You cut, I choose?

As siblings separated by only two years, my brother and I never wasted any chance to express our, shall I say, differences in opinions ;)  A context that we were very particular about was when mother doled out snacks.  We would carefully monitor each other's share, and complain if we felt that it was not equal.  Of course, as we got older, we also teamed up to sniff out where exactly mother had hidden away some awesomely tasty snacks and we were partners in crime ;)

We now live in a world of plenty. And, at the same time, a number of kids do not have siblings either.  Which means there is nobody to fight with, nor is there a need to fight.

But then there are divorces.  Some are bitterly contested.  Recall Harry's advice to his friends on how they should plan for the divorce right from their early days of being married so that the bitterness on who gets what and how much can be easily settled?

How to divvy things up is not a new question.  It is as old as humanity itself.  We kids in Hindu households in the old country grew up with epics that were all about who gets what.  The Pandavas and the Kauravas fought intensely bloody--I mean bloody--battles as a result.  A war that Krishna said was Arjuna's duty to fight in the Bhagvad Gita!

While we can't bring about world peace, math does offer some interesting ways in which interpersonal property splits can be handled.  Well, not math by itself, as this essay points out. 

Perhaps the oldest fair division method on the books—one which has been used by children from time immemorial—is the “I cut, you choose” method for dividing up, say, a cake between two people. One person cuts the cake into two pieces, and the other person gets to choose which piece to take.

Such a system, or any system, assumes that the participants play by the rules.  Imagine tRump in something like this.  That mafia don will simply walk away with it all, and then turn around and accuse you of eating the cake that he stole from you!

Thankfully, other than 63 million, we are not all such horrible humans beings.  We might fight, like how my brother and I did, but we try to fight by the rules and try to be fair.  But, even when we try, methods like "I cut, you choose" don't always end up being fair and equitable.

“Mathematics sets limits on what is achievable ... Then the question is, if you can’t get everything, what properties do you want to give up on?”  

This post is unfair!

Much to the displeasure of Ramesh and Anne, I constantly explore inequality and fairness.  In case they, or you, need a refresher, I will gladly point to the following samples:

• The birth of inequality
• The Student Affluence Test

Those two posts, among many, always lead to the same bottom-line: The best thing that you can do is to choose your parents well.  Of course, we do not get to choose our parents, which means that ...

It is not merely income inequality that results from this accident of birth in the correct (or incorrect) geography.  It shows up in various attributes of life, like even the lifestyle choices.  Things are different on the other side of the railroad track.

Like with health and life expectancy:



In the old country, the juxtaposition of the rich and the poor is perhaps best symbolized in Antilia.  Being born in the wrong place makes all the difference in one's life.  A luck of the draw, in which we are not even active participants given that it is pretty much determined at birth.

These are the kinds of intellectual and practical issues that led to me graduate school in the first place. Which is also where I got to read John Rawls--in a condensed form, because the book itself was way too big!

This video explains the importance of the Rawlsian argument, and why figuring out fairness is important and is also difficult.



As important as these ideas are, the fact that people prefer instant gratification and entertainment over reading and thinking, and the fact that thinking politicians have been replaced with demagogues, mean that we will never get to addressing the effects of being born in the wrong zip code, or the wrong country, or the wrong skin color, or ... and then we wonder why the world is so unfair!

American lifestyle can no longer remain non-negotiable

One of the many tough lessons that we learn while growing up is that life is unfair.  It is a tough lesson.  Even worse is the lesson that we humans will not work towards making life at least a tad less unfair.

Today's exhibit on unfairness: the global climate change discussions.

We are rapidly counting down the days towards that global meeting of the minds, which will happen in Paris from November 30th to December 11th.  It is the latest in a long-running series of meetings that began in 1979.

Except for a few nutcases, who operate mostly from the US and from within the Republican party, there is an overwhelming consensus on climate change and its potential to wreak havoc on conditions for human life, via the impacts on the natural environment.



Those nutcases aside,,

climate experts estimate that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions need to be reduced by 40-70% by 2050 and that carbon neutrality (zero emissions) needs to be reached by the end of the century at the latest.

But, that is where the "fairness" and "unfairness" begins.

Rancorous negotiations over a draft version of a universal climate treaty took place this week in Bonn, Germany. The treaty is supposed to be adopted by nearly 200 nations at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris in December. The fight in Bonn is over how much the countries of the world should cut their emissions of greenhouse gases, by what year they should complete those cuts, and who should pay for the transition.

Remember those expressions like, "talk is cheap" or "put your money where your mouth is" and the like?  It is one thing to wish for a wonderful planet, but another when it comes to who has to the dirty work and how to pay for it.

Fairness and fair share arguments kick in, and they kick in faster than the time it takes you to yell "climate change":

The activists calculate that rich countries need to boost their domestic reductions from 5.5 billion tons to 9.1 billion tons. They also call for "a vast expansion of international finance, technology and capacity-building support." This means the rich countries should provide poor countries with the wherewithal to reduce by 15.1 billion tons the greenhouse gases they would otherwise have emitted. ...
What do the activists think is the U.S.'s fair share of reductions? Historically, the U.S. is responsible for about 30 percent of the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide since 1850. The fair share activists calculate that the United States is promising to cut its annual emissions by only 2 billion tons by 2030. Without going into the arcana of the climate equity calculations, the activists argue that the U.S. should instead cut its emissions by the equivalent of 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. 

If you even remotely think that the most affluent country that the planet has ever known will even remotely agree to paying for fairness, well, I have only these words for you: lobotomy by Dr. Carson!

Shikha Dalmia adds to these:

Western countries, especially America, have been arguing that China and India with their billion-plus people and dirty energy sources are a major part of the problem. Therefore, unless they do their "fair share" to cut — not just slow the rate of — their emissions, no amount of mitigation by the West will make a dent in global temperatures.
However, India and China counter by dragging out the West's historic emissions. ... As these countries see it, America (as the rest of the Western world) is in their ecological debt. It needs to put itself on a drastic energy diet — and effectively undo the industrial revolution that has generated untold wealth for it. Especially since India has used only 7 percent of its share. "For the sake of the world's future, American lifestyle can no longer remain non-negotiable," froths India's leading environmentalist, Sunita Narain.

The Indian stand is understandable:

Over 300 million Indians still live below the poverty line, earning less than $1 per day. India's per capita energy consumption is 15 times less than the United States'. India has to keep boosting its energy use — and therefore carbon emissions — for at least another two decades to eliminate dire poverty

The selfish gene is not wired for fairness, it seems.