build a world where Black people can truly be liberated. Endnotes 1 The term “Black bourgeoisie” used here is not directly related to E. Franklin Frazier’s text Black Bourgeoisie in which the term is used to refer to the Black middle class rather than the Black capitalist class. Along these lines, by the capitalist class, I am referring to the class that does not earn money solely through labor but also through the accumulation and exchange of assets. 2 Emmrich, Stuart, “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Press Conference Shows True Leadership During A Crisis.” 3 Robinson, Cedric, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, 2. 4 Ibid, 2. 5 Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick et al, "The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class,” 5. 6 Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, “Back to the Neoliberal Moment: Race Taxes and the Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1960s,” 189. 7 Ibid, 189. 8 Ibid, 191. 9 Ibid, 189. 10 Ibid, 195. 11 Thomas, Taylor Miller, “Coronavirus Relief Favors White Households, Leaving Many People of Color at Risk of Being Evicted.” 12 Chatelain, Marcia, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, 14. 13 Weems, Robert E., and Lewis A. Randolph, “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente,” 67. 14 Weems, 68. 15 Chatelain, Franchise, 15. 16 Ibid, 177. 17 Kendi, Ibram X, “A Battle between the Two Souls of America.” 18 Dawson, Michael C. and Meghan Ming Francis, “Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order,” 46. 19 Ibid, 48. 20 Ibid, 48. 21 Ball, Jared, The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power, 2. 22 Ibid, 2. 23 Robinson, Black Marxism, xi. Works Cited Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick, Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, and Emmanuel Nieves. Rep. The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class. Institute for Policy Studies, September 2017. https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Road-to-Zero-Wealth_FINAL.pdf . Ball, Jared A. The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Chatelain, Marcia. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. Liveright, 2020. Dawson, Michael C., and Megan Ming Francis. “Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order.” Public Culture, vol. 28, no. 1 78, 2015, pp. 23–62, https://doi.org/10.1086/685540 . Emmrich, Stuart. “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Press Conference Shows True Leadership During A Crisis.” Vogue, May 2020. Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeoisie. The Free Press, 1957. Kendi, Ibram X. “A Battle between the Two Souls of America.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, November 16, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/americas- two-souls/617062/ . Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Back to the Neoliberal Moment: Race Taxes and the Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1960s.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 2012. Thomas, Taylor Miller. “Coronavirus Relief Favors White Households, Leaving Many People of Color at Risk of Being Evicted.” POLITICO. POLITICO, August 7, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/07/coronavirus-relief-racial-eviction-392570 . Weems, Robert E., and Lewis A. Randolph. “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente.” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2001): 66–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193470103200104 . Previous Next

Author Name < Back Ronald Reagan and the Role of Humor in American Movement Conservatism Abie Rohrig In this paper, I argue that analysis of Reagan’s rhetoric, and particularly his humor, illuminates many of the attitudes and tendencies of both conservative fusionism—the combination of traditionalist conservatism with libertarianism—and movement conservatism. Drawing on Ted Cohen’s writings on the conditionality of humor, I assert that Reagan’s use of humor reflected two guiding principles of movement conservatism that distinguish it from other iterations of conservatism: its accessibility and its empowering message. First, Reagan’s jokes were accessible in that they are funny even to those who disagree with him politically; in Cohen’s terms, his jokes were hermetic (requiring a certain knowledge to be funny), and not effective (requiring a certain feeling or disposition to be funny). The broad accessibility of Reagan’s humor reflected the need of movement conservatism to unify constituencies with varying political feelings and interests. Second, Reagan’s jokes were empowering—they presume and therefore posit the competence of their audience. Many of his jokes implied that if an average citizen were in charge of the government they could do a far better job than status quo bureaucrats. This tone demonstrated the tendency of movement conservatism to emphasize individual freedom and self-governance as a through line of its constituent ideologies. In the first part of this paper, I offer some historical and political context for movement conservatism, emphasizing the ideological influences of Frank Meyer and William F. Buckley as well as the political influence of Barry Goldwater. I then discuss how Reagan infused many of Meyer, Buckley, and Goldwater’s talking points with a humor that is both accessible and empowering. I will conclude by analyzing how Reagan’s humor was a concrete manifestation of certain principles of fusionism. Post-war conservatives found themselves in a peculiar situation: their school of thought had varying constituencies, each with different political priorities and anxieties. George Nash writes in The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945 : “The Right consisted of three loosely related groups: traditionalists or new conservatives, appalled by the erosion of values and the emergence of a secular, rootless, mass society; libertarians, apprehensive about the threat of the State to private enterprise and individualism; and disillusioned ex-radicals and their allies, alarmed by international Communism” (p. 118). Conservative intellectuals like Frank Meyer and William F. Buckley attempted to synthesize conservative schools of thought into a coherent modern Right. In 1964, Meyer published What is Conservatism? , an anthology of conservative essays that highlight the similarities between different conservative schools of thought. Buckley founded the National Review , a conservative magazine that published conservatives of all three persuasions. Its Mission Statement simultaneously appeals to the abandonment of “organic moral order,” the indispensability of a “competitive price system,” and the “satanic utopianism” of communism. 2 Both Meyer and Buckley thought that the primacy of the individual was an ideological belief through the line of traditionalism and libertarianism. Meyer wrote in What is Conservatism? that “the freedom of the person” should be “decisive concern of political action and political theory.” 3 Russell Kirk, a traditionalist-leaning conservative, similarly argued that the libertarian imperative of individual freedom is compatible with the “Christian conception of the individual as flawed in mind and will” because religious virtue “cannot be legislated,” meaning that freedom and virtue can be practiced and developed together. 4 The cultivation of the maximum amount of freedom that is compatible with traditional order thus became central to fusionist thought. Barry Goldwater, a senator from Arizona and the 1964 Republican nominee for president, championed the hybrid conservatism of Buckley and Meyer. Like Buckley in his Mission Statement, Goldwater’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention included a compound message in support of “a free and competitive economy,” “moral leadership” that “looks beyond material success for the inner meaning of [our] lives,” and the fight against communism as the “principal disturber of peace in the world.” 5 Goldwater also emphasized the fusionist freedom-order balance, contending that while the “single resolve” of the Republican party is freedom, “liberty lacking order” would become “the license of the mob and of the jungle.” 6 Having discussed the ideological underpinnings of conservative fusionism, I turn now to an analysis of how Reagan used humor as a tool for political framing. First, Reagan’s humor is distinctive for its accessibility: by this I mean that there are few barriers one must overcome to laugh at Reagan’s jokes. In his book Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters , philosopher Ted Cohen calls jokes “conditional” if they presume that “their audiences [are] able to supply a requisite background, and exploit this background.” 7 The conditionality of a joke varies according to how much background it requires to be funny. In Cohen’s terms, Reagan’s jokes are not very conditional since many different audiences can appreciate their content. Cohen presents another distinction that is useful for analyzing Reagan’s humor: a joke is hermetic if the audience’s “background condition involves knowledge,” and it is affective if it “depends upon feelings … likes, dislikes and preferences” of the audience). Reagan’s jokes are not very conditional because they are at most hermetic, merely requiring some background knowledge to be appreciated— not a certain feeling or disposition— and that this makes his jokes funny even to people who disagree with him. There are two ways in which Reagan’s humor is accessible. The first is that many of his jokes have apolitical premises. By apolitical, I mean that the requisite knowledge required to make a joke funny does not directly relate to government or public affairs. For instance, Reagan said at the 1988 Republican National Convention, “I can still remember my first Republican Convention. Abraham Lincoln giving a speech that sent tingles down my spine.” To appreciate this joke, one only needs to know that Reagan is the oldest president to even hold office. This piece of knowledge does not pertain to the government in any direct way— in fact, this joke would remain funny even if it were told by a different person at a nonpolitical conference with a reference to a nonpolitical historical figure. Another example of Reagan’s apolitical humor is a joke he made in the summer of 1981: “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.” All one needs to understand here is that long meetings are often boring and sleep-inducing. One can even love long meetings and still find this joke funny because they understand the phenomenon of a boring, sleep-inducing meeting. Reagan made hundreds of these jokes during his time in office, all of which were, with few exceptions, funny to just about any listener. Their apolitical content ensured that no one political constituency would be unable to “get” Reagan’s jokes. The second way in which Reagan’s humor is hermetic is that his political jokes were playful and had relatively innocuous premises, meaning that one did not have to agree with their sentiment to laugh. Reagan’s political jokes can be differentiated from his apolitical jokes because they do require knowledge about government or public affairs in order to be funny. One such piece of knowledge is the inefficiency of government bureaucracy. For example, in his speech, “A Time for Choosing,” Reagan says that “the nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this Earth is a government program.” In another speech, Reagan quips, “I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.” The premises of these jokes, though political, are not very contentious. To find them funny one simply needs to know that bureaucracy can be inefficient, or even that there exists a sort of joke in which bureaucracies are teased for being inefficient; one does not need to hate bureaucracy or even want to reduce bureaucracy. Cohen might offer the following analogy to explain the conditionality of Reagan’s bureaucracy jokes: one does not need to think that Polish people are actually stupid to laugh at a Polish joke, one simply needs to understand that there exists a sort of joke in which Polish people are held to be stupid. Reagan’s inoffensive political jokes are playful, lighthearted, and careful not to alienate or antagonize the opposition by presuming a controversial belief. The accessibility of Reagan’s humor reflects the overall need for fusionism to appeal to a wide variety of conservative groups— traditionalists, libertarians and anti-communists. Instead of converting libertarians to traditionalism or vice versa, Nash writes that fusionists looked to foster agreement on “several fundamentals” of conservative thought. Reagan’s broadly accessible humor is both a concretization and a strategy for fusionism’s broadly accessible ideology. The strategic potency of Reagan’s humor lies in its ability to bond people together. Cohen writes that the “deep satisfaction in successful joke transactions is the sense held mutually by teller and hearer that they are joined in feeling.” Friedrich Nietzsche expresses a similar sentiment when he writes that “rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.” This joint feeling brings people together even more than a shared belief since the moment of connection is more visceral and immediate. One might ask, however; is it not the case that all politicians value humor as a means to connect with their audience and unify their constituencies? Why is Reagan’s humor any different? While humor can be used for a broader range of political goals, politicians often connect with one group at the expense of another. For example, when asked what she would tell a male supporter who believed marriage was between one man and one woman, Senator Elizabeth Warren responded, “just marry one woman. I'm cool with that— assuming you can find one.” 9 Some democrats praised this joke for its dismissal of homophobic beliefs, but others felt that the joke was condescending and antagonistic. This is the sort of divisive joke that Reagan was uninterested in— one that pleases one of his constituencies at the expense of another. Reagan would also avoid much of Donald Trump’s humor. For instance, Trump wrote in 2016, “I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!” Trump’s dismissal of “political correctness” is liberating to some but offensive to others. By contrast, Reagan’s exoteric style of humor welcomes all the constituencies of conservative fusion. Nash writes that fusionists were “tired of factional feuding,” and thus Reagan had no motivation to drive a larger wedge between traditionalists and libertarians. 1 The second thing to note about Reagan’s humor is its empowering tone. This takes two forms. First, Reagan elevates his audience by implying that if they controlled the government, they could do a far better job, a message which presumes and therefore posits their competence. For instance, in “A Time For Choosing,” Reagan argues that one complicated anti-poverty program could be made more effective by simply sending cash directly to families. In doing so, Reagan suggests that if any given audience member were in charge of the program, they could do a better job than the bureaucrats. Second, Reagan’s insistence on limited government affirms the average citizen’s capacity for self-government. Reagan famously states that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Since this implies that government aid will leave you worse off, it also posits the average citizen’s capacity for autonomy and therefore their maturity, level-headedness, and overall competence. The empowering tone of Reagan’s humor reflects fusionism’s emphasis on individual freedom and independence. Meyer writes that “the desecration of the image of man, the attack alike upon his freedom and his transcendent dignity, provide common cause” for both traditionalists and libertarians against liberals. Yet, a presupposition of a belief in freedom is a belief in people’s faculty to be free, to not squander their freedom on pointless endeavors or let their freedom collapse into chaos. This freedom-order balance is fundamental to fusionism as an ideology that straddles support from libertarians who want as little government intervention as possible with traditionalists who want the state to maintain certain societal values. By positing the competence of the free individual in his jokes, Reagan affirms Russell Kirk’s idea that moral order will arise organically from individual freedom, not government coercion. In this paper, I argue that one of Reagan’s marks on the development of conservative thought was his careful use of humor to reflect certain ideological and practical commitments of post-war fusionism. By making his jokes accessible to the varying schools of conservatism and propounding the capacity of the individual for self-government, Reagan’s humor functioned as both a manifestation and a strategy for fusionism’s post-war triumph. References “A Selected Quote From: The President’s News Conference, August 12, 1986.” August 12, 1986 Reagan Quotes and Speeches. Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute. Accessed August 6, 2022. https://www.reaganfoundation.org/ronald-reagan/reagan-quotes-speeches/news-conference-1/ . Buckley Jr., William F. "Our Mission Statement." National Review 19 (1955). Campbell, Colin. 2016. “Donald Trump Announces to the World That He Won’t Call Megyn Kelly a ‘Bimbo.’” Insider . January 27, 2016. https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-fox-news-debate-megyn-kelly-bimbo-2016-1 . Cohen, Ted. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. “‘George - Make It One More for the Gipper.’” The Independent. August 16, 1998. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/george-make-it-one-more-for-the-gipper-1172284.html . “Goldwater’s 1964 Acceptance Speech.” Washington Post. Last Modified 1998. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm . Harris, Daniel I. "Friendship as Shared Joy in Nietzsche." Symposium 19, no. 1, (2015): 199-221. Meyer, Frank S., ed. What is Conservatism? Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2015. Open Road Media. Nash, George H. The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 . Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2014. Open Road Media. Panetta, Grace. 2019. “Elizabeth Warren Brings Down the House at CNN LGBT Town Hall With a Fiery Answer on Same-Sex Marriage.” Insider . October 11, 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/elizabeth-warren-brings-down-house-cnn-lgbt-town-hall-video-2019-10 . Reagan, Ronald. “A Time for Choosing.” Transcript of speech delivered in Los Angeles, CA, October 27, 1964. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/reagans/ronald-reagan/time-choosing-speech-october-27-1964#:~:text=%22The%20Speech%22%20is%20what%20Ronald,his%20acting%20career%20closed%20out . Sherrin, Ned, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations . 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Wilson, John. Talking With the President: The Pragmatics of Presidential Language . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Jasmine Bacchus Tribes and Tribulations: Character as Property in Survivor Jasmine Bacchus Almost 600 contestants have appeared on the US version of Survivor , with only 82 of those contestants (approximately 13%) identifying as Black. Over the past twenty years, Black Survivor contestants have expressed that their portrayal on the edited version of the show misrepresents their lived experiences on and off the island. In 2020, a group of Black alumni joined together to produce a series of panels and discussions on race in Survivor and have argued that CBS, the show’s broadcasting network, has a responsibility to accurately and appropriately represent the experiences of their contestants of color. This paper explores character as a form of property and aims to showcase how intellectual property rights and the right to publicity function within the context of reality television. Ultimately, I argue that networks, such as CBS, should aim to balance their desire to produce an entertaining show with genuine attempts to accurately tell the stories of Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC). After showcasing how CBS’s ownership of their contestant’s characters has uniquely harmed Black contestants, I will suggest steps CBS can take to improve their portrayals. I. Character on Survivor Survivor is an American television show created by Mark Burnett in 2000. The premise of the show is that 16-20 players, called “castaways,” are brought to a deserted island. The castaways are put into two teams, called “tribes.” In each episode, the two tribes compete against each other in a series of challenges. The losing tribe goes to “Tribal Council” where they collectively vote one player off of the island. This pattern continues until there are only two or three contestants left in the game; the final players then face a “jury” consisting of the last seven players that have been voted out of the game. The final players give speeches and the jury members cast their vote for the player they want to win the game. The winner receives the title of “Sole Survivor” and $1,000,000. As a reality TV show, Survivor is known for its memorable characters and character moments. When the show originally aired in 2000, one of the earliest marketing points was that the game was bringing sixteen people from different “walks of life”; the significance of bringing together different socioeconomic, racial, and geographic backgrounds made the show a televised social experiment. While the show still claims to bring together a diverse group of players, at home, audience members see characters carefully crafted by the network, rather than raw footage of sixteen strangers. The discrepancy between reality and their portrayal is what has sparked action from Black Survivor alumni. During the casting and editing process, contestants are typically shaped to fit specific archetypes. While Survivor producers aim to get contestants from a range of archetypes each season, many times Black contestants are repeatedly cast into the same roles or emphasized for the same shortcomings. Gervase Peterson (Season 1), Osten Taylor (S7), Tasha Fox (S31), and Keith Sowell (S38) received major storylines about their inability to swim, contributing to the harmful stereotype that “Black people can’t swim.” Alicia Calaway (S2) is primarily remembered for being aggressive and JoAnna Ward (S6) was shown as “overly religious.” Likewise, contestants NaOnka Mixon (21), Nick Brown (S2), and J’Tia Hart were primarily shown as being “lazy” and nonstrategic and were frequently shown taking naps and not participating in camp work. This seems to suggest that “laziness” is one of their core personality traits when in fact outside of the game, Mixon was a physical education teacher, Brown was a Harvard Law Student, and Hart was a nuclear engineer with a Ph.D. (1). Black contestants have argued that these repetitive, one-sided portrayals ignore the fact that the Black Survivor community is not a monolith. The contestants are multifaceted people, but by shoehorning them into the same narratives every season, they are inaccurately portraying the true personas of the contestants. While producers can only work with the footage they are given, Black contestants have argued that the showrunners focus on turning the footage into memorable moments without also highlighting their gameplay and strategy. While a white contestant may be given both a fun edit and strategic moments, Black contestants often are only highlighted when they do something to support their assigned archetype. These one-sided portrayals come at the expense of giving the contestants “proper credit” for the positive contributions they made to the game. Vecepia “Vee” Towery, winner of Survivor: Marquesas and the first African American contestant to win the game, has been known throughout the Survivor community for being a “boring” and “nonstrategic” player, yet during one of the Black Voices of Survivor panels, Vecepia spoke out about her edit: They flipped it and made me look like I was under the radar like I didn’t do anything to win that game. Even to the point that when we were watch- ing the episodes, people on my season would call me and email me like ‘that didn’t happen like that. Why didn’t they show you doing that?’ and I’m sitting there like I have no idea (2). With instances like Vecepia’s occurring regularly, Black Survivor contestants have joined together to campaign for better representation. Black alumni shared their stories in a series of podcasts known as the “Black Voices of Survivor”; the series is accompanied by a petition sent to CBS, which called for “anti-racism”; specifically, they called for CBS to “Ensure that cultural elements of the experiences of BIPOC are not exploited and their portrayal does not perpetuate harmful stereotypes” (3). This raises the question: to what extent do Black contestants have ownership over how they are portrayed on the show? The following sections explore the concept of a “reality tv character” and examine how intellectual property (IP) and publicity laws can be used to give individuals and corporations ownership over characters. II. Character as Property I believe that property functions in this setting as a means of character owner- ship. Denise Martinez defines “character” as “the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of a person” (4). These traits and features are constructed by various elements, including the person’s “physical appearance, their background and personality, the words they use and the actions they take” (5). As I discuss character in this paper, I am referring to the aggregate of a contestant’s personalities, appearances, and actions, that edited together, make “a character.” Personality is a key component used to build a character. Deborah Halbert breaks a reality TV star’s personality into three parts. There is the “human persona,” which is the person in their everyday life, a functional persona, which represents the archetypal character the network aims to project, and a hybrid persona, which contains elements of both (6). What we see on television is the hybrid persona, where the “Reality TV star’s personality is combined with producer-controlled storylines and edits” (7). This, combined with other elements of their wardrobe and back- ground, create a reality TV character. Thus, the tension between the contestants and the network is over the ownership of these characters. By “character ownership,” I mean control over how the character, including the hybrid persona, is displayed in the edited final cut of the television show and any appearances of the character afterward. The law views character ownership in a couple of ways. Both IP and publicity rights have been invoked to claim ownership over a character. Reality TV characters, however, do not tend to receive intellectual property protections. In order for a character to be eligible for copyright, the creator must prove that the character is 1) “sufficiently Distinctive So as to Constitute an Original Expression” and 2) “constitute the story being told” (8). Martinez argues that reality TV characters are not sufficiently distinctive, as their “hairstyle, hair color, clothing (costume), and scenery change from one episode or season of a reality TV show to another”(9). Likewise, with ensemble casts, a singular Survivor contestant would not “constitute the story being told”: in other words, if that contestant was removed from the season, the show would still be able to proceed (10). While stereotypes themselves cannot be trademarked, trademarked characters, such as “Aunt Jemima,” have perpetuated negative stereotypes about the Black community (11). Some reality stars have sought trademark protection over certain aspects of their character as a way of claiming ownership over their “personal brand” (12). In the early days of Survivor , some contestants would use their experience on the show to propel them to higher celebrity statuses with hopes of making money off of their appearances (13). Contestants who received poor edits might have been excluded from those opportunities, however, even those who were offered opportunities were often denied participation by CBS.14 Sean Rector (S4) described his experience with this, stating “many of the opportunities that were offered to me from different networks, and even Viacom, were denied to me by SEG/Survivor and yet my image and catchphrases [are] exploited on merchandise and monetized by various different entities and I couldn’t even mention Survivor let alone try and make a living off of my experience” (15). While there is an interesting argument to be made that contestants are being robbed of the opportunity to profit off of their personal brand, I am primarily concerned about situations where CBS’s ownership of Black and POC characters cause contestants to be disproportionately affected relative to white contestants. While BIPOC contestants may experience less accurate portrayals than their counterparts, all contestants lack the ability to trademark these aspects of their brand. Ultimately, the ability to profit off of their appearance does not seem to be the primary concern raised by the Black Survivor alumni. III. The Survivor Contract What I see as the primary property issue here is the right to publicity, which “protects against the unauthorized appropriation of a person’s name, likeness, portrait, picture, voice and other indicia of identity or persona” (16). Survivor contestants give up their right to publicity when they sign the participation contract. During the early stages of the casting process, contestants who wish to continue in the casting process must sign a contract that releases their right to their portrayal during the show and after it airs. Deborah Herbert explains, “the contract grants CBS all rights to the name and likeness of the application, forever, even if the application is not recognizable” (17). If they are selected to participate on the show, “anything related to Survivor becomes the property of CBS” (18). Not only does the contract give CBS the rights to control how they are portrayed, but the network maintains full control over their “life story,” and this control extends after the show airs (19). Thus, once a contestant signs the contract, they relinquish any right to their storylines or narratives on the show, and technically cannot do or say anything after the show to contradict anything that was portrayed onscreen with- out facing a potential penalty (20). As a result, any interviews, talk shows, books, or appearances a contestant wants to make for at least three years after the show airs must be cleared by CBS first. With CBS having control over their narratives on the show and actions afterward, Black contestants have struggled to find ways to reshape their characters outside after the show has aired. Two of the four Black Survivor winners have expressed a desire to participate in positive outreach to the Black community after their show, however, they received little to no support from CBS to do so. Earl Cole, the winner of Survivor’s fourteenth season , Survivor: Fiji, was the first Black man to win the show and the first contestant to receive a unanimous vote at the end of the game. During “The Black Voices of Survivor: Roundtable,” Earl explained that after he won the show, CBS gave him a structured list of appearances and interviews to make. Earl noticed that most of the venues he was scheduled to speak at catered to a predominately white audience and asked CBS if he could make additional appearances at venues where he was more likely to reach a Black audience. However, he was met with opposition from the network. He explained: I thought that CBS would use this as an opportunity to actually try to get more Black viewers...[but] nothing happened. They did nothing for me. They didn’t promote me in any kind of way...like hey you know a Black dude just won for the first time, won unanimously...[But] I never got any of those opportunities, no promotional things, no marketing things (21). Wendell Holland, winner of S urvivor: Ghost Island experienced similar frustra- tion when trying to obtain access to clips from the show for speaking engagements. Wendell described his experience to the group, stating: We [the four Black winners] want to be great ambassadors for Survivor . We want to go to the community...scream from the mountaintops that we were on Survivor ...I spoke at so many places and I tried my hardest to acquire things. I would try to get clips from my show, I’d go through the proper channels, I would send messages to the people at CBS and they make me jump through so many hoops, and ultimately they wouldn’t give me anything, that I could show to like 700 kids (22). The anecdotes from Earl and Wendell showcase how little agency contestants have once they sign the contract and agree to participate on the show. While the argument can be made that players could have read the contract and refused to sign it, often reality TV contestants have limited legal understanding and when faced with a 100+ page document they may feel overwhelmed or unable to digest it all. While perhaps contestants should read the contract with an attorney present, often reality tv contestants are given a limited amount of time to sign and feel pressured to do so before the network replaces them with another candidate (23). In an interview for Entertainment Weekly, Sean Rector expressed regret for how the contract signing process went down, stating: I rarely have regrets in life, but if there were some regrets after doing the show, it would have been that I wished I would’ve legally understood the SEG/Survivor contract I signed. I wished they would’ve had more transparency and explanation as to why certain people were able to capitalize off of their experience and others were not (24). With the pressure to sign quickly and no legal counsel provided by CBS, Survivor contestants have signed away their right to publicity for the rest of their lives, making it challenging for contestants to remedy harmful on-screen portrayals. VI. Race and Character Portrayal – Finding Balance Given the extensive contracts they signed when they auditioned for the show, Black Survivor contestants do not retain any rights to publicity over their Survivor character. CBS has economic incentives to continue to structure their contracts in this manner, however as more stories of Black contestants begin to be made public, the network is facing pressure to better characterize their BIPOC contestants. Thus, if CBS continues to require contestants to sign away their right to publicity, they still may be held accountable when it comes to handling the characterization and life stories of marginalized individuals. Thus, how can networks balance exercising their autonomy over character creation (to craft an entertaining show), without putting marginalized groups in a position where they are forced to connect their likenesses to harmful stereotypes? In this final section, I will explain how and why CBS should take steps to better characterize their contestants of color, and how they can do so, without modifying their contract. Unique Harms to Black Contestants A negative reality television edit has the potential to harm any contestant, how- ever, I believe that stereotypical portrayals of predominantly Black contestants create unique harms to the Black community. In her study of race on reality TV shows, Katrina Bell-Jordan writes that reality television can “shape the reality of race and racism in the US” (25). For BIPOC contestants, their character portrayals shape not only their personal image, but how our society views African Americans. Bell-Jordan explains that the “editing and framing of footage depicting the experiences of ‘real’ people have the power to shape our understandings of the people, places and sociocultural issues presented on these programs” (26). People who watch Survivor may have limited real-life experience interacting with the Black community. Thus, portrayals of Black contestants can directly shape the way a person views the community. Likewise, at this point, many Black contestants have recognized how important it is to be depicted in a non-harmful light, and thus multiple Black castaways have spoken out about the pressure they felt to positively represent their ethnic group and avoid any editing traps while on the show. Thus, these players enter the show aiming to “dispel the myths about their respective group” (27). Often, they spend additional energy not only trying to play the game but being hyper-aware of their surroundings and their actions, so they can avoid alienating their tribe. This pressure is two-pronged. For example, while a white contestant may feel comfortable taking a nap after helping catch food for dinner, a Black contestant may feel an additional pressure to stay active, as they would not want their nap to become their main storyline. They are likely aware of the “lazy” stereotype that has been pushed on previous Black contestants and will want to make sure their fellow castaways have no evidence of them being lazy (as this would likely lead to them being voted out). They may also feel an additional level of anxiety around the producer’s ability to push the stereotype on them. While all castaways regardless of race are thinking about their in-game relationships and the final edit, Black castaways experience a unique pressure to avoid falling into stereotypical narratives historically pushed by the show. Navigating these one-dimensional negative portrayals may also make it more challenging for players to be invited back to play Survivor again. Many contestants dream about the chance to be invited back; another chance gives them more exposure, another once-in-a-lifetime experience, and another chance to win $1,000,000. Thus, not being invited back is incredibly disappointing to many players. Black alumni expressed frustration when Vecepia, the first Black contestant to win and the only Black woman to win, was one of the only winners not invited to play in the “All-Winners” season of Survivor . Unpopular characters are less likely to be invited back to play Survivor again; contestants with poor edits are often perceived negatively by the fanbase and thus denied another invitation. However, refusing to play into a stereotype may cause a player to be disliked by production, which could still lead to a negative edit (albeit a different one) or being “black- listed” from future invitations. Out of the 103 contestants who have been invited back to the show, only 11 of the invited castaways are Black (28). Knowing that they are invited back at a lower rate, Black and other BIPOC contestants face another level of complexity not faced by their white counterparts. Lastly, unbalanced edits can lead to Black stories being completely ignored. During Season 38 Julia Carter was the only Black castaway in her tribe. During the first few nights of the game, a fellow castaway used a racial slur. Julia reported feeling uncomfortable but remained silent due to a desire not to make her tribe uncomfortable or put a “target” on her back. Eventually, a white castaway stepped in and confronted the other contestant. After this incident occurred, Julia hoped that once aired, it would create a dialogue amongst viewers about language and race. However, CBS chose not to air any part of this incident, and many speculate that this was done to protect the reputation of the castaway who said the slur (29). In fact, Julia is known for being virtually erased from the entire season, receiving very few confessionals or moments at all (30). This story only came to light after Julia wrote an essay about the incident after the show aired. Unfortunately, Julia’s story of unaired racial incidents is not unique. When the edit chooses to ignore these contestant narratives altogether, they invalidate the lived experiences of Black contestants, while making no effort to make the game a more comfortable space for BIPOC players. Network Incentives to Address these Harms As I mentioned earlier, for many viewers, characters and their storylines are what makes a show like Survivor so interesting. Building drama, creating conflict, and putting contestants in challenging situations are essential parts of the show, and to do that effectively, production companies need to have blanket approval from the contestants. The contract enables CBS to have control over these creative elements of the show. By owning each contestant’s right to publicity, the network has creative freedom to produce a show that is entertaining to the public. Likewise, character creation is a time consuming, creative process. Retaining rights to these characters serves as an economic incentive for the company to create compelling ones that will generate high viewership. Likewise, part of being a reality TV contestant is the willingness to put yourself out there and risk potential failures or humiliations that may occur (31). Contestants should expect that any negative footage obtained is fair game to be used for the show. Likewise, the comprehensive contract allows producers to obtain “genuine” footage from contestants. Some aspects of Survivor , like the “gross” food eating challenges, are centered around the contestants not knowing what they are going to face. If contestants were to be given a contract that revealed everything that would happen to them, it would remove elements of drama and make it much less satisfying to watch their reactions (32). If CBS was required to receive editing approval from each contestant before airing a show, likely we would never see any conflicts (artificial or genuine), mess-ups, or moments of stupidity. While a contestant may not feel like they “signed up to be portrayed as an idiot,” by virtue of the genre, players should expect some level of humiliation. However, I believe that the harms created by CBS’s current portrayals combined with their contract make the game uniquely challenging for BIPOC players beyond the reasonable expectation of humiliation and drama. The game of Survivor is not “fair”—every player will experience varying levels of luck throughout their time on the show. However, the show is edited in a way that portrays, to the audience, a level of “fairness.” We are led to believe that at the start of the show, for all intents and purposes, each contestant has a relatively fair shot of winning. Yet, Black contestants are not only trying to play the game, but they also attempt to dodge negative stereotypes and positively represent their entire group, all while navigating their complex relationship with production. There is a whole new level of challenge for these contestants. One group of people consistently facing additional hurdles and challenges undermines this illusion of “fairness” that the network tries to create. Continuing to ignore these inherent disadvantages faced by players delegitimizes the game of Survivor . As these issues come to light, the show is at risk of losing the element of com- petition that makes the audience want to turn in each week to find out who moves on. Likewise, as the Black Survivors have begun to speak out about their concerns, CBS has faced lots of negative publicity for how they treat BIPOC contestants. As more Black contestants share negative experiences, future applicants of color may be deterred from applying to be on the show. CBS has already received negative publicity surrounding this issue, but a season of all white contestants would possibly put the show over the edge. Thus, the network now has two incentives to tackle this issue 1) the incentive to continue to stage Survivor as a “fair game” and 2) the incentive to respond to the negative publicity. I recognize that CBS has the economic motive to produce an entertaining show; retaining the right to publicity over their characters and IP ownership over their recordings gives them an incentive to create quality content. I do not believe that CBS needs to modify their contract as it currently exists. However, the network also has an incentive to improve the way they tell Black stories. The network should take steps to make these improvements. Suggestions for CBS Without modifying their contract, the Survivor team should take steps to minimize future harmful portrayals in the first place. The petition sent by the Sole Survivors Organization asked CBS to hire more BIPOC producers, casting directors, and editors to increase the likelihood that diverse stories are being told in a way that is respectful and accurate (33). A more diverse team would be more equipped to think about representing new archetypes and displaying important parts of each BIPOC castaway’s “life stories.” Likewise, CBS should also make it a priority to cast a more diverse group of players. Some of the pressure tied to a contestant’s feeling like they must “represent for their race” is the fact that Black contestants are only 13% of all players. Often, Black players find themselves one of maybe two African American contestants on a season. The limited amount of representation makes the stakes of an accurate portrayal even higher. The Sole Survivor Organization suggested 30% of the cast each season to people of color (34) and CBS has publicly expressed intent to work towards achieving a similar goal (35). Moving forward, the network should work to increase the number of diverse voices at all stages of production. Likewise, CBS should encourage contestants to speak out against inaccurate portrayals as they see fit. As we have seen with the Black Voices of Survivor podcast, contestants have already begun to speak about their experiences without authorization from the network. I believe that dialogues such as the Black Voices of Survivor should not only be permitted but encouraged; if contestants are encouraged to speak up, stories of stereotypical portrayals made public will put more pressure on the network to do a better job in future seasons. In cases where Black winners, like Wendell and Earl, want to speak in the Black community, the network should be more open to giving them access to materials from the show. No modification to their contract has to be made, but the network should be more diligent about approving and supporting the speaking engagements of BIPOC contestants. V. Conclusion Throughout this paper, I have showcased how Black Survivor contestants have felt inaccurately portrayed by CBS and I have examined their desire to receive ownership over their on-screen characters. The unique harms experienced by Black contestants reveal that an understanding of property driven by economic incentives can cause great harm to specific groups of people. I recognize that CBS’s property claims enable them to create compelling characters and produce their show without fear of interference from disgruntled contestants, however, their absolute character ownership has uniquely harmed BIPOC contestants. Thus, I suggested that CBS increase diversity amongst all aspects of the filming process and to encourage BIPOC contestants to speak up when they feel uncomfortable with their edit. While neither of these options will give these contestants the ability to trademark their catchphrases or control their edit, it is a step towards eliminating the pressures that come with harmful portrayals. Our systems do not seem to recognize when the creations we fostered create harmful, negative externalities. We seem to rely on the market to naturally eliminate creations that do more harm than good. In the case of CBS, public reaction is the only way to gauge if their show is net positive for society, however, controlling the contestant’s right to publicity functions as a way of managing public reaction through limiting public interactions. Thus, this issue is important to a discussion about property because it highlights how the economic benefits of property rights can lead to negative externalities that uniquely harm marginalized communities. In this case, property rights seem to foster innovation, but there is no formal system in place to check if the innovation, Survivor , is continuing to positively impact society (or even, a structured way to measure what constitutes a “net positive im- pact”). In this case, property rights do not have to be a zero-sum game where either the producers or the contestants are satisfied. Hopefully, the external pressure caused by the public will push CBS to engage with their BIPOC contestants. However, I recognize that the network may choose not to make any changes to their production teams or processes. Therefore, this issue has showcased to me that while property laws can foster creativity, they can also create societal harms that uniquely harm groups of people. Endnotes 1 Office of Economic Impact and Diversity. “Dr. J’Tia Hart.” Energy.gov, www.energy.gov/diversity/ contributors/dr-j-tia-hart. 2 Rob Has a Podcast, director. Black Voices of Survivor: Changing the Game of Survivor. YouTube, 1 Sept. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7_rju1pneQ. 3 The Soul Survivors Organization, and J’Tia Heart. “A Petition for Anti-Racism Action by Survivor Entertainment Group.” MoveOn, June 2020, sign.moveon.org/petitions/a-petition-for-anti-racism-action-by- survivor-entertainment-group-2. 4 Martinez, Denise. “Character Ownership in Reality TV”. p. 5. 5 Ibid. 6 Halbert, Debora. “Who Owns Your Personality: Reality Television and Publicity Rights.” Survivor Lessons Essays on Communication and Reality Television, by Matthew J. Smith and Andrew F.. Wood, McFarland & Company, 2003, p. 42. 7 Martinez, Denise. “Character Ownership in Reality TV.” p. 6. 8 Ibid, p. 8. 9 Ibid, 11. 10 Ibid, 13 11 Greene, K.J. “Intellectual Property at the Intersection of Race and Gender: Lady Sings the Blues.” American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, vol. 16, no. 3, 2008, p. 375. 12 Greene, K.J. “Right of Publicity, Identity, and Performance K .J. Greene Article 4.” Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal, vol. 28, no. 4, 1 Oct. 2012, p. 870. 13 Collins, Sue. “Making the Most out of 15 Minutes.” Television &New Media, vol. 9, no. 2, Mar. 2008, p. 88, tvnm.sagepub.com. 14 Halbert, Debora. “Who Owns Your Personality” p.44. 15 Ross, Dalton. “Sean Rector Speaks out on Never Being Asked Back for ‘Survivor’.” EW.com, 9 Nov. 2020, ew.com/tv/survivor-marquesas-sean-rector-quarantine-questionnaire/. 16 Greene, K.J. “Right of Publicity” p. 866. 17 Halbert, Debora. “Who Owns Your Personality” p.44. 18 Ibid, 44. 19 Blair, Jennifer L. “Surviving Reality TV: The Ultimate Challenge for Reality Show Contestants.” Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review, vol. 31, no. 1, 2010-2011, p. 1-26. HeinOnline. 20 Halbert, Debora. “Who Owns Your Personality” p.44. 21 Rob Has A Podcast. “Black Voices of SURVIVOR Roundtable LIVE - June 24, 2020.” 22 YouTube, YouTube, 24 June 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqJM_05fFuk. JTiaPhD. “Tribes and Tribulations.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 June 2020, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=K7YK4DjRQwI. 23 Blair, Jennifer L. “Surviving Reality TV” p. 20. 24 Ross, Dalton. “Sean Rector Speaks out on Never Being Asked Back for ‘Survivor’.” EW.com, 9 Nov. 2020, ew.com/tv/survivor-marquesas-sean-rector-quarantine-questionnaire/. 25 Bell-Jordan, Katrina E. “Black.White. and a Survivor of The Real World: Constructions of Race on Reality TV.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 25, no. 4, Oct. 2008, p. 357. 26 Bell-Jordan, Katrina E. “Black.White,” p. 368. 27 Ibid, p. 353. 28 Survivor Wiki. “Returning Players.” Survivor Wiki, survivor.fandom.com/wiki/Returning_Players. 29 r/Survivor. “r/Survivor - Can Someone Explain to Me What Happened with Joe and Julia from Eoe and What Shes Ranting about? Is Joe Really Racist...” Reddit, Nov. 2020. 30 Eager Tortoise. “The Real Reason Julia Was Upset About Her Edit .” YouTube, YouTube, 6 Dec. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCXaYeHROT0. 31 Mendible, Myra. “Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV.” Feminist Media Studies , vol. 4, no. 3, Jan. 2004. 32 Blair, Jennifer L. “Surviving Reality TV” p.19-20. 33 The Soul Survivors Organization, and J’Tia Heart. “A Petition for Anti-Racism Action by Survivor Entertainment Group.” MoveOn, June 2020, sign.moveon.org/petitions/a-petition-for-anti-racism-action-by- survivor-entertainment-group-2. 34 Ibid. 35 Hauser, Christine. “‘Survivor’ and Other Reality Shows Will Feature More Diverse Casts, CBS Says.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Nov. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/business/media/cbs-reality- tv-diversity.html. 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Halbert, Debora. “Who Owns Your Personality: Reality Television and Publicity Rights.” Survivor Lessons Essays on Communication and Reality Television , by Matthew J. Smith and Andrew F.. Wood, McFarland & Company, 2003, pp. 37–56. Hauser, Christine. “‘Survivor’ and Other Reality Shows Will Feature More Di- verse Casts, CBS Says.” The New York Times , The New York Times, 11 Nov. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/business/media/cbs-reali- ty-tv-diversity.html. JTiaPhD. “Tribes and Tribulations.” YouTube , YouTube, 27 June 2020, www.you- tube.com/watch? v=K7YK4DjRQwI. Mendible, Myra. “Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV.” Feminist Media Studies , vol. 4, no. 3, Jan. 2004. Office of Economic Impact and Diversity. “Dr. J’Tia Hart.” Energy.gov , www.ener- gy.gov/diversity/contributors/dr-j-tia-hart. r/Survivor. “r/Survivor - Can Someone Explain to Me What Happened with Joe and Julia from Eoe and What Shes Ranting about? Is Joe Really Racist...” Reddit , Nov. 2020, www.reddit.com/r/survivor/comments/jo012s/can_ someone_explain_to_me_what_happened_with_joe/?utm_source=share. Rob Has a Podcast, director. Black Voices of Survivor: Changing the Game of Survivor . YouTube , 1 Sept. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7_rju1pneQ. Rob Has A Podcast. “Black Voices of SURVIVOR Roundtable LIVE - June 24, 2020.” YouTube , YouTube, 24 June 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq- JM_05fFuk. Ross, Dalton. “Sean Rector Speaks out on Never Being Asked Back for ‘Survivor’.” EW.com, 9 Nov. 2020, ew.com/tv/survivor-marquesas-sean-rector-quaran- tine-questionnaire/. The Soul Survivors Organization, and J’Tia Heart. “A Petition for Anti-Racism Action by Survivor Entertainment Group.” MoveOn , June 2020, sign. moveon.org/petitions/a-petition-for-anti- racism-action-by-survivor-enter- tainment-group-2. Survivor Wiki. “African-American Contestants.” Survivor Wiki , survivor.fandom. com/wiki/Category:African-American_Contestants. Survivor Wiki. “Returning Players.” Survivor Wiki , survivor.fandom.com/wiki/Re- turning_Players. Previous Next

Mark Carney The Road to Glasgow is Paved with Data Mark Carney In a little over a year, the world will converge physically and virtually on Glasgow for COP26 hosted the United Kingdom in partnership with Italy. It will then be six years after the landmark Paris Accord, and the stakes could not be higher. Despite prolonged lockdowns of large swathes of the global economy, the earth’s car- bon budget continues to be rapidly depleted, the physical risks of climate change continue to mount, and the sixth mass extinction continues to progress. Paris was a triumph of commitment and process. Commitment by [193] governments to limit temperature rises to below 2 degrees, with a stretch target of 1.5 degrees. Process in the innovation of Nationally Determined Contributions, whereby countries set their own pledges, and the world transparently added them up to see whether those efforts did the job. That calculation, 2.8 degrees of warm- ing even if all countries fulfilled their pledges, was as sobering as it was disciplined. And it set the tone on the road to Glasgow: climate policy in the public and private spheres would be driven by data and data analytics because slogans won’t solve an existential crisis. In the event, many countries have fallen short of their pledges, and the IPCC estimates that the world is on course for up to 4 degree warming by the end of the century. At current rates of emissions, we have less than a decade left to stay within the carbon budget that keeps temperature rises below 1.5 degrees with 50% probability. Getting back on track will require a redoubling of public efforts and a quantum change in private investment. The IEA estimates that the low-carbon transition could require $3.5trn in energy sector investments every year for decades – twice the rate at present. Under their scenario, in order for carbon to stabilise by 2050, nearly 95% of electricity supply will need to be low carbon, 70% of new cars electric, and the CO2 intensity of the building sector will need to fall by 80%. For private markets to anticipate and smooth the transition to a net zero world, they need the right reporting, risk management, return optimisation. Our objective for Glasgow is to build these frameworks so that there is a new financial system in which every decision takes climate change into account. This requires a fundamental reordering of the financial system so that all aspects of finance— investments, loans, derivatives, insurance products, whole markets—view climate change as much a determinant of value as creditworthiness, interest rates or technology. A world in which the impact of an activity on climate change is a new vector, a new determinant, of value. Doing so requires new data sets and new analytic techniques. The challenges are enormous and the timescales tight, but the prize are protecting the planet while seizing the greatest commercial opportunity of our time. In order to bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial decision making, climate disclosure ( reporting ) must become comprehensive; climate risk management must be transformed, and sustainable investing ( returns ) must go mainstream. Reporting Catalysed by the G20 and created by the private sector, the Task Force on Cli- mate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is a comprehensive, practical and flexible framework for corporate disclosure of climate-related risks and opportunities. Since the TCFD set out its recommendations for climate-related disclosures, there has been a step change in both demand and supply of climate reporting. The demand for TCFD disclosure is now enormous. Current supporters control balance sheets totaling $140 trillion and include the world’s top banks, asset managers, pension funds, insurers, credit rating agencies, accounting firms and shareholder advisory services. The supply of disclosure is responding, with four fifths of the top 1100 G20 companies now disclosing climate-related financial risks in line with some of the TCFD recommendations. Suitable for use by all companies that raise capital, the TCFD recommendations include a mixture of objective, subjective and forward-looking metrics: - Include disclosure of governance , strategy and risk management ; - Establish consistent and comparable metrics applicable across all sectors, as well as specific metrics for the most carbon-intense sectors; and - Encourage use of scenario analysis so as to consider dynamically the potential impact of the risks and opportunities of the transition to a low carbon economy on strategy and financial planning. The TCFD will call on new skills from measuring Scope 3 emissions to assessing strategy, risk and performance under different climate pathways. The next step is to make these disclosures mandatory through initiatives by national authorities, regulators and international standard setters. Understanding and using such forward-looking impact disclosure will become a core skill across the private financial sector. Risk management The providers of capital—banks, insurers, asset managers—and those who supervise them all need to improve their understanding and management of climate-related financial risks. Changes in climate policies, new technologies and growing physical risks will prompt a reassessment of the value of virtually every financial asset. Firms that align their business models to the transition to a net zero world will be rewarded handsomely. Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist. The longer meaningful adjustment is delayed, the greater the disruption will be. Climate risks differ from conventional risks in several critical respects, including: Their unprecedented nature. Past experience and historical data are not good predictors of the probabilities in the future. Indeed, as the insurance industry has learned, yesterday’s tail event is becoming today’s central scenario. Their breadth and magnitude . They will affect every customer, in every sec- tor in every country. Their impact will likely be correlated, non-linear, irreversible, and subject to tipping points. They will therefore occur on a much greater scale than the other risks financial institutions are used to managing. That they are both foreseeable , in the sense that we know some combination of physical and transition risk will occur, and uncertain , in that the timing and scale is path dependent. Although the time horizons for physical risks are long - not the usual 3-5-year business planning horizon, but over decades— addressing major climate risks tomorrow requires action today . Indeed, actions over the next decade—prob- ably in the next three to five years—will be critical to determining the size and balance of future risks (1). It is self-evident that the financial system cannot diversify its way out of this risk. As the pandemic has revealed, the interconnections between the real economy and the financial system run deep. And just like Covid-19, climate change is a far-reaching, system-wide risk that affects the whole economy, from which the financial system is not immune and indeed cannot hide. As the CEO of Morgan Stanley remarked to Congress, “It’s hard to have financial stability if you don’t have a planet.” So if financial risk is to be reduced, then the underlying climate risks in the real economy must be managed. And fixing this collective action problem is a shared responsibility across financial institutions and regulators. The public and private sectors need to work together to solve it, and that means developing the necessary risk management expertise rapidly. That expertise is needed because it is challenging to assess financial risks in the normal way. As emphasised by the TCFD, it means that disclosures need to go beyond the static (what a company’s emissions are today) to the strategic (what their plans are for their emissions tomorrow). That means assessing the resilience of firms’ strategies to transition risks. This will be the principle focus of the new climate stress testing regime of central banks. At present, led by the Banque de France, the Nederlands Bank and the Bank of England, 16 central banks and supervisors will stress test their systems against different climate scenarios for a smooth transition to net zero to business-as-usual hothouse earth. Returns Financial participants increasingly recognise that sustainable investment brings enormous opportunities ranging from transforming energy to reinventing protein. While green investment products, such as green, sustainable and transition bonds are important catalysts to developing a new financial system, they will not be sufficient to finance the transition to a low carbon future. We need to mobilise mainstream finance to help support all companies in the economy to adjust business models to align with net zero pathways. Value will be driven by identifying the leaders and laggards, as well as the most important general-purpose technologies that will overcome choke points in the transition. That means having a more sophisticated understanding of how companies are working to transition from brown to green, not just where they are at a single point in time. Thus far, the approaches to doing so have been inadequate. Scores that combine E, S and G to give a single ESG metric—while worthy—are dominated by the S and the G. Carbon footprints are not forward-looking. And the impact of shareholder engagement is hard to measure. Moreover, a whole economy transition isn’t about funding only deep green activities or blacklisting dark brown ones. We need fifty shades of green to catalyse and support all companies towards net zero and be able to assess collectively whether we’re “Paris aligned.” That means investors must be able to assess the credibility of company transition plans. Transition planning is nascent and of varying quality among companies. Some have a stated net zero objective, but are yet to set out a credible strategy or tactics to achieving it. Others have fully integrated climate strategies, governance and investments. Emerging best practice transition plans include: - Defining net zero objective in terms of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions; - Outlining clear short term milestones and metrics that senior management uses to monitor progress and gauge success; - Board level governance; and - Embedding metrics in executive compensation. Schemes such as the Science Based Targets Initiative and Transition Pathway Initiative are already supporting companies to develop transition plans and certifying them when they meet appropriate thresholds. An emerging differentiator in the investment community will need to make these critical judgments. Over time, investors will not just judge company transition plans, they too shall be judged. Investors should be obliged to alignment of their portfolios with the transition and disclose their position in a readily understandable and impactful manner. There are several ways to do this. At the most basic end of the spectrum, investors could calculate the percentage of assets that have a net zero target. However, as disclosures improve in the real economy, a more sophisticated option is to calculate the degree warming potential of assets in a portfolio. A “warming potential” calculation – or Implied Temperature Rise – estimates the global temperature rise associated with emissions by the companies in an investment portfolio. For example, one of the world’s largest insurers, AXA, estimates that its assets are currently consistent with a 3.1 degree path, and it has developed an innovative climate Value-at-Risk model to measure the opportunities as well as risks from the climate-related exposures of its investments. Rating the warming potential of assets and portfolios has a number of ancillary benefits, including signaling to governments the transition path of the economy, and therefore the effectiveness of their policies; and empowering consumers to give them more choice in how to invest to support the transition. After all, with our citizens, particularly the young, demanding climate action, it is becoming essential for asset owners to disclose the extent to which their clients’ money is being invest- ed in line with their values. Conclusion A financial market in the transition to a 1.5 degree world is being built, but we need to accelerate the pace on the road to Glasgow. Now is the time for a step change to bring the reporting, risk management and return optimisation of sustainable finance into everyday financial decision making. This will require new data sets from scope 3 emissions to exposures to climate transition risk, and new financial skills from scenario analysis to assessing implied temperature warming. The common theme will be determining who is on the right and wrong side of climate history. In that way, private finance can bend the arc of that history towards climate justice. Endnote 1 UNEP Emissions Gap Report, 2019. Previous Next

Anna Savo-Matthews The Unchurching of Black Lives Matter: The Evolving Role of Faith in the Fight for Racial Justice Anna Savo-Matthews The Black church was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1990s, American society began a trend in secularization, whereby many Americans began to identify less with religious institutions. This societal shift, coupled with the rise of social media, has had a marked impact on racial justice movements. To illustrate how secularization has affected protest, this work compares the Civil Rights Movement with Black Lives Matter and specifically examines the decline of the Black church’s organizational capacity in Jacksonville, Florida. Faith has long been closely intertwined with racial justice movements. Scholars of Black liberation theology believe that Jesus is the God of the oppressed, someone who stands with those struggling for freedom. This religious movement was born from civil-rights activism of the 1960s, and it continues to inspire activists to this day (1). Furthermore, the Civil Rights Movement’s close relationship with the Black church has been well documented, as the church provided organizational support that was crucial for the movement’s success (2). When comparing the Civil Rights Movement to more recent racial justice movements, more specifically the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, the Black church has had a less prominent role in organizing and mobilizing protestors. However, spirituality still had a great influence over the content of the protests, as protesters often draw from a greater plurality of religious inspiration than the Civil Rights Movement did (3). In line with findings on a national scale, local reporting has found that spiritual rituals were incorporated into the Black Lives Matter protests in Jacksonville. Prayer, vigils, and altars were incorporated into the protests, and the rhetoric used by many organizers and protestors reflected common religious tropes. The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Church The impact of religion on the Civil Rights Movement has been well documented. Both in terms of organization and content of protests, the Black church had an enormous effect on the Civil Rights Movement. The Black church was an autonomous sphere, owned and controlled by Black people, within a larger societal context where Black people were excluded economically, socially, and politically. As a result, in terms of structure, the Black church was the primary organizational center for the Civil Rights Movement (4). The church provided a network of charismatic clergymen who were “economically independent of the larger white society,” a regular meeting place free from surveillance, and a membership that was united by a rich culture and similar political aims (5). As a result, the Black church gave the Civil Rights Movement many resources crucial for a successful social movement. Additionally, the content of the protests themselves were often based on religious teachings from the Black church; one would have to look no further than Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches to see its influence. In one of his most famous speeches, “Eulogy for Martyred Children,” King draws upon Christian notions of martyrdom and applies these sentiments to the fight for racial equality. Older martyrdom accounts—like those of Perpetua and Felicity, or animal sacrifices found in Leviticus—speak of suffering and death transformationally powerful, sometimes for entire communities. King employs a similar theme in his speech, claiming that the children who lost their lives “died nobly,” and that “the innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city” (6). Furthermore, King’s speeches often explicitly draw connections between his faith and the modern-day fight for racial justice, saying “They did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive” (7). When an innocent life is lost due to senseless violence, it can be a rational response to try to make sense of the tragedy. In this way, martyrdom accounts serve an important social function, allowing communities to grapple with tragedy in a meaningful way. Furthermore, these tragedies can be leveraged politically. Many sociologists consider martyrs to be “tangible cultural resources” that can be used to motivate social and political movements. The violence inflicted on a martyr can “galvanize a course of action” and rally a community around their cause (8). Black Lives Matter and Secularization Originally founded in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Black Lives Matter movement began to build a more prominent national profile in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, who were both killed by police in the summer of 2014 (9). The Black Lives Matter movement reached a new level of public support following the murder of George Floyd, and it is estimated that tens of millions of people participated in protests across the country in 2020 (10). As a result of its large and diverse membership, the movement is very decentralized; however, the general aims of the movement include police reform and reallocating police department funds to invest in Black communities directly. In contrast to the powerful, direct influence the Black church had on the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter’s religious influences are far less straightforward, and this is especially apparent in the movement’s organization. Sociologists and political scientists have contended that the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter movement have markedly different structures. Professor of political science Dewey Clayton has noted that the leadership structure of the two organizations are “vastly different,” describing Black Lives Matter’s structure as “highly decentralized and unstructured” (11). He suggests that, rather than the Black church, social media is the new movement center for Black Lives Matter, contributing to its decentralized nature. Other scholars and researchers have confirmed that social media has played a “core role” in the proliferation of the movement, as platforms like Twitter and Instagram allow for the “documentation of cases of police violence” against both “individual African Americans” and “BLM protests,” which can draw emotional responses from casual users of social media (12). Because of its heavy use of social media, Black Lives Matter “does not want one leader,” but rather encourages leaders from all over the country to “engage in grassroots organizing in their local communities” (13). Jamal Bryant, a clergyman who spoke at Freddie Gray’s funeral, acknowledged this shift in leadership and noted that his role in Black Lives Matter is more limited, saying, “The difference between the Black Lives Matter movement and the civil-rights movement is that the civil-rights movement, by and large, was first out of the church. The Black Lives Matter movement, largely speaking, is not” (14). However, despite the Black church’s receding role in the organization of the movement, the influence of religion and spirituality on the Black Lives Matter movement is still apparent on a national scale. Founders of the movement, like Patrisse Cullors for example, practice Ifà, a religious tradition from Nigeria. She describes her spirituality as having a huge influence on her protests, saying that , “seeking spirituality had a lot to do with trying to seek understanding about [her] conditions… and how [she understands] them as part of a larger fight, a fight for [her] life.” In Black Lives Matter more broadly, researchers have found that protests often incorporate a wide variety of religious rituals, from invoking “the names of abolitionist ancestors'' to “the creation of sacred sites and alters at locations of mourning” to “purification, protection, and healing practices'' like burning sage (15). Overall, Black Lives Matter has incorporated rich religious pluralism into the national movement, as it draws inspiration from Native American, Buddhist, and African religious traditions, in addition to Black Protestant traditions (16). Scholars have found that Black Lives Matter draws from a broader source matter than the Civil Rights Movement did, and others argue that “the Black church is not the only religious well from which Black movements have historically drawn,” and Black Lives Matter is no different (17). Given the broad variety of faiths that Black Lives Matter draws inspiration from, Erika Gault argues that “we are actually seeing more religion, not less” (18). Younger activists from Baltimore described their own beliefs similarly; they did not necessarily have a diminished sense of spirituality, but they felt a need to express their religious beliefs outside of formal institutions. Brion Gill, a 25-year-old organizer, recounted that many of her friends within Black Lives Matter identify as “spiritual but not religious” and claim that they want “a relationship with the Creator” but don’t wish to manifest that “within the church space” (19). BLM’s move away from formal religious organizations fits within social trends more broadly. Around the turn of the century, sociologists began to describe a new theory of secularization, which emphasized that faith is still a “powerful force at the individual level” despite a decline in religious institutional authority (20). Theorists from this newer perspective, sometimes called neosecularization theorists, emphasize that religion is not necessarily “declining… They believe that it is changing” (21). These findings are similar to those articulated in a major study by Hout and Fischer, who found that the number of Americans who identified themselves as having no religious preference increased significantly in the late nineties. From the early ‘90s to the early 2000’s, the number of adults who reported having no religious preference doubled, from roughly 7 percent, to 14 percent (22). However, despite this increase, a significant portion of the population still retains spiritual beliefs: “Over two-thirds (68 percent) of adults with no religious preference expressed some belief in God or a higher power in 1998 or 2000; one-fourth said they do not doubt that God really exists” (23). Thus, the decrease in identification with formal institutions is not driven largely by a decrease in religious sentiment, but rather a stronger desire to disassociate from organized religion. This urge to express religious beliefs often originates from a desire to distance oneself from the conservative political views often associated with religious institutions (24). The sudden decline in religious identifications correlated with the rise of the Religious Right, as “religious conservatives definitely received more attention in the press in the 1990s than during earlier years” (25). Therefore, the authors argue that the rise of the Religious Right initiated dissociation with religious institutions among left-leaning individuals. Hout and Fisher stress that a decline in religious identification is most attributable to a dislike of the Religious Right, and not a result of a decline in religious sentiment or ideas: “The key fact, in sum, about people who express no religious preference is that most are believers of some sort, and many are quite conventional” (26). One of the most commonly used metrics to gauge the religiosity of an individual is the frequency with which they pray. This metric was cited by the authors of this study, and they noted that of the respondents who claimed no religious preference, “Relatively few are secular, agnostic, or atheist; most actually pray. Their most distinguishing feature is their avoidance of churches” (27). Therefore, we may expect contemporary activists to still express religious beliefs and participate in religious rituals in protest, even though they may not be guided by any specific institution. The authors of this article actually raise concerns regarding the future of religious institutions and their connections to social and political movements, asking the question of how the “spiritual but not religious” trend will affect new social movements (28). Overall, secularization in the Black Lives Matter movement seems to be widely consistent with a general nationwide trend towards secularization. While formal religious institutions have less power in influencing behavior and social movements, religious beliefs are still held by a majority of those who participate in the BLM movement. This seems to be the general consensus among scholars who have studied the movement; that, while the movement is no longer organized through the church, spirituality still has a great influence on the movement, and at times, protest can even be a spiritual act. To examine these claims, I will take a closer look at one specific city. To get a sense of how the shift from ‘churched’ social movements to a decentralized movement plays out in a specific city, I will compare Jacksonville’s Civil Rights Movement to its Black Lives Matter movement. Jacksonville and Racial Justice Jacksonville has an extensive history with the Civil Rights Movement. For a considerable portion of time, the primary method of challenging segregation in Jacksonville was through litigation. The City Council segregated numerous public services: streetcars, saloons, theaters. There were long, drawn-out attempts to overturn these and other segregation policies like unequal pay, and an “all-white Democratic primary” (29). However, the courts ruled against African American attorneys seeking to challenge segregationist policies. As a result, civil rights activists turned to civil disobedience. One of the most well-known events in the history of civil rights activism in Jacksonville occurred on August 27, 1960, when a group of African American men staged a sit-in to protest segregation in local businesses and lunch counters (30). The group of protestors were attacked by a group of over 200 Ku Klux Klan members, armed with baseball bats and axe handles. The lunch counters were desegregated in the months following this protest. Although African American communities in Jacksonville had pushed for desegregation in the past, many locals see Axe Handle Saturday as the true start of the Civil Rights Movement in Jacksonville. A first-hand account from protestor Rodney Hurstdetails the planning that went into this protest. His account demonstrates the importance of the Black church. In Hurst’s view, the Black church was a lifeline for the Civil Rights Movement: “the civil rights movement in Jacksonville would not have survived without the support of Black pastors and their churches” (31). Along with providing a support network for protestors, Black churches were the meeting place for the NAACP meetings during the fifties and sixties, providing resources for a legal organization responsible for many local civil rights victories (32). The NAACP’s efforts were crucial in desegregating businesses and public services in Jacksonville. In the months following Axe Handle Saturday, the NAACP Youth Council continued a boycott of downtown merchants, and in the following year the NAACP and business leaders reached an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters (33). Turning to the Black Lives Matter protests that took place decades after the Civil Rights Movement, it is apparent that Jacksonville mirrors national religious trends. While Jacksonville’s Civil Rights Movement used the Black church as its main movement center, taking advantage of its resources and member base, the Black Lives Matter protests were organized in a more decentralized manner, often relying on social media to spread awareness of police violence and information about upcoming events and protests. Over the course of the summer of 2020, several waves of protests were held in Jacksonville; from May 30th to June 8th, the city saw thousands of protestors participate in marches in the downtown area (34). Smaller marches occurred sporadically throughout the greater Jacksonville area in the subsequent weeks. A smaller march took place near Atlantic and Neptune Beach on June 28th. An inter-faith group held a Juneteenth celebration live stream discussing racial injustice on June 19th, and a group of Black ministers hosted a press conference in front of the Duval County Courthouse on June 8th (35). Another wave of protests occurred on July 10th, as protestors blocked off portions of highways around the downtown area (36). Consistent with findings on a national scale, the Jacksonville protests were largely organized through social media; websites like Twitter and Instagram played a crucial role in spreading information throughout the Jacksonville community. Social media accounts were started at several Duval county high schools to document instances of racial profiling; the accounts generally followed a similar format: “they’re titled “Black At [the respective school]” and allow students, parents, and faculty to submit posts where they document racist experiences they’ve had at their respective high school, which are shared publicly on the Instagram account (37). Kiara Alexis, a young community organizer born and raised in West Jacksonville, described the crucial role Twitter played in diffusing information throughout her community, saying “Twitter has become this hub… the news won’t tell you what’s going on, but people on Twitter, they’re gonna come up there and they’re gonna give it to you” (38). Diversity in Spirituality Again, in line with findings on a national scale, although the church was not the main avenue through which protests were organized, religion and spirituality still had a notable impact on the content of the protests. Moments of prayer were incorporated into many of the protests that took place in Jacksonville. One notable example took place on June 3, outside of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, where faith leaders led a prayer before a press conference on police accountability (39). Rituals and prayers were not only seen in smaller protests: one of the largest rallies that took place in Jacksonville was the “Reflective Walk” for Floyd in which over 1,000 participants prayed before marching throughout Jacksonville’s San Marco business district and residential areas (40). Even protests that were planned by secular organizations, like The Women’s March Jacksonville Chapter, involved spiritual ceremonies. The Women’s March held a two-hour long remembrance ritual on June 4, where “candles were lit in memory of those who died by police or racial brutality, plants watered on a table as each was remembered.” Participants at this protest were encouraged to express their “sorrow and disgust over the racial division in this country” (41). Jacksonville’s protests often seem to embody what sociologist Emile Durkheim would identify as “collective effervescence,” referring to the emotional effect experienced by individuals when they collectively perform religious rituals; when people come together and perform the same action together, they may feel ‘outside of themselves.’ Durkheim describes this process in Elementary Forms of Religious Life, saying that “When collective life reaches a certain degree of intensity it awakens religious thought… vital energies become overstimulated, sensations stronger; there are even some that are produced only at this moment” (42). In this moment, collective effervescence then strengthens group identity. The common usage of prayer in protest likely serves a similar function; overall, rituals like group prayer serve an important, unifying force during protests, allowing the protester to step outside of themselves and feel a greater sense of unity with those they are protesting with. Aspects of the Jacksonville protests encourage such an experience. For example, Chapter President Bonnie Hendrix was reported as saying “I felt it was time for black people to have the podium to raise their voice, to be heard, to let the pain and anguish of years of oppression, out,” acknowledging the heightened emotional experience that was produced by the remembrance ritual (43). Even disregarding the use of rituals like prayer and reflection, protests exhibited religious characteristics in other ways. When activists described their motivations for protesting, they often directly or indirectly referenced their religious beliefs, often echoing sentiments in speeches from the Civil Rights Movement. On June 8th, several dozen ministers from local Black churches read a letter addressed to Jacksonville mayor Lenny Curry, Sheriff Mike Williams, and various other city and state officials. The letter called for a variety of reforms that asked for increased transparency and communication between police and community members. Some of the demands included roundtable discussions with black officers, increased sensitivity training, and increased diversity in leadership (44). Martyrdom narratives were incorporated into the minister’s press conference as well, as one minister was quoted as saying “It was as a result of George Floyd that all of a sudden a choir began. A choir of people from all across this nation have come together to lend their voices together in harmony for the express purpose of making sure that people can be treated fair.” In a similar manner to how martyrdom narratives were used during the Civil Rights Movement, the pain and suffering inflicted upon George Floyd can be the impetus for social change. In the quote from Rev. Williams, there are themes of unity and healing, demonstrating similar themes to those used by Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Eulogy for Martyred Children” as well as older martyrdom accounts, like those in Leviticus, where the loss of innocent life has the power to transform an entire community. In honor of Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery, the Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida held a livestream, connecting the protests that took place this summer to the fight for equality during the Civil War. Religion again played a large role in the motivations for those participating in the conversation. In describing her motivations for fighting for justice, Rev. Juana Jordan referenced Matthew 10 as an inspiration for resilience in her activism, saying “[Jesus] says people are gonna harass you, and he talks a lot about… using your voice. If you are a part of the family, if you are gonna do what I’m doing, people are gonna come against you. But there’s some responsibilities that you have” (45). In a later comment, Rev. Juana again connected the notion of equal rights to Scripture, saying “I believe in communion, there is more than enough at the table. When Jesus laid out the table, he stretched the table to make sure everybody could come around” (46). This livestream reiterated a common theme from Hurst’s personal account, where faith gives activists resilience in their work. Conclusion In conclusion, faith still plays a prominent role in Black civil rights movements, but its role has been complicated due to recent trends in secularization and the rise of social media. Although social media has replaced the Black church as the organizational center of the movement, spirituality has proved itself to be indispensable to the movement due to its ability to unify protesters through rituals. Finally, spiritual beliefs also seem to be a powerful source of motivation for those who participate in protest, providing inspiration to continue persevering when met with opposition. With this sudden shift towards a more decentralized movement center, it will be interesting to see if Black Lives Matter will be able to achieve the same legislative successes as the Civil Rights Movement. Endnotes 1 “Black Liberation Theology, in its Founder’s Words,” NPR, 2008. 2 Morris, Aldon D , The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, (The Free Press, 1986). 3 Gleig, Ann and Farrag, Hebah, “Far from Being anti-religious, faith and spirituality run deep in Black Lives Matter,” The Conversation. 4 Morris, Aldon D , The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, 4. 5 Ibid. 6 King, Martin Luther, “Eulogy for the Martyred Children,” Carnegie Mellon University. 7 Ibid, 221. 8 DeSoucey et al, “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom,” ( Cultural Sociology, 2008), 114. 9 Luibrand, Shannon, “How a death in Ferguson sparked a movement in America,” 2015. 10 Buchanan, Quoctrung, and Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” 2020. 11 Clayton, Dewey M, “Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States,” Journal of Black Studies , Vol. 49 no. 5, 2018. 12 Bolsover, Gillian, “Black Lives Matter discourse on US social media during COVID: polarised positions enacted in a new event,” The University of Leeds, Centre for Democratic Engagement, 2020. 13 Clayton, Dewey M, “Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States.” 14 Green, Emma, “Black Activism, Unchurched,” The Atlantic, 2016. 15 Gleig, Ann and Farrag, Hebah, “Far from Being anti-religious, faith and spirituality run deep in Black Lives Matter,” The Conversation. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Green, Emma, “Black Activism, Unchurched.” 20 Yamane, David and Roberts, Keith A, “Secularization: Religion in Decline or Transformation?” Religion in Sociological Perspective, (SAGE Publications, 2015), 25. 21 Ibid. 22 Hout, Michael and Fischer, Claude, “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations,” American Sociological Review , vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 165-190, (April 2002), 166. 23 Ibid, 173. 24 Ibid, 168. 25 Ibid, 179. 26 Ibid, 175. 27 Ibid, 175. 28 Ibid, 178. 29 Crooks, James B, “The history of Jacksonville race relations. Part 2: Struggling for equality,” The Florida Times-Union, 2021. 30 Ibid. 31 Hurst, Rodney L, “It was never about a hotdog and a Coke,” Wingspan Press, 2008. 32 Ibid. 33 Woods, Mark and Soergel, Matt, “Ax Handle Saturday: The segregated lunch counters are gone, but the ‘Jacksonville Story’ continues,” 2020. 34 Avanier, Erik, “Thousands march through San Marco during peaceful demonstration,” 2020. 3 5 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, Uploaded by Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flDBJx_HWhM&feature=youtu.be 36 Cravey, Beth R. and Patterson, Steve, “Black Lives Matter protesters march through downtown Jacksonville; 3 arrested,” The Florida Times-Union, 2016. 37 Bloch, Emily, “Students at Jacksonville’s elite schools discuss racism — often anonymously,” The Florida Times-Union, 2020. 38 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, 50:13. 39 “Photos: Jacksonville Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death,” The Florida Times-Union, 2020. 40 Ibid. 41 Scanlan, Dan, “Jacksonville Residents continue protests in support of black lives,” The Florida Times-Union. 2020. 42 Durkheim, Emile, “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,” ( Oxford University Press: 2001), 317. 43 Scanlan, Dan, “Jacksonville Residents continue protests in support of black lives.” 44 Savo-Matthews, Anna, “Black ministers call for Jacksonville reforms amid unrest,” The Florida Times-Union , 2020. 45 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, 61:28. 46 Ibid, 66:54. Works Cited Aron, Hillel. “These Savvy Women have Made Black Lives Matter the Most Crucial Left-Wing Movement Today” LA Weekly. November 9, 2015. http://www.laweekly.com/these-savvy- women-have-made-black-lives-matter- the-most-crucial-left-wing-movement-today/. Avanier, Erik. “Thousands march through San Marco during peaceful demonstration.” News4Jax . June 3, 2020. https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/06/03/city-says-to-expect- emergency-personnel-in-san-marco- square-due-to-scheduled-walk/ “Black Liberation Theology, in its Founder’s Words.” NPR. March 31, 2008. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89236116 Bolsover, Gillian. “Black Lives Matter discourse on US social media during COVID: polarised positions enacted in a new event.” The University of Leeds, Centre for Democratic Engagement. August 21, 2020. https://arxiv.org/ pdf/2009.03619.pdf Bloch, Emily. “Students at Jacksonville’s elite schools discuss racism — often anonymously.” The Florida Times-Union. June 16, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/local/2020/06/16/students-at-jacksonvillersquos- elite-schools-discuss-racism-mdash-often-anonymously/112296954/ Buchanan, Quoctrung, and Patel. “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History” The New York Times. July 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size. html Clayton, Dewey M. “Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States.” Journal of Black Studies . Vol. 49 no. 5, pp. 448-480. March 21, 2018. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021934718764099? journalCode=jbsa Cravey, Beth R. and Patterson, Steve. “Black Lives Matter protesters march through downtown Jacksonville; 3 arrested.” The Florida Times-Union. July 10, 2016. https://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2016-07-10/story/black-lives-matter-protesters- march-through-downtown-jacksonville-3 Crooks, James B. “The history of Jacksonville race relations. Part 2: Struggling for equality.” The Florida Times-Union. September 5, 2021. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2021/09/05/james- crooks-history- jacksonville-race-relations-struggling-equality/8210831002/ DeSoucey et al. “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom.” Cultural Sociology. Vol. 2, no.1, pp. 99-121. 2008. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1749975507086276 Durkheim, Emile. “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.” Oxford University Press. Translated by Carol Cosman. 2001. Farrag, Hebah H. “The Role of Spirit in the #BlackLivesMatter Movement: A Conversation with Activist and Artist Patrisse Cullors.” Religion Dispatches. June 24, 2015. https://religiondispatches.org/the-role-of-spirit-in-the-blacklivesmatter-movement-a- conversation-with-activist-and-artist-patrisse-cullors/ Gleig, Ann and Farrag, Hebah. “Far from Being anti-religious, faith and spirituality run deep in Black Lives Matter.” The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/far-from- being-anti-religious- faith-and-spirituality-run-deep-in- black-lives-matter-145610 Green, Emma. “Black Activism, Unchurched.” The Atlantic. March 22, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/black-activism-baltimore- black-church/474822/ Hout, Michael and Fischer, Claude. “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations.” American Sociological Review . vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 165-190. April 2002. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3088891?seq=1 Hurst, Rodney L. “It was never about a hotdog and a Coke.” Wingspan Press. Jan 1, 2008. “The Spirit of Juneteenth.” YouTube. Uploaded by Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida, June 24, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flDBJx_ HWhM&feature=youtu.be King, Martin Luther. “Eulogy for the Martyred Children.” Carnegie Mellon University. http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=- file&item=434085 Luibrand, Shannon. “How a death in Ferguson sparked a movement in America.” August 7, 2015. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-black-lives-matter-movement-changed- america-one-year-later/ Morris, Aldon D . The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change . The Free Press. January 1, 1986. Savo-Matthews, Anna. “Black ministers call for Jacksonville reforms amid unrest.” The Florida Times- Union. June 8, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/ news/local/2020/06/08/black- ministers-call-for-jacksonville-reforms-amid-unrest/112295624/ Scanlan, Dan. “Jacksonville Residents continue protests in support of black lives.” The Florida Times- Union. June 4, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/sto- ry/news/local/2020/06/04/jacksonville- residents-continue-protests-in-sup- port-of-black-lives/112302732/ “Photos: Jacksonville Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.” The Florida Times-Union. June 7, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/photogallery/LK/20200607/PHOTOGALLERY/607009988/PH/1 Vandenboom, Liza. “The Faith of the Black Lives Matter Movement.” Religion Unplugged. July 10, 2020. https://religionunplugged.com/news/2020/7/10/ the-faith-of-the-black-lives-matter- movement Woods, Mark and Soergel, Matt. “Ax Handle Saturday: The segregated lunch counters are gone, but the ‘Jacksonville Story’ continues.” The Florida Times-Union. August 21, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/ history/2020/08/21/jacksonville-civil-rights-demonstrators-took-action-60-years-ago-ax-handle-saturday/5620995002/ Yamane, David and Roberts, Keith A. “Secularization: Religion in Decline or Transformation?” Religion in Sociological Perspective, Sixth Edition. SAGE Publications. 2015. Previous Next

Adithya V. Raajkumar “Victorian Holocausts”: The Long-Term Consequences of Famine in British India Adithya V. Raajkumar Abstract: This paper seeks to examine whether famines occur- ring during the colonial period affect development outcomes in the present day. We compute district level measures of economic development, social mobility, and infrastructure using cross-sectional satellite luminosity, census data, and household survey data. We then use a panel of recorded famine severity and rain- fall data in colonial Indian districts to construct cross-sectional counts measures of famine occurrence. Finally, we regress modern day outcomes on the number of famines suffered by a district in the colonial era, with and without various controls. We then instrument for famine occurrence with climate data in the form of negative rainfall shocks to ensure exogeneity. We find that districts which suffered more famines during the colonial era have higher levels of economic development; however, high rates of famine occurrence are also associated with a larger percentage of the labor force working in agriculture, lower rural consumption, and higher rates of income inequality. We attempt to explain these findings by showing that famine occurrence is simultaneously related to urbanization rates and agricultural development. Overall, this suggests that the long-run effects of natural disasters which primarily afflict people and not infrastructure are not al- ways straightforward to predict. 1. Introduction What are the impacts of short-term natural disasters in the long-run, and how do they affect economic development? Are these impacts different in the case of disasters which harm people but do not affect physical infrastructure? While there is ample theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of devastating natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, there are relatively few studies on the long-term consequences of short-term disasters such as famines. Further- more, none of the literature focuses on society-wide development outcomes. The case of colonial India provides a well-recorded setting to examine such a question, with an unfortunate history of dozens of famines throughout the British Raj. Many regions were struck multiple times during this period, to the extent that historian Mike Davis characterizes them as “Victorian Holocausts” (Davis 2001 p.9). While the short-term impacts of famines are indisputable, their long-term effects on economic development, perhaps through human development patterns, are less widely understood. The United Kingdom formally ruled India from 1857 to 1947, following an ear- lier period of indirect rule by the East India Company. The high tax rate imposed on peasants in rural and agricultural India was a principal characteristic of British governance. Appointed intermediaries, such as the landowning zamindar caste in Bengal, served to collect these taxes. Land taxes imposed on farmers often ranged from two-thirds to half of their produce, but could be as high as ninety to ninety-five percent. Many of the intermediaries coerced their tenants into farming only cash crops instead of a mix of cash crops and agricultural crops (Dutt 2001). Aside from high taxation, a laissez-faire attitude to drought relief was another principal characteristic of British agricultural policy in India. Most senior officials in the imperial administration believed that serious relief efforts would cause more harm than they would do good and consequently, were reluctant to dispatch aid to afflicted areas (ibid). The consequences of these two policies were some of the most severe and frequent famines in recorded history, such as the Great Indian Famine of 1893, during which an estimated 5.5 to 10.3 million peasants perished from starvation alone, and over 60 million are believed to have suffered hardship (Fieldhouse 1996). Our paper focuses on three sets of outcomes in order to assess the long-term impact of famines. First, we measure macroeconomic measures of overall development, such as rural consumption per capita and the composition of the labor force. We also use nighttime luminosity gathered from satellite data as a proxy for GDP, of which measurement using survey data can be unreliable. Second, we look at measures of human development: inequality, social mobility, and education, constructed from the India Human Development Survey I and II. Finally, we examine infrastructure, computing effects on village-level electrification, numbers of medical centers, and bus service availability. To examine impacts, we regress famine occurrence on these outcomes via ordinary least-squares (OLS). We use an instrumental-variables (IV) approach to ensure a causal interpretation via as-good-as-random assignment (1). We first estimate famine occurrence, the endogenous independent variable, as a function of rainfall shocks–a plausibly exogenous instrument–before regressing outcomes on predicted famine occurrence via two-stage least-squares (2SLS). Since the survey data are comparatively limited, we transform and aggregate panel data on rainfall and famines as counts in order to use them in a cross-section with the contemporary outcomes. We find for many outcomes that there is indeed a marginal effect of famines in the long-run, although where it is significant it is often quite small. Where famines do have a significant impact on contemporary outcomes, the results follow an interesting pattern : a higher rate of famine occurrence in a given district is associated with greater economic development yet worse rural outcomes and higher inequality. Specifically, famine occurrence has a small but positive impact on nighttime luminosity–our proxy for economic development–and smaller, negative impacts on rural consumption and the proportion of adults with a college education. At the same time, famine occurrence is also associated with a higher proportion of the labor force being employed in the agricultural sector as well as a higher level of inequality as measured by the Gini index (2). Moreover, we find limited evidence that famine occurrence has a slightly negative impact on infrastructure as more famines are associated with reduced access to medical care and bus service. We do not find that famines have any significant impact on social mobility–specifically, intergenerational income mobility–or infrastructure such as electrification in districts. This finding contradicts much of the established literature on natural disasters, which has predominantly found large and wholly negative effects. We at- tempt to explain this disparity by analyzing the impact of famines on urbanization rates to show that famine occurrence may lead to a worsening urban-rural gap in long-run economic development. Thus, we make an important contribution to the existing literature and challenge past research with one of our key findings: short-term natural disasters which do not destroy physical infrastructure may have unexpectedly positive outcomes in the long-run. While the instrumental estimates are guaranteed to be free of omitted variable bias, the OLS standard errors allow for more precise judgments due to smaller confidence intervals. In around half of our specifications, the Hausman test for endogeneity fails to reject the null hypothesis of exogeneity, indicating that the ordinary-least squares and instrumental variables results are equally valid (3). How- ever, the instrumental variables estimate helps address other problems, such as attenuation bias, due to possible measurement error (4). Section 2 presents a review of the literature and builds a theoretical framework for understanding the impacts of famines on modern-day outcomes. Section 3 describes our data, variable construction, and summary statistics. Sections 4 and 5 present our results using ordinary least-squares and instrumental two-stage least- squares approaches. Section 6 discusses and attempts to explain these results. 2. Review and Theoretical Framework 1. The Impact of Natural Disasters Most of the current literature on natural disasters as a whole pertains to physical destructive phenomena such as severe weather or seismic events. Moreover, most empirical studies, such as Nguyen et al (2020) and Sharma and Kolthoff (2020) , focus on short-run aspects of natural disasters relating to various facets of proxi- mate causes (Huff 2020) or pathways of short-term recovery (Sharma and Kolthoff 2020). Famines are a unique kind of natural disaster in that they greatly affect crops, people, and animals but leave physical infrastructure and habitation relatively unaffected. We attempt to take this element of famines into account when explaining our results. Of the portion of the literature that focuses on famines, most results center on individual biological outcomes such as height, nutrition, (Cheng and Hui Shui 2019) or disease (Hu et al. 2017. A percentage of the remaining studies fixate on long-term socioeconomic effects at the individual level (Thompson et al. 2019). The handful of papers that do analyze broad long-term socioeconomic outcomes, such as Ambrus et al. (2015) and Cole et al. (2019), all deal with either long-term consequences of a single, especially severe natural disaster or the path dependency effects that may occur because of the particular historical circumstances of when a disaster occurs, such as in Dell (2013). On the other hand, our analysis spans several occurrences of the same type of phenomenon in a single, relatively stable sociohistorical setting, thereby utilizing a much larger and more reliable sample of natural disasters. Thus, our paper is the first to examine the long-term effects of a very specific type of natural disaster, famine, on the overall development of an entire region, by considering multiple occurrences thereof. Prior econometric literature on India’s famine era has highlighted other areas of focus, such as Burgess and Donaldson (2012), which shows that trade openness helped mitigate the catastrophic effects of famine. There is also plenty of historical literature on the causes and consequences of the famines, most notable in academic analyses from British historians (contemporarily, Carlyle 1900 and Ewing 1919; more recently Fieldhouse), which tend to focus on administrative measures, or more specifically, the lack thereof. In terms of the actual effects of famine, all of the established literature asserts that natural disasters overwhelmingly influence economic growth through two main channels: destruction of infrastructure and resulting loss of human capital (Lima and Barbosa 2019, Nguyen et al. 2020, Cole et al. 2019), or sociopolitical historical consequences, such as armed conflict (Dell 2013, Huff 2019). Famines pose an interesting question in this regard since they tend to result in severe loss of human capital through population loss due to starvation but generally result in smaller-scale infrastructure losses (Agbor and Price 2013). This is especially the case for rural India, which suffered acute famines while having little infrastructure in place (Roy 2006). We examine three types of potential outcomes: overall economic development, social mobility, and infrastructure, as outlined in section three. Our results present a novel finding in that famine occurrence seems to positively impact certain outcomes while negatively impacting most others, which we attempt to explain by considering the impact of famines on urbanization rates. Famines can impact outcomes through various mechanisms; therefore, we leave the exact causal mechanism unspecified and instead treat famines as generic shocks with subsequent recovery of unknown speed. If famines strike repeatedly, their initial small long-term effects on outcomes can escalate. In order to distinguish long- run effects of famines, we construct a simple growth model where flow variables such as growth quickly return to the long-run average after the shock, but stock variables such as GDP or consumption only return to the average asymptotically. Our intuition for the basis of distinguishing a long-run effect of famines rests on a simple growth model in which flow variables such as growth quickly return to the long-run average after a shock, but stock variables such as GDP or consumption only return to the average asymptotically (5). Thus, over finite timespans, the differences in stock variables between districts that undergo famines and those that do not should be measurable even after multiple decades. As mentioned below, this is in line with more recent macroeconomic models of natural disasters such Hochrainer (2009) and Bakkensen and Barrage (2018). Assume colonial districts (indexed by i ) suffer n i famines over the time period (in our data, the years 1870 to 1930), approximated as average constant rates f i . The occurrence of famine can then be modeled by a Poisson process with interval parameter f i , which represents the expected time between famines–even though the exact time is random and thus unknown–until it is realized (6). For simplicity, we assume that famines cause damage d to a district’s economy, for which time r i is needed to recover to its assumed long-run, balanced growth path (7). We make no assumptions on the distributions of d and r i except that r i is dependent on d and that the average recovery time E[ r i] is similarly a function of E[ d ]. If the district had continued on the growth path directly without the famine, absent any confounding effects, it would counterfactually have more positive out- comes today by a factor dependent on niE[tf] and thus n i , the number of famines suffered. We cannot observe the counterfactuals (the outcome in the affected district had it not experienced a famine), so instead, we use the unaffected districts in the sample as our comparison group. Controlling for factors such as population and existing infrastructure, each district should provide a reasonably plausible counterfactual for the other districts in terms of the number of famines suffered. Then, the differences in outcomes among districts measured today, y i , can be modeled as a function of the differences in the number of famines, n i . Finally, across the entire set of districts, this can be used to represent the average outcome E[y i ] as a function of the number of famines, which forms the basis of our ordinary-least squares approach in section four. This assumes that the correlation between famine occurrence and outcome is equal to 0. To account for the possibility their correlation is non-zero, we also use rainfall shocks to isolate the randomized part of our independent variable in order to ensure that famine occurrence is uncorrelated with our outcome variables. The use of rainfall shocks, in turn, forms the basis of our instrumental variables approach in section five. The important question is the nature of the relationship between d and ri . While f can be easily inferred from our data, d and especially r are much more difficult to estimate without detailed, high-level, and accurate data. Since the historical record is insufficiently detailed to allow precise estimation of the parameters of such a model, we constrain the effects of famine to be linear in our estimation in sections four and five. 2. Estimation Having constrained the hypothesized effects of famine to be linear, in section four, we would prefer to estimate (1) below, where represents our estimate of the effect of famine severity ( famine i), measured as the number of famines undergone by the district, on the outcome variable outcome yi, and Xi is a vector of contem- porary (present-day) covariates, such as mean elevation and soil quality. The con- stant term captures the mean outcomes across all districts andis a district-specific error term. Much of the research on famine occurrence in colonial India attributes the occurrence of famines and their consequences to poor policies and administration by the British Raj. If this is the case, and these same policies hurt the development of districts in other ways, such as by stunting industrialization directly, then the estimation of (1) will not show the correct effect of famines per se on comparative economic development. Additionally, our observations of famines, which are taken indirectly from district-level colonial gazetteers and reports, may be subject to “measurement” error that is non-random. For example, the reporting of famines in such gazetteers may be more accurate in well-developed districts that received preferential treatment from British administrators. To solve this problem, we turn to the examples of Dell et al. (2012), Dell (2013), Hoyle (2010), and Donaldson and Burgess (2012), who use weather shocks as instruments for natural disaster severity. While Dell (2013) focuses on historical consequences arising from path dependency and Hoyle (2010) centralizes on productivity, the instrumental methodology itself is perfectly applicable to our work. Another contribution of our pa- per is to further the use of climate shocks as instruments. We expand upon the usage of climate shocks as instruments because they fit the two main criteria for an instrumental variable. Primarily, weather shocks are extremely short-term phenomena, so their occurrence is unlikely to be correlated with longer-term climate factors that may impact both historical and modern outcomes. Secondly, they are reasonably random and provide exogenous variation with which we can estimate the impact of famines in an unbiased manner. We first estimate equation (2) below before estimating (1) using the predicted occurrence of famine from (2): We calculate famine as the number of reported events occurring in our panel for a district and rainfall as the number of years in which the deviation of rainfall from the mean falls below a certain threshold, nominally the fifteenth and tenth percentiles of all rainfall deviations for that district. As in (1), there is a constant term and error term. As is standard practice, we include the control variables in the first-stage even though they are quite plausibly unrelated to the rainfall variable. This allows us to estimate the impacts of famine with a reasonably causal interpretation; since the assignment of climate shocks is ostensibly random, using them to “proxy” for famines in this manner is akin to “as good as random” estimation. The only issue with this first-stage specification is that while we instrument counts of famine with counts of lo w rainfall years, the specific years in which low rainfall occurs theoretically need not match up with years in which famine is recorded in a given district. Therefore, we would prefer to estimate (3) below instead, since it provides additional identification through a panel dataset. Any other climate factors should be demeaned out by the time effects. Other district characteristics that may influence agricultural productivity and therefore famine severity, such as soil quality, should be differenced out with district effects, represented by the parameters. Differences in administrative policy should be resolved with provincial fixed effects. Unfortunately, we would then be unable to implement the standard instrumental variables practice of including the control variables in both stages since our modern-day outcomes are cross-sectional (i.e, we only have one observation per district for those measures). Nevertheless, our specification in (2) should reason- ably provide randomness that is unrelated to long-term climate factors, as mentioned above. Finally, we collapse the panel by counting the number of famines that occur in the district over time in order to compare famine severity with our cross-sectional modern-day outcomes and to get an exogenous count measure of famine that we can use de novo in (1). To account for sampling variance in our modern-day estimates, we use error weights constructed from the current population of each district meaning that our approach in section 5 is technically weighted least-squares, not ordinary. While this should account for heteroscedasticity in the modern observations, we use robust SM estimators in our estimations (McKean 2004, Barrera and Yohai 2006) to assure that our standard errors on the historical famine and rainfall variables are correct (8). The results of these approaches are detailed in section six. 3. Data 1. Sources and Description Our principal data of interest is a historical panel compiled from a series of colonial district gazetteers by Srivastava (1968) and details famine severity at the district level over time in British India from 1870 to 1930. Donaldson and Burgess (2010) then code these into an ordinal scale by using the following methodology: 4 – District mentioned in Srivastava’s records as “intensely affected by famine” 3 – District mentioned as “severely affected” 2 – Mentioned as “affected” 1 – Mentioned as “lightly affected” 0 – Not mentioned 9 – Specifically mentioned as being affected by spillover effects from a neighbor- ing district (there are only four such observations, so we exclude them) In our own coding of the data, we categorize famines as codes 2, 3, and 4, with severe famines corresponding to codes 3 and 4. We compute further cross-sectional measures, chiefly the total number and proportion of famine-years that a district experienced over the sixty-year periods. This is equivalent to tabulating the frequency of code occurrences and adding the resulting totals for codes 2 to 4 to obtain a single count measure of famine. Our results are robust to using “severe” (codes 3 and 4) famines instead of codes 2, 3, and 4. Across the entire panel, codes from 0 to 4 occurred with the following frequencies: 4256, 35, 207, 542, and 45 respectively. We also supplemented this panel with panel data on rainfall over the same time period. Several thousand measuring stations across India collected daily rainfall data over the time period, which Donaldson (2012) annualizes and compares with crop data. The rainfall data in Donaldson (2012) represents the total rainfall in a given district over a year, categorized by growing seasons of various crops (for ex- ample, the amount of total rainfall in a district that fell during the wheat growing season). Since different districts likely had different shares of crops, we average over all crops to obtain an approximation of total rainfall over the entire year. We additionally convert this into a more relevant measure in the context of famine by considering only the rainfall that fell during the growing seasons of crops typically grown for consumption in the dataset; those being bajra, barley, gram (bengal), jowar (sorghum), maize, ragi (millet), rice, and wheat. Finally, to ensure additional precision over the growing season, we simply add rainfall totals during the grow- ing seasons of the two most important food crops - rice and wheat - which make up over eighty percent of food crops in the country (World Bank, UN-FAOSTAT). The two crops have nearly opposite growing seasons, so the distribution of rainfall over the combined growing seasons serves as an approximation of total annual rainfall. Our results are robust with regards to all three definitions; the pairwise correlations between the measures are never less than ninety percent. Moreover, the cross-sectional famine instruments constructed from these are almost totally identical as the patterns in each type of rainfall (that is, their statistical distributions over time) turn out to be the same. As expected, there appears to be significant variation in annual rainfall. The ex- ample of the Buldana district (historically located in the Bombay presidency, now in Maharashtra state) highlights this trend, as shown in Figure 1 on the following page. In general, the trends for both measures of rainfall over time are virtually in- distinguishable aside from magnitude. As anticipated, famine years are marked by severe and/or sustained periods of below-average rainfall although the correlation is not perfect. There are a few districts which have years with low rainfall and no recorded famines, but this can mostly be explained by a lack of sufficient records, especially in earlier years. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are a few districts that recorded famines despite above-average rainfall, which could possibly be the result of non-climatic factors such as colonial taxation policies, conflicts, or other natural disasters, such as insect plagues. However, the relationship between rainfall patterns and famine occurrence suggests that we can use the former as an instrument for the latter especially since the correlation is not perfect, and famine occurrence is plausibly non-random due to the impact of British land ownership policies. Figure 1: Rainfall over time for Buldana from 1870 to 1920 Notes : The dashed line shows mean rainfall for all food crops; the solid line shows the total rainfall over the wheat and rice growing seasons. The blue and purple lines represent the historical means for these measures of rainfall. The rad shading denotes years in which famines are recorded as having affected the district. We construct count instruments for famines by first computing the historic mean and annual deviation for rainfall in each district. We can then count famines as years in which the deviation was in the bottom fifteenth percentile in order to capture relatively severe and negative rainfall shocks as plausible famine causes. For severe famines, we use the bottom decile instead. The percentiles were chosen based on famine severity so that the counts obtained using this definition were as similar as possible to the actual counts constructed from recorded famines (see above) in the panel dataset. For modern-day outcomes, we turn to survey data from the Indian census as well as the Indian Human Development Survey II, which details personal variables (ex. consumption and education), infrastructure measures (such as access to roads), and access to public goods (ex. hospital availability) at a very high level of geographical detail. An important metric constructed from the household development surveys is that of intergenerational mobility as measured by the expected income percentile of children whose parents belonged to a given income percentile, which we obtain from Novosad et al. (2019). Additionally, as survey data can often be unreliable, we supplement these with an analysis of satellite luminosity data, which provides measures of the (nighttime) luminosity of geographic cells, which should serve as a more reliable proxy for economic development, following Henderson et al. (2011) and Pinkovsky and Sala-i-Martin (2016). These data are mostly obtained from Novosad et. al (2018, 2019) and Iyer (2010), which we have aggregated to the district level. The outcomes variables are as follows: 1. Log absolute magnitude per capita. We intend this to serve as a proxy for a district’s economic development in lieu of reliable GDP data. This is the logarithm of the total luminosity observed in the district divided by the district’s population. These are taken from Vernon and Storeygard (2011) by way of Novosad et al. (2018). 2. Log rural consumption per capita. This is taken from the Indian Household Survey II by way of Novosad et al. (2019). 3. Share of the workforce employed in the cultivation sector, intended as a mea- sure of rural development and reliance on agriculture (especially subsistence agri- culture). This is taken from Iyer et al. (2010). 4. Gini Index, from Iyer (2010), as a measure of inequality. 5. Intergenerational income mobility (father-son pairs), taken from Novosad et al. (2018). Specifically, we consider the expected income percentile of sons in 2012 whose fathers were located in the 25th percentile for household income (2004), using the upper bound for robustness (9). 6. The percentage of the population with a college degree, taken from census data. 7. Electrification, i.e. the percent of villages with all homes connected to the power grid (even if power is not available twenty-four hours per day). 8. Percent of villages with access to a medical center, taken from Iyer (2010), as a measure of rural development in the aspect of public goods. 9. Percent of villages with any bus service, further intended as a measurement of public goods provision and infrastructure development. Broadly speaking, these can be classified into three categories with 1-3 representing broad measures of economic development, 4-6 representing inequality and human capital, and 7-9 representing the development of infrastructure and the provision of public goods. As discussed in section two, our preliminary hypothesis is that the occurrence of famines has a negative effect on district development, which is consistent with most of the literature on disasters. Hence, given a higher occurrence of famine, we expect that districts suffering from more famines during the colonial period will be characterized by lower levels of development, being (1) less luminous at night, (2) poorer in terms of a lower rural consumption, and (3) more agricultural, i.e have a higher share of the labor force working in agriculture. Similarly, with regards to inequality and human capital, we expect that more famine-afflicted districts will have (4) higher inequality in terms of a higher Gini index, (5) lower upward social mobility in terms of a lower expected income percentile for sons whose fathers were at the 25th income percentile, and (6) a lower percentage of adults with a college education. Finally, by the same logic, these districts should be relatively underdeveloped in terms of infrastructure, and thus (7) lack access to power, (8) lack access to medical care, and (9) lack access to transportation services. Finally, even though our independent variable when instrumented should be exogenous, we attempt to control for geographic and climatic factors affecting agriculture and rainfall in each district, namely: - Soil type and quality (sandy, rocky or barren, etc.) - Latitude (degree) and mean temperature (degrees Celsius) - Coastal location (coded as a dummy variable) - Area in square kilometers (it should be noted that district boundaries correspond well, but not perfectly, to their colonial-era counterparts) As mentioned previously, research by Iyer and Banerjee (2008, 2014) suggests that the type of land-tenure system implemented during British rule has had a huge impact on development in the districts (10). We also argue that it may be re- lated to famine occurrence directly (for example, in that tenure systems favoring landlords may experience worse famines), in light of the emerging literature on agricultural land rights, development, and food security (Holden and Ghebru 2016, Maxwell and Wiebe 1998). Specifically, we consider specifications with and without the proportion of villages in the district favoring a landlord or non-land- lord tenure system, obtained from Iyer (2010). In fact, the correlation between the two variables in our dataset is slightly above 0.23, which is not extremely high but enough to be of concern in terms of avoiding omitted variable bias. We ultimately consider four specifications for each dependent variable based on the controls in X from equation (1): no controls, land tenure, geography, and land tenure with geography. Each of these sets of controls addresses a different source of omitted variable bias: the first, land-tenure, addresses the possibility of British land-tenure policies causing both famines and long-term development outcomes. The second, geography, addresses the possibility of factors such as mean elevation and temperature impacting crop growth while also influencing long-term development (for example, if hilly and rocky districts suffer from more famines because they are harder to grow crops in but also suffer from lower development because they are harder to build infrastructure in or access via transportation). We avoid using contemporary controls for the outcome variables (that is, including infrastructure variables, income per capita, or welfare variables in the right- hand side) because many of these could reasonably be the result of the historical effects (the impact of famines) we seek to study. As such, including them as controls would artificially dilate the impact of our independent variable. 2. Summary statistics Table I presents summary statistics of our cross-sectional dataset on the follow- ing page. One cause for potential concern is that out of the over 400 districts in colonial India, we have only managed to capture 179 in our sample. This is due chiefly to a paucity of data regarding rainfall; there are only 191 districts captured in the original rainfall data from Donaldson (2012). In addition, the changing of district names and boundaries over time makes the matching of old colonial districts with modern-day administrative subdivisions more imprecise than we would like. Nevertheless, these districts cover a reasonable portion of modern India as well as most of the regions which underwent famines during imperial rule. The small number of districts may also pose a problem in terms of the standard errors on our coefficients, as the magnitude of the impacts of famines that occurred over a hundred years ago on outcomes today is likely to be quite small. Table 1 – Summary Statistics Source : Author calculations, from Iyer (2010), Iyer and Bannerjee (2014), Novosad et. al (2018), Asher and No- vosad (2019), Donaldson and Burgess (2012). 4. Ordinary Least Squares Although we suspect that estimates of famine occurrence and severity based on recorded historical observations may be nonrandom for several reasons (mentioned in section two and three), we first consider direct estimation of (1) from section two. For convenience, equation (1) is reprinted below: As in the previous section, famine refers to the number of years that are coded 2, 3, or 4 in famine severity as described in Srivastava (1968). X is the set of con- temporary covariates, also described in section three. We estimate four separate specifications of (1) where X varies: 1. No controls, i.e. X is empty. 2. Historical land tenure, to capture any effects related to British land policy in causing both famines and long-term developmental outcomes. 3. Geographical controls relating to climatic and terrestrial factors, such as temperature, latitude, soil quality, etc. 4. Both (2) and (3). Table II presents the estimates for the coefficients on famines and tenure for our nine dependent variables on the following page (we omit coefficients and confidence intervals for the geographic variables for reasons of brevity and relevance in terms of interpretation). In general, the inclusion or exclusion of controls does not greatly change the magnitudes of the estimates nor their significance, except for a few cases. We discuss effects for each dependent variable below: Log of total absolute magnitude in the district per capita : The values for famine suggest that interestingly, each additional famine results in anywhere from 1.8 to 3.6 percent more total nighttime luminosity per person in the district. As mentioned in section three, newer literature shows that nighttime luminosity is a far more reliable gauge of development than reported survey measures such as GDP, so this result is not likely due to measurement error. Thus, as the coefficient on famine is positive, it seems that having suffered more famines is positively related to development. This in fact is confirmed by the instrumental variables (IV) estimates in Table III (see section five). Curiously, the inclusion of tenure and geography controls separately does not change the significance, but including both of them together in the covariates generates far larger confidence intervals than expected and reduces the magnitude of the effect by an entire order of magnitude. This may be because each set of controls tackles a different source of omitted variable bias. As expected, however, land tenure plays a significant role in predicting a district’s development; even a single percent increase in the share of villages with a tenant-favorable system is associated with a whopping 73-80% additional night- time luminosity per person. Log rural consumption per capita : We find evidence that additional famines are associated with lower rural consumption, albeit on a minuscule scale. This suggests that the beneficial effect of famines on development may not be equal across urban and rural areas but instead concentrated in cities. For example, there might be a causal pathway that implies faster urbanization in districts that undergo more famines. Unlike with luminosity, historical land tenure does not seem to play a role in rural consumption. Percent of the workforce employed in cultivation : As expected, additional famines seem to play a strongly significant but small role with regards to the labor patterns in the district. Districts with more famines seem to have nearly one percent of the labor force working in cultivation for each additional famine, suggesting famines may inhibit development of industries other than agriculture and cultivation. Our instrumental variables estimates confirm this. Puzzlingly, land tenure does not seem to be related to this very much at all. Gini Index : The coefficients for the number of famines seem to be difficult to interpret as both those for the specification with no controls and with both sets of controls are statistically significant with similar magnitudes yet opposite signs. The confidence interval for the latter is slightly narrower. This is probably because the true estimate is zero or extremely close to zero, and the inclusion or exclusion of controls is enough to narrowly affect the magnitude to as to flip the sign of the co- efficient. In order to clarify this, more data is needed – i.e for more of the districts in colonial India to be matched in our original sample. At the very least, we can say that land tenure clearly has a large and significant positive association with in- equality. Unfortunately, this association cannot be confirmed as causal due to the lack of an instrument for land tenure which covers enough districts of British India. However, as Iyer and Banerjee (2014) argue, the assignment of tenure systems itself was plausibly random (having been largely implemented on the whims of British administrators) so that one could potentially interpret the results as causal with some level of caution. Intergenerational income mobility : Similarly, we do not find evidence of an association between the number of famines suffered by a district in the colonial era and social mobility in the present day, but we do find a strong impact of land tenure, which makes sense to the reported institutional benefits of tenant-favorable systems in encouraging development as well as the obvious benefits for the tenants and their descendants themselves. Each one-percent increase in the share of villages in a district that uses a tenant-favorable system in the colonial era is associated with anywhere from ten to thirteen percent higher expected income percentile for sons whose fathers were at the 25th percentile in 1989 although the estimates presented in Table II are an upper bound. College education : We find extremely limited evidence that famines in the colonial period are associated with less human capital in the present day, with a near-zero effect of additional famines on the share of adults in a district with a college degree (in fact, rounded to zero with five to six decimal places). Land tenure similarly has very little or no effect. Electrification, access to medical care , bus service : All three of these infra- structure and public goods variables show a negligible effect of famines, but strong impacts of historical land tenure. Ultimately, we find that famines themselves seem to have some positive impact on long-term development despite also being associated with many negative out- comes, such as a greater share of the workforce employed in agriculture (i.e as opposed to more developed activities such as manufacturing or service). Another finding of note is that while famines do not seem to have strong associations with all of our measures, land tenure does. This suggests that the relationship between land-tenure and famine is worth looking into. The existence of bias in the recording of famines, as well as the potential for factors that both cause famines while simultaneously affecting long-term outcomes, present a possible problem with these estimates. We have already attempted to account for one of those, namely historical land tenure systems. Indeed, in most of the specifications, including tenure in the regression induces a decrease in the magnitude of the coefficient on famine. As the effect of famine tends to be extremely small to begin with, the relationship is not always clear. Other errors are also possible. For example, it is possible that a given district experienced a famine in a given year, but insufficient records of its occurrence remained by 1968. Then, Srivastiva (1968) would have assigned that district a code of 0 for that year, but the correct code should have been higher. Indeed, as described in section three, a code of 0 corresponds to a code of “not mentioned”, which encompasses both “not mentioned at all” and “not mentioned as being affected by famine” (Donaldson and Burgess 2010). While measurement error in the dependent variable is usually not a problem, error in the independent variable can lead to attenuation bias in the coefficients since the ordinary least-squares algorithm minimizes the error on the dependent variable by estimating coefficients for the independent variables. The greater this error, the more the ordinary least- squares method will bias the estimated coefficients towards zero in an attempt to minimize error in the dependent variable (Riggs et al. 1978). For these reasons, we turn to instrumental variables estimation in section five in an attempt to provide additional identification. Table 2 – Ordinary Least-Square Estimates Notes : Independent variable is number of with recorded famines (famine code of 2 or above). Control specifications: (a) no controls, (b) land-tenure control (proportion of villages with tenant-ownership land tenure system), (c) geographic controls (see section three for enumeration), (d) both land-tenure and geographic controls. Source : Author calculations. These are more table notes. The style is Table Notes. *** Significant at the 1 percent level or below (p ≤ 0.01). ** Significant at the 5 percent level (0.01 < p ≤ 0.05). * Significant at the 10 percent level (0.05 < p ≤ 0.1). 5. Weather Shocks as an Instrument for Famine Severity As explained in section two, there are many possible reasons why recorded famine data may not be exogenous. In any case, it would be desirable to have a truly exogenous measure of famine, for which we turn to climate data in the form of rainfall shocks. Rainfall is plausibly connected to the occurrence of famines, especially in light of the colonial government’s laissez-faire approach to famine relief (Bhatia 1968). For example, across all districts, mean rainfall averaged around 1.31m in years without any famine and around 1.04m in districts which were at least somewhat affected by famine (code 1 or above). Figure 2 below shows that there is a very clear association between rainfall activity and famines in colonial India, although variability in climate data as well as famine and agricultural policy means that there are some high-rainfall districts which do experience famines as well as low-rainfall districts which do not experience as many famines, as noted in section three. Figure 2: Associations between famine occurrence and rainfall trends It should be clear from the first three scatterplots above that there is a negative relationship between the amount of rainfall a district receives and the general prevalence of famine but more importantly, the total size of the rainfall shocks and the total occurrences of famine in that district. From the final plot we see that when we classify low-rainfall years by ranking the deviations from the mean, counting the number of years in which these deviations are in the bottom fifteenth percentile corresponds well to the actual number of recorded famines for each district. In order to use this to measure famine exogenously, we first estimate (2) (see below, section two and section three) where we predict the number of famines from the number of negative rainfall shocks as represented by deviation from the mean in the bottom fifteen percent of all deviations before estimating (1) using this predicted estimate of famine in place of the recorded values. Our reduced form11 estimates, where we first run (1) using the number of negative rainfall shocks directly, are presented on the following pages in Table III (11). The reduced form equation is shown as (4) below as well: Table 3 – Reduced form estimates for IV Notes : Independent variable is number of years in which deviation of rainfall from the historic mean is in the bottom fifteenth-percentile. Control specifications: (a) no controls, (b) land-tenure control (proportion of villages with tenant-ownership land tenure system), (c) geographic controls (see section three for enumeration), (d) both land-tenure and geographic controls. Source : Author calculations. These are more table notes. The style is Table Notes. *** Significant at the 1 percent level or below (p ≤ 0.01). ** Significant at the 5 percent level (0.01 < p ≤ 0.05). * Significant at the 10 percent level (0.05 < p ≤ 0.1). From Table III, it would appear that negative rainfall shocks have similar effects on the outcome variables as do recorded famines in terms of the statistical significance of the coefficients on the independent variable. There is also the added benefit that we can confirm our very small and slightly negative effects of famines on the proportion of adults with a college education: for each additional year of exceptionally low rainfall in a district, the number of adults with a college education in 2011 decreases by 0.1%. In addition, whereas the coefficients in Table II were conflicting, Table III provides evidence in favor of the view that additional famines increase inequality in a district as measured by the Gini index. However, the magnitudes of the effects of famines or low-rainfall years are pre- dominantly larger than their counterparts in Table II to a rather puzzling extent. While we stated earlier in section three that famines and rainfall are not perfectly correlated, it might be that variation in historical rainfall shocks can better explain variation in outcomes in the present day. In order to get a better understanding of the relationship between the two, it would first be wise to look at the coefficients presented in Table IV, which are the results of the two-stage least-squares estimation using low-rainfall years as an instrument for recorded famines. Table IV follows the patterns established in Table II and Table III with regards to the significance of the coefficients as well as their signs; famines have a statistically significant and positive impact on nighttime luminosity, a significant negative impact on rural consumption, and a positive impact on the percent of the labor force employed in agriculture. The results with respect to Table II, concerning the impact of famine on the proportion of adults with a college education, are also very similar. Most other specifications do not show a significant effect of famine on the respective outcome with the exception of access to medical care. Unlike in Table II and Table III, each additional famine is associated with an additional 11.2 to 12.5 percent of villages in that district having some form of medical center or service readily accessible (according to the specifications with geographic controls, which we argue are more believable than the ones without). However, this relationship breaks down at the level of famines seen in some of our districts; a district having suffered nine or ten famines would see more than 100% of its villages having access to medical centers (which is clearly nonsensical), suggesting we may need to look for nonlinearity in the effects of famine in section six. Unfortunately, unlike in Table III, it seems that we cannot conclude much regarding the effect of famines on intergenerational mobility as the coefficients are contradictory and generally not statistically significant. For example, the coefficient on famine in the model without any controls is highly significant and positive, but the coefficient in the model with all controls is not significant and starkly negative. The same is true for the effect of famines on the Gini index. One possibility is that the positive coefficients on famine for both of these dependent variables are driven by outliers as our data was relatively limited due to factors mentioned in section 2. The magnitudes of the coefficients in Table IV are generally smaller than those presented in Table III but still significantly larger than the ones in Table II. For ex- ample, in Table II, the ordinary least-squares model suggests that each additional historical famine is associated with an additional 0.5 to 0.9 percent of the district’s workforce being employed in cultivation in 2011, but in Table IV, these numbers range from 1.5 to 4.3 percent for the same specifications, representing almost a tenfold increase in magnitude in some cases. One reason for this is the possibility attenuation bias in the ordinary least-squares regression; here, there should not be any attenuation bias in our results as the use of instruments which we assume are not correlated with any measurement error in the recording of famines excludes that possibility (Durbin 1954). On the other hand, the Hausman test for endogeneity (the econometric gold standard for testing a model’s internal validity) often fails to reject the null hypothesis that the recorded famine variable taken from Srivastava (1968) and Donaldson and Burgess (2012) is exogenous. To be precise, in one sense the test fails to reject the null hypothesis that the rainfall data add no new “information”, which is not captured in the reported famine data. It is possible that our rainfall instrument, as used in equation (2) is invalid due to endogeneity with the regression model specified in equation (1) despite being excluded from it. The only way to test this possibility is to conduct a Sargan-Han- sen test12 on the model’s overidentifying restrictions; however, we are unable to conduct the test as we have a single instrument. It follows that our model is not actually overidentified (12). Table 4 –Instrumental Variables Estimates Notes : Independent variable is number of years with recorded famines (famine code of 2 or above), instrumented with number of low-rainfall years (rainfall deviation from historic mean in bottom fifteenth percentile). Control specifications: (a) no controls, (b) land-tenure control (proportion of villages with tenant-ownership land tenure system), (c) geographic controls (see section three for enumeration), (d) both land-tenure and geographic controls. Source : Author calculations. These are more table notes. The style is Table Notes. *** Significant at the 1 percent level or below (p ≤ 0.01). ** Significant at the 5 percent level (0.01 < p ≤ 0.05). * Significant at the 10 percent level (0.05 < p ≤ 0.1). We also need to consider the viability of our instrumental variables estimates. Table V on the following page offers mixed support. While the weak-instrument test always rejects the null-hypothesis of instrument weakness, for models with more controls, namely those with geographic controls, the first-stage F-values – the test statistics of interest– are relatively small. Which is not encouraging as generally a value of ten or more is recommended to be assured of instrument strength (Staiger and Stock 1997) (13). In Table IV, we show confidence intervals obtained by inverting the Anderson-Rubin test, which accounts for instrument strength in determining the statistical significance of the coefficients. These are wider in the models with more controls, although not usually wide enough to move coefficients from statistically significant to statistically insignificant. However, additional complications arise when considering the Hausman tests for endogeneity. The p-values in Table V suggest that around half of the regression specifications in Table IV do not suffer from a lack of exogeneity, meaning that the ordinary least-squares results are just as valid for those specifications. A more serious issue is that the Hausman test rejects the null-hypothesis of exogeneity for four out of nine outcome variables. Combined with the fact that the first-stage F-statistics are concerningly low for the specifications with geographic controls, this means that not only are the ordinary least-squares results likely to be biased, but the instrumental variables estimates are also likely to be imprecise. This is most concerning for the results related to rural consumption and percent of the workforce in agriculture. Conversely, the results for nighttime luminosity are not affected as the Hausman tests do not reject exogeneity for that outcome variable. While we might simply use the ordinary-least squares results to complement those obtained via two-stage least-squares, the latter are lacking in instrument strength. More importantly, the differences in magnitude between the coefficients presented in Table II and in Table IV are too large to allow this use without abandoning consistency in the interpretation of the coefficients. Ultimately, given that the Hausman tests show that instrumentation is at least somewhat necessary, and the actual p-values for the weak-instrument test are still reasonably low (being less than 0.05 even in the worst case), we prefer to uphold the instrumental variables results as imperfect as some of them may be. We argue that it is better to have un- biased estimates from the instrumental variables procedure (IV), even if they may be less unreliable, than to risk biased results due to endogeneity problems present in ordinary least squares (OLS). Table 5 – Instrumental Variables Diagnostics Notes : The weak-instrument test p-value is obtained from comparison of the first-stage F-statistic with the chi- square distribution with degrees of freedom corresponding to the model (number of data points minus number of estimands). Independent variable is number of years in which deviation of rainfall from the historic mean is in the bottom fifteenth-percentile. Control specifications: (a) no controls, (b) land-tenure control (proportion of villages with tenant-ownership land tenure system), (c) geographic controls (see section three for enumeration), (d) both land-tenure and geographic controls. Source : Author calculations. 6. Discussion Our data suggest that there are long-run impacts of historical famines. Tables II, IV, and VII clearly show that the number of historical famines has a[72] [73] [MOU74] statistically significant, though small impact on the following: average level of economic development as approximated by nighttime luminosity, the share of the population employed in cultivation, consumption, inequality, and the provision of medical services in contemporary Indian districts. There appear to be no discernible effects on intergenerational income mobility or basic infrastructure such as electrification. The effects are quite small and are generally overshadowed by other geographical factors such as climate (i.e., latitude and temperature). They are also small in comparison to the impact of other colonial-era policies such as land-tenure systems. Nevertheless, they are still interesting to observe given that the famines in question occurred nearly a hundred years prior to the measurement of the outcomes in question. We contend that they reveal lasting and significant consequences of British food policy in colonial India. Table IV suggests that a hypothetical district having suffered ten famines - which is not atypical in our data - may have developed as much as ninety-four percent more log absolute magnitude per capita, around forty percent less consumption per capita in rural areas , 150% percent more of the workforce employed in cultivation, and a Gini index nearly ten percent greater than a district which suffered no famines. As to the question of whether or not the famines were directly caused by British policy, the results suggest that, at the very least, British nineteenth-century laissez-faire attitudes to disaster management have had long-lasting consequences for India. Moreover, these estimates are causal as the use of rainfall shocks as instruments provides a means of estimation which is “as good as random.” Therefore, we can confidently state that these effects are truly the result of having undergone the observed famines. In considering whether to prefer our instrumental estimates or our least-squares estimates, we must mainly weigh the problems of a potentially weak instrument versus the benefits of a causal interpretation. We argue that we should still trust the IV estimates even though the instrument is not always as strong as we would like. First of all, the instrumentation of the recorded famine data with the demeaned rainfall data provides plausible causal estimation due to the fact that the rainfall measures are truly as good as random. Even if the recorded famine measure is itself reasonably exogenous as suggested by the Hausman tests, we argue that it is better to be sure. Using instruments for a variable which is already exogenous will not introduce additional bias into the results and may even help reduce attenuation bias from any possible measurement error. The Hausman test, after all, can- not completely eliminate this possibility; it can only suggest how likely or unlikely it is. In this sense, the instrumental estimates allow us to be far more confident in our assessment of the presence or absence of the long-run impact of famines. Though the first-stage F-statistics are less than ten, they are still large enough to reject the null hypothesis of instrument weakness as shown by the p-values for this test in Table V. We argue that it is better to be consistent than pick and choose which set of estimates we want to accept for a given dependent variable and model. We made this choice because the differences in magnitude between the IV and OLS coefficients are too large to do otherwise. A more interesting question raised by the reported coefficients in Table II, Table IV, and Table VII has to do with their sign. Why do districts more afflicted historically by famines seem to have more economic development yet worse out- comes in terms of rural consumption and inequality by our models? This could be due to redistributive preferences associated or possibly even caused by famines; Gualtieri et al. pose this hypothesis in their paper on earthquakes in Italy. We note that districts suffering more famines in the colonial era are more “rural” to- day in that they tend to have a greater proportion of their labor force working in cultivation. This cannot be a case of mere association where more rural districts are more susceptible to famine as our instrumental estimates in Table IV suggest otherwise. Rather, we explore the possibility that post-independence land reform in India was greater in relatively more agricultural districts. Much of the literature on land-tenure suggests that redistributing land from large landowners to smaller farmers is associated with positive effects for productivity and therefore, economic development (Iyer and Banerjee 2005, Varghese 2019). If the historical famines are causally associated with districts having less equal land tenure at independence, then this would explain their positive, though small, impact on economic development by way of inducing more land reform in those districts. On the other hand, if they are causally associated with districts remaining more agricultural in character at independence, and a district’s “agriculturalness” is only indirectly associated with land reform (in they only benefit because they have more agricultural land, so they benefit more from the reform), this would indicate that famines have a small and positive impact on economic development through a process that is less directly causal. Although we are unable to observe land-tenure and agricultural occupations immediately at independence, we are able to supplement our data with addition- al state-level observations of land-reform efforts in Indian states from 1957-1992 compiled in Besley and Burgess (2010) and aggregate the district-level observations of famines in our dataset by state (14). If our hypothesis above is correct, then we should see a positive association between the number of historical famines in a state’s districts and the amount of land-reform legislation passed by that state after independence, keeping in mind that provincial and state borders were almost completely reorganized after independence. Although this data is quite coarse, being on the state level, it is widely available. However, the plot below suggests completely the opposite relationship as each additional famine across the state’s districts appears to be associated with nearly 0.73 fewer land-reform acts. Even after removing the outlier of West Bengal, which underwent far more numerous land reforms due to the ascendancy of the Communist Party of India in that state, the relationship is still quite apparent; every two additional famines are associated with almost one fewer piece of land-reform legislation post-independence. Figure 3: Historical Famine Occurrence vs Post-independence land reforms Figure 3 with West Bengal removed Therefore, there seems to be little evidence that famines are associated with land-reforms at all. This is quite puzzling because it is difficult to see how famine occurrence could lead to positive economic development while hurting outcomes such as inequality, consumption, and public goods provision. One potential explanation is that famines lead to higher urban development while hurting rural development, which would suggest a key impact of famine occurrence is the worsening of an urban-rural divide in economic development. This would explain how high er famine occurrence is linked with higher night-time luminosity, which would itself be positively associated with urbanization but is also linked with lower rural consumption, higher inequality (which may be the result of a stronger rural-urban divide), and a higher proportion of the workforce employed in the agricultural sector. For example, it is highly plausible that famines depopulate rural areas, leaving survivors to concentrate in urban centers, where famine relief is more likely to be available. Donaldson and Burgess (2012), who find that historical famine relief tended to be more effective in areas better served by rail networks, support this explanation. At the same time, the population collapse in rural areas would leave most of the workforce employed in subsistence agriculture going forward. Thus, if famines do lead to more people living in urban areas while simultaneously increasing the proportion of the remaining population employed in agriculture, then they would also exacerbate inequality and worsen rural, economic out- comes. If the urbanization effect is of greater magnitude, this would also explain the slight increase in night-time luminosity and electrification. This is somewhat supported by the plots in Figure 4, in which urbanization is defined as the proportion of a district’s population that lives in urban areas as labeled by the census. It appears that urbanization is weakly associated with famine occurrence (especially when using rainfall shocks) and positively associated with nighttime luminosity and inequality while negatively associated with rural consumption and agricultural employment as hypothesized above. However, instrumental estimates of urbanization as a result of famine detailed in Table VI only weakly support the idea that famine occurrence causally impacts urbanization as only the estimation without any controls is statistically significant. Figure 4: Urbanization Rates vs. Famine occurrence and Development outcomes Notes : The first two plots (in the top row) depict urbanization against famine occurrence and negative rainfall shocks. The rest of the plots depict various outcomes (discussed above) against the urbanization rate. Table VI –Urbanization Vs. Famine Occurrence Notes : Independent variable is percent of a district’s population that is urban as defined in the 2011 Indian census. Control specifications: (a) no controls, (b) land-tenure control (proportion of villages with tenant-ownership land tenure system), (c) geographic controls (see section three for enumeration), (d) both land-tenure and geographic controls. Source : Author calculations. *** Significant at the 1 percent level or below (p ≤ 0.01). ** Significant at the 5 percent level (0.01 < p ≤ 0.05). * Significant at the 10 percent level (0.05 < p ≤ 0.1). Nevertheless, this represents a far more likely explanation for our results than land reform, especially since the land reform mechanism implies that famine occurrence would be associated with better rural outcomes. In other words, if famines being associated with land-reform at independence was the real explanation behind our results, because the literature on land-reform suggests that it is linked with improved rural development, we would not expect to see such strongly negative rural impacts of famine in our results. Therefore, not only is the explanation of differential urban versus rural development as a result of famine occurrence better supported by our data, it also constitutes a more plausible explanation for our findings. While we do not have enough data to investigate exactly how famine occurrence seems to worsen urban-rural divides in economic development (for example, rural population collapse as hypothesized above), such a question would certainly be a key area of future study. Conclusion In this paper, we have shown that famines occurring in British India have a statistically significant long-run impact on present-day outcomes by using both ordinary least-squares as well as instrumenting for famine with climate shocks in the form of deviated rainfall. In particular, the occurrence of famine seems to ex- acerbate a rural-urban divide in economic development. Famines appear to cause a small increase in overall economic development, but lower consumption and welfare in rural areas while also worsening wealth inequality. This is supported by the finding that famines appear to lead to slightly higher rates of urbanization while simultaneously leading to a higher proportion of a district’s labor force remaining employed in the agricultural sector. Even though our ordinary-least squares measures are generally acceptable, we point to the similar instrumental variable estimates as stronger evidence of the causal impact of the famines. Ultimately, our results demonstrate that negative cli- mate shocks combined with certain disaster management policies, such as British colonial laissez-faire approaches to famine in India, may have significant, though counter-intuitive, impacts on economic outcomes in the long-run. Endnotes 1 One can essentially understand this technique as manipulating the independent variable, which may not be randomly assigned, via a randomly assigned instrument. 2 The Gini index measures the distribution of wealth or income across individuals, with a score of zero corresponding to perfectly equal distribution and a score of one corresponding to a situation where one individual holds all of the wealth or earns all of the income in the group. 3 The Durbin-Wu-Hausman test essentially asks whether adding the instrument changes bias in the model . A rejection of the null hypothesis implies that differences in coefficients between OLS and IV are due to adding the instrument, whereas the null hypothesis assumes that the independent variable(s) are already exogenous and so adding an instrument contributes no new information to the model. 4 Attenuation bias occurs when there is measurement error in the independent variable, which biases estimates downward due to the definition of the least-squares estimator as one which minimizes squared error on the axis of the dependent variable. See Durbin (1954) for a detailed discussion. 5 Classical growth theory, such as in the Solow-Swan (1957) and Romer (1994) implies long-run convergence and therefore that districts would have similar outcomes today regardless of the number of famines they underwent. However, this is at odds with most of the empirical literature as discussed previously, in which there are often measurable long-term effects to natural disasters. 6 A Poisson process models count data via a random variable following a Poisson distribution. 7 Although we use the term damage, the impact to the economy need not be negative – indeed, we find that some impacts of famine occurrence are positive in sections four and five, which we attempt to explain in section seven. 8 Normally, OLS assumes that the variance of the error term is not correlated with the independent variable(s) i.e the errors are homoscedastic. If this is not true, i.e the errors are heteroscedastic, then the standard errors will be too small. Robust least-squares estimation calculates the OLS standard errors in a way that does not depend on the assumption that the errors are homoscedastic. 9 So, for example, if this value is 25, then there is on average no mobility on average, as sons would be expected to remain in the same income percentile as their fathers. Similarly, if it is less than (greater than) 25, then there would be downward (upward) mobility. A value of 50 would indicate perfect mobility, i.e no relationship between fathers’ income percentiles and those of their sons. 10 For a brief overview of the types of systems employed by the East India Company and Crown administrators, see Iyer and Banerjee (2008), or see Tirthankar (2006) for a more detailed discussion. 11 While reduced form estimates–that is, estimating the outcomes as direct functions of the exogenous variables rather than via a structural process–are often not directly interpretable, they can serve to confirm the underlying trends in the data (for example, via the sign of the coefficients), which is why we choose to include them here. 12 The Sargan-Hansen test works very similarly to the Durbin-Wu-Hausman test, but instead uses a quadratic form on the cross-product of the residuals and instruments. 13 To be precise, this heuristic is technically only valid with the use of a single instrument, which is of course satisfied in our case anyway. 14 To be clear, the value of famine for each state is technically the average number of famines in the historical districts that are presently part of the state, since subnational boundaries were drastically reorganized along linguistic lines after independence. 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Neti Linzer Can Pascal Convert the Libertine? An Analysis of the Evaluative Commitment Entailed by Pascal's Wager Neti Linzer While Pascal’s wager is commonly approached as a stand-alone decision theoretic problem, there is also a crucial evaluative component to his argument that adds oft-overlooked complexities. Though we can formulate a response to these challenges by drawing on other sections of the Pensées, an examination of an argument from Walter Kaufmann highlights enduring difficulties with this response, leading to the conclusion that Pascal lacks the resources to convincingly appeal to the libertine’s self-interest. I. Introduction Pascal’s wager, an argument due to the 17th-century mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, is generally analyzed as a self-contained, formalizable problem, embodying one of the first applications of decision theory (1). In short, it calculates the expected utility of believing in God against that of not believing, and concludes that, inasmuch as rationality entails maximizing expected utility, i.e. making the decision that will most likely lead to the most preferable outcome, it is rational for us to believe in God (2). This is a “wager” insofar as we cannot know with certainty that God exists, and the most we can do is gamble on the fact that He does. But what I will argue is that the wager argument presupposes a certain evaluative commitment, which Pascal’s targeted audience, the ‘libertine,’ notably lacks (3). The libertine is someone who does not believe in God, and whose value system is instead oriented towards earthly, bodily, happiness. I claim that for someone thus constituted, Pascal’s wager fails to be convincing. The wager, however, is only one part of Pascal’s never-finished apologetic project, the preliminary notes of which are organized in the Pensées, meaning ‘Thoughts.’ I will show that if we examine some of the other arguments Pascal makes throughout the Pensées, then we can formulate a response to this objection on Pascal’s behalf. As Pascal describes her, the libertine is deeply unhappy when she thinks about the contingencies of the human condition, and she therefore values activities which entertain her and divert her from these disturbing thoughts. In his description of the libertine’s condition, Pascal p erforms something of a Nietzschean style ‘revaluation’ of this approach to life: it includes a destructive phase—in which Pascal argues that the libertine’s values are based on false p resuppositions—followed by a constructive phase—in which Pascal presents the libertine with a more attractive evaluative framework. Once she is in this new cognitive space, the libertine is p repared to be persuaded by the wager. I argue, however, that inasmuch as there are alternative ways for the libertine to revalue her mortality, Pascal fails to make an argument that will necessarily appeal to her self-interest. Drawing on the work of the 20th-century philosopher Walter Kaufmann, I argue that the libertine can instead revalue her mortality by embracing it, by recognizing the way in which the fact of her death is precisely what makes her life worthwhile. And while Kaufman’s approach certainly might also fail to be convincing it at least offers a viable alternative, and has two advantages over Pascal’s: (i) it draws on known facts (our mortality) rather than theoretical possibilities (an immortal soul), and it does not require any kind of wager. The upshot is that, while thedestructive phase of Pascal’s ‘revaluation’ may have been successful, the success of the constructive phase is dubious. As an appeal to the libertine’s self-interest, the wager falls short. The first section of this paper presents the objection to Pascal’s argument, the second section develops a response on Pascal's behalf, and the final section presents enduring difficulties with Pascal’s argument by introducing Kaufmann’s alternative approach. II. The Libertine’s Objection to Pascal’s Wager Crucially, Pascal’s wager is written in a language that the libertine will understand—the language of self-interest. We can summarize Pascal’s argument by saying that the libertine’s current lifestyle can, at most, offer her finite happiness: “what you are staking is finite.” If she gambles on belief in God, however, then the libertine opens herself up to the possibility of gaining infinite reward, and, as Pascal puts it, “all bets are off wherever there is an infinity.” As long as there are not infinitely greater chances that God doesn’t exist, than that God does exist, then, Pascal urges the libertine that, “there is no time to hesitate, you must give everything.” Pascal thereby appeals to the libertine’s instrumental rationality by identifying what it is that the libertine intrinsically desires—namely, her own “beatitude” (4)—and then by arguing that in order to truly satisfy this desire, the libertine must wager on belief in God (5). But there is a catch: the infinite happiness guaranteed by God is incomparable to any form of finite happiness that the libertine now enjoys. This is certainly true after the libertine accepts the wager, since belief in God demands that the libertine radically transform her lifestyle, substituting the dictates of her own will for the dictates of God’s. But I will argue that choosing to accept the wager requires the libertine to undergo what is arguably an even more dramatic transformation: she must transform her value system. This is because the wager does not just promise the libertine more happiness, but rather, it promises her qualitatively different happiness. And the wager only works if the libertine values this sort of happiness. It is true that Pascal never specifies what he means by “an infinite life of infinite happiness,” but inasmuch as he believes that it is the result of a life of faith, we can assume that he is referring to a traditional Catholic conception of heaven. Consider, then, the following reply in the mouth of Pascal’s libertine: an infinite life with God sounds absolutely miserable! First of all, inasmuch as my happiness is derived, at least in part, from the enjoyment of bodily pleasures, I cannot imagine being happy without my body. Happiness means hunting expeditions, games of cards, lavish feasts, and good company—where can I find those in heaven? Moreover, God promises to unite with believers in heaven. But why should I want to unite with God? You are offering me something that satisfies absolutely none of my desires. My life would not be better if God existed, even, (and this is crucial), if God rewarded me as a believer! Pascal’s wager works by presenting the libertine with a gamble: if God exists, there will be infinite happiness for those who believe and infinite misery for those who do not. This is because God promises to reward believers by uniting with them in heaven, and punishing non-believers by burning, or otherwise punishing them, in hell. But from the libertine’s perspective, there is no gamble: the prospects of heaven and hell are both unattractive, and since we are dealing with infinite amounts of time, they are both infinitely distressing prospects. There is therefore nothing worth gambling on. We might try to assure the libertine that once she is a believer, she will desire eternal life in heaven. We often persuade people to do something by promising that they might enjoy it, even if right now they cannot understand why. To take a mundane example, you might happily follow the recommendation of a friend to try a new food, even if you cannot imagine what it would be like to eat it. True, the stakes of this decision are qualitatively lower, but the same epistemic uncertainty seems to be at play: you cannot know whether you appreciate this food until you taste it, and you also cannot know whether you value a relationship with God until you attempt to build one. Inasmuch as wagering on the food does not involve any sort of evaluative transformation on your part, wagering on God might be the same way. But, there is a disanalogy between the two cases. Pascal is presenting the libertine with a certain decision matrix in which Pascal assigns an infinitely positive value to heaven and an infinitely negative value to hell (6). In order for the libertine to assign the same values to the given outcomes in the matrix, she must transform her evaluative framework, so that this-worldly happiness is no longer her highest value. The case of the new food, however, does not require a transformation of this sort. You know that you will either like or dislike the food, and you know that you value eating food that you like and disvalue eating foods that you do not like. Of course, there is still a gamble involved in trying the food since it is impossible to know how you will feel about its taste (7).But crucially, this puts you in a position that is analogous to the libertine considering Pascal’s wager only provided that she has already made the necessary evaluative transformation. It does not put you into the position of a standard libertine, who values her current happiness above all else, and therefore does not see anything to gamble for. Let’s describe a case that would be more analogous to the wager. Henrietta is a principled ascetic, meaning that she values abstention from earthly pleasures to whatever extent possible. As such, she adheres to a strict diet of only bread and water. She has sworn off earthly pleasures and adheres to a strict diet of bread and water. Suppose that her cousin, Henry, a food connoisseur, wants to convince her to try some caviar. He knows that he has never tasted caviar before, but he argues that, given her expected utility calculations, those who eat caviar enjoy it so much that he stands to gain more than lose from trying the caviar. But of course, even if Henrietta thought that Henry’s calculations were correct, they would be meaningless to her. As a matter of principle, she does not value the sensual pleasure provided by eating delicious food. Therefore, the experience of enjoying the food might be even more negative for Henrietta than the experience of disliking it, inasmuch as she has moral disdain for sensual pleasure. Henry’s calculations will only be persuasive if Henrietta abandons her current ascetic values and adopts a more hedonistic lifestyle. This is similar to the situation that the libertine finds herself in when presented with Pascal’s wager. Just as it would be meaningless to convince Henrietta to eat caviar by convincing her to abandon her ascetic lifestyle, to suggest that the libertine will desire heaven if she is a believing Christian is to reformulate the challenge rather than to address it. By formulating the libertine’s challenge this way, we realize just what Pascal’s wager requires: before the libertine can decide to wager on God’s existence, she must first revolutionize her evaluative framework, performing what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would refer to as a “revaluation of values,” i.e. a complete reversal of her normative commitments. At present, a religious lifestyle is not in the libertine’s self-interest; the libertine’s conception of happiness is tethered to her physical existence in this world, and therefore she will not be moved by promises of her soul being rewarded in another world. Now that we have established that the libertine must be induced to reassess her values before she can be persuaded to wager on God’s existence we must ask: does Pascal present the libertine with such an argument? III. Pascal’s Revaluation There is an inherent challenge in trying to influence someone to “revalue their values”: namely, identifying which values one can appeal to in formulating the argument. Generally, pragmatic arguments like Pascal’s wager take the agent’s values as a starting point, and then proceed to demonstrate that a certain action will do a better job at furthering the agent’s values. But if we use values as a starting point, how can we cogently provide someone with practical reasons to adopt a wholly new evaluative framework, without invoking the very values that they do not yet possess? To see how we might formulate a “revaluation” without recourse to other values, we can draw inspiration from Friedrich Nietzsche, whose philosophical undertaking was just that: a revaluation of all values. In his work, Nietzsche’s Revaluation of Values: A Study in Strategies, contemporary Nietzsche scholar, E.E. Sleinis, analyzes the various strategies that Nietzsche uses to achieve his evaluative revolution. One strategy that he discusses, “destruction from within,” undermines a certain value by revealing that it is internally inconsistent (8). This undermines the value on its own terms. There are a few different permutations of this strategy. One, which Sleinis refers to as “false presuppositions,” aims to show that “the value requires a fact to obtain that, as it turns out, fails to obtain.” In attacking the factual, rather than the evaluative component of the value system, Nietzsche is able to undermine it from within, without recourse to other values. For example, Nietzsche devalues “disinterested contemplation as the ideal of aesthetic contemplation” by arguing that humans are simply incapable of disinterested contemplation. We cannot disengage from our passions, emotions, and other interests when we contemplate works of art. “We can put this point in more graphic terms,” explains Sleinis, by arguing that “the pure aesthetic contemplator is a fiction" (9). In what follows, I will demonstrate how Pascal launches a similar attack on the libertine’s value system by arguing, in a parallel manner, that the happy libertine is a fiction. As mentioned, the wager is merely a part of Pascal’s broader apologetic project, and it is within this broader project that Pascal employs this Nietzschean revaluation strategy. There are many notes in the Pensées devoted to bemoaning the wretchedness of the libertine’s condition, and arguing that man simply cannot be happy without God. And while we do not know where Pascal would have placed these ideas (if at all) in his final work, we can still argue that, Pascal’s intentions aside, they do an excellent job preparing the libertine to be receptive to the wager. Once Pascal convinces the libertine that her approach to life was premised on a false presupposition, he is able to urge her to gamble on a new one. Pascal undermines the libertine’s approach to life—happiness derived from entertainment or diversions as the ideal of happiness—in the same way that Nietzsche undermines disinterested contemplation as the ideal of aesthetic contemplation: he shows that humans are incapable of achieving happiness through their diversions (10). While traces of this argument are evident throughout the Pensées , Pascal’s most sustained argument for it appears in his section “Diversions.” After examining this argument, we will turn to the possibility of an alternative response on behalf of the libertine in the spirit of philosopher Walter Kaufmann. Pascal presents us with an imagined dialogue, presumably between a believer and a libertine, in which the libertine explains her approach to life: “is not happiness the ability to be amused by diversion?”(11). For the libertine, to be happy is to be entertained. We can understand some of the more perplexing behaviors of people if we realize that their underlying motivation is to divert and entertain themselves: “those who philosophize about it, and who think people are quite unreasonable to spend a whole day chasing a hare they would not have bought, scarcely know our nature.” People do not hunt because they want the kill, but rather, because hunting provides them with entertainment. Pascal argues that all men, even kings who are in “the finest position of the world,” are miserable, “if they are without what is called diversion” (12). The reason that we value diversion, explains Pascal, is because it allows us to avoid confronting all of the unpleasant features of our condition. We do not seek “easy and peaceful lives,” because those would force us to think about “our unhappy condition” (13). The “unhappy” quality of our condition is delineated in the believer’s reply to the libertine; the libertine asks whether happiness is not the ability to be amused by diversions, to which the believer replies, “No, because that comes from elsewhere and from outside, and thus it is dependent, and subject to be disturbed by a thousand accidents which cause inevitable distress” (14). All of the activities with which the libertine happily amuses herself are all highly contingent, and are made easily inaccessible by any number of factors that are necessarily out of the libertine’s control. Moreover, all of the libertine’s amusements are necessarily ephemeral, so that even if they are miraculously undisturbed by illness or accident, they will inevitably be disturbed by death. This is the primary source of the libertine’s inconsolable misery in Pascal’s conception—no matter how much happiness she derives from her activities in this world, her impending death constantly threatens to rob her of everything. As Pascal puts it, man “wants to be happy, wants only to be happy, and cannot want not to be so. But how will he go about it? The best way would be to render herself immortal, but since he cannot do this, he has decided to prevent himself from thinking about it” (15). Thoughts of mortality thwart the libertine’s ability to enjoy the world around, and so the libertine blocks out these thoughts with diversions. In Pascal’s example, the libertine hunts vigorously for a hare that he would never buy, because while “the hare does not save us from the sight of death...the hunt does” (16). All of this explains how Pascal can argue, in the spirit of Nietzsche, that valuing the happiness derived from diversions as the ideal of happiness falsely assumes that humans can find happiness in diversions. Pascal demonstrates that they cannot. Our diversions are inevitably “subjected to be disturbed by a thousand accidents, and this causes inevitable distress” (17). Crucially, the distress is inevitable ; even if we spend most of our time completely amused by diversions, the fact that our source of happiness is external and contingent puts us in a constant state of instability. We are rendered eternally dependent on factors beyond our control and are therefore powerless to console ourselves in the face of adversity unless the universe conspires to offer us diversion. We might wonder if Pascal’s case is overstated. Couldn’t the libertine seek happiness through something more substantial than a mere “diversion,” like, for example, self-fulfillment? I think that for Pascal the answer is no. This is because death robs any pursuit–even the pursuit of self-fulfillment–of enduring meaning. As Pascal puts it: “the final act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. In the end, they throw some earth over our head, and that is it forever” (18). The libertine can only be satisfied if she does not think about the “final act” that will undermine “the rest of the play,” and because of this, all of her pursuits, even those that appear most meaningful, are really attempts to distract herself from this sobering fact. Pascal suggests that if the libertine actually confronted the truth of her condition, she would desist from all of her pursuits–even her desire for self-fulfillment–because they would no longer mean anything. That the libertine seeks to distract herself from the contingency of her condition with something that is itself contingent, is, I think, sufficient to undermine the libertine’s approach to life. But Pascal goes even deeper in exposing the problems with the libertine’s approach. He writes that, “The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is mainly what prevents us from thinking about ourselves, leading us imperceptibly to our ruin” (19). The libertine’s pursuit of diversions makes genuine self-knowledge impossible—if she is always distracting herself, she will never take the time to understand herself and her condition, and search for a more reliable and stable form of happiness. How can we say that someone is happier the more diverted they are, if someone who is diverted is also wholly alienated from herself? (20). It is this consideration that motivates Pascal’s famous observation that, “man’s unhappiness arises from one thing alone: that he cannot remain quietly in his room” (21). As Pascal sees it, diversion as source of true happiness–much like Nietzsche’s detached contemplation–is, indeed, a fiction. Pascal has induced a value crisis in the libertine by rendering what she previously valued—the amusements of earthly life—fundamentally meaningless. So what now? Left to live without diversion, Pascal explains, “we would be bored, and this boredom would lead us to seek a more solid means of escape” (22). I will argue that Pascal asking the seeking libertine to consider the possibility of an immortal soul is, in a certain sense, similar, to Nietzsche’s imagined demon presenting the possibility of eternal recurrence–i.e the doctrine that our live will be repeated infinitely many times into the future. Nietzsche presents this as a mere possibility , the consideration of which is nonetheless capable of inspiring an evaluative transformation in his readers (23). Entertaining the possibility of eternal recurrence hopefully inspires us to seek meaning in the lives that we are living on earth, rather than placing all of our hopes on a life after death. Analogously, before the wager, Pascal does not expect the libertine to believe in the immortal soul as a metaphysical fact , but he nonetheless presents it to her as an attractive possibility, powerful enough to reorient her life. If the possibility of an immortal soul isn’t even on her radar, then the wager argument cannot even get off the ground. But Pascal believes that considering this possibility will induce the libertine to seek God, the wager will then point out that doing so maximizes her expected utility, and eventually she will be certain of God’s existence (24). What makes the libertine’s condition so unhappy are all of the external threats that face her at every moment, the most debilitating of which is her own death (25). The libertine’s old approach was to avoid confronting this reality. As Pascal puts it, “as men are not able to fight against death...they have it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.”What Pascal offers the libertine is a solution that is truly sustainable: instead of valuing distractions from our mortality, we can value that which denies it altogether . We can reject that part of us that gets piled with dirt, since it can only make us unhappy, and instead we can embrace our immortal soul (26). Pascal presents this as a dazzling, metamorphic possibility, writing that “the immortality of the soul is something so important to us, something that touches us so profoundly, that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent to knowing the facts of the matter” (27). Inspired by the possibility of an immortal soul, we are primed to be receptive to the wager, which tells us that if we want to maximize the expected outcome for our soul, we must gamble on God’s existence (28). If we now believe that it is through taking care of our immortal soul that we can transcend the misery of our bodily condition, the wager will indeed have a powerful pull on us. Inasmuch as the libertine’s challenge is escaping the misery of her contingent condition, Pascal presents the possibility of the immortal soul as a powerful alternative to the use of amusements and diversions. But is this alternative persuasive? The weakness in Pascal’s argument is noted by Sleinis in his analysis of Nietzsche’s parallel argument: “pure possibilities may have some capacity to exert pressure on our choices, but this capacity can in no way be equal to that of known actualities” (29). There is, however, a limit to how influential a mere possibility can be. If you know that a certain consideration that is motivating you to act, is only possibly true, then you won’t feel like you have a decisive reason to act. Pascal is confident that if we take the possibility of an immortal soul seriously, then we will eventually be led to believe it as an actuality. The problem, however, is whether we can take it seriously enough for this epistemic transformation to occur. This doesn’t mean that Pascal’s argument can not work at all, it just means that its practical success will likely be limited to libertines with certain psychological constitutions (i.e. it will be more persuasive to someone with a credulous disposition than to someone with a skeptical disposition). IV. Walter Kaufmann on Our Misery So far, we have seen that Pascal’s wager requires a certain evaluative shift on the part of the libertine, and that certain sections of the Pensées can be read as making an argument for that shift. But there is a weakness to part of this argument, namely, the plausibility that a mere possibility can inspire a dramatic revaluation. What I would like to consider, therefore, is an alternative response to the libertine’s crisis of value that would allow her to retain her current theoretical framework, but nonetheless allow her to transcend the apparent miseries of the human condition. We can read Kaufmann as addressing the libertine at the same stage that Pascal is—once she has accepted the futility of her diversions but does not know how else to cope with her unhappy condition—and arguing that the libertine can embrace her mortality rather than try to escape from it. Examining Kaufmann’s argument helps us to appreciate the way in which Pascal’s wager falls short as a straightforward appeal to the libertine’s self-interest. At most, the wager offers the libertine one way to escape her misery, but the libertine may find Kaufmann’s ideas more persuasive. While for Pascal, the libertine is unhappy if she is left to ponder her mortal condition, Kaufmann argues that this is not so; in fact, it is our mortality that renders our lives here worthwhile. The libertine considers herself miserable because she will not live in this worldforever, but Kaufmann urges her to consider how miserable she would be if she did . It's true that death is frightening for those who “fritter their lives away,” but “if one lives intensely, the time comes when sleep seems bliss” (30). Meaning, that if the libertine embraces all that this-life throws at him, then she will welcome death as a much-needed rest. One cannot live intensely forever. This argument might seem a bit problematic. After all, it is not clear why a simple good night’s sleep (or two) would not suffice for the one who lives intensely—why should she crave eternal sleep? The answer to this lies in the second argument that Kaufmann makes, namely, that without an eternal deadline we would not be able to live our lives as meaningfully. Our impending death offers a perspective that would otherwise be impossible. Kaufmann describes the way in which the threat of death motivates us to live vigorously: “the life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worthwhile and death welcome.” Death “makes life worthwhile” b ecause it encourages us to carve out lives that are indeed worthwhile. For example, “love can be deepened and made more intense and impassioned by the expectation of impending death,” meaning that our desire to be with someone we love is made all the more acute by our knowledge that we cannot be with them forever. When the libertine worries about the fact that she may one day lose her beloved, she need not retreat from these thoughts—either by seeking diversion or by entertaining the possibility of an immortal soul—but rather, as Kaufmann advises, she should embrace them. The fact that she may never see her beloved again is all the more reason for the libertine to express her love more eloquently and fervently than she ever would have if she was not worried about losing her beloved. It is not just that such intensity and p assion would be impossible to sustain in an infinite life, but rather that in an infinite life we could never achieve it in the first place. Death offers a perspective on life that, contrary to what Pascal argues, makes our lives in this world vibrant and precious. Pascal writes that, “As men have not been able to cure death, wretchedness, ignorance, they have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about those things” (31). But Kaufmann argues that it is precisely by thinking about her own death that the libertine can be inspired to live in a way that makes her happy. Perhaps this is why Ecclesiastes muses that “it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting”—proximity to death provides the living with an invaluable lesson to truly “take to heart” (32). The libertine desperately avoids confronting her mortality, when in fact, thinking about death makes her life better right now: “one lives better” says Kaufmann, “when one expects to die,” and takes advantage of the time she has (33). This is not to deny the tragic reality that death often visits too early, but rather, to suggest that inasmuch as this is not always the case, we are, as philosopher Bernard Williams puts it, “lucky in having the chance to die” (34). Pascal might still counter that even if contemplating our death imbues our lives with urgency and significance, belief in the Christian afterlife also accomplishes this inasmuch as our conduct in this life determines how we fare in the next. But this argument will have no sway over the libertine at the stage of the argument at which we are now encountering him—when she does not yet believe in God. And what Kaufmann’s argument has demonstrated is that the libertine does not need to wager on God’s existence in order to live life meaningfully and passionately. While the Wager asked the libertine to revalue her values–which, as we have seen, is a non-trivial requirement–Kaufmann speaks directly to the evaluative commitments that the libertine already has. In a way, Kaufmann uses mortality in the same way that Pascal uses immortality: to redeem us from our misery by impressing upon us the urgency and significance of our lives. It’s true that Kaufmann and Williams don’t consider the possibility of an afterlife that is equally as exciting–if not more exciting–than earthly existence. There is, after all, no reason to assume that when we die we lose our ability to exercise agency. But the point is simply that they offer a way of seeing life on earth as meaningful regardless of what comes afterward. This is in sharp contrast with Pascal’s picture in which life on earth is miserable unless it is redeemed by belief in the afterlife. This is not to say that Pascal is wrong per sé; it is possible that Kaufmann would have lived a better life had he sought God and embraced religion. It is possible that he is currently b urning in the depths of hell, wishing his philosophical reasoning had taken a different turn. But this is of no consequence. What I am arguing is that Pascal is wrong to assume that the libertine’s mortality leaves her irredeemably miserable; Kaufmann offers an alternative perspective, whereby the libertine’s mortality is precisely what redeems her life and makes it worthwhile. Crucially, Kaufmann’s argument does not ask the libertine to entertain any theoretical p ossibilities like Pascal’s does, and it never requires that she make a wager of any sort. The libertine might still prefer Pascal’s argument, and therefore choose to see “the final act” as “bloody.” But as we have seen, she might choose to welcome death as a “blissful sleep.” And if Pascal cannot convince the libertine that mortal life is miserable, then he cannot get her into the evaluative mindset to be receptive to the wager. V. Conclusion The success of Pascal’s wager as an appeal to the libertine’s self-interest depends on his ability to convince the libertine to change her evaluative framework. At least at the outset, the possibility of an infinite life with God in heaven will repel rather than attract the libertine, giving her no reason to “wager all she has” (35). If we study the wager against the backdrop of Pascal’s broader apologetic project, however, we find the resources to persuade the libertine to “revalue her values.” This argument takes place in two stages. First, Pascal shows the libertine that the premium she places on amusements and entertainment falsely presupposes that they can truly make her happy. Pascal argues that they fail to do so, both because they are external—and therefore “subject to a thousand accidents”—and because they alienate the libertine from herself, making it impossible for her to discover what might truly make her happy. With the libertine’s evaluative framework thus dismantled, the inherent unhappiness of her condition becomes even more acute. Without diversions, she must confront the miserable fact of her mortality head-on. It is in this evaluative vacuum that Pascal offers her a new value that can save her from the misery of mortality: the immortal soul. At this stage of the argument, the libertine will not believe in the immortality of her soul as a metaphysical fact, but in considering this marvelous possibility, she will be encouraged to investigate it. And when Pascal tells her that her soul will fare best if she gambles on God’s existence, she will eagerly oblige. But this need not be the only way to save the libertine from the misery of mortality: Kaufmann suggests that the libertine should embrace and cherish her mortality because it is through the prism of her own death that her life becomes urgent and precious. This approach does not require an epistemic leap of faith like Pascal’s did; it simply requires the libertine to look at the fact of her life in a new light. The upshot is that for those who find themselves moved by Pascal’s polemic against diversions, but unmoved by her appeal to dubious metaphysical facts, there might be a more attractive solution. After he presents the libertine with her wager, Pascal urges that “there is no time to hesitate!” From what we have seen, however, there might be far too much of it. Endnotes: 1 This insight is due to Ian Hacking, quoted in: Hájek, Alan. “Pascal's Wager.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Stanford University, 1 Sept. 2017, plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/. 2 While, as Hajek notes in her article, Pascal actually presents three different wager arguments, for the purposes of this paper, I will not discuss the correct interpretation/presentation of the wager. This is because my paper is not so much about the mechanics of the wager, but about the wager as a general strategy to inspire pragmatic commitment to God. 3 For the purposes of this paper, I adopt Pascal’s use of the term “libertine” to refer to his intended audience. This is partially for convenience, and partially meant to underscore that Pascal’s argument is addressed to a specific target audience and is not necessarily applicable to anyone who does not believe in God. As we will see throughout this paper, Pascal’s libertine has a very specific set of values and concern, which at times may even seem unrealistic. Inasmuch as Pascal sees himself as addressing this sort of person, however, this paper will assume that his observations are accurate, and analyze whether Pascal’s argument is successful on Pascal’s own terms. 4 All quotations in this paragraph come from: Pascal, Blaise, and Roger Ariew. Pensées. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co., 2005 pg. 212-13 (S680/L418). 5 Pascal actually argues that there are two things that the libertine desires: the true and the good. However, Pascal argues that we cannot know whether God exists, and therefore “your reason is no more offended by choosing one rather than the other.” Since the libertine only stands to gain in the realm of happiness, and not in the realm of truth (or at least not yet), I focus, for brevity, only on this claim. 6 This is a simplification. Pascal does not mention exactly how we ought to quantify the harm that will come to a non-believer if God exists. It is certainly possible that the harm will be infinite. And since this is the strongest way to formulate Pascal’s wager, I choose to present it this way. 7 The case of trying a new food is interesting in its own right. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze this case, it is worth noting that it is unclear how one might weigh the value of trying a food and disliking it against the value of trying a food and liking it, since there are also different degrees of liking and disliking a food. But I think it is fair to assume that, having had the experience of eating foods that you’ve liked and disliked, you can have a rough sense of the maximum and minimum amount of pleasure that can be derived from eating a food. I would venture to say that trying a food that you love more than any food you have ever eaten, is still not a qualitatively different type of pleasure than eating a food that you really love. 8 Sleinis, E. E. Nietzsche's Revaluation of Values: A Study in Strategies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994, pg. 168. 9 Ibid. 10 As Ariew notes in his translation, “the word ‘diversion’suggests entertainment, but to divert literally means: “to turn away” or to mislead.” By using this word, Pascal makes his critique implicit from the beginning. 11 Pascal, S165/L132. 12 Quotations in this paragraph come from Pascal, S168/L136. 13 Ibid. 14 Pascal, S165/L132. 15 Pascal, S166/L134. 16 Pascal, S168/L136. 17 Pascal, S165/L132. 18 Pascal S197/L165. 19 Pascal, S33/L414. 20 The libertine says something in this spirit in Pascal, S165/L132. 21 Pascal S168/L136. 22 Pascal, S33/L414. 23 In some interpretations of Nietzsche, the eternal recurrence is actually presented as a metaphysical truth that we must believe in. Inasmuch as I am looking for an example that will parallel Pascal, however, I have chosen to discuss the interpretation that sees it as a pure possibility. 24 Evidence that Pascal believes those who are inspired by the possibility of an immortal soul and genuinely seek God as a result will come to have sure knowledge of her existence can be found in S681/L427. 25 This is not intended to summarize Pascal’s nuanced account of why we are wretched, but rather to encapsulate what it is that the libertine recognizes as “unhappy” about her condition: that is, all of the external factors that threaten her ability to enjoy diversions, the most intractable of which is death. 26 This might seem almost like a pre-wager-wager: wager on belief in an immortal soul, since it provides the potential for immortality rather than on the belief in a mortal soul, since this will lead to a life of misery. 27 Pascal S681/L427. 28 Of course, it is possible that there are other belief systems which include the notion of an immortal soul in an equally attractive way. This is similar to the well-known “many Gods objection” to Pascal’s wager, and while addressing it is not the subject of this paper, it is worth noting its presence. When I argue later on that the argument can work, I mean that, leaving other considerations such as this objection aside, it can work. 29 Sleinis, pg. 173. 30 Kaufmann, Walter, and Immanuel Velikovsky. The Faith of a Heretic. [1st ed.] Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1961 , pg . 386. 31 Pascal S168. 32 Ecclesiastes 7:2. 33 Quotations in this paragraph come from Kaufmann, pg. 386. 34 Williams, Bernard. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality.” Chapter. In Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 , 82–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. 35 Pascal, S680/L418. Bibliography: Kaufmann, Walter, and Immanuel Velikovsky. The Faith of a Heretic. [1st ed.] Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1961 . Pascal, Blaise, and Roger Ariew. Pensées. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co., 2005. Sleinis, E. E. Nietzsche's Revaluation of Values: A Study in Strategies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Williams, Bernard. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality.” Chapter. In Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 , 82–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Previous Next

Aash Mukerji The Growing Incoherence of Our Higher Values Aash Mukerji Nihilism is perhaps the most commonly misunderstood notion in Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings. Not only do many wrongly believe Nietzsche to advocate for nihilistic behavior, but many also see nihilism as the loss of all value and synonymous with the belief that everything is meaningless and valueless. In reality, Nietzsche defines severe nihilism as “the conviction of the absolute untenability of existence when it comes to the highest values that are acknowledged”(1). For Nietzsche, nihilism thus does not necessarily reduce the individual to a living lump of ennui. Rather than lacking all value judgements, Nietzsche portrays nihilism as a condition characterized by the absence of justifiable higher values. This supposed depletion in justification comes from Nietzsche’s infamous assertion of the death of God; Nietzsche held that modern science has made “belief in the Christian God unbelievable” (2). Nietzsche believed that without divine reasons to cherish our higher values, we would ultimately lose them entirely. Moreover, Nietzsche characterizes nihilism primarily as a cultural phenomenon—the societal loss of higher values precedes and causes the affective individual symptoms of nihilism. Nietzsche sees this cultural wave of nihilism as a looming threat; he predicts that humanity is on the brink of succumbing, to becoming nothing more than a group of “last men” Last men are characterized by the aforementioned deficiency in higher values, effectively rendering them incapable of justifying any goals that do not immediately benefit them (3). Nietzsche makes the impending nature of nihilism clear in Zarathustra , where the titular character is confronted by a chorus of individuals who actually wish to become last men (4). Nietzsche’s assertion of the imminence of nihilism was something of great interest to me as it seems that, even in the last two hundred odd years, our higher values have not been lost entirely. Nonetheless, I was not ready to entirely discount Nietzsche’s worries concerning our higher values, and this paper discusses a different manner in which our relationship with them may be deteriorating. In the wake of the death of God, what we are losing may not be our higher values themselves, but instead the unifying principles that require consistency and soundness among them. I will argue that we are progressing towards a world where our higher values are maintained but do not necessitate coherence in order to inform and justify our actions. Indeed, some incoherent higher values evidently already enjoy primacy over other kinds of values. I will attempt to demonstrate this by showing that, though contemporary society has preserved various higher values, individuals and communities frequently act in ways that conflict with those values without recognizing any logical inconsistency. This implies that what is missing from our higher values is the necessity for harmony with our actions and the other values we hold. In this paper, I will discuss some ideologies maintained today that seem to fit the characterization of higher values but conflict with our day-to-day activities and other values. I will attempt to supply some explanation for what causes this incoherence both through a Nietzschean lens and through the analysis of media culture within the framework of Jean Baudrillard. I believe both perspectives provide valuable insight into the mechanics of what is going on. Throughout this paper, I essentially seek to prove that we have retained our higher values but are losing their coherence and structure. First and foremost, we must establish some higher values that have been preserved. In my view, the most prevalent ones seem to be the political and social ideologies we subscribe to individually and culturally. For this paper, I will primarily consider liberalism and conservatism in America as typical instances of these types of values. To distinguish higher values from other more standard values, I will make use of the criteria detailed by Katsafanas in his paper, “Fugitive Pleasure and the Meaningful Life: Nietzsche on Nihilism and Higher Values.” These criteria include demandingness, tendency to generate tragic conflicts, regular induction of strong emotions, professedly great import, exclusion of other values, and propensity for creating communities (5). As far as I can tell, political ideologies seem to instantiate all of these criteria. They are certainly demanding; liberals and conservatives both generally see their chosen credo as the “correct” way to live and believe that it is immune to any sort of compromise. For either group, their ideology does not (in theory) allow them to be frivolous with their moral and political choices or to deviate from the prescribed guidelines is often perceived as a violation of some sort of ethical code. When conflict between our political ideologies and other higher values is acknowledged, such discord is often seen as tragic. For instance, nearly everyone has heard of individuals that have experienced, or have themselves experienced, intense strife with family members due to political disagreements. Family, as a general construct, is widely treated as a higher value. Familial bonds are demanding insofar as compromising them is seen as betrayal of the highest degree, they induce powerful emotions, acting for the sake of one’s family is seen as sufficient to explain most actions, family is often presented as taking priority over all other pursuits in life (to the point of being exclusionary), and family, of course, instantiates strong communities. So, when we experience conflicts between our political ideology and our family, such conflicts are nothing short of agonizing. Is it morally permissible to cut off one’s family members because they are conservative or liberal or libertarian? Is the gap in ideology something so forceful that it ought to trump deep familial bonds? Such questions are not easy to answer (for most) and the dilemma one finds oneself in when faced with them is most definitely viewed as a tragic one. Even if one is not sold on the status of family as a higher value, there are numerous others that can be substituted to illustrate my point. Here I will include a brief clarification that will prove important further on in this paper: The conflict between higher values must be acknowledged. My characterization of political ideology as a higher value relies partially on the notion that if one identifies a conflict between one’s political ideology and another higher value, then such conflict will be viewed as tragic. However, should one have an unrecognized logical conflict between one’s ideology and another higher value for whatever reason (for instance due to growing incoherence in our higher values), then this trait does not go unfulfilled merely because such a conflict goes unnoticed. Elicitation of strong emotions when it comes to political ideology needs no lengthy justification. One merely needs to survey the landscape of almost any social media platform to witness the masses loving, hating, condemning, and worshiping political figures. Likewise, it seems obvious that we believe political ideology is more important than the vast majority of things in our lives. At their core, ideologies such as liberalism and conservatism exist to function as banners of the things we value most in life. For the strong liberal or strong conservative, the very essence of what it means to live a good life is often synonymous with their dogma. Lastly, it is needless to say that political ideology has become exclusionary in nature and is prone to instantiate powerful communities. This phenomenon is represented best by the American political system where, by being part of one community, you are by default excluded (and often even looked down upon) by rivaling groups. As people increasingly and overwhelmingly define themselves and others based on their choices in politics, one’s ideology is commonly seen as central to one’s character. The intense political polarization that has resulted from this is testament to just how exclusionary political ideology has become and how robust the coalitions formed based on such ideology can truly be. Thus far, I have endeavored to establish political ideologies as common examples of higher values that are still held by people today. From here, I aim to show that such higher values are not being lost, but rather becoming increasingly incoherent. To this end, I would invite my reader to consider how party politics works in America. Generally speaking, the Democratic Party is meant to model liberalism and represent liberal people, and, conversely, the Republican Party is supposed to model conservatism in action. But can we confidently say that those values are the basis upon which each party unerringly acts? I have instead found their condition to be best described by the ideas of Baudrillard, whose framework I will use to illustrate what is going on. Of contemporary society, Baudrillard says: “Abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra” (6). In short, rather than our values and ideals informing the models we use to structure society, the models have begun to determine our values. In this case, instead of political parties typifying our liberal or conservative ideals, it seems increasingly true that the parties are influencing and warping our values. If we accept this Baudrillardian understanding, it seems evident that what retains vital importance in modern society is not our higher values themselves but the models that now precede them. This account also explains why incoherence of higher values seems to be on the rise; we still perceive our higher values to be what drives our society forward, even though this is not the case, which causes a disconnect between the individual and the weight of their own values. In addition, because our models have started to inform our values, we are no longer able to distinguish which actions we take on behalf of a higher value and which we take on behalf of a mere imitation of one. Even worse, the solution is no longer as simple as critically analyzing our values in order to discriminate between which ones are legitimate and which ones are mere simulacra; our genuine higher values have started to emulate the misshapen versions of them embodied by our models. The Baudrillardian fall from grace notably has two distinct steps: First, the models of our values (in this case our political parties) seem to operate completely independently from, and often in contradiction with, our actual values. Second, in a more sinister fashion, our values themselves are altered in a manner that breeds incoherence and an inability to grasp the inconsistencies in our beliefs. This transmutation occurs, on Baudrillard’s account, through media culture (7). This fits nicely with my argument, as it seems overwhelmingly obvious that the media is now inextricably entwined with politics, meaning our political ideology is especially susceptible to modification by mass media. For those readers who are skeptical about the weight Baudrillard and I are assigning to media culture, I will justify this further on in this paper. For now, however, I will provide some evidence that the process I have just described is in fact reflective of our society. First, consider America’s involvement in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. For the fiscal year 2021, the Trump Administration sought $3.8 billion to support Israel’s military spending (8). Theoretically, this should be a big concern for Republicans. Since the reduction of taxes and minimization of governmental scope are undoubtedly two of the main goals of conservatism, and purportedly the Republican Party, it seems as though the Party ought to support decreasing tax-funded aid to Israel. And yet, studies show that the vast majority of Republicans believe that Trump has “struck the right balance” in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (9). As we can see, even if reducing our financial assistance to Israel is in the best interests of conservatism, self-identified conservatives consistently act contrary to this because that is what their party leaders convey to them. A Republican might object to this characterization, on the grounds that America has a responsibility to intervene in areas where it has deemed human rights violations are occurring. But if that is the case, then how can the Republican simultaneously support the construction of a border wall designed to prevent persecuted Latin Americans from fleeing for their lives? (10). The significance of all this is that the status of our higher values, in relation to their models, becomes dubious. This issue seems to mimic the first step quite clearly in our Baudrillardian process. The U.S. support of Israel is but one example of this phenomenon wherein actions resulting from our models are completely separate from the actions that would normally be dictated by our higher values. Next, let’s discuss an example of the second step of the Baudrillardian framework. Firearm legislation is another controversial issue in America at the moment, with various groups holding drastically different positions on whether one has the right to bear arms. Through this issue, I hope to demonstrate the ways in which the incoherence of higher values can lead to illogical stances on both ends of the political spectrum. When it comes to gun control, conservatives are generally in favor of fewer restrictions. This is largely consistent with core conservative beliefs, such as minimizing government input on private lives and preserving the liberties provided by the second Amendment. As a matter of fact, widespread gun ownership is not only morally permissible but even necessary , many conservatives say, in case the state ever decides to infringe on the rights of its citizens or coerce them without due cause. For the conservative, guns are thus a mode through which the individual can retain power over the state. So far, nothing seems wrong. But issues arise when other beliefs, supposedly in line with the same brand of conservatism, are added to the mix. While retaining this belief in the need, and indeed the moral right, to protect oneself from an unjust state as one sees fit , conservatives in America today are also associated with the position that it is unpatriotic and morally reprehensible to kneel during the anthem or otherwise protest the brutality and violence that occurs through the arm of the state, i.e., the police. It seems to me that simultaneously holding these two beliefs is something that is very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. And yet, these are often considered standard conservative and Republican positions in our society. Contemporary liberals do not fare much better when their higher values are analyzed in this context. For the liberal, government institutions in America have a long history of systemic racism and oppression of minorities and lower classes. Such institutions thus ought to be overhauled or rectified, the logic goes, in order to form a society that reflects more liberal values. Yet at the same time, there is a common liberal view that guns are instruments of death and should be withheld from all except government employees who require them for their job, such as police officers and military personnel. But this view seems to remove an opportunity for the individuals oppressed by the state to gain power, and instead places that power squarely in the hands of the oppressors. The liberal cannot have their cake and eat it too; to believe that the police should be defunded because of their routine violence against the people they ought to be protecting, and simultaneously believe that the state should have full authority and exclusive control over all firearms, seems problematic at best. Even if the liberal attempts to avert this problem by going even further and asserting that nobody should own a gun, then a similar problem arises. It is still the same oppressive and racist state that takes guns away from people. It is still the same state that ultimately retains the power in this scenario. These are just some ways in which our higher values have begun to show signs of incoherence. Unlike our first step, this second step is no longer just a matter of us acting in line with our models while wrongly believing that they are reflections of what we ultimately value. If we could stop after the first step, there would still be a dim hope of redemption. If one can be shown the inconsistencies between their values and the actions of their party, it seems as though they can revise their mode of life. But the incoherence of the second step is far more deadly. Our higher values themselves are being changed; they are becoming muddled and losing intelligibility rapidly. Recommitting oneself to one’s values when faced with inconsistency is already exceptionally difficult but refashioning one’s values when faced with complete incoherence is even more demanding. Gun control is just one example of this, but these types of discussions all beg the same question: Are conservatives and liberals determining what their party stands for, or is it their parties that are deciding what the ideology stands for? It may be, in the words of Baudrillard, “no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real” (11). This Baudrillardian diagnosis of society is explained by many factors, but primary among them is the rise of media culture. Overwhelmingly, the types of media we consume has come to define what it means to be social in our culture. The interactions we have with friends, family members, significant others, strangers, all are determined by the media we absorb. Take romantic encounters, for instance. The ways in which we decide how we ought to act towards our partners, what sort of romantic gestures are considered socially acceptable, what kind of boundaries we set, are all largely, if not entirely, defined by what we have seen in social media, films, television, advertisements, and so on. One need look no further, Baudrillard says, than to observe that, “whoever is underexposed to the media is desocialized or virtually asocial” (12). Such a state of affairs would be fine, of course, if most forms of media faithfully represented and depicted our higher values, but the opposite seems to be the case. Consider the social phenomena commonly referred to as “virtue signaling” or “performative activism.” In particular, let us contemplate the cases in which one virtue signals without actually doing much to pursue that virtue. In cases like these, many remain unaware of their hypocrisy and nonetheless believe that they act virtuously when, in fact, they are merely presenting the facade of virtue. The mere posting of a black square on one’s Instagram account without any further action to support African American communities comes to mind as a relevant example of this. One might say that all individuals who engage in such signaling do so consciously—they are aware that they are “faking it” in order to achieve popularity, acceptance into a social group, or something of this nature. But this seems like an overly pessimistic claim, and I would characterize the phenomenology of such individuals differently. I would argue that most people that act in these ways genuinely believe that they are pursuing their ideal of a virtuous life. They do not recognize that their virtues (which are closely related to, if not synonymous with, their higher values) are not informing their actions. Rather, they are acting according to the media-warped model of what it means to instantiate that virtue. To make this more concrete, take the notion of equality to be a higher value or virtue that one strives towards. If equality was truly what was informing the behavior of the virtue signaling person, then such a person would seemingly recognize that their actions are not satisfying that higher value. Thus, it seems much more likely that what the virtue signaler is motivated by is not the pure higher value of equality, but rather an incoherent version of it altered by media culture. The people who post black squares on their Instagram and then go about their daily life feeling excellent about their stand against police brutality and institutionalized racism certainly feel as if they have higher values (e.g., equality, liberalism), but such values have been rendered incoherent. The proof of this incoherence is of course that their higher values are (even partially) satisfied by trivial actions that provide no substantive change in one’s way of life or the world. In addition, as referenced earlier, such people do not experience the tragic feelings that are meant to accompany conflict between higher values because they do not recognize that such conflict exists in the first place. We can perhaps judge from the outside that there seems to be an objective disconnect between these people’s purported higher values and their actions, but the growing incoherence of their values prevents the perpetrators themselves from coming to the same conclusion. At this juncture, one might object that if our higher values have become so vacuous that they can be fulfilled by such superficial action, then it is likely that they are not higher values at all anymore. In this regard, it would seem that we have ultimately returned to Nietzsche’s hypothesis and lost our higher values entirely. To this I would reply that these incoherent higher values may very well be vacuous, but they retain their status, nonetheless. Political ideology, for instance, still instantiates all the higher value criteria, as I have discussed. What this shows is that our immediate societal condition is distinct from that of the last man. We still have the capacity to cherish things in all the right ways and set goals for ourselves beyond immediate gratification, it is just that the things we cherish and the goals we set may be severely distorted. Now that we have touched on how our current situation is different from the last man, a question naturally arises: What would Nietzsche say about the state of our political ideology? When it comes to politics, Nietzsche is remarkably silent. Try as one might, it is rare to find Nietzsche discussing political ideology at great length. Though he is often found criticizing democracy as a “conspiracy of the whole herd against [its] shepherd,” this does not amount to much in the form of a distinct political structure (13). We also get some cryptic allusions to the merits of a natural order-based caste system in The Antichrist , but this discussion seems less about the desirability of the castes and more about how even this sort of ideology is preferable to the life-negating belief system that characterizes Christianity (14). Rather than focusing on political structures in service of the many, it seems like Nietzsche was more interested in particular individuals that could serve as paragons of vice or virtue. Napoleon is an oft-cited example of someone Nietzsche admired very much, going so far as to name him one of the “profound and largeminded men of [the] century” (15). But Nietzsche’s view of Napoleon as a higher man could justify an entire paper by itself, and such analysis is not particularly relevant to our discussion of higher values. Rather than present Nietzsche’s (scarce) ideas on political ideology, it seems more fruitful to examine how concepts like the death of God might have led to our current predicament. Nietzsche, of course, saw the loss of higher values as a direct result of the absence of a divine entity able to furnish our choices and goals with meaning. But what may be more potent than the loss of objective meaning is the loss of the structure installed by that divinity. Organized religion generally aims to provide a clear system concerning the fulfillment of our higher values. It lays out, for instance, what constitutes a sin, how to worship properly, and so on. Ergo, religion serves to enforce a uniformity between our actions and our values. It is fundamentally designed not to allow individuals to both violate their own higher values and escape with a morally sound conscience. But without religion, this necessity for consistency between our higher values and our behavior is damaged. There is no eternal damnation, no divine punishment, no karmic justice to threaten us to maintain such cohesion, and so we lose it. What all of these topics have in common, from virtue signaling to contradictory stances on gun control, is the apparent inconsistency in the higher values that allow such behaviors to take place. Ultimately, I would suggest that the path the individual in contemporary American society has taken is distinct from the condition of the last man that Nietzsche fears. Higher values persist, as I have endeavored to show, but the logical consistency required to fulfill them properly seems to be rapidly deteriorating. Nevertheless, if one wishes to remain compatible with Nietzsche’s theory, then we could perhaps frame the current state of society as merely one of the final steps on our inevitable trajectory to becoming last men. After all, it does seem plausible that the degeneration of the coherence of our highest values will eventually lead to the loss of them entirely. Such an understanding does raise some concerns, however, as discarding our higher values (“believing in their untenability” as Nietzsche puts it) seems to require one to be aware of their unintelligibility. Insofar as we have reached a state where our higher values no longer even need to be consistent in order for us to act on them, one can wonder whether we will ever collectively reach a position where we realize the inconsistencies exist so deeply in our higher values that they must be abandoned altogether. Still, there is certainly a Nietzschean argument to be made that there must be a limit to how incoherent our higher values can get before we rid ourselves of them in disgust. As it stands now, even though our higher values have garnered significant incoherence, they can still be said to represent us faithfully for the most part. For example, though issues like gun control demonstrate some glaring problems that require rectifying, I would argue American liberals and conservatives still tend to largely act on the values at the core of their ideology. Single-payer healthcare is a good instance of this: Liberals largely support it on the basis of their beliefs about equality and human rights, while conservatives largely do not because it would result in less individual freedom and greater taxes (16). Thus, though I have spent the majority of this paper painting quite a dismal picture, our higher values do not seem close to collapsing entirely. We may not have to resign ourselves to the fate of the fabled boiling frog, insofar as the coherence of our higher values continually gets worse without us noticing. One could certainly make a compelling case that when the incoherence gets to a stage where it overwhelms the proper functioning of our higher values, we will desert them. At such a juncture, it appears we would have no choice but to become last men. At any rate, if one is really committed to the Nietzschean hypothesis, one could call the state we are currently inhabiting that of the “penultimate man” (or better yet penultimate person, for the sake of inclusivity and alliteration). Endnotes 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, et al., Writings from the Late Notebooks , (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 205. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Kaufmann, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs: Translated, with Commentary by Walter Kaufmann, (Random: 1974), 343. 3 Friedrich Nietzsche, et al, Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra , (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 129. 4 Ibid, 130. 5 Paul Katsafanas, “Fugitive Pleasure and the Meaningful Life: Nietzsche on Nihilism and Higher Values: Journal of the American Philosophical Association,” Cambridge Core , (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 9-11. 6 Jean Baudrillard and Sheila Faria Glaser, Simulacra and Simulation , (University of Michigan Press, 2019), 2. 7 Glenn Yeffeth, Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in the Matrix , (Benbella Books, 2003), 74. 8 U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel , Congressional Research Service, 2020, fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf. 9 “U.S. Public Has Favorable View of Israel's People, but Is Less Positive Toward Its Government,” Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy , 2020, www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/04/24/u-s-public-has-favorable-view-of-israels-people-but-is-less-positive-toward-its-government/ . 10 Suzanne Gamboa, et al., “Why Are so Many Migrants Crossing the U.S. Border? It Often Starts with an Escape from Violence in Central America,” NBCNews.com , 2018, www.nbcnews.com/storyline/immigration-border-crisis/central-america-s-violence-turmoil-keeps-driving-families-u-s-n884956 . 11 Baudrillard andGlaser, Simulacra and Simulation , 2. 12 Ibid, 55. 13 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, (Auckland, NZ: Floating Press, 2010), 67. 14 Ibid, 57. 15 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil , (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1998), 256. 16 Bradley Jones, “Increasing Share of Americans Favor a Single Government Program to Provide Health Care Coverage,” Pew Research Center , 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-share-of-americans-favor-a-single-government-program-to-provide-health-care-coverage/ . Bibliography Baudrillard, Jean, and Sheila Faria Glaser. Simulacra and Simulation . University of Michigan Press, 2019. Gamboa, Suzanne, et al. “Why Are so Many Migrants Crossing the U.S. Border? It Often Starts with an Escape from Violence in Central America.” NBCNews.com , NBCUniversal News Group, 22 Oct. 2018, www.nbcnews.com/storyline/immigration-border-crisis/central-america-s-violence- turmoil-keeps-driving-families-u-s-n884956. Jones, Bradley. “Increasing Share of Americans Favor a Single Government Program to Provide Health Care Coverage.” Pew Research Center , Pew Research Center, 30 Sept. 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-share-of-americans-favor-a-single- government-program-to-provide-health-care-coverage/ . Katsafanas, Paul. “Fugitive Pleasure and the Meaningful Life: Nietzsche on Nihilism and Higher Values: Journal of the American Philosophical Association.” Cambridge Core , Cambridge University Press, 22 Sept. 2015, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american- philosophical-association/article/abs/fugitive-pleasure-and-the-meaningful-life-nietzsche-on- nihilism-and-higher-values/449B756CD8E5DC8139A701AC195F33F8. “Most Border Wall Opponents, Supporters Say Shutdown Concessions Are Unacceptable.” Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy , Pew Research Center, 21 Aug. 2020, www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/01/16/most-border-wall-opponents-supporters-say- shutdown-concessions-are-unacceptable/. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil . Dover Thrift Editions. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1998. Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Walter Kaufmann. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs: Translated, with Commentary by Walter Kaufmann . Random, 1974. Nietzsche, Friedrich, et al. Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Cambridge University Press, 2006. Nietzsche, Friedrich, et al. Writings from the Late Notebooks . Cambridge University Press, 2016. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Antichrist. Auckland, NZ. Floating Press, 2010. U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel . Congressional Research Service, 16 Nov. 2020, fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf. “U.S. Public Has Favorable View of Israel's People, but Is Less Positive Toward Its Government.” Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy , Pew Research Center, 30 May 2020, www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/04/24/u-s-public-has-favorable-view-of-israels-people-but- is-less-positive-toward-its-government/. Yeffeth, Glenn. Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in the Matrix . Benbella Books, 2003. Previous Next

Douglas Beal The Financial Case for Nations and Corporations to Put People and the Planet First Douglas Beal We are in a period of increasing societal disruption. Pressure is mounting to ad- dress the climate crisis. Racial equity issues have moved to the forefront. And the COVID-19 pandemic has caused untold suffering and death and upended economies around the globe. In the past, addressing such issues has been seen primarily as the responsibility of government. But increasingly, there are expectations that the private sector must play a leading role in driving progress on major societal challenges. I, along with my colleagues at Boston Consulting Group, have spent the last decade supporting nations and corporations in addressing social and environmental issues—and measuring how their efforts impact country GDP and company financial performance. My work in this area began with economic development, helping nations to advance in a way that improved the living standards of citizens. More recently I refocused on private sector work, helping companies and investors create strategies to deliver both business and societal value. The research and client work I’ve done in both areas reveal a powerful insight: whether one is talking about a country’s economic growth or a company’s prof- its or returns for shareholders, performance is not degraded by focusing on how decisions impact people and the planet. Rather, the evidence is mounting that integrating such factors into strategy enhances financial performance. Putting Well-Being at the Heart of a Nation’s Strategy BCG’s insight on these dynamics started with our work in the area of economic development. As we supported presidents and prime ministers around the world in honing their development strategies, it became clear they were looking for a way to measure their progress beyond the purely financial benchmark of GDP. This reflected their acknowledgement that robust GDP per capita growth in the short term means little if living standards are undermined in the long term (by poor health, underinvestment in education, a degraded environment, and a widening gap between rich and poor). The Sustainable Development Goals had not yet been put in place at this time, meaning a globally-recognized holistic framework for measuring country progress did not exist. We set out to create one. This led to some deep conversations about what really matters for a society. As Robert F. Kennedy said, GDP “measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” We had to ask our- selves: What actually makes life worthwhile? We thought about general measures of happiness, for example, and whether levels of citizen happiness would be a good barometer for a nation’s performance. Ultimately, we decided that happiness would be too subjective for what we wanted to achieve. Instead we decided to focus on well-being , the conditions and quality of life people experience. We then asked ourselves: how do you measure well-being—and how can a government contribute to it? We spoke with numerous experts and dug into the re- search on well-being to determine what factors should comprise our measure. We eventually zeroed in on 10 dimensions: income, economic stability, employment, health, education, infrastructure, equality, civil society, governance, and environment. We identified a series of indicators for each—a total of 40 in all. The result was the Sustainable Economic Development Assessment, a diagnostic tool and measurement framework launched in 2012. SEDA allows us to track how a country’s well-being compares to that of other nations, determine the pace of progress over time, and identify areas in which countries are performing well or need to improve. SEDA revealed valuable insights. First, not surprisingly, countries with higher levels of wealth tended to have higher well-being. Norway, for example, has had the highest level of well-being relative to the rest of the world every year since we launched SEDA. Second, not all countries convert their wealth (GDP per capita) into well-being at equal rates. Some deliver well-being levels that are beyond what one would expect given the country’s wealth—and others deliver well-being far be- low what would be expected. In recent years Vietnam has been among the leading countries in terms of converting wealth into well-being—outpacing countries such as Germany, France, and the US on this metric. Third, inequality—and not just income inequality—has a major impact on well-being. Certainly, income inequality gets significant attention in political and media circles. But SEDA captures a broader view, assessing not only income inequality but also the lack of equity in access to health care and education as well. And our analysis last year found, somewhat surprisingly, that high levels of social inequality are a greater drag on well-being than high levels of income equality. Over the years, as we continued to assess country levels of well-being, public sector clients, journalists, and others often raised a similar question. While it was clear that countries with higher levels of wealth or growth had more resources to advance well-being, we were frequently asked if the reverse was true. So, was there evidence that countries with a better record on well-being ultimately posted more robust GDP growth? In 2018 we decided to take a stab at answering that question. By then we could access ten years’ worth of SEDA data—enough time to give us confidence we could identify a long-term trend if it existed. Drawing on data for all 152 countries in our data set, we looked at a country’s initial well-being performance relative to its wealth in the period leading up to and including the financial crisis (from 2007 through 2009)—and its growth rate in the decade that followed. We found that on average, countries that produced better well-being for their population given their level of wealth did in fact have a higher GDP growth rate in the future. Our analysis also found that countries that had a better record at delivering well-being for citizens were more resilient during the financial crisis, taking fewer months to recover to pre-crisis GDP levels than countries with weaker records on well-being. It turns out that taking care of people and the planet is good economics. Focusing on Total Societal Impact As we worked with nations on development strategies, we urged them to think strategically about integrating the private sector into those efforts. This included understanding where the country’s most pressing needs existed and identifying the industries and companies that could play a role in addressing those needs. Banks, for example, can be key partners in expanding access to capital for entrepreneurs. Food manufacturers that expand their supply chain to include small-holder farmers can help raise incomes for those individuals and reduce poverty rates overall. And biopharmaceutical companies that move to expand access to medicine can play a vital role in improving health outcomes. Time and time again my economic development work in the public sector rein- forced the importance of the private sector in advancing important societal issues. In 2016, I started focusing more on working directly with large multinational corporations to find ways to improve both business returns and their positive impact on society. At that time, academic research had shown that integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance into investment decisions led to better returns from a portfolio perspective. What that meant for individual businesses was not quite as clear. Most of our clients are large corporations—and they had a lot of questions. First, CEOs and CFOs were grappling with whether they should think of good ESG performance as a cost or an opportunity. They also wanted to understand what specific ESG topics were most important for their industry. So, we set out to prove that in fact ESG is an opportunity—not a cost—and to identify those topics that matter for specific industries. In 2017, I joined a group of colleagues in the Social Impact practice to conduct a detailed study of ESG performance in four industries: biopharmaceuticals, oil and gas, consumer packaged goods, and retail and business banking. We assessed company performance in dozens of ESG topics, such as ensuring a responsible environmental footprint or promoting equal opportunity. We looked for any correlation with market valuation multiples and margins. Our goal was to determine whether companies that excelled in those areas, enhancing what we call Total Societal Impact (TSI), saw a difference in financial performance versus companies that lagged in those ESG areas. Now, as members of the Social Impact practice, we were of course hoping we’d find a link. In fact, the results exceeded our expectations. Nonfinancial performance (as captured by the ESG metrics) has a statistically significant positive correlation with the valuation multiples of companies in all the industries we analyzed. In each industry, investors rewarded the top performers in specific ESG topics with valuation multiples 3% to 19% higher, all else being equal, than those of the median performers in those topics. And top performers in certain ESG topics had margins that were up to 12.4 percentage points higher, all else being equal, than those of the median performers in those topics. The bottom line: not only was there no penalty for focusing on ESG, but companies that performed well in critical ESG areas were rewarded in the market. The Moment of Truth Our work in SEDA and TSI were completely different—looking at different players, using different methodologies, and conducted at different times. Yet the results yielded strikingly parallel insights: putting people and the planet at the center of strategy improves financial performance. Those insights have major implications for nations and companies as they navigate the current period of turbulence and disruption. Certainly, it is too early to know which countries around the world will prove more resilient in the face of the pandemic. However, our research does support the view that those nations that design recovery strategies that support citizen well-being are likely to fare best. In particular, governments should design economic re- vitalization programs that don’t just position their nation for economic success in the future, but also ensure the benefits of any gains are equally shared among citizens. And those that created massive stimulus programs must leverage them as an opportunity to accelerate progress in fighting climate change. For companies, the imperative to transform in ways that create positive societal impact is equally strong. Companies should protect employees by ensuring work- place safety, while also reskilling workers and accelerating hiring where feasible. And as they transform their business in the face of the pandemic, they should integrate a societal impact lens into the effort. They can, for example, improve the resiliency of supply chains while also reducing carbon emissions and environmental impact. They can look for new product opportunities that yield real societal benefits. And they can partner with other companies or organizations to maximize impact. There are early indications that companies with a strong focus on their impact on society are faring better right now. Some key MSCI ESG indices, for example, have outperformed non-ESG benchmarks since the start of COVID-19. The challenges facing society today are grave—and daunting. But nations and corporations have massive leverage to move the needle against climate threat, racial inequity, and the devastating pandemic. Without their leadership, it is hard to see how we can make progress in any of these areas. Lucky for us, the evidence shows it is in their economic interest to do so. Previous Next

Sydney Bowen A “Shot” Heard Around the World: The Fed made a deliberate choice to let Lehman fail. It was the right one. Sydney Bowen On the morning of September 15, 2008, the DOW Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 500 points; $700 billion in value vanished from retirement plans, government pension funds, and investment portfolios (1). This shocking market rout was provoked by the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc., which would soon become known as “the largest, most complex, most far-reaching bankruptcy case” filed in United States history (2). Amid job loss, economic turmoil, and choruses of “what ifs,” a myriad of dangerous myths and conflicting stories emerged, each desperately seeking to rationalize the devastation of the crisis and explain why the Federal Reserve did not extend a loan to save Lehman. Some accuse the Fed of making a tragic mistake, believing that Lehman’s failure was the match that lit the conflagration of the entire Global Financial Crisis. Others disparage the Fed for bowing to the public’s political opposition towards bailouts. The Fed itself, however, adamantly maintains that they “did not have the legal authority to rescue Lehman,” an argument played in unremitting refrain in the years following the crisis. In this essay, I discuss the various dimensions of the heated debate on how and why the infamous investment bank went under. I examine the perennial question of whether regulators really had a choice in allowing Lehman to fail, an inquiry that prompts the multi-dimensional and more subjective discussion of whether regulators made the correct decision. I assert that (I) the Fed made a deliberate, practical choice to let Lehman fail and posthumously justified it with a façade of legal inability, and that (II) in the context of the already irreparably severe crisis, the fate of the future financial landscape, obligations to taxpayers, and the birth of the landmark legislation TARP, the Fed made the ‘right’ decision. I. The Fed’s Almost Rock-Solid Alibi: Legal Jargon and Section 13(3) Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and New York Fed general counsel Thomas Baxter Jr. have each argued in sworn testimony that regulators wanted to save Lehman but lacked the legal authority to do so. While their statements are not lies, they neglect to tell the entire – more incriminating – truth. In this section, I assert that Fed officials deliberately chose not to save Lehman and justified their decision after the fact with the impeccable alibi that they did not have a viable legal option. In a famous testimony, Bernanke announced, “ [T]he only way we could have saved Lehman would have been by breaking the law, and I’m not sure I’m willing to accept those consequences for the Federal Reserve and for our system of laws. I just don’t think that would be appropriate ”(3). At face value, his argument appears sound; however, the “law” alluded to here– Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act–was not a hard and fast body of rules capable of being “broken,” but rather a weakly worded, vague body that encouraged “regulatory gamesmanship and undermined democratic accountability” (4). i. Section 13(3) Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act gives the Fed broad power to lend to non-depository institutions “in unusual and existent circumstances” (5). It stipulates that a loan must be “secured to the satisfaction of the [lending] Reserve Bank,” limiting the amount of credit that the Fed can extend to the value of a firm’s col- lateral in an effort to shield taxpayers from potential losses (6). Yet, since the notion of “satisfactory security” has no precise contractual definition, Fed officials had ample room to exercise discretionary judgment when appraising Lehman’s assets. This initial legal freedom was further magnified by the opaqueness of the assets themselves – mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, and associated derivatives were newfangled financial instruments manufactured from a securitization process, complexly tranched and nearly impossible to value. Thus, the three simple words, “secured to satisfaction,” provided regulators with an asylum from their own culpability, allowing them to hide a deliberate choice inside a comfort- able perimeter of legal ambiguity. ii. Evaluations of Lehman’s Assets and “Secured to Satisfaction” The “legal authority” to save Lehman hinged upon the Fed’s conclusions on Lehman’s solvency and their evaluation of the firm’s available collateral–a task that boiled down to Lehman’s troubled and illiquid real-estate portfolio, composed primarily of mortgage-backed securities. Lehman had valued their portfolio at $50 billion, purporting a $28.4 billion surplus; however, Fed officials and potential private rescuers, skeptical of Lehman’s real-estate valuation methods, argued that there was a gaping “hole” in their balance sheet. Bank of America, a private party contemplating a Lehman buyout, maintained that the size of the hole amounted to “$66 billion” while the Fed’s task team of Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse CEO’s determined that “tens of billions of dollars were missing” (7). Esteemed economist Lawrence Ball, who meticulously reviewed Lehman’s balance sheet, however, concluded to the contrary–there was no “hole” and Lehman was solvent when the Fed allowed it to fail. While I do not claim to know which of the various assessments was correct, the simple fact remains–the myriad of conflicting reports speak to the ultimate subjectivity of any evaluation. “Legal authority” became hitched to the value of mortgage-backed securities, and in 2008 their value had become dangerously opaque. In discussing the Fed’s actions, it is necessary to point out that the Federal Reserve has a rare ability to value assets more liberally than a comparable private party–they are able to hold distressed assets for longer and ultimately exert incredible influence over any securities’ final value as they control monetary policy. The Dissenting Statement of the FCIC report aptly reveals that Fed leaders could have simply guided their staff to “re-evaluate [Lehman’s balance sheet] in a more optimistic way to justify a secured loan;” however, they elected not to do so since such action did not align with their private, practical interests (8). The “law” could have been molded in either direction–the Fed consciously chose the direction of nonintervention just as easily as they could have chosen the opposite. iii. The Fed’s “Practical” and Deliberate Choice Section 13(3) had been invoked just five months earlier in March 2008, when the Fed extended a $29 billion loan to facilitate JP Morgan’s purchase of a differ- ent failing firm, Bear Stearns. In an effort to separate the Fed’s handling of Bear Stearns from Lehman, Bernanke admits that considerations behind each decision were both “ legal and practical ” (9). While in Bear Stearns case, practical judgement weighed in favor of intervention, in Lehman’s case, it did not: “if we lent the money to Lehman, all that would happen would be that the run [on Lehman] would succeed, because it wouldn’t be able to meet the demands, the firm would fail, and not only would we be unsuccessful, but we would [have] saddled the taxpayer with tens of billions of dollars of losses” (10). While an exhaustive display of arguments and testimonies that challenge the Fed’s claim of legal inability is cogent, perhaps the most chilling evidence lies in an unassuming and incisive question: “Since when did regulators let a lack of legal authority stop them? There was zero legal authority for the FDIC’s broad guarantee of bank holding debt. Saving Lehman would have been just one of many actions of questionable legality taken by regulators” (11). iv. Other Incriminating Facts: The Barclay’s Guarantee and Curtailed PDCF Lending An analysis of Lehman’s failure would be incomplete without discussing the Fed’s resounding lack of action during negotiations of a private rescue with Barclays, a critical moment in the crisis that could have salvaged the failing firm with- out contentious use of public money. Barclays began conversing with the U.S. Treasury Department a week prior to Lehman’s fall as they contemplated and hammered out terms of an acquisition (12). The planned buyout by the British bank would have gone through had the Fed agreed to guarantee Lehman’s trading obligations during the time between the initial deal and the final approval; yet, the Fed deliberately refused to intervene, masking their true motives behind a legal inability to offer a “‘naked guarantee’–one that would be unsecured and not limit- ed in amount” (13). However, since such a request for an uncapped guarantee never occurred, the Fed’s legal alibi is deceitfully misleading. In truth, Lehman asked for secured funding from the Fed’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), a liquidity window allowing all Wall Street firms to take out collateralized loans when cut off from market funding (“The Fed—Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF),” n.d.). While Lehman would not have been able to post eligible collateral under the initial requirement of investment-grade securities, they likely would have been able to secure a loan under the expanded version of the program that accepted a broader range of collateral. The purposeful curtailment of the expanded collateral to Lehman is one of the most questionable aspects of the Lehman weekend, and is perhaps the most lucid evidence that the Fed made a deliberate choice to let the firm fail. The FCIC de- tails the murky circumstances and clear absence of an appropriate explanation for the act: “the government officials made it plain that they would not permit Lehman to borrow against the expanded types of collateral, as other firms could. The sentiment was clear, but the reasons were vague” (14). If there had been a rational ex- planation, regulators would have articulated it. Instead, they merely repeated that “there existed no obligation or duty to provide such information or to substantiate the basis for the decision not to aid or support Lehman” (15). The Fed’s refusal to provide PDCF liquidity administered the final nail in Lehman’s coffin–access to such a loan made the difference in Lehman being able to open for business that infamous morning. v. An Intriguing Lack of Evidence The Fed did not furnish the FCIC with any analysis to show that Lehman lacked sufficient collateral to secure a loan under 13(3), referencing only the estimates of other Wall Street firms and declining to respond to a direct request for “the dollar value of the shortfall of Lehman’s collateral relative to its liquidity needs” (16). Diverging from typical protocol, where the Fed’s office “wrote a memo about each of the [potential] loans under Section 13(3),” Lehman’s case contains no official memo. When pressed on this topic, Scott Alvarez, the General Counsel of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, rationalized the opportune lack of evidence as an innocuous judgement call: “folks had a pretty good feeling for the value of Lehman during that weekend, and so there was no memo prepared that documented why it is we didn’t lend... they understood from all of [the negotiations] that there wasn’t enough there for us to lend against and so they weren’t willing to go forward” (17). While this absence of evidence does not prove that the Fed had access to a legal option, it highlights a disconcerting and suggestive vacancy in their claims. Consider an analogous courtroom case where a defendant exercises the right to remain silent rather than respond to a question that may implicate them–similarly, the Fed’s intentional evasion of the request for concrete evidence appears an incriminating insinuation of guilt. The lack of “paper trail” becomes even more confounding when coupled with the Fed’s inconsistent and haphazard statements justifying their decision. Only after the initial praise for the decision soured into a surge of public criticism did any mention of legality enter the public record. Nearly three weeks after Lehman’s fall on October 7th, Bernanke introduced a strategic “alibi:” “Neither the Treasury nor the Federal Reserve had the authority to commit public money in that way” (18). Bernanke insists that he will “maintain until [his] deathbed that [they] made every effort to save Lehman, but were just unable to do so because of a lack of legal authority” (19). However, when considering the subjectivity of “reasonable assurance” of repayment, the malleability of “legal authority,” and the convenient lack of evidence to undermine his statement, Bernanke’s “dying” claim becomes comically hollow. If the Fed had truly made “every effort” to rescue Lehman, they would have relied on more than a “pretty good feeling”–had they truly been sincere, the Federal Reserve, a team of seasoned economists, would have used hard numerical facts as guidance for a path forward. vi. The Broader Implications of “Secured to Satisfaction:” a Logical Fallacy While the Fed’s lack of transparency is unsettling, perhaps the most unnerving aspect of the entire Lehman episode is the precarious regulatory framework that the American financial system trusted during a crisis. The concept of “secured to satisfaction” is not the bullet-proof legal threshold painted by the media, rather it was a malleable moving target molded by the generosity of the Fed’s estimates and the fluctuating state of the economy, instead of precise mathematical facts. A 2018 article by Columbia Law Professor Kathryn Judge exposes the logical fallacy of Section 13(3)’s “secured to satisfaction,” citing how “subsequent developments can have a first order impact on both the value of the assets accepted as collateral and the apparent health of the firms needing support” (20). The “legal authority” of regulators to invoke Section 13(3) is a circular and empty concept, hitched to nebulous evaluations of complex and opaque securities, assets that were not only inherently hard to value but whose valuations could later be manipulated. By adjusting the composition of their balance sheet (Open Market Operations) and altering interest rates, the Fed guides the behavior of financial markets, thus subtly inflating (or deflating) the value of a firm’s collateral (21). Indeed, in the years following the government’s support of Bear Stearns and AIG, the Fed’s aggressive and novel monetary policy (close to zero interest rates and a large-scale program of quantitative easing) may have been “critical to making the collateral posted by [Bear Stearns and AIG] seem adequate to justify the central bank’s earlier actions’’ (22). Using collateral quality and solvency as prerequisites for lawful action is inherently problematic, since a firm’s health and the quality of their collateral are not factors given exogenously–they are endogenous variables that regulators them- selves play a critical role in determining. Thus, acceptance of the narrative that Lehman failed because the Fed lacked any legal authority to save it would be a naive oversight. Rather, Lehman failed because the Fed lacked the practical and political motivations to exploit the law. II. The Right Choice As Lehman’s downfall is both a politically contentious and emotionally charged topic, it is necessary to approach the morality of the Fed’s decision with sympathy and caution. In the following sections, I intend to illustrate why regulators made the right decision in allowing Lehman to fail by using non-partisan facts organized around four key arguments . (1) Lehman was not the watershed event of the Crisis. The market panic follow- ing September 2008 was a reaction to a collection of unstoppable, unrelated, and market-shaking events. (2) Lehman’s failure expunged the hazardous incentives carved into the financial landscape prior. Policymakers shrewdly chose long-term economic order over the short-term benefit of keeping a single firm afloat. (3) Failure was the “right” and only choice from a taxpayer’s perspective. (4) Lehman’s demise was a necessary catastrophe, creating circumstances so parlous that Congress passed TARP, landmark legislation that gave the Federal Reserve the authority that ultimately revived the financial system. (1) Lehman Was Not the Watershed Event of the Crisis For many people, the heated debate over whether regulators did the right thing in allowing Lehman to fail is synonymous with the larger question: “would rescuing Lehman have saved us from the Great Recession?” In the following section, I assert that Lehman was not the defining moment of the Financial Crisis (as is often construed in the media); rather, the global financial turmoil was irreversibly underway by September 2008 and the ensuing disaster could not have been simply averted by Lehman’s rescue. “ The problem was larger than a single failed bank – large, unconnected financial institutions were undercapitalized because of [similar, failed housing bets] ” (23). By Monday September 15, Bank of America had rescued the deteriorating Merrill Lynch and the insurance giant AIG was on the brink of failure–a testament to the critical detail that many other large financial institutions were also in peril due to losses on housing-related assets and a subsequent liquidity crisis. Indeed, in the weeks preceding Lehman’s failure, the interbank lending market had virtually froze, plunged into distress by a contagious spiral of self-fulfilling expectations. Unable to ascertain the location and size of subprime risk held by counterparties in the market, investors became panicked by the obscured and so ubiquitous risk of housing exposure, precipitously cutting off or restricting funding to other market participants. This perceived threat of a liquidity crisis triggered the downward spiral of the interbank lending market in the weeks preceding Lehman’s fall, a market which pumped vital cash into nearly every firm on Wall Street. The LIBOR-OIS spread, a proxy for counterparty risk and a robust indicator of the state of the interbank market, illustrates these “illiquidity waves” that severely impaired markets in 2008 (24). (Sengupta & Tam, 2008). As shown in the figure below, in the weeks prior to the failure of Lehman Brothers, the spread spiked dramatically, soaring above 300 basis points and portraying the cascade of panic and contraction of lending standards in the interbank market. The idea that Lehman was the key moment in the crisis might be accurate if nothing of significance happened before its failure; however, as I outline below this was clearly not the case. The quick succession of events occurring in September 2008 – events which would have occurred regardless of Lehman’s failure – triggered the global financial panic. A New Yorker article publishing a detailed timeline of the weekend exposes how AIG’s collapse and near failure was completely uncorrelated to Lehman (25). On Saturday September 13, AIG’s “looming multi-billion-dollar shortfall” from bad gambles on credit default swaps became apparent. Rescuing AIG became a top priority throughout the weekend, and on Tuesday, the day after Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection, the Fed granted an $85 billion emergency loan to salvage AIG’s investments (26). Given the curious timing, AIG’s troubles are often chalked up to be a market reaction to Lehman’s failure; however, proper facts expose the failures of AIG and Lehman as merely a close succession of unfortunate, yet unrelated events. In a similar light, the failure and subsequent buyouts of Washington Mutual (WaMu) and Wachovia, events that further rocked financial markets and battered confidence, would have occurred regardless of a Lehman bailout. Both commercial banks were heavily involved in subprime mortgages and were in deep trouble before Lehman. University of Oregon economist Tim Duy asserts that, even with a Lehman rescue, “the big mortgage lenders and regional banks [ie. WaMu and Wachovia] that were more directly affected by the mortgage meltdown likely wouldn’t have survived” (27). The financial system was precariously fragile by the fall of 2008 and saving Lehman would not have defused the larger crisis or ensuing market panic that erupted after September 2008. Critics of the Fed’s decision often cite how the collapse of Lehman Brothers be- gat the $62 billion Reserve Primary Fund’s “breaking of the buck” on Thursday, September 18 and precipitated a $550 billion run on money-market funds. Lehman’s dire effect on money and commercial paper markets is irrefutable; however, arguments that Lehman triggered this broader global financial panic neglect all relevant facts. The Lehman failure neither froze nor would a Lehman rescue have unfrozen credit markets, the key culprit responsible for the escalation and depth of the Crisis (28). Credit markets did not freeze in 2008 because the Fed chose not to bailout Lehman–they froze because of the mounting realization that mortgage losses were concentrated in the financial system, but nobody knew precisely where they lay. It was this creeping, inevitable realization, amplified by Lehman and the series of September events, that caused financial hysteria (29). As Geithner explains, “Lehman’s failure was a product of the forces that created the crisis, not the fundamental cause of those forces” (30). The core problems that catalyzed the financial market breakdown were an amalgamation of highly leveraged institutions, a lack of transparency, and the rapidly deteriorating value of mortgage-related assets–bailing out Lehman would not have miraculously fixed these problems. While such an analysis cannot unequivocally prove that regulators made the right decision in choosing to let Lehman fail, it offers a step in the right direction–the conventional wisdom that Lehman single-handedly triggered the collapse of confidence that froze credit markets and caused borrowing rates for banks to skyrocket is unfounded. While I have argued above that Lehman’s bankruptcy was not the sole trigger of the crisis, it was also not even the largest trigger. Research by Economist John Taylor asserts that Lehman’s bankruptcy was not the divisive event peddled by the media–using the LIBOR spread (the standard measure for market stress), Taylor found that the true ratcheting up of the crisis began on September 19, when the Fed revealed that they planned to ask Congress for $700 billion to defuse the crisis (31). Arguments advanced by mainstream media that saving Lehman would have averted the recession are naively optimistic and promote a dangerously inaccurate narrative on the events of 2007–2009. The failure of Lehman did indeed send new waves of panic through the economy; however, Lehman was not the only disturbance to rock financial markets in September of 2008 (32). This latter fact is of critical importance. (2) Lehman’s Collapse Caused Inevitable and Necessary Market Change “The inconsistency was the biggest problem. The Lehman decision abruptly and surprisingly tore the perceived rule book into pieces and tossed it out the window.” –Former Vice Chairman to the Federal Reserve Alan Blinder (33). Arguments that cite the ensuing market panic and erosion of confidence that erupted after Lehman’s failure are near-sighted and fail to appreciate the larger picture motivating policy makers’ decision. Regulators’ decision not to rescue the then fourth largest investment bank, an institution assumed “too big to fail,” dispensed a necessary wake-up call to deluded and unruly Wall Street firms, which had been lulled into a costly false sense of security. The question of whether regulators did the right thing in allowing Lehman to fail cannot be studied in a vacuum; it must be considered alongside the more consequential question of whether regulators made the right decision in saving Bear Stearns. In 2007, the Fed’s extension of a $29 billion loan to Bear Stearns rewrote the tacit rules that had governed the political and fiscal landscape for centuries, substantiating the notion that institutions could be “too big or too interconnected to fail.” The comforting assumption that regulators would intervene to save every systemically important institution from failure was a turning point in the crisis, “setting the stage for [the financial carnage] that followed” (34). After the Bear Stearns intervention, regulators faced a formidable and insuperable enemy: the inexorable march of time. It would be an unsustainable situation for the government to continue bailing out every ailing financial firm. “These officials would have eventually had to say ‘no’ to someone, sometime. The Corps of Financial Engineers drew the line at Lehman. They might have been able to let the process run a few weeks more and let the bill get bigger, but ultimately, they would have had to stop. And when they did expectations would be dashed and markets would adjust. If Lehman had been saved, someone else would have been allowed to fail. The only consequence would be the date when we commemorate the anniversary of the crisis, not that the crisis would have been forever averted. ” (35). The Lehman decision corrected the costly market expectations created by Bear Stearns’ rescue and restored efficiency and discipline to markets. Throughout the crisis, policymakers, unable to completely avoid damage, were forced to decide which parties would bear losses. Lehman’s demise was a reincarnation and emblem of their past decisions–their precedent of taxpayer burden had further encouraged Wall Street’s excessive leverage and reckless behavior (36). Saving Lehman would have simply hammered these skewed incentives further into markets, putting the long-term stability and structure of capitalist markets at risk. Taxpayers would have been forced to foot a bill regardless of the Fed’s final decision: if not directly through a bailout, then indirectly through layoffs and economic turmoil (37). Instead of saddling taxpayers with the lingering threat of a large bill in the future, the Fed made the prudent and far-sighted decision to hand them a smaller bill today. The Fed heeded the wisdom of the age-old adage, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” Put simply, the economic “calculus” of policymakers was correct. While rescuing Lehman may have seemed tantalizing at the time, the long-term costs would have been far more consequential than the short-term benefits (38). Political connotations often accompany this argument, evocative of what some have christened the Fed’s “painful yet necessary lesson on moral hazard;” however, partisan beliefs are extraneous to the simple, economic facts of the matter. From a fiscal perspective, policymakers made the right choice to let Lehman fail by shrewdly choosing long-term economic order over short-term benefits. (3) The Right Decision from a Taxpayers’ Perspective Given financial markets’ complete loss of confidence in Lehman and the unnervingly fragile state of the economy, an attempt at a Lehman rescue (within or above the law) would not only have been a fruitless, but also a seriously unjust use of taxpayer dollars. The health of an investment bank hinges upon the willingness of customers and counterparties to deal with it, and according to former Secretary Geithner, “that confidence was just gone” (39). By the weekend, the market had already lost complete confidence in Lehman: “no one believed that the assets were worth their nominal value of $640 billion; a run on its assets was already underway, its liquidity was vanishing, and its stock price had fallen by 42% on just Friday September 12th; it couldn’t survive the weekend” (40). For all practical purposes, the markets had sealed Lehman’s fate and a last-minute government liquidity line could have done nothing to change it. In testimony, Bernanke aptly characterizes a loan to supplant the firms’ disappearing liquidity as a prodigal expenditure, “merely wast- ing taxpayer money for an outcome that was unlikely to change” (41). After the fallout of the Barclays deal, many experts have argued that the Fed should have provided liquidity support during a search for another buyer, since temporary liquidity assistance from the government might have extinguished the escalating crisis. However, such an open-ended government commitment that allowed Lehman to shop for an “indefinite time period” would have been an absurd waste of public money (42). If the Fed had indeed provided liquidity aid up to some generous valuation of Lehman’s collateral, “the creditors to Lehman could have cashed out 100 cents on the dollar, leaving taxpayers holding the bag for losses” (43). The loan would not have prevented failure, but only chosen which creditors would bear Lehman’s losses at the expense of others. On September 15, “Lehman [was] really nothing more than the sum of its toxic assets and shattered reputation as a venerable brokerage”(44). It would have been an egregious abuse of the democratic tax system if the government were to bail out Lehman, leaving the public at the whims of the fragile financial markets and saddling them with an uncapped bill for Wall Street’s imprudence. While virulent rumors of Lehman’s failure as political save-face by regulators may prevail in mainstream media, I maintain that the Fed’s deci- sion was the right one for the American public (45). (4) TARP: Lehman Begat the Legislation that Revived the Financial System In considering the relative importance of Lehman as the cause of the crisis, scholars must also consider the more nuanced and hard-hitting counterpart: “How important was Lehman as a cause of the end of the Crisis? ” While in the context of the suffering caused by the Great Recession and the polarizing rhetoric of “bailing out banks,” this question is politically unpopular; I broach it nonetheless, since it is an important facet of the debate on whether regulators made the “right decision.” Lehman’s failure was vitally important to the end of the Crisis–it allowed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to pass Congress, a critical piece of legislation that equipped regulators with the tools ultimately necessary to repair the financial system (46). Every previous effort of the Fed (creating the PDCF, rescuing Bear Stearns, the conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie) was not enough to salvage the deteriorating financial system–by September 2008 “Merrill Lynch, Lehman, and AIG were all at the edge of failure, and Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley were all approaching the abyss” (47). The Fed needed the authority to inject capital into the financial system, and as described in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine , Lehman’s unexpected fall acted as the final catastrophic spark necessary to “prompt the hasty emergency action involving the relinquishment of rights and funds that would otherwise be difficult to pry loose from the citizenry” (48). With authority to inject up to $700 billion of capital into suffering non-bank institutions, TARP preserved the crumbling financial system by inspiring them to lend again. The government offered $250 billion in capital to the nine most systemically important institutions, and used $90 billion in TARP financing to save the teetering financial giants, Bank of America and Citigroup (49). Exactly how much credit TARP deserves for averting financial catastrophe is unclear, yet the fact remains that coupled with Geithner’s Stress Tests, TARP helped stop the county’s spiral into what could have been a crisis as dire as the Great Depression. IV. Conclusion In this essay, I have shown that the Fed exploited the vagueness of Section 13(3) to ad- vance their political, economic, and moral agenda to let Lehman fail, and asserted that policymakers made the right choice in allowing Lehman to fail (weighing economic facts, the implications of future economic landscape, taxpayers’ rights, and the passage of land- mark legislation). It may have been easier for regulators to hide behind legal jargon and technicalities than to defend the economic rationale and practicality of their onerous decision to an audience of distressed Americans; however, this ease is not without the costs of continued confusion, misleading conventional wisdom, and bitter citizenry. Lehman’s bankruptcy will forever be synonymous with the financial crisis and (resulting) wealth destruction.” -Paul Hickey, founder of Bespoke Investment Group (50). Lehman’s failure left an indelible mark in history and a tireless refrain of diverging and potent emotions towards regulators: contempt for the Fed that “triggered the Crisis,” disdain for the government that bailed out Wall Street with TARP, and hatred of impressionable leaders who “bowed” to political pressure. It is indeed easier to accept a visceral and tangible moment like Lehman’s failure as a cause of suffering than the nihilistic and elusive fact that the buildup of leverage and the burst of the housing bubble caused the crisis. However, it is not enough for only academics and policymakers to understand that “Lehman’s failure was a product of the forces that created the crisis, not a fundamental cause of those forces” (51). Conventional wisdom must be rewritten for the sake of faith in the government and the prevention of future crises. Our acceptance of why Lehman was allowed to die must move beyond the apportioning of responsibility or the distribution of reparations–we must redirect the futile obsession over the legality and morality of the Fed’s decision towards the imbalances in the financial system that caused the Crisis to begin with. Endnotes 1 Public Affairs, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 340. 2 Ibid. 3 Clark, “Lehman Brothers Rescue Would Have Been Unlawful, Insists Bernanke.” 4 Judge, “Lehman Brothers: How Good Policy Can Make Bad Law.” 5 Fettig, The History of a Powerful Paragraph. 6 Ball, The Fed and Lehman Brothers, 5. 7 Stewart, Eight Days. 8 Public Affairs, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 435. 9 Public Affairs, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 340. 10 Ibid. 11 Calabria, “Letting Lehman Fail was a Choice, and It Was the Right One.” 12 Chu, “Barclays Ends Talks to Buy Lehman Brothers.” 13 Ball, The Fed and Lehman Brothers. 14 Public Affairs, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 337. 15 Ball, The Fed and Lehman Brothers, 141. 16 Ibid, 11. 17 Ibid, 133. 18 J.B. Stewart and Eavis, “Revisiting the Lehman Brothers Bailout that Never Was.” 19 Ibid. 20 Judge, “Lehman Brothers: How Good Policy Can Make Bad Law.” 21 Tarhan, “Does the federal reserve affect asset prices? 22 Judge, “Lehman Brothers: How Good Policy Can Make Bad Law.” 23 Public Affairs, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 433. 24 Sengupta & Tam. 25 J.B. Stewart, “Eight Days.” 26 Public Affairs, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 435. 27 O’Brien, “Would saving Lehman have saved us from the Great Recession?” 28 Ibid. 29 Public Affairs, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 436. 30 Geithner & Metrick, Ten Years after the Financial Crisis: A Conversation with Timothy Geithner. 31 Skeel, “History credits Lehman Brothers’ collapse for the 2008 financial crisis. Here’s why that narrative is wrong.” 32 Public Affairs, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 436. 33 J.B. Stewart and Eavis, “Revisiting the Lehman Brothers Bailout that Never Was.” 34 Skeel, “History credits Lehman Brothers’ collapse for the 2008 financial crisis. Here’s why that narrative is wrong.” 35 Reinhart, “A Year of Living Dangerously: The Management of the Financial Crisis in 2008.” 36 Ibid. 37 Antoncic, “Opinion | Lehman Failed for Good Reasons.” 38 Reinhart, “A Year of Living Dangerously: The Management of the Financial Crisis in 2008.” 39 Geithner & Metrick, Ten Years after the Financial Crisis: A Conversation with Timothy Geithner. 40 J.B. 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Eleanor Ruscitti God Save the Fish: The Abyss of Electoral Politics in Trade Talks—a Brexit Case Study Eleanor Ruscitti “The EU is continuing to make demands that are incompatible with our independence... we cannot accept a deal that doesn’t leave us in control of our own laws or waters” ~ Boris Johnson on December 20, 2020 (1-2). Abstract During the “exit negotiations” between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU), the relatively economically insignificant fishing industry received a disproportionate share of not just UK media attention, but global press as well; not to mention an array of political machinations, which almost halted a free trade agreement between two of the world’s largest trading partners. This evaluation seeks to understand why such disproportional influence existed. Why were both the EU and the UK coming to blows over something as seemingly innocuous as fishing, and willing to risk the most significant trade agreement in recent European history? Existing subject matter literature cites history and symbolism as the main factors that brought fishing into the limelight, almost killing a multi-billion-dollar trade deal between these two primary trade partners. While this paper concurs with existing analysis, it finds further illumination in the murky waters of electoral politics. It argues that the Conservative Party brought fishing to the trade talk surface to demonstrate that they were protecting a disenfranchised industry while aiming to convey the benefits of Brexit to maintain votes and prevent Scottish secession. More broadly, this paper sheds light on the potential ramifications that domestic politicians have on free trade agreements, especially in this new global populist era where the leverage of the disenfranchised is key; an affirmation of the American colloquial- ism that “all politics is local” (3). I: Introduction A Fishy Paradox From many perspectives, most of the Brexit drama did not make sense. From an economic point of view, it made more sense for the United Kingdom (UK) to remain in the European Union (EU) to keep access to the European Single Market (Single Market) and their largest and longest trading partners, especially in an era of increasing globalization. However, even though the vast majority of expert opinions concluded that leaving the EU would be economically disastrous for the UK, in the summer of 2016, its citizens voted to leave. Brexit was not just about economics, though. It was a reaction of nostalgia and entrenchment vis-à-vis a world that was rapidly becoming more interconnected with the EU leading the way. As the offshoring of lower productivity sectors of the economy and the development of more technologically advanced goods and services providers sailed ahead, once-thriving industries were no longer key to the economy. These changes left many in the UK workforce feeling stranded in an unnavigable wake of market disruption, while Brussels charted a course toward ever-increasing globalization. The disenfranchised felt as though they were under the thumb of Brussels, having to abide by laws that they believed were unfavorable to the UK. A rather sentimental notion of sovereignty and the call for “taking back control” resonated within certain portions of the British populace. Their goal was to withdraw from their largest economic market to regain full regulatory control yet maintain access to the Single Market via a free trade deal that represented over 40 percent of its exports (4). When the time came to negotiate this free trade deal, economic reasoning took a back seat, again. As the final days of the deal approached, most of the negotiations had been settled. However, over a dinner of pumpkin soup, scallops, and steamed turbot with mashed potatoes (a not-so-subtle nod to the feud) UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen almost derailed the entire deal for the seemingly economically insignificant fishing industry (5). Johnson left the dinner asserting that “very large gaps remain between the two sides (regarding a fishing deal) and it is still unclear whether these can be bridged.” Von der Leyen said that “we understand each other’s positions. But [we] remain far apart” (6). With only 15 days left to seal the deal, and no consensus on fishing in sight, many were left confused and frustrated. The fishing industry employs roughly 12,000 workers out of a UK workforce of over 33 million (excluding the processing industry, which employs a larger portion); represents 0.1 percent of British domestic output; 0.2 percent of EU GDP; and accounts for just 0.8 percent of total EU-UK trade (7, 8, 9, 10). It produces a little more than £1 billion of the total £300 billion worth of UK exports. It seemed that the UK was effectively putting at risk over 99 percent of its trade with the EU to defend an industry that accounted for a mere fraction of the world’s sixth-largest economy. Even Harrods in London contributes more to the British economy (11). Many questioned why the British government was prepared to risk the most important trade negotiations in recent British history over an industry that barely even touches the economic needle, let alone moves it. Literature Review Academics and journalists alike, such as Professor Anand Menon (12), Jeremy Phillipson (13), Sophia Kopela (14), and Stijn Billiet (15) tried to address the paradox, but the vast majority failed to account for the genesis of the paradox by failing to consider the role of elections and electoral politics. Professor Menon argued that the British government’s focus on the repatriation of fishing rights was instrumentally relevant because it was symbolic and represented a commitment to the “left behind.” Menon asserted that the media’s amplification of the issue brought it to relevance, and in a sense, forced Johnson to act (16, 17). Other scholars, such as Craig McAngus, Christopher Huggins, and John Connolly concluded that since fishing was one of the most Europeanized policies for the UK, it would receive the most attention throughout the trade talks (18, 19). On par with the rest of Brexit, the answer lies in convoluted domestic politics rather than economic reasoning. As mentioned in previous analyses, the fishing industry was perceived as a symbol for the wider movement fueling Brexit: “taking back control” and revitalizing a domestic industry that was lost under the heel of the EU boot. Politicians focused on it in order to create an image that the government was helping the citizens, and particularly, the disenfranchised (20). The cause for this might not be just because of the media’s influence, as per Menon’s analysis, but rather because of a synergistically strong confluence of the Scottish fishing lobby, an upcoming Scottish general election, and the Conservative party’s political agenda. II: Why Do Politicians Protect and Amplify Certain Industries in Free- Trade Agreements? Theoretical Frameworks: Lobbying Influence and the Self-Serving Politician There are a multitude of theories regarding the significance of certain industries in trade talks, often finding answers in lobby groups and politicians’ electoral objectives. Typically, democratically elected/appointed officials ultimately determine trade agreements. As theorized by Robert Putnam in 1988, the politics of trade agreements are often a two-level game in which public sector officials/politicians are simultaneously in negotiations at both the international and the domestic levels (21). Putnam assessed that domestic groups pressure the officials to adopt favorable policies and, in turn, these officials seek to amplify their power by developing relationships with these groups who offer support via votes or campaign contributions (22). Politicians then go to the international level and seek to maximize their ability to satisfy domestic pressures while balancing the needs of their international partners (23). Following Putnam’s two-level game theory, Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman introduced special-interest politics into the analysis, analyzing profit-maximizing lobbying groups. They found that, “lobbies seek to curry favor with politicians who covet their financial support... seeking to maximize the aggregate welfare of the lobby groups’ members” (24). As the politician’s objective is to maximize their own political welfare––which often relies on having a large number of contributions––they champion the policy of those who donate the most. In other words, those who donate the most have purchased the most access to influence during trade talks. Sometimes, though, the most influence comes from industries that do not have deep pockets. In 1982, Arye Hillman assessed why politicians put their support behind declining industries that have little special-interest money and/or little economic or voting influence (25). Hillman found that politicians protect and promote declining industries for self-interest motives to maximize political support, rather than for altruistic ideals, as the industry will still typically decline even with protection (26). However, a strong influence of a declining industry may not solely manifest from a politician’s political agenda. In “Entry and Asymmetric Lobbying: Why Governments Pick Losers”, Richard Baldwin and Frederic Robert-Nicoud use Grossman and Helpman’s 1994 pressure group approach to conclude that while government policy is influenced by pressure groups that employ expensive lobby- ing tactics, losers (such as declining industries) lobby more diligently through less expensive means (27). They concluded that it is not just the government that picks the losers, but rather it is also the losers that pick the government (28). The Fishing Industry as a “Loser” Lobbyist It is helpful to use Grossman and Helpman’s campaign finance lobbying, Hillman’s self-serving/re-election interests, and Baldwin’s and Robert-Nicoud loser lobbying framework to contextualize the fishing paradox. To begin, one must view the fishing industry as a lobbyist and Johnson as a political welfare maximizer. However, the fishing industry is not the lobbyist illustrated by Grossman and Helpman. After analyzing over 7,000 donations to both Conservative Party and Unionist Party between 2016-2020, the Scottish Fishing Federation and the National Federation of Fishermen did not appear to make meaningful contributions to the party. Several material contributions came from the fishing towns, yet such donations did not correlate with the amount of influence achieved. From 2016-2020, of the £169,449,385 donated to both parties, only £275,950 came from relevant coastal towns––roughly 0.163 percent (29). It is a bit of a conundrum, as according to Grossman and Helpman, the more robust sectors that donate the most would receive the highest levels of government support. When applying Baldwin and Robert-Nicod’s theory, though, it becomes clear that the fishers were not campaign contribution lobbyists, rather they were “loser” lobbyists who were loud and deliberate. They saw the Brexit movement as their policy opportunity and harnessed their symbolic nature to make themselves quite relevant in final trade talks. Concurrently, Johnson acted as a political welfare maximizer. When applying Hillman’s theory, the declining fishing community became relevant to the Conservatives, who hoped to maximize political support for electoral gains, re-election, and legacy. The newly formed Johnson administration needed to amplify an easy-to-understand industry that resonated with Brexit supporters and exemplified regained sovereignty. But it is often overlooked that the Conservatives also needed an industry that could help maintain the Tory Scottish Parliament seats and form a bulwark against the growing post-Brexit Scottish independence movement. The industry that conveniently and succinctly represented these values was the Scottish fishing industry. To see how this fits together, the story of Brexit and the fishing industry should be traced. First, we will examine the path to Brexit and the ways in which fishing––particularly the Scottish fisher––was influential from the beginning. Then we will scrutinize the trade talks and the political machinations of each actor. We will see that the political endgames of politicians are apparent in trade talks and domestic electoral gains often materially influence their tack as they adjust for the ever-changing political winds. III: A Deep-Seated History Part 1: How Did the UK Get to Brexit? An Overview of UK/EU Relationship: A Troubled Beginning As Professors Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth note, “Brexit was, in many ways, an accident waiting to happen” (30). The UK and the EU always had an am- bivalent relationship––a noncommittal half-in, half-out—in which the UK has been referred to as the “awkward partner” that never really embraced the deeper political, cultural, and ideological ambitions of her partners across the Channel. In the aftermath of WWII, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created in 1951 to ensure stability across the continent by linking economies. While the UK embraced the idea of a united Europe, she saw herself as a separate entity––not just physically, but culturally as well. She was an island empire on which the sun had never set. But as the empire declined in stature and size during the post-war recovery period, she realized that in order to achieve her global ambitions in the new post-imperial world, she may find herself in a useful position to be the bridge between the US and the new ECSC: the European Economic Community (EEC). After two prior attempts, the UK finally joined in 1973 under Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath (31). However, Euroscepticism reigned from the get-go. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell argued that a federal Europe would mean the “end of Britain as an independent European state” and promised to hold a referendum if elected (32). Two years later, in 1975, Labour formed a government under Harold Wilson and held the UK’s first EU referendum (33). Although closely divided, the UK would vote “Yes” to a united Europe, with the then-Europhile Conservative leader Margret Thatcher leading the way for the Conservatives, while Labour remained extremely divided over the subject (34). Thatcher’s Europhilism, however, was short-lived. A staunch supporter of the Single Market, Thatcher ultimately changed course due to the contentious Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its budget contributions (35). She felt that the UK contributed more than its fair share of funding. Rhetoric of losing power and control to Brussels became common in her speeches and while her Eurosceptic agenda and rhetoric would ultimately become her downfall, it planted the seed for a growing anti-Europe movement that divided both parties internally (36). This seed later found its political moment amongst the disenfranchised in 2016 after a Conservative political opportunist called another EU referendum in hopes of bridging a divided Tory Party and securing a re-election win. Divisions within the Tories regarding Europe had been brewing since the Thatcher years, and were proving to be problematic for David Cameron’s upcoming general election as the rise of a relatively new right-wing populist party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), began siphoning off the Conservative Eurosceptic votes. Hoping to mitigate Tory Europhile defections, Cameron promised an EU membership referendum if re-elected, believing that the party would vote to remain (37). The result was a complete miscalculation as he underestimated just how powerful Euroscepticism had become. The country split into two camps: Leave vs. Remain. The Remain campaign took a negative approach, focusing their argument on the economic consequences of a vote to leave (38). As mentioned, however, Brexit was not about economics and, as such, it did not resonate at the doorstep. The Leave campaigns led by Boris Johnson and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage took a more emotional, visceral approach that resonated well with the disenfranchised who felt that the globally interconnected EU was the source of all their problems. They had seen their employment opportunities evaporate as the industrial sector left the country and viewed the EU as their scapegoat. The campaigns of Vote Leave and Leave.EU tapped into this discontent, arguing to “take back control” of a trade by creating their own trade deals, revitalizing declining industries, and bringing jobs back to Britain (39). The Take Back Control mantra percolated throughout the country and was succinctly exemplified with the vignette of the fishing industry. The fishing industry perfectly embodied the Conservative Leave movement––it was an industry key to the British identity, but was disenfranchised and felt powerless and expendable, and held deep-seated resentment towards Europe. This resentment was a manifestation of an EU policy known as the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) that seeks to conserve fishing stocks and ensure fair competition in European waters by setting catching quotas for European fishing vessels based on 1983 catch activity (40, 41). The EU can determine quotas in each boundary as the policy requires that each member state pool its sovereignty and open its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to all member states, creating a ‘European Water’ and overriding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (42). To understand why the British held deep resentment towards this policy, one must understand the fishing wars. Part 2: Fishing Wars To Control or Not to Control, That is the Question As an island nation, Britain has had an obsession with claiming ownership and sovereignty of its waters, at times to the point of belligerency. Fishing has always been key to British identity, especially Scottish identity, which makes it a rather sensitive topic. The tension between the Island and the Continent regarding the open seas dates back to the Anglo-Dutch wars and grew throughout the Anglo-French rivalry and crescendoed with the infamous 1950s-70s Cod Wars where the UK and Iceland faced off over British access to the rich cod waters off the coast of Iceland (43, 44). These violent showdowns repeated throughout multiple decades, with Iceland almost leaving NATO and falling into the Soviet orbit (45). The clash ended with the UK’s long-distance fishing fleets losing access to Iceland’s lucrative fishing grounds followed by a sharp decline in fishing industry revenues. Around the same time, the UK joined the EU and was required to join the contentious CFP. The UK’s fishing industry was wary about entering the CFP and pooling access to its waters, relinquishing control over its EEZ. Academics, politicians, and journalists alike wondered why the Heath government did not try to negotiate an opt-out of the CFP––an action for which the UK is famous––or even negotiate a better deal for the UK (46). The answer circles back to Iceland. When the UK lost its long-distance access to Iceland, there was little inshore activity to replace it as the nation had become so dependent on the white fish from the more northern seas (47). British fishers were not fishing near the British coast. As such, most of the quota rights for inshore fishing went to the French, Dutch, and Danish fishers during the accession negotiations (48). The Resentful Fishers This did not sit well with the fishers, particularly the Scottish fishers, who watched their industry decline just as the EU gained access to UK waters. When asked about Britain’s entrance into the CFP, Scottish fisher Baden Gibson insisted that: “The EU and its fisheries policy have destroyed businesses beyond fishing... If you fish outside of your quota the penalties can be fierce— my worry would be that I would lose my boat and then I would lose everything. I realize that there must be quotas, but it should be fishing organizations who set those quotas” (49). Fishers felt a loss of control and that the government sold them out for access to the Single Market. This was further exacerbated when it came down to ownership of the quotas. Over the years, more and more foreign entities started to own Brit- ish fishing fleets, with 50 percent of all English quotas “owned” by British-flagged ships that were actually Spanish, Dutch, or Icelandic; that is about £160 million worth of England’s fishing quota (50, 51). The feeling of loss of control was palpable. It must be noted that it was not necessarily Brussels causing the decline. Rather, it was overfishing and advances in technology that prevented fishers from achieving previous catching thresholds as well as the aftermath of the Cod Wars that prevented them from fishing in certain areas. Another factor was the rise of multimillion-dollar fishing companies in the UK (52). Nonetheless, British fishers did not see it this way. From their perspective, the correlation was objectively clear: the UK fishing industry thrived before EU membership, but as part of the EU, it died at the hands of the quotas. Reforming the Common Fisheries Policy Calls were made by the fishing industry to reform the CFP, and in 2014, the European Commission tried to do so, putting forth reforms that would increase the labor market mobility of fishers (53). These schemes were criticized as they did not consider the local and cultural factors enough and did not give countries sufficient control over the quota issue. The reforms adjusted the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund and allowed member states to manage 89 percent of it, while the European Commission would manage 11 percent (54). However, that still did not fix the unpopular element of being too distant and top-down with rules dictated by Brussels, far away from the UK and even further from understanding the local fishers’ needs (55). The fishers wanted a greater say in fishery management; they wanted to decentralize the decision-making structures as they felt like bystanders in decisions that impacted them greatly. Part 1: The Referendum Brexit as a Policy Window for Fishers The EU referendum was the fishing industry’s “policy window” under Leave’s rally cry of “Take Back Control.” It was finally time to expel the European vessels from British waters and manage their fish stocks independently. Rather than lobbying via campaign contributions, as Grossman and Helpman’s theory predicts, the fishing industry-aligned more with Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud’s theory of lobbying diligently through less expensive means. In this case, the less expensive means came in the form of a new 21st-century campaign tool: social media. UKIP’s Nigel Farage teamed up with the campaign group Fishing for Leave (FFL) to storm social media and conduct demonstrations, calling for the UK to leave the EU and leave the CFP. To make a public display of discontent and grievances a few days before the referendum, Farage led a 35-boat flotilla of fishers up the Thames, asserting that “today’s flotilla is not a celebration or a party but a full-throttled protest. We want our waters back” (56). He also said that “one thing I can promise you, is that you are about to hear a lot about the fishing industry” (57). They were vociferous lobbyists who would become a key electoral constituency for the Conservatives. The hope, and promise, was that leaving the EU would allow the UK to reclaim fishing dominance and sovereignty over their territorial waters, which would, in turn, see fishing communities thrive again with replenished stock and the return of jobs. On June 26, 2016, the referendum was held, and the UK voted to leave 51 percent to 48 percent. The fishing industry, as predicted, was a firm supporter, especially the Scottish fishers (58). A pre-referendum survey indicated that 92 percent of Scottish fishers intended to vote to leave (59). Fishing communities such as Banff and Buchan voted for Brexit, with around 54 percent voting to leave, but were outnumbered by the rest of Scotland who largely voted to remain (60). They were a small, disenfranchised group within a larger community that found a policy window and representation within the Brexiteers. They would become incredibly important to the Conservatives who needed to keep a seat at the team in Scotland. Part 2: The Trade Talks The Conservative’s Seat at the Scottish Table: The Rise of the Politically Important Scottish Fishers The Scottish fishers were Brexiteers, but that did not necessarily mean they were pro-Tory. After Heath’s historic 1973 betrayal of fishing, Scotland’s northeast fishing community channeled its anger by voting with the pro-independence, social democratic Scottish National Party (SNP) for the following decades. The Tories were treacherous in the eyes of the fishers, best underscored by the 1973 quote from a UK civil servant: “In light of Britain’s wider European interests they, the Scottish fishermen, are expendable” (61). While the Scottish Tories initially lost the community’s trust, gaining it back was easier than one may think as the Scottish fisheries did not ideologically align with the rest of Scotland and the SNP. Leading up to the referendum, Scottish scholar Dr. Craig McAngus conducted a survey of Scottish fishers’ demographic characteristics as well as their political, social, and constitutional attitudes. McAngus found that they were: (1) a unionized industrial working class made up of mostly middle-aged men with standard grade qualifications who value self-sufficiency and sense of freedom to succeed in their profession and take on a libertarian ideology that is skeptical of state intervention; (2) very Eurosceptic, portraying themselves as “victims of an overly bureaucratic and unsympathetic governance regime,” and would lean towards the Conservative Party rather than the Labour Party whose values of collectivism and socialist principles conflicted with their notion of an unsympathetic governance regime; (3) differing from the rest of the Scottish population in that they tended to trust the UK Government more than the Scottish Government, which seems contradictory at first given Heath’s 1973 betrayal for access to the Single Market, however, their support relates to the Scottish independence movement. As the Scottish Government is currently led by the SNP, and as the fishers tend to be more British-unionist, conflicts often arise between the secession-seeking Scottish government and the union-seeking fishing industry. How the British Government Attempted to Divert Fisher’s Support Away from SNP to Scottish Tory via Brexit Scottish independence from the UK has been a divisive topic ever since Scot- land joined the UK in 1707. In a 2014 independence referendum, Scotland voted to remain in the UK, 55 percent to 45 percent, but the debate never settled. Scot- land’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon continued to push for another referendum, rather than receiving additional devolved powers from Westminster (which had been done in the past as a way for Westminster to circumvent Scottish independence). After the Brexit referendum, her calls for independence grew louder than ever as the majority of Scotland voted to remain in the EU––62 percent to 32 percent. Sturgeon argued that it was undemocratic for Scotland to be “dragged out of the EU against its will,” demanding another independence referendum–– indyref2––and then hoping to re-join the EU.62 But, to hold another referendum on Scottish independence, the UK’s Prime Minister must grant formal permission and the newly minted PM Boris Johnson did not support such. Johnson and other supporters of a unified UK argued that the 2014 referendum was a once-in-a-generation opportunity––a phrase Sturgeon campaigned on back in 2014––and asserted that under this reasoning, another referendum should not be held for another 40+ years. On the horizon, however, was the upcoming May 2021 Scottish Parliament election, thus Johnson and his Scottish Tory counterparts were finding themselves in a political pickle. Opinion polls saw a sizable shift from a slight majority of pro-independence voters in 2019 to a solid majority in 2020. Analysts attributed this shift to Brexit, and also to Sturgeon’s handling of the Coronavirus, which many believed had been better than Johnson’s. With polls indicating that the SNP was on course to win an overall majority in the May 2021 Scottish Parliament election, polling expert Sir John Curtice said that the country “seem[ed] headed for a significant clash between the UK and Scottish governments over whether another independence referendum should be held” (63). Conservatives started to worry that if they lost their Scottish Tory seats to the SNP, the Scottish Parliament would be comprised mostly, if not all, of the SNP. Scottish Tories would lose their voice in the Scottish Government, and Westminster would have to grant an independence referendum if asked, or risk being further branded as undemocratic. There was, however, a Brexit-supporting Scottish constituency that could potentially save the Scottish Tories: the Scottish fishers. As mentioned previously, fisheries have been caught between supporting the SNP and the Tories for decades. The fisheries voted SNP in the years after Heath’s “betrayal,” as the then-SNP Leader Alex Salmond sought to bring Scotland out of the CFP (64). During the 2014 independence referendum, Salmond made fishing a material role in the SNP’s campaign, asserting that if independence was gained, fishing would be the #1 national priority and would have direct representation in the EU (65). The issue, however, was that the fishers wanted out of the CFP, not more EU representation, which is what Salmond was campaigning for. As a result, SNP lost a large majority of the fisheries in the 2015 Scottish Parliament election. The hemorrhaging of fishing votes continued when the Brexiteers campaigned to “Take Back Control” during the 2016 EU/UK referendum. The 2017 Scottish Parliament elections saw a loss of fishing votes from SNP to Scottish Conservatives. The Tories increased their hold from one seat in 2015 to 13 in 2017, gaining the northeast fishing community seats as per figure 11 (66, 67). Figure 11 (68) Yellow indicates SNP seats, orange indicates Liberal Democrats, red indicates Labour, and blue indicates Scottish Tory. Brexit was the perfect opportunity for the Conservative Party to regain both the fishers’ trust and seats in the Scottish Parliament. Once they regained that support, they could potentially prevent independence by keeping the vote. The game was not over, though. The SNP made it its goal to regain coastal communities by illustrating that the Tories could not be trusted in looking out for Scotland’s best interests.69 Conservatives then countered by making fishing a key part of the “exit-negotiations.” A Hiccup: When May did not prioritize the Fisheries After the referendum, Cameron stepped down and Theresa May assumed Tory leadership in 2016. May called a snap election in 2017 in hopes of increasing her party’s slim majority in the lower house and having a stronger mandate to negotiate a Brexit deal with the EU. However, due to a resurgent Labour Party, May did not gain a majority and had to form a confidence-and-supply agreement with ten MPs of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) (70). That being said, May did gain some Scottish coastal seats due to the 2017 surge in Scottish Tory support. Suddenly, Scottish fishers––as well as the DUP––became one of the preeminent interest groups for May’s coalition, as they were some of the few who kept her party from anemic minority status. Appeasing them and creating and maintaining trust would be necessary to get her Brexit deal approved and to keep Scottish Parliament seats. May proceeded with her Brexit plans and announced a Fisheries Bill to take back control of British waters and remove fishing quotas after the country with- drew from the EU (71). This pleased the fishers, but as 2017 progressed, the EU countries whose fishing industries were heavily dependent on access to UK waters became worried that access to the waters would be completely severed and that the EU would set an undesirable precedent for its member nations. Denmark claimed it had historical rights to fish in British waters dating back to the 1400s, while other EU countries claimed that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea stated that countries must respect each other’s “traditional fishing rights”, and the ability to access British waters fell under traditional rights (72). In March of 2018, then-Brexit Secretary David Davis and the EU’s Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier announced that the UK and the EU had agreed on a Brexit transition deal. However, to achieve the deal, the UK partially conceded its fishing contentions: fisheries would be required to follow the CFP rules until the end of the December 2020 Brexit transition period (73). The UK fishing industry was infuriated. Bertie Armstrong, CEO of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, said, “This falls far short of an acceptable deal. We will leave the EU and leave the CFP, but hand back sovereignty over our seas a few seconds later... Our fishing communities’ fortunes will still be subject to the whim and largesse of the EU for another two years” (74). Again, Nigel Farage protested on a fishing boat floating along the Thames outside of Parliament while chucking dead haddock into the river. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon took to Twitter hoping to sway the fishers back over to the SNP stating: “This is shaping up to be a massive sellout of the Scottish fishing industry by the Tories” (75). The thirteen Scottish Conservative MPs announced that the deal was like “drink[ing] a pint of cold sick” and assured that they would be prepared to vote against their own party if they did not see a return to full control of British waters as “the EU does not care about Scottish fishermen and neither do the SNP government who wants us to re-join the Common Fisheries Policy and the EU” (76). A sense of betrayal was palpable, and May’s fellow Conservative politicians started to understand that prioritizing fishermen would need to be on their political agenda. May would go on to put forth two other Brexit deals but was met with sound political rejection. In June 2019, she stepped down and Boris Johnson assumed leadership in July. The Hiccup Continues: Johnson Learning to Prioritize Fish With May’s Brexit failure in the rearview mirror, Johnson was keen on steering the UK out of the EU. However, after May’s perceived slight, he found little support amongst the Scottish Conservatives and fishers. In August, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson resigned. She worried that a Johnson government would boost support for independence, given that his hard-liner Brexit stance stood in complete opposition to the majority opinion of Scotland and the SNP (77). Johnson, however, had a different agenda; one that was keen on maintaining the union and appeasing the fishing industry was one way of doing so. In July 2019, Johnson made his first visit to Scotland and pledged that fishing access would not be sacrificed in the new Brexit deal.78 The Scottish fishers welcomed his rhetoric, with Bertie Armstrong stating, “We have been looking for a straight and direct answer and that’s exactly what we have got... Scottish fishing’s sea of opportunity lies on the other side of Brexit” (79). Additionally, Johnson assured fishers that he would “strengthen the union” and pledged £300 million for boost- ing growth in the devolved nations (Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) as a way to try to counteract critics who said his no-deal strategy would break up the UK (80). Among those critics was Nicola Sturgeon, who branded Johnson as the “last prime minister of the UK” (81). After a series of controversial events in the Fall of 2019––proroguing Parliament and then withdrawing the whip from 21 MPs (effectively expelling them from the party)––Johnson was left with no majority in Parliament and found it impossible to get Brexit legislation through. He enacted the Benn Act to extend the divorce date from October 19th, 2019 to January 31st, 2020, and then called a snap election for December 12th, 2019. While Johnson took a strong stance against Scottish independence, his attention to fishing seemed to wane during the snap election. Johnson did keep Scotland in his sights, but most of his attention was to mainland England, hoping to gain back the English voters who defected to Labour in 2017 (82). He visited Scotland once during the campaign, where he delivered the Scottish Conservative manifesto and claimed that Scotland was “paralyzed” by the SNP. Johnson asserted that “a vote for the Scottish Conservatives is a vote to stop a second independence referendum and to get Brexit done... Only a vote for the Conservatives will stop the SNP’s plans to break up the UK” (83 , 84). However, given that May lost many British votes to Labour in 2017, he also needed to prioritize issues that were of interest to larger voting blocs, such as the NHS, the police, and the British education system. To do so, as is now second nature to many politicians, Johnson harnessed Twitter to connect with constituents. On Twitter, Johnson spoke less about fishing and more about those three campaign stances. In total, Johnson tweeted 62 times regarding his campaign agenda on those issues, while only tweeting about fishing five times and Scotland nine times. Figure 13 (85) Illustrates the number of times Johnson Tweeted about a specific subject: 5 times about fishing; 9 times about Scotland; and 62 times about the NHS, policing, and schooling. With much focus on Johnson’s campaign, fishers in coastal Scottish towns were growing worried that fishing was not his top priority. These fishers became more apprehensive and began questioning Johnson’s true intentions: “There’s a calculation that the fishing industry is making that there’s a heavy risk they will get sold out on the way out of the EU, just like they did on the way in” and that maybe “the SNP might get a better deal for Scottish fishing from the EU” (86) especially since Johnson “changes his mind like the weather” (87). A growing number of fishers were unsure whether Johnson would protect the fishing industry or divert his focus towards other aspects in the UK during the trade talks. Election day came, and while Johnson won the largest Parliamentary majority since Thatcher in 1987, he lost several crucial seats in Scotland, which resulted in a small swing back to the SNP, who won 48 out of 59 seats (88). Although a tabloid journalist, Torcuil Crichton provided some thoughtful insight by noting that Scottish Tory 2017 gains were halved in 2019, and any further “betrayal” of the fish- ing industry “will fuel the independence argument and undermine the principles Brexit was fought on” (89). Suddenly, the importance of Scottish independence began to sink in. Johnson needed to show Scotland the benefits of staying in the UK and that Brexit was good for Scottish communities. The fishing industry was the perfect political tool for this end. Johnson could argue that he was going to secure them a good deal, stand up for the disenfranchised against an “overbearing” Brussels, and bring back the domestic industry. He could argue that the UK’s government was paying attention to Scottish needs and, as such, Scotland should stay in the UK rather than back the independence-preoccupied SNP. It is for this reason that fishing was greatly amplified during the trade talks. The Tories needed to secure the Scottish fishing industry a good deal––the rare Scottish industry that embodied the Brexit movement, had yet to back SNP fully, and were against independence––or else potentially be forced to consider calling an independence referendum. Fishing was the fulcrum for Johnson’s political leverage. The Talks and the Deal With the general election behind him and the risk of Scottish independence at the forefront of his mind, Johnson entered the trade talks as a strong counter to Macron and other EU officials who wanted the status quo ante . The issue has now come full circle, back to the famed scallop and turbot dinner on December 9th, 2020, when Johnson and von der Leyen sat down to hash out the final open issue. Britain demanded 80 percent of the EU’s catch to be returned to the UK, but reduced this to 60 percent as a compromise; the EU countered with 20 percent (90). The UK demanded that this transition would take no longer than three years, while the EU asked for a 14-year transition period, which they then reduced to seven. The EU asked for its fishing vessels to be able to fish in the six-to-twelve-mile zone from the British coastline, but the UK insisted that EU vessels be banned from this zone. Von der Leyen left the dinner saying the two sides remained “far apart” (91). The whole trade deal was on the line, with only a few days to go. Finally, on Christmas Eve, after four-and-a-half years of bitter negotiations and only a week to spare before the UK would crash out of the EU, they came to a deal. The 1,200-page document was passed by MPs on December 30th, 521 to 73, and it goes as follows: The transition will be phased over five and a half years, during which EU vessels will still be able to fish in the UK waters. During the adjustment period, EU quotas will decrease by 15 percent in the first year, and then two and a half percent for the following four years. That means by year five, the UK will regain 25 percent of the current EU catch in British waters; Fish will continue to be traded between the two parties with no tariffs imposed; After the five-year adjustment period is over, the UK and EU will enter annual negotiations to determine the quota of fish that EU vessels are allowed to catch in UK waters (92). Johnson announced the deal while wearing a fish patterned tie and praised it as a great deal in which fishers would see their hauls increase from half of the fish quota in British waters under CFP, to about two-thirds by the end of the adjustment period (93). However, neither the fisheries, the French, nor the other EU nations, saw it this way. A deal had been made, but the saga was far from over. V: Conclusions Summary of Findings While fisheries were the “losers” that lobbied hard to grab the government’s attention initially during the Brexit campaign (much like Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud’s theory), it appears that the Conservatives needed the fishers during the exit negotiations and thus took a hard position on access to UK waters, not for social merit, but rather for their electoral and political gains (much like Hillmen’s theory). Matt Bevington, an analyst with the UK in a Changing Europe, pointed out that Johnson saw fishing as one of the few areas where the government would be able to score a “win” to tout as evidence of Brexit’s success (94). Barrie Deas, CEO of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organization, said that the fishing industry was a “litmus test’’ for Brexit since we will not know most of the effects of the Brexit deal for many years, but the effects for fishing will be realized immediately (95). The Guardian journalist Daniel Boffey noted that fisheries were important to Johnson as he needed to show some benefit of Brexit to Scottish communities as Sturgeon was ramping up her demands for another independence referendum (96). In a similar vein, Denis Staunton of the Irish Times emphasized that North East Scotland is now essential to Johnson’s electoral constituency and will play an important role in the Scottish independence debate over the next few years (97). However, if he remains unable to please the Scottish fishers, the SNP may snatch up those who feel expendable to the Tories. This will again potentially embolden the independence movement since no politician wants to be known as the last Prime Minister. Lessons Learnt While the deal itself was a “Christmas miracle” to the Tories, in many respects, its aftermath has not been so merry. Johnson was unable to provide the fishing industry the deal that they wanted, and more importantly, that they were expect- ing. While the Scottish Tories matched their 2016 performance in the May 2021 Scottish elections, the fishing debacle still plagues the Johnson government with many lessons to be taught to future politicians (98). Hoping to illustrate the UK government’s commitment to the disenfranchised and their commitment to taking back control from the EU, many promises were made. These promises, however, were not plausible, let alone achievable––especially in regards to the fishing industry. Now, the Scottish independence movement has re-emerged, with the SNP harnessing the fishing failure as another reason for why they should leave the UK. Electoral politics influenced the amplification of the industry during the talks. In so doing, it amplified a delicate social, economic, and political bond that is about to snap. However, the main lessons scholars may glean from this case study is the extreme influence of domestic electoral politics in trade agreements: 1. An industry being economically insignificant does not mean that it will be insignificant in the international arena. Not everything in trade talks distills down to economics. More likely than not, declining domestic industries will be protected in trade talks for political purposes. 2. That is not to say, however, that economics is not influential. Johnson was a champion of the industry throughout the trade talks, but ultimately, he had to secure a deal that would allow European vessels access to UK waters for a limited time in order to salvage a trade relationship. In other words, economic interests were prioritized over politics towards the end of the talks. As Barrie Deas said, “It’s what we always feared... When you get to the endgame in the negotiations it becomes a binary choice and economics prevails over politics. I think that’s what’s happened and it’s really not good news.” Ultimately, for better or for worse, Johnson needed a deal (99). 3. Politicians often pick easily understood industries to get their message across. While much of the fishing industry is quite complex, once dissected, its disenfranchised status is not. Johnson harnessed the underserved with a message centered around one question: “what does Brussels know about potholes in London?” His intent with the fishing industry was to illustrate an example of him protecting locals to show (1) that Brexit can be a success and (2) that he was fighting for the British (and Scottish) industry. Fishing was an industry that many people could understand as it portrayed Brussels as treating them unfairly with “draconian quotas.” It would have been difficult if, for example, Johnson had tried to highlight intellectual property rights; few people would latch on to that due to its highly technical nature. Here, success revolves around clear messaging, which is something the Remain camp struggled to achieve. In the eyes of the Brexiteers, these were local fishers––the heart and soul of the UK, even if they were no longer as economically significant––being taken advantage of by Brussels. Fishers also happened to be politically right-leaning and resided in the “hostile” territory of Scotland. As the world enters a more global epoch, there has been a greater emphasis on interdependence and trans- nationalism, which often glazes over domestic factors. But, as former Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill (D-MA) famously quipped: “all politics is local,” or, rather, “all local politics are global,” especially in free-trade agreements. Constituents care more about what is happening on the home front, rather than what is going on in Brussels. They care about how Brussels affects them at home more than being in an economically efficient partnership with the EU. 4. Thus, as Putnam theorized in 1988, international negotiations are a two-level game in which domestic groups pressure the government to adopt favorable policies, as the politicians seek to amplify their power by consulting coalitions of these groups. The politicians then go to the international level and seek to maximize their ability to satisfy domestic pressures while balancing the needs of their international partners. However, the need to get reelected and to preserve legacy presides over the strategy they bring to the negotiation table and the industries they choose to protect. Electoral politics is at the heart of all politics, especially in free trade arrangements. Future Research It has been eight months since this paper was originally completed, and fishing still remains top of the fold. The UK and France are in continuous disputes, threatening sanctions and denying each other licenses to harvest in each other’s seas. To understand this continued conflict, scholars and politicians must look at the EU’s perspective as well as the British perspective. While this paper sought to understand why British politicians amplified the fishing industry during the talks, the UK was not its only amplifier. Just as with the UK, fishing is an economically insignificant industry for the EU overall, yet it continues to be amplified by EU member states. From the EU’s perspective, British waters have fish that are the staple of the European diet: herring, mackerel, sole, and shellfish (100). Herring and mackerel are Denmark’s most popular seafood, and it would be impossible to catch their quota if they could no longer fish in UK waters. This would devastate Denmarks’ industry, culture, and customs. For France, on the other hand, it is more about political weight, similar to what we saw in Scotland with Prime Minister Johnson. As journalist John Lichfield pointed out, “The north of France, around Boulogne, is hugely important for the presidential election in 2022... The regional president... might well be one of Macron’s main rivals at that time, so [Macron] needs to be seen to be supporting what is already a struggling area economically” (101). Additionally, the EU was determined to not set an undesirable precedent. They could not let Britain dictate access to such waters, which could potentially portray the EU as weak to other countries trying the same. This was one of the reasons the EU insisted that the previous level of access to UK waters be maintained, and why Phil Hogan, the EU’s Trade Commissioner, assured Johnson that if he wanted to gain access to EU financial markets, the UK would have to allow EU vessels in British fishing waters (102) Both sides took hardline positions for their constituents, thinking that they were doing their best while also serving their political agendas. Now, though, both British and EU constituents and their businesses are the ones suffering from the fallout of the deal. As stated by Olivier Lepretre, the head of the Hauts-de-France regional fishers association, they want to move on with their lives: “Fishers really don’t care about the politics” anymore, “they just want to work, to go to sea” (103). But, Brexit always was, and still is, a political initiative at its core, and as such, the politics remain. The continued fishing feud illuminates much larger and more profound structural relationship issues that will play out over the next few decades as the two former partners navigate these uncharted waters and tack against the political winds. Endnotes 1 Robert Fisk, “Boris’s Last Push for Brexit Sees Him Kissing Fish and Posing for Selfies as New Poll Gives Leave the Narrowest of Leads,” The Sun (The Sun, June 22, 2016), https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1326026/boriss-last-push-for-brexit-sees-him-kissing-fish-and-posing-for-selfies-in-a-gruelling-final-day-of-campaigning/ . 2 Raf Casert, “EU-UK Trade Talks Floundering over Fish as Cutoff Day Nears,” Associated Press , December 20, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/brexit-europe-global- trade-boris-johnson-europe-94ead6da2c46c87efc51328893cd3590 . 3 Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill. 4 Avery Koop, “Visualizing the UK and EU Trade Relationship,” Visual Capitalist, February 9, 2021, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-uk-and-eu-trade- relationship/ . 5 Adam Coghlan, “Breaking Bread Over Brexit With Fish in Brussels, a Short Story,” Eater London , December 10, 2020, https://london.eater.com/2020/12/10/22167244/no-deal-brexit-fishing-boris-johnson-ursula-von-der-leven-dinner . 6 Daniel Boffey, “The Brexit Brussels Dinner: Fish and Frank Talk but No One Left Satisfied,” The Guardian, December 10, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/ dec/10/the-brexit-brussels-dinner-fish-and-frank-talk-but-no-one-left-satisfied . 7 Elena Ares et al., “UK Fisheries Statistics,” House of Commons Library, November 23, 2020, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02788/ . 8 Reuters Staff, “PM Sold out Fish in Brexit Trade Deal, Fishermen Say,” Reuters, December 26, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-fish/pm-sold-out-fish- in-brexit-trade-deal-fishermen-say-idUSKBN2900KG . 9 Kat Haladus, “Fisheries: An Industry That’s Worth 0.1% of the UK’s GDP Is Holding up the Talks,” UK Customs Solutions, December 23, 2020, https://ukcustomssolutions . co.uk/2020/12/23/fisheries-an-industry-thats-worth-0-1-of-the-uks-gdp-is-holding-up-the- talks/. 10 Matt Bevington, Professor Anand Menon, and Professor Jonathan Portes, “Fishing: Why Is It Such a Tricky Issue in UK-EU Negotiations?” UK in a Changing Europe, November 10, 2020, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/fishing-why-is-it-such-a-tricky-issue-in-uk-eu-negotiations/ . 11 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries,” British Sea Fishing, January 20, 2021, https://britishseafishing.co.uk/brexit-and-britains-fisheries/ . 12 Anand Menon and UK in a Changing Europe Team, “Fisheries and Brexit,” The UK in a Changing Europe , June 2020, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ Fisheries-and-Brexit.pdf . 13 Jeremy Phillipson and David Symes, “‘A Sea of Troubles’: Brexit and the Fisheries Question” 90 (2018): pp. 168-173, https://doi.org/10.31230/osf.io/fxnqj . 14 Sophia Kopela, “Historic Fishing Rights in the Law of the Sea and Brexit,” Leiden Journal of International Law 32, no. 4 (2019): pp. 695-713, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0922156519000438 . 15 Stijn Billiet, “Brexit and Fisheries: Fish and Chips Aplenty?” The Political Quarterly 90, no. 4 (2019): pp. 611-619, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923x.12748 . 16 Tom McTague, “Why Britain’s Brexit Mayhem Was Worth It,” The Atlantic (Atlantic Media Company, December 24, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/12/brexit-trade-deal-uk-eu/617509/ . 17 Anand Menon and UK in a Changing Europe Team, “Fisheries and Brexit”. 18 Craig McAngus and Christopher Huggins, et al., “The Politics and Governance of UK Fisheries after Brexit.” Political Insight 9, no. 3 (September 2018): 8-11, https://doi.org/10.1177/2041905818796570 . 19 John Connolly et al., “The Governance Capacities of Brexit from a Scottish Perspective: The Case of Fisheries Policy,” Public Policy and Administration , January 2020, https://doi.org/10.1177/0952076720936328 . 20 Matt Bevington, Professor Anand Menon, and Professor Jonathan Portes, “Fishing: Why Is It Such a Tricky Issue in UK-EU Negotiations?” 21 Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: the Logic of Two-Level Games.” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706785 . 22 Corneliu Bjola and Ilan Manor, “In the Long Run,” In the Long Run, July 19, 2018, http://www.inthelongrun.org/criaviews/article/revisiting-putnams-two-level-game-theory- in-the-digital-age-domestic-digita/ . 23 Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt and Patrick A. Mello, “Two-Level Games in Foreign Policy Analysis,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.496 . 24 Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman, “Trade Wars and Trade Talks,” Journal of Political Economy 103, no. 4 (1995): pp. 678, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3450062/Helpman_TradeWars.pdf . 25 Arye L. Hillman, “Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives.” The American Economic Review 72, no. 5 (1982): 1180-187. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1812033 . 26 Hilman, 1186. 27 Richard E. Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric, “Entry and asymmetric lobbying: why governments pick losers.” PSPE working papers, March 2007. Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. 28 Ibid. 29 Data collected by Eleanor Ruscitti via the UK Electoral Commission donation reports from 2016-2020, http://search.electoralcommission.org.ukcurrentPage=1&rows=10&sort=AcceptedDate&order=desc&tab=1&open=filter&et=pp&isIrishSourceYes=true&isIrishSourceNo=true&prePoll= false&postPoll=true®ister=gb®ister=ni&optCols =IsAggregation . 30 Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth, “Brexit: What Happened? What Is Going to Happen?” Politique Étrangère, no. 4 (2016): pp. 123-138, https://doi.org/10.3917/pe.164.0123 . 31 Ibid, 4. 32 Kevin H. O’Rourke, “A Short History of Brexit: from Brentry to Backstop,” in A Short History of Brexit: from Brentry to Backstop (London: Pelican, 2019), p. 74. 33 James Walsh, “Britain’s 1975 Europe Referendum: What Was It like Last Time?” The Guardian, February 25, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/25/britains-1975-europe-referendum-what-was-it-like-last-time . 34 Ibid. 35 Pan Pylas, “Britain’s EU Journey: When Thatcher Turned All Euroskeptic,” Associated Press, (January23,2020), https://apnews.com/article/64855d1ff67454443db5132bdfb22ea6 . 36 Ibid. 37 Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth, 7. 38 Ibid, 4. 39 Jorge Martins Rosa and Cristian Jiménez Ruiz, “Reason vs. Emotion in the Brexit Campaign: How Key Political Actors and Their Followers Used Twitter,” First Monday 25, no. 3 (March 2, 2020), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v25i3.9601 . 40 European Commission, “The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP),” European Commission, 2015, https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp_en . 41 Andy Forse, Ben Drakeford, and Jonathan Potts, “Fish Fights: Britain Has a Long History of Trading Away Access to Coastal Waters,” The Conversation, March 25, 2019, https://theconversation.com/fish-fights-britain-has-a-long-history-of-trading-away-access- to-coastal-waters-112988 . 42 Convention on the Law of the Sea , New York, 10 December 1982, United Nations Treaty Series, pg. 40. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e. pdf 43 Thomas Wemyss Fulton, “The Fisheries,” in The Sovereignty of the Sea: an Historical Account of the Claims of England to the Dominion of the British Seas, and of the Evolution of the Territorial Waters; with Special Reference to the Rights of Fishing and the Naval Salute (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1911), pp. 25-57. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54977/54977- h/54977-h.htm . 44 Keith Johnson, “So Long, and Say Thanks for All the Fish,” Foreign Policy, February 28, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/28/fishing-uk-european-union-brexit-trade- talks-cfp/ . 45 Ibid. 46 Dan Roberts, “‘We Have Been Hijacked’: Fishermen Feel Used over Brexit,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 23, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/we-have-been-hijacked-fishermen-feel-used-over-brexit . 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Serena Kutchinsky, “Is Nigel Farage the Fisherman’s Friend?” Newsweek, June 27, 2016, https://www.newsweek.com/eu-referendum-brexit-fishing-policy-nigel-farage- scotland-snp-473435 . 50 John Litchfield, “Ukip Is Wrong: British Fishing Answers to Westminster Not Brussels,” The Guardian, April 6, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/ ukip-british-fishing-westminster-brussels-brexit . 51 Oliver Barnes and Chris Morris, “Brexit Trade Deal: Who Really Owns UK Fishing Quotas?” BBC News, January 1, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/52420116 . 52 Keith Johnson, “So Long, and Say Thanks for All the Fish.” 53 European Commission, “The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP): the essentials of the new CFP,” 2015. 54 Ibid. 55 Craig McAngus, “A Survey of Scottish Fishermen Ahead of Brexit: Political, Social and Constitutional Attitudes,” Maritime Studies 17, no. 1 (2018): pp. 41-54, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0090-z . 56 Daniel Boffey, “UK Fishermen May Not Win Waters Back after Brexit, EU Memo Reveals,” The Guardian, February 15, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/15/uk-fishermen-may-not-win-waters-back-after-brexit-eu-memo-reveals . 57 Severin Carrell, “Nigel Farage to Lead pro-Brexit Flotilla up Thames,” The Guardian, June 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/03/nigel-farage-pro-brexit- flotilla-thames-eu-referendum-leave-campaign . 58 Chris Morris and Oliver Barnes, “Brexit Trade Deal: What Does It Mean for Fishing?” BBC News, January 20, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/46401558 . 59 Craig McAngus, “A Survey of Scottish Fishermen Ahead of Brexit: Political, Social and Constitutional Attitudes.” 60 The Newsroom, “Scottish Constituency of Banff and Buchan ‘ ̃Voted for Brexit’,” The Scotsman, November 22, 2016, https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-constituency-banff-and-buchan-voted-brexit-1462018 . 61 Kevin McKenna, “Scotland’s Fishermen Feel a Sickening Sense of Betrayal Yet Again,” The Guardian, March 24, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/ mar/24/scotland-fishermen-betrayal-peterhead-brexit . 62 “Scottish Independence: Will There Be a Second Referendum?” BBC News (BBC, March 22, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-50813510 . 63 Ibid. 64 Scotland Correspondent, “SNP Tries to Dump EU Fisheries Policy” (The Times, March 31, 2010), https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-tries-to-dump-eu-fisheries- policy-7b8tnlq3gw5 . 65 Scottish Government, “Scotland’s Future and Scottish Fisheries,” Scottish Government, August 14, 2014, https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-future-scottish-fisheries/pages/2/ . 66 “General Election 2017: Former SNP Leader Alex Salmond Loses Seat,” BBC, June 9, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40212541 . 67 “General Election 2017: SNP Lose a Third of Seats amid Tory Surge,” BBC News, June 9, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40192707 . 68 Ibid. 69 “Letters: Tories Could Not Be Trusted to Negotiate in Good Faith in Independence Talks,” HeraldScotland, November 11, 2020, https://www.heraldscotland.com/ news/18864349.letters-tories-not-trusted-negotiate-good-faith-independence-talks/ . 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries.” 73 Ibid. 74 The Newsroom, “Fishing Industry’s Anger as UK and EU Strike Brexit Transition Deal,” The Scotsman, March 19, 2018, https://www.scotsman.com/country-and-farming/ fishing-industrys-anger-uk-and-eu-strike-brexit-transition-deal-318889 . 75 Ibid. 76 Jenni Davidson, “Brexit Deal for Fisheries like ‘A Pint of Cold Sick’, Conservative MP Douglas Ross Says,” Holyrood Website, October 4, 2019, https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,brexit-deal-for-fisheries-like-a-pint-of-cold-sick-conservative-mp-douglas-ross- says_13762.htm . 77 Libby Brooks, “Scottish Tories Still Anxious over Johnson’s Impact on the Union,” The Guardian, July 23, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/23/scottish-tories-still-anxious-over-johnson-impact-on-the-union-independence-ruth-davidson . 78 Tom Peterkin, “Boris Johnson Pledges That Access to Fishing Will Not Be Sacrificed in New Brexit Deal,” Press and Journal, July 30, 2019, https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/scottish-politics/1807666/boris-johnson-pledges-that-access-to-fishing-will-not-be-sacrificed-in-new-brexit-deal/ . 79 Ibid. 80 Rowena Mason and Libby Brooks, “Boris Johnson Heads to Scotland to Deliver £300m Pledge,” The Guardian, July 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/28/boris-johnson-heads-to-scotland-to-deliver-300m-pledge . 81 Ibid. 82 Tim Ross, “Boris Johnson’s Tories Abandoned Scotland to Win Their Big Victory,” Bloomberg, December 23, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-23/how-johnson-s-tories-ditched-scotland-to-rule-a-divided-kingdom . 83 “General Election 2019: Boris Johnson Claims Scotland ‘Paralysed’ by SNP,” BBC News, November 26, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50561993 . 84 Reuters Staff, “Boris Johnson to Tell Scotland: Vote Conservative to Stop Independence Bid,” Reuters, November 6, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-election- scotland/boris-johnson-to-tell-scotland-vote-conservative-to-stop-independence-bid-idUSKBN1XG333 . 85 Data collected by Eleanor Ruscitti via Boris Johnson’s Twitter account 86 Alistair Grant and Rohese Devereux Taylor, “Constituency Profile: Fishing for Votes in Scottish Coastal Communities,” HeraldScotland, December 1, 2019, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18072191.general-election-2019-fishing-votes-scottish-coastal- communities/ . 87 Ibid. 88 “Results of the 2019 General Election,” BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2019/results . 89 Torcuil Crichton, “Why Scottish Fishing Rights Are a Brexit Deal Breaker in EU Trade Talks,” Daily Record, October 15, 2020, https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/.politics/scottish-fishing-rights-brexit-deal-22850163 . 90 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries.” 91 Ibid. 92 Chris Morris and Oliver Barnes, “Brexit Trade Deal: What Does It Mean for Fishing?” 93 Harry Taylor, “Kipper Tie: Boris Johnson Sports Fish Symbol in Brexit Message,” The Guardian, December 24, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/24/net-gains-boris-points-up-his-ties-to-the-fishing-industries . 94 Jeremy Kahn, “A Fine Kettle: How Fishing Became the Issue That Could Sink a Post- Brexit U.K.-EU Trade Deal,” Fortune, October 15, 2020, https://fortune.com/2020/10/15/fishing-rights-brexit-u-k-eu-trade-deal/ . 95 Barrie Deas, “Opinion Piece,” NFFO, October 9, 2020, https://nffo.org.uk/news/opinion-piece.html . 96 Daniel Boffey, “Catches, Quotas and Communities: the Key Fisheries Issues at Stake,” The Guardian, October 17, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/17/catches-quotas-and-communities-the-key-fisheries-issues-at-stake . 97 Denis Staunton, “Johnson Covers Brexit Win on Fish to Show He’s ‘Taking Back Control’,” The Irish Times, December 4, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/johnson-covets-brexit-win-on-fish-to-show-he-s-taking-back-control-1.4426956 . 98 “Scottish Election 2021: Conservative Match Best Scottish Election Results,” BBC News (BBC, May 8, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-57042432 . 99 Dan Roberts, “‘We Have Been Hijacked’: Fishermen Feel Used over Brexit.” 100 Laura Hughes, “Brexit: Why Fishing Threatens to Derail EU-UK Trade Talks.” 101 Lucy Williamson, “Brexit: Why France Is Raising the Stakes Over Fishing” (BBC, October 13, 2020), 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Author Name < Back From Sex to Science: The Challenges and Complexity of Consent Matthew Grady I. Abstract Since the beginning of biomedical research on human subjects, the notion of consent has been widely debated and highly contentious. With philosophers and bioethicists focusing on the issue of what constitutes truly informed consent and the proper ethical guidelines for retrieving it, the existing notion of consent in biomedical research fails to fully consider the potentially coercive forces on participants. Consent has also been an issue of import amongst philosophers of sex and feminist scholars. Rallying behind the contemporary idea of a robust version of consent—one that fully encompasses the ways in which agents may be coerced into consenting to a sexual act—these philosophers have argued that societal norms, external pressures, and the nature of consent itself often render consent insufficient to guarantee the moral permissibility of sex. I will argue that these two seemingly distinct concepts of consent in sexual and biomedical spheres face many of the same ethical issues. Borrowing from recent discussions around coercive factors influencing consent in sexual interactions and my own experiences in biomedical research settings, I will draw parallels between these two notions of consent in order to illuminate a more accurate and robust philosophical framework for setting ethical guidelines around obtaining consent in biomedical research settings. II. Introduction As biomedical research has increased exponentially with regard to both enhanced funding for the practice of human-subject experimentation and new research methodologies for promising medical interventions, there is an urgent need for robust ethical guidelines around utilizing human subjects in biomedical research contexts. This paper will focus on the use of human subjects in average biomedical research experiments, which typically recruit and pay individuals to undergo a certain medical procedure, take a specific drug, etc. before approval of the medical intervention for the general population. Across all of the varying perspectives regarding how to best recruit, treat, and compensate human subjects, consent has remained an absolute standard and necessity for conducting ethical biomedical research. While philosophers and bioethicists have contentiously debated over the necessary conditions for obtaining consent, most have widely (if not completely) neglected factors that may wrongfully induce human subjects to consent to biomedical research. Consent has also been a central topic of importance within the philosophy of sex and feminist p hilosophy, yet its development has remained quite distinct from the understanding of consent in the field of biomedical research and subject recruitment. Philosopher and bioethicist Alan Wertheimer has made a connection between the notion of consent in sexual interactions and biomedical research, but my parallels and conclusions will clearly be distinct from his and will primarily focus on developing thoughts inspired by the initial connection made by Quill Kukla in “A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent.” In sexual interactions, most philosophers agree that consent is a necessary, but insufficient, element for ensuring the permissibility of sex between p artners. Consent is something to be given freely, and many forces may serve to coerce or influence an individual into granting their consent, thus potentially curtailing the normative goal of “ideal” consent. Traditional discussions of consent are structured around fulfilling the normative goal of obtaining consent that is free from undue influence on one’s agency, autonomy, ability to make rational decisions, etc. Consent, under this view, is either valid or not—anything constraining an agent’s ability to consent automatically invalidates its moral force. Quill Kukla has introduced a “nonideal theory of sexual consent,” which classifies consent as degreed and emphasizes that genuine consent can still be achieved in the presence of potentially coercive factors. Under this conception, agency and autonomy are present in lesser and greater degrees within different sexual interactions, and agents are continually pressured by coercive forces. Thus, consent is not valid or invalid; instead, genuine consent (or robust consent as I will often refer to it) is built when coercive factors are controlled to such a degree that all sexual partners possess sufficient agency to make a fully rational decision to consent. This does not deny our ability to determine whether a sexual act is morally permissible and establish a standard for morally permissible ways to obtain consent. Rather, it allows us to adopt a nuanced view of consent as a nonideal concept, wherein agents can consent under our oft-constrained and coerced statuses. Philosophical inquiries into coercive factors impacting one’s ability to obtain genuine, robust consent in sexual interactions have focused on external pressures, societal norms, and the implications of consent as the dominant framework itself. Yet, bioethicists have neglected this crucial area in their understanding of consent. Much can be gained for our existing notion of consent in biomedical research settings by embracing the approach taken by philosophers of sex. Consent operates in many different facets of life—agreeing to consent forms, consenting to a sexual interaction, consenting to someone entering your home, and many other forms of implicit and explicit acts of consent . However, the nature of consent within sexual interactions and biomedical research settings is distinct from other forms, making them especially morally-laden. Given violations of these kinds of consent are particularly harmful to one’s bodily autonomy, sexual interactions and biomedical research settings are especially deserving of rigid consent guidelines. The genuine robustness of these two forms of consent is also dependent upon the satisfaction of external conditions not always under the control of the agent granting consent (ex. a non-coercive partner in sexual interactions or a biomedical institutional review board that grants approval for a biomedical experiment), opening up the potential for coercive factors to render a certain act morally impermissible. T hese two distinct forms of consent face many of the same ethical issues and should be engaged in a conversation with one another—a conversation that has been neglected thus far. I hope to build a more accurate, encompassing framework in the biomedical sphere by which we can set ethical guidelines for engaging human research subjects in a truly consensual manner based on the progress made by philosophers of sex, like Kukla and others. To conduct this comparative analysis, I will begin by discussing the existing notion of consent within the biomedical research field and detailing the major issues of importance currently debated. I will then proceed to review the ways in which many philosophers of sex have taken a broader approach to defining consent—one that takes into account the coercive factors that may inhibit an agent’s ability to grant consent with full autonomy and agency. I will then draw comparisons b etween these two distinct notions of consent to reveal several coercive factors in biomedical research settings that may render “informed” consent coerced. Finally, I will suggest how we may build a broader philosophical framework to scaffold the agency of human subjects when consenting to potentially dangerous biomedical research experiments. III. The Existing Notion of Consent in Biomedical Research After many instances of harmful treatments being given to vulnerable, often marginalized populations, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis study, bioethicists began to question what truly constitutes informed consent in biomedical research settings. This question has included exploration into both the b est ways to obtain consent, as well as the proper way to interpret the term, “informed.” The p redominant conclusion on how to best define informed consent has overwhelmingly neglected consideration of coercive factors that impact the ability for human subjects to rationally consent to biomedical trials. As will become clear, there are an abundance of underexplored factors that may constrain one’s ability to rationally consent to participate in a biomedical research trial. This paper aims to fill this lacuna in the current understanding of biomedical research consent. There are many interesting debates around the understanding of biomedical consent that will become relevant to my argument later, the first being the therapeutic misconception. This phenomenon occurs quite often in biomedical research settings, where human subjects possess the incorrect belief that they are receiving life-changing or potentially beneficial treatments, despite being told about the potential of receiving a placebo treatment, or the chance that the experimental drug may be ineffective. The implications of the therapeutic misconception for ensuring the genuine nature of a human subject’s consent are vast. Consent hinges upon an agent’s uncoerced ability to make an informed decision, and philosophers of biology have rightfully debated what constitutes truly meeting the informed standard of consent. Can one really be said to have full decision-making agency and possess the needed information to genuinely consent if they wrongly believe, as subjects with the therapeutic misconception do, that they are guaranteed life-saving treatment? This is not to say that consent is in some way unobtainable in biomedical research settings; however, we ought to properly understand the implications of the therapeutic misconception on a subject’s ability to grant their consent in a knowing, informed fashion. In addition to the therapeutic misconception, there is another important debate around whether informed consent requires comprehension in any way. Some argue that full comprehension of what the study entails is the only way to ensure the participant is aware of all of the risks and does not possess the therapeutic misconception. Participants have also been shown to severely misunderstand the actual p rocedures, treatments, etc. they are consenting to, whether that be due to not reading the consent form or not fully understanding the researcher’s explanation of what will occur during the study . By not comprehending both the purpose of the study and the exact particulars involved in it, research subjects may fail to meet the “informed” requirement of informed consent. Regardless of the exact answers to these concerns, it is clear that the current discourse surrounding biomedical consent has yet to satisfactorily explore the intricacies of the coercive factors impacting consent in medical experiments. Participants may be hindered in their ability to grant genuine, uncoerced consent when, as research shows is often the case, they do not understand the purpose or specifics of the research study to which they are consenting. In a way, participants in many biomedical studies consent to a version of the study that does not carry the significant risks of harm they take on when consenting—is this morally permissible? How can we ensure coercive factors, like the therapeutic misconception, do not wrongly influence a human subject to consent to a potentially dangerous experiment? These ethical issues debated within the philosophy of biology can be b etter answered with a revised, robust version of consent—one which thoroughly examines and addresses the coercive factors that unduly encourage someone to grant consent without b eing truly informed and open to participating. IV. Moving Beyond Mere Consent: Philosophy of Sex While consent works to p reserve the agency of a sexual partner, the vast majority of philosophers agree that consent is necessary for sex to be morally permissible, not sufficient. When consenting to a sexual act, a person is utilizing their agency and autonomy—their capacity to make free and independent decisions to meet their own ends—to make a rational choice, so consent both contributes to and draws from one’s agency. We now recognize the ability of rational agents to utilize their agency to consent to sexual acts that may still be morally problematic, whether that consists of morally dubious sexual actions or acts obtained with a coerced notion of consent. Given the importance of sexual consent, we need an understanding of it that can account for any and all factors that may coerce a sexual partner into granting consent when they otherwise would not have. Philosophers have addressed the issue of consensual sex that may be coerced in a variety of fashions. Some feminist scholars, like Catharine MacKinnon, have taken a radical approach, claiming that no consent is truly valid under heteronormative structures. Their understandings of consent highlight the ways in which external societal conditions may render consent insufficient if they constrain one’s options to the point where consent becomes obligatory, rather than freely given. Nicola Gavey provides a compelling account of how heteronormative , oppressive structures may render one’s consent involuntary or obligatory in sexual situations because of societal conditions pressuring women. Women sometimes feel obligated to consent to unwanted sexual advances because of the heteronormative forces that pressure them to enter a subservient, diminutive role within sexual interactions. Other philosophers take a different approach to consent by illuminating varying ways in which traditional consent is not sufficient to guarantee a good moral standard for sex. Power dynamics, a misunderstanding of what will actually take place during sex, the offer of money, socialized b ehaviors, and societal pressures are all examples of coercive factors that may encourage one to say yes, even when one did not originally intend to. A person may not be able to fully, rationally consent to a sexual act if pressured by these sorts of coercive factors. Philosophers operating with this lens focus less on making a valid versus invalid distinction of consent and instead emphasize the way consent can be constrained or limited by oppressive structures and other coercive forces. The moral permissibility of a sexual act depends on the agency and autonomy possessed by all of the sexual partners consenting, which may be constrained by coercive factors. By emphasizing the coercive factors outside of direct threats from a partner that may constrain one’s genuine consent, feminist philosophers have been able to build a more robust understanding of consent—one that accounts for the coercive factors that may wrongfully influence one to consent to a sexual act. To summarize all of this into a more digestible framework, I find Quill Kukla’s non-ideal theory of consent to be particularly illuminating. Essentially, under Kukla’s perspective, consent is a “nonideal concept,” where virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual if consent requires the full autonomy of its participants. Their framework allows for the permissibility of sex and obtaining consent even when coercive forces are present; all agents are constrained in different ways, by different power relations, as a result of different identities, and that does not fully invalidate our ability to consent. Instead, to ensure one’s consent is genuine in the presence of common coercive factors, Kukla argues we must “scaffold” consent by “[being] sensitive to the limits of and possibilities for agency and consent in a given context and [adjusting] accordingly,” to ensure a partner possesses agency and autonomy. Scaffolding can be accomplished socially or interpersonally, where practices, environments, and relationships can help to enable a sexual partner’s agency. Kukla uses the example of a retirement facility embracing guidelines, policies, and management that allow its patients to have sex in such a way that does not threaten their ability to participate safely or diminish their own agency in pursuing sexual relationships. On the interpersonal level, agents can also aid in scaffolding their sexual partner’s (or partners’) agency and autonomy by ensuring their partner feels the, “ability to exit a situation, trust, [and] safety,” among other crucial practices that build and protect one’s ability to genuinely consent. Policies here scaffold consent by examining potential coercive factors and building social practices which are inclusive and protective of sexual agency. Again, philosophers of sex, like Kukla, have explicated external factors, such as power dynamics, money, the traditional, overriding depiction of a woman “giving” consent to a man’s request, and heteronormative structures, that may coerce someone to consent to a sexual act. In identifying these, philosophers can strategically recommend scaffolding structures to ensure the moral permissibility of sexual interactions and to enhance the agency and autonomy of sexual partners. I argue that the bioethicist ought to take on a similar project of identifying coercive factors and scaffolding their designs to preserve agency, autonomy, and genuine consent in biomedical research experiments. This challenge has been neglected thus far, and the current understanding of informed consent fails to fully account for coercive factors; thus, the biomedical research community is in need of a scaffolding strategy to preserve genuine, robust consent. The following section attempts to embrace the approach taken by Kukla and others in developing a more robust theory of consent within biomedical research settings. V. Can Biomedical Research Achieve Genuine, Robust Consent? To curb coercive factors from playing a role in one’s decision to have sex, Kukla proposes a more robust, nonideal theory of consent, which works to scaffold protections for an individual’s autonomy in the process of granting consent. Kukla’s framework understands that agents are constantly influenced by external, coercive factors. I argue that we should embrace this approach in the b iomedical research field, which requires a thorough understanding of the implicit and explicit factors that encourage participants to grant consent to medical experiments and treatments. I will now begin to detail four p rimary coercive factors that have been underexplored by philosophers of biology, highlighting the direct parallels that can be found with the coercive factors that impact sexual consent. In drawing these parallels and embracing a more robust understanding of consent, this paper will aim to demonstrate the need for greater encompassing ethical guidelines around biomedical research experiments. A. Compensation: Fair or Coercive? The standard practice for most biomedical research trials is to compensate their human subjects for their participation and time spent completing the study (and any additional costs incurred, medical expenses, inter alia). To recruit enough human subjects for a statistically valid biomedical study, researchers must offer compensation as an inducement to p articipate. Many ethical questions have been explored by philosophers and bioethicists, including how much to pay human subjects, whether payment for certain kinds of research is morally acceptable, and if payment can truly compensate for the serious risks involved in participating in experimental research. However, most have neglected to explore the role money plays as a coercive factor to participate in potentially dangerous research and its impact from a scaffolding perspective. Participating in biomedical research can be a valuable way to earn both active and p assive income, yet money is known to influence the rational decision-making of moral agents. Might someone “consent” to engaging in a biomedical research study that crosses their ethical and/or physical level of comfort in desperation for money? Philosophers of sex have rightly acknowledged that money can serve as an influential and potentially coercive force for consenting to certain actions because an agent may, in an attempt to earn crucial income for themselves, consent to sex in which they would not normally be comfortable engaging. A very similar ethical dilemma arises in the case of biomedical research. Consider this fictional example: an extremely poor woman who struggles to pay for her basic necessities agrees to take a highly experimental drug that could have damaging, long-term side effects. She would not normally endanger her own health in this way, but she is so desperate for passive income that this compensation is too important to pass up. Under the existing notion of informed consent in b iomedical research, this kind of participation would still be considered fully consensual when, clearly, money played a coercive role in her decision. This is not to say that all sexual interactions and all biomedical research settings involving the exchange of cash are coercive (e.g. sex work depends on the presence of money, but is not necessarily coerced), but we ought to pay crucial attention to these areas because of the morally problematic force money can have on obtaining consent. Money has the potential of encouraging and even forcing one into doing things they would not normally be comfortable with, so compensation is especially deserving of ethical guidelines. See Largent, et. al. for a further discussion of the concerns here. Imagine a case where someone decides to consent to a risky biomedical research trial with full comprehension of the risks and particulars involved with the medical study. They choose to accept all of the accompanying risks with participation because the potential compensation is worth their involvement according to a rational assessment by the agent in question. I concede here that this person may not be making a coerced decision to consent—this person, depending on the background circumstances and personal costs, may be choosing to utilize their agency to make a rational decision to pursue compensation. But, it is equally important for research designers to ask, ‘If this subject were in a greater position of agency and authority, would they still be comfortable with making the same decision?’ This question concerning the potential for coercive influence is neglected and unaddressed in the vast majority of biomedical research settings. Not all cases will reveal coercive factors influencing a subject’s decision, but bioethicists have neglected to fully accept the incredibly powerful and sometimes coercive influence compensation can have on a person’s ability to rationally consent. Furthermore, many research studies design their compensation schedule in a way to coerce participants into completing the entirety of a biomedical experiment by offering a significant “bonus” at the end of the study. Given that consent hinges on the ability for an agent to say “no” at any time to any part of an experiment, compensation can wrongfully be utilized as a tool of coercion, in that a research subject may feel unduly compelled to complete a study in hopes of receiving the bulk of their compensation at the end of the research. Compensation, in this role, can coerce consent and thus render the consent given as less robust, less agential, and likely to be less morally permissible than a more scaffolded version of biomedical consent. B. Underexplored Power Dynamics Furthermore, there exist underexplored power dynamics that may induce individuals to consent to biomedical research that they might not otherwise. It is not uncommon for physicians to offer (or even suggest) participating in an experimental research trial to their ailing patients. The physician here possesses a status of authority and level of power that may wrongfully induce their patient to agree to participate, despite the overwhelming risks, in benefits to their own research or that of their colleagues. This is not to say that all actions by a doctor wrongfully operate on a power dynamic, but recommending someone to consent to a trial with clear and substantial potential for harm rightfully deserves a more critical lens for moral judgments. Another example worth noting is when professors recruit their students to participate in their own b iomedical research. Might a student consent to participate merely because their p rofessor, who is in a position of power, asked them to do so? I argue that both of these cases illuminate a power dynamic that may render the given consent here as below the standard for moral permissibility and fully robust consent. Just as a boss requesting to have sex with their employee possesses an imbalanced power dynamic, so do certain recommendations of research studies by people of authority. By understanding the coercive influence of underexplored power dynamics in biomedical research recruitment, we can begin to build a more robust theory of consent that accounts for this coercive factor. C. The Misunderstanding of Particulars By Research Participants As previously discussed, it has been well documented that human subjects often misunderstand the particular actions and risks involved with their participation in biomedical research trials. While comprehension is difficult to fully impart on human subjects, might some of these knowledge gaps wrongfully encourage one to consent to a research study? As mentioned earlier, if one is under the guise of the therapeutic misconception, they may be more willing to consent to potentially dangerous research in the hope of receiving free treatment; however, there is no guarantee they will receive any sort of efficacious medical intervention. Research participants are also often unaware of the particular procedures, treatments, etc. they will have to undergo, meaning they cannot grant fully informed consent to them. A similar ethical dilemma arises in the case of sexual consent: one may consent to a sexual interaction without knowing the full breadth of what will occur. Biomedical researchers ought to work (or alternatively, “scaffold”) toward ensuring their research participants have full knowledge and comprehension of any factor of the research that might change their decision to consent. Only a more robust consent framework within biomedical research settings can properly protect the autonomy of human subjects to provide truly informed consent. D. Lack of Knowledge Regarding Research Intentions The final factor that I argue merits greater consideration in our ethical guidelines around b iomedical consent concerns the ability of the patient to understand the intentions of the research. Due to the nature of biomedical research, human subjects are often not informed of every detail of the study in order to maintain scientific objectivity and integrity. So, a human subject may be told what the study consists of, while not fully understanding the intentions of the research. What if a human subject consents to participating in a Phase I biomedical trial without knowing that the intention of the research is to produce a drug that only the extremely wealthy will be able to afford (an unfortunately common occurrence in the US)? Or, what if the aim of the research is to reach a conclusion that goes against one’s own morals, like that racial differences are essential rather than constructed? Just as one possesses a right to know the intentions behind their partner asking for consent to have sex, human subjects have a right here as well because the information presented may actively encourage one to not offer consent in the first place. Our existing definition of consent for human subjects in biomedical research experiments does not properly account for preserving, or scaffolding, the full rational decision-making of human subjects. While understanding the need for a certain level of confidentiality, the intentions behind the research itself may serve as a deterrent for someone to grant consent. So, in order to have genuine, robust consent, we must be able to set ethical guidelines that actively inform the participant of any detail that may render their consent below the bar for moral permissibility if unknown. VI. An Argument for a More Robust Consent in Biomedical Experiments I present these four coercive factors not in an attempt to develop a fully-fledged account of proper consent in biomedical research, but rather to demonstrate that our existing notion does not go far enough to protect the autonomy of human subjects. All four of these concerns do not apply equally in every context, but they do merit a greater, more nuanced understanding of consent and how to ethically scaffold against coercive factors. Philosophers of sex, like Kukla, have begun to p opularize the idea of a robust, nonideal theory of consent as a way to scaffold ethical precautions to engaging in sexual acts with a partner. The field of biomedical research ought to embrace a similar strategy and approach, and these four factors can begin to identify the key elements influencing the autonomy and agency of sexual partners. To scaffold a human subject’s ability to grant their uncoerced consent, we need to maximize their knowledge of anything essential to their rational decision-making. This would involve instituting clear and expansive policies to combat the therapeutic misconception and ensure participants understand the potential harms they may undergo. Researchers should also develop pay schedules and formats that work to ensure that the benefit incurred from compensation does not wrongly coerce one into participating or lacking the ability to revoke their participation at any time. Crucially, though, we ought to concurrently reform the issues of capitalism and systemic wealth inequality that force many people in the US to sell their own bodies for lifesaving income. Finally, we should adopt stricter guidelines for participating in biomedical research experiments to both restrict coercive power dynamics and pursue further scaffolding of subjects’ agency and autonomy. It is important to note, though, that this paper is primarily concerned with the philosophical issues that might constrain one’s genuine consent, and I invite bioethicists to create a more concrete and thorough list of ethical guidelines to scaffold agency in experiments. By conducting a rigorous philosophical analysis of coercive factors that influence human subjects, philosophers of biology will be better equipped to develop their own version of robust consent that can account for coercive factors. This new, reinspired lens from a philosopher of sex into scaffolding consent should help to control the damaging effects of coercive factors and grant the human subject greater autonomy in making rational decisions regarding whether and when to participate in biomedical research. Research study designers can utilize the recognition of these coercive forces, scaffold ethical practices to combat their influence on diminishing an agent’s authority and embrace a more robust understanding of consent in biomedical research experiments. VII. Conclusion My aim in this paper has been to draw parallels between the currently distinct notions of consent within sexual interactions and biomedical research to illuminate the similar ethical issues facing both. Many feminist scholars and philosophers of sex have taken an approach of examining the societal conditions, other external pressures, and nature of consent itself to illuminate the ways consent may be unduly coerced in rational agents. In doing so, they have been able to develop a more robust framework around a nonideal theory of consent that socially and interpersonally scaffolds (but not completely) a person’s agency in order to minimize coercive factors in one’s decision to consent to sex. By detailing parallel coercive factors present in the biomedical research field, I hope further philosophical inquiries will be able to develop a similar robust consent framework for biomedical research involving human subjects. On a more practically conclusive note, biomedical research experiments are luring; research designers purposefully advertise their studies to sound like easy, safe ways to make money, despite their risks. As shown by decades of research studies with devastating effects on communities of color, biomedical research experiments target specific populations…populations that are often BIPOC, low-income, young, and most vulnerable to being coerced into consenting in a biomedical research setting (see NIH for more on the crucially important element of structural medical racism). I’ve seen firsthand the consequences of a biomedical research industry that has consistently used advertising to tempt many young people, like myself, to participate in potentially harmful studies—experiments where we may not be in a fully agential capacity due to coercive factors. Money, power relations, a lack of understanding regarding the experiment, and other coercive factors constantly influence the ability for people, especially those of marginalized or fiscally disadvantaged backgrounds, to make a fully rational choice in consenting to biomedical research. 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