Great Banana made a number of interesting comments about my Learning from Chattanooga post last month. One of them concerned fairness: it doesn't seem fair that a inner city school system that's been languishing for years receives more attention (and funding), while the suburban systems that have been doing well are penalized.
While on vacation last week, I found some interesting examples that challenged my intutions about fairness.
These examples come courtesy of Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink. In a recent New Yorker article, he detailed some social issues that can be solved by "unfair" or, more accurately, "non uniform" social programs.
Homelessness is one such problem. Recent studies in New York and Boston have shown that only 10% of the homeless are "hard core". At any given time, 90% of the homeless population are people who will soon find a way to get off the street.
This 10% consumes a disproportionate amount of social resources. Gladwell's example, Million-Dollar Murray, was a homeless man in Reno. Because of injuries and sickness related to his chronic alcoholism, he may have had the largest medical bill for a homeless person in Nevada (over $1 million).
Murray and others like him did well when they were in apartments or treatment programs under the close supervision of social workers. When released into the community, however, Murray was a disaster. Because the social system isn't set up to house people like Murry for the long term, he was constantly drying out, getting injured on the street, and going back into treatment.
It may be that the "unfair" solution for the 10% like Murray is to concentrate more housing and social work resources on this population in order to keep them off the street under close supervision. This may be the case for other social problems that follow a "power law" distribution (i.e, all of the problem individuals are in one cluster rather than being distributed uniformly or in a bell curve). Some other examples:
- Police Misconduct: A study of the LAPD found that only about 44 officers (out of over 8,000) were responsible for huge percentage of all excessive force complaints, and that fewer than 200 had more than 4 complaints.
- Pollution Control: In Denver, 5% of the cars produce 55% of the emissions.
In both of these cases, there's a "fair" process in place. LA had force sensitivity training and a grievance process. Colorado has mandatory emissions testing for all vehicles. But neither of these "fair" processes addresses the problem. The vast majority of LA cops haven't had a single excessive force complaint. Most new cars produce relatively tiny amounts of pollution.
Since "fair" solutions aren't working, these cities are looking for alternatives. One proposal for Denver is to ditch mandatory testing and instead have trucks with emission sensors patrol the town and issue tickets on the spot.
My sense is that, like Denver and LA, there are probably a number of social issues in Rochester that might follow a power law distribution. School quality might be one. Before we insist on fairness, we need to be sure that our notion of "fair" is broad enough to encompass solutions like the one that could have helped Million-Dollar Murray. Spending a few bucks to give him better housing than the average homeless person (which is strictly unfair) would have saved Nevada hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical costs.
Paradoxically, sometimes what's "fair" is anything but just in the end.
Comments (5)
Thanks for the reference!
A couple of comments. 1st, at to homelessness, the problem you identify was created in the late 70's early 80's when Courts basically decided that you could not involuntarily institutionalize someone without due process, and that the hurdle to involuntarily institute someone was that they be a danger to themselves or others and could only be held for as long as they were such a danger - as involuntary institutionalization is akin to imprisonment. This led to having to put all of the involuntarily institutionalized people out on the streets (this is probably the 10% of the people you are talking about).
thus, mentally ill / addictive individuals could only be held for a short time, given treatment (usually meds) which then brought them to a point when they were not a danger to themselves or others, and the people have to be realeased. Once out on the streets, these people tend to stop taking their meds or go back onto whatever addictive substance they like.
So, your solution re: homelessness was what was done in the past, but was destroyed by the Courts, leading to the current problem.
So, without even discussing arguments of "fairness", we can't do what you would propose, b/c the ACLU or some other group would immediately sue and the courts would order the release of the people.
As to things like the LA Police and excessive force, there might be many other reasons for this data. for instance, certain patrol areas could have a much higher rate of "excessive force" claims (in my experience, this is true - certain communities are much more willing to file a claim of excessive force and/or perceive any action by the police as "excessive"). Thus, officers assigned to that area are much more likely to have such claims made against them. Now, there are probably also some bad officers who have several valid excessive force claims against them, it is probably not true that all of the excessive force claims made against the 44 officers are valid.
If it turned out that certain areas are more likely to have excessive force claims from any interaction between civilians and police, what then is to be done with the data?
As to the vehicle emissions idea, I'm not sure that implicates fairness or justice - it is simply a different method of enforcing the law, more akin to speed limit enforcement than the current system of yearly vehicle inspections. Not sure it would accomplish much or be worth the cost of enforcement, but would have to see much more info.
Finally, as to Million Dollar Murray, why sould society have to pay for his medical care in the first instance? Isn't his illness self-inflicted? What is just about someone abusing themselves and having their fellow citizens foot the bill? Or pay more to house him? Why is that just or fair?
I think in a post like this, you need to come up with what you are using for definitions for "just" and "fair". For instance, is justice or fairness defined by you as government/society being responsible for everyone's health and or happiness?
As an example, and obviously off the top of my head, for me, justice is that everyone be treated the same by the legal system, and thus have the same legal rights, and be otherwise given autonomy over themselves. Fairness is being allowed to keep what you earn and being allowed to exercise your rights as long as you are not violating someone else's legal rights. Thus, as an example, I would percieve just about any redistribution of wealth (i.e., taking from me what I have earned to give to someone else), as inherintly unfair and unjust. This is different from more legitimate government functions, such as commond defense or law enforcement, where the gov't is not redistributing wealth, but paying for necessary functions of gov't. Of course, then one gets into differences of opinion about what are "necessary" functions of gov't.
Posted by Great Banana | July 17, 2006 12:31 PM
Posted on July 17, 2006 12:31
A lot of the questions you raised are addressed explicitly or implicitly in the article.
Short answers: You're right on the connection between clearing out institutions and homelessness. But the programs listed in the article don't have the same legal issues as commitment. The LAPD stats are from a blue-ribbon commission that studied the LAPD after the Rodney King riots. I'm guessing they controlled for the artifacts that you listed.
The point of the Denver pollution example (and LAPD and Murray) is that when you have a problem that affects a small part of a group, solutions that address the entire population are inefficient and ineffective. However, it may be that those solutions are viewed as "fairer" because everyone is treated the same.
You're right that "fair" is a loaded term, as is "just". Books are written to define each term. In this case, the sense of "fair" that I thought Gladwell's article addressed was the same sense that we use when dividing up a birthday cake: everyone gets a same-sized piece. So, in LA, all officers who have been accused of excessive force get the same treatment. But it may be more effective to give the ones who have multiple complaints different treatment. This isn't "fair" in the birthday-cake sense.
On why we need to take care of Murray: anyone who shows up sick at a hospital is treated, whether their illness is self-inflicted or inflicted by others. That's why Murray cost Nevada taxpayers $1 million.
So, to get back to Rochester schools, we have a few that are like Murray. The students in these schools aren't getting a good education. The cost of having uneducated graduates is probably much more than it would cost to fix the school. If we could find a good fix for those schools, it might be worth spending more on them than is "fair" in the birthday-cake sense, since the ultimate cost of having uneducated young adults is much, much more than the cost of educating them.
Posted by Rottenchester | July 17, 2006 2:46 PM
Posted on July 17, 2006 14:46
You said,
"On why we need to take care of Murray: anyone who shows up sick at a hospital is treated, whether their illness is self-inflicted or inflicted by others. That's why Murray cost Nevada taxpayers $1 million."
Yes, but I would argue that the hospital should not necessarily have to treat him in the first instance. Perhaps the real problem is requiring hospitals to care for everyone with the same care. Problem solved - Nevada is not stuck with the bill for someone else's self destructive behaviour. And, simply getting someone "nicer" digs or a nicer living arrangement, is not going to ensure the person remains on their meds or off of their addicative substance. They would have to be institutionalized to ensure that, which is why that article was moslty pie in the sky. As always, throwing more money at a problem is not a solution in most instances.
You also said:
"So, to get back to Rochester schools, we have a few that are like Murray. The students in these schools aren't getting a good education. The cost of having uneducated graduates is probably much more than it would cost to fix the school. If we could find a good fix for those schools, it might be worth spending more on them than is "fair" in the birthday-cake sense, since the ultimate cost of having uneducated young adults is much, much more than the cost of educating them."
I hardly think money is the issue. We spend more per student today, adjusted for inflation, per student, even in RCSD, then ever before. Moreover, RCSD has a bigger budget per student then most other districts. The issue is not money, and spending more money on a corrupt, inefficient district is just wasting more money. Until the teacher unions are controlled, until the social expirentation (rather than actually teaching math, english, science) type courses are rejected, until the community values education, hard work, personal responsibility, and discipline, nothing will change. More money won't fix those problems. That has nothing to do with "fairness."
Every year, the answer is "give them more money." More money is routinely given. The same problems get worse. New solutions are needed. Or, really, old solutions that were abandoned in the 1960's and 1970's.
As to the Police Officers - you cannot treat them differently just b/c there are complaints of excessive force. If excessive force is proven, then you can discipline the officer. Otherwise, they have rights of their own, they also have a union contract stating what can and can't be done to there terms and conditions of employment. My point was that simply b/c some officers might have more complaints against them, however, is not really evidence of anything. There may be many other factors contributing to the larger number of complaints.
I'm all for new and innovative solutions, but the solutions offered are not really new or innovative. It is the same old, "if we just spent more now, we would save more later" argument.
Off topic - we need to get more commentators at these local Rochester blogs. I would love to have some real dust-ups on local issues, it is fun and edifying.
- GB
Posted by Great Banana | July 18, 2006 9:30 AM
Posted on July 18, 2006 09:30
On Murray: It is easy to proclaim that hospitals shouldn't treat people like him, who have self-inflicted problems. But there's no way to do that in practice. Illness is a combination of inherited traits, history, good or bad self-care, and good or bad luck. Often it is impossible to tell why someone ended up in the Emergency Department on a given day.
For example, if Murray had been on the wagon for a month, was robbed and beat up while on his way home from his new job and was left lying in the street, doesn't he "deserve" treatment? But how is the ED staff going to be able to tell that he deserves treatment in this instance but not in others?
On the schools issue: I shouldn't have said money, because I agree that money isn't the problem. The problem is that nobody is willing to do the hard things that are required to fix the schools. And some of those hard things don't cost a lot but are "unfair" to some constituencies, like teachers' unions.
The examples that I used -- the Chattanooga report or the Murray article -- include a lot of careful research on how money spent will specifically achieve the intended goals. There's no "spend more to save later" generic hand-waving, which I agree is worthless.
Posted by Rottenchester | July 18, 2006 4:22 PM
Posted on July 18, 2006 16:22
I have several disgareements, but I'm going to pick the easiest one.
"Fairness is being allowed to keep what you earn and being allowed to exercise your rights as long as you are not violating someone else's legal rights."
Do you believe that is true even in places/times when people had the legal right to own other humans?
Do you believe that is true in cases where a loophole in the legal system allows for what is clearly explotive behavior?
Pegging 'fair' to 'not violating what is legal' is (pardon me) plain idiotic. Things like farm subsidies for suburban home owners* are 100% legal, but I can't believe anyone would call that fair.
*see:
http://www.heritagetidbits.com/archives/2006/07/us_agricultural.htm
Posted by FarMcKon | July 19, 2006 7:57 PM
Posted on July 19, 2006 19:57