Federalist 70

I chose this one because it is the only recent paper I have written for a college course.

In Alexander Hamilton’s essay, Federalist 70, he argues in favor of a single executive as a suggestion for the government structure for the United States. In Federalist 70, the most significant contributions to the piece are Hamilton’s analyses and comparisons between different types of executives, using real, as opposed to theoretical, examples and discussing problems with certain types of executive branches. Hamilton specifically uses the examples of the Roman Republic and the British constitutional monarchy to discuss their issues.

Hamilton first analyzes the executive branch of the Roman Republic, the consuls, dual executives with veto authority in the Roman Republic. Hamilton introduces his opposition to multiple executives by stating that people are “not to be enamoured of plurality in the Executive” because “the Roman history records many instances of mischiefs to the republic from the dissensions between the Consuls” while offering “no specimens of any peculiar advantages.” Hamilton means that plurality in executives causes problems within a government without having any advantages. Hamilton then discusses specific examples of plural executives causing harm in a government as he says, “Wherever two or more persons are engaged in any common enterprise or pursuit, there is always danger of difference of opinion. If it be a public trust or office, in which they are clothed with equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal emulation and even animosity. From either, and especially from all these causes, the most bitter dissensions are apt to spring. Whenever these happen, they lessen the respectability, weaken the authority, and distract the plans and operation of those whom they divide. If they should unfortunately assail the supreme executive magistracy of a country, consisting of a plurality of persons, they might impede or frustrate the most important measures of the government, in the most critical emergencies of the state. And what is still worse, they might split the community into the most violent and irreconcilable factions, adhering differently to the different individuals who composed the magistracy.”(Hamilton). Hamilton’s opposition to multiple executives comes from the differing ideas or aspirations of the multiple executives. Furthermore, the differing ideas of the executives would weaken the position overall. Unlike in the legislative branch of government, competing interests offer no advantages in the executive branch where a certain amount of urgency is necessary to perform the task of executive. Additionally, multiple executives encourages the formation of factions; an example of such can be shown through the rivalry between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Because Pompey and Caesar were competing for power, Pompey conspired with the senate against Caesar, causing a civil war. The overall significance of Hamilton’s discussion on the Roman Republic highlights is the explanation on why the system of multiple executives does not work and should not be used.

Hamilton also analyzes the British monarchy as another form of executive power; However, Hamilton is as dismissive of the British Monarchy as he is of the Roman Republic. According to Hamilton, “In England, the king is a perpetual magistrate… he is unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred. Nothing, therefore, can be wiser in that kingdom, than to annex to the king a constitutional council, who may be responsible to the nation for the advice they give… even there the king is not bound by the resolutions of his council… He is the absolute master of his own conduct in the exercise of his office, and may observe or disregard the counsel given to him at his sole discretion”(Hamilton). Though the King of Britain would not have competition in his position, he would not be held accountable for any failures in governance either; instead the king is considered above laws and scrutiny. Furthermore, Hamilton condemns the British Parliament as it serves to protect the king’s power, not dispute it, causing a dearth of checks and balances in the government. Hamilton then says ideally that “in a republic, where every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behavior in office the reason which in the British Constitution dictates the propriety of a council, not only ceases to apply, but turns against the institution. In the monarchy of Great Britain, it furnishes a substitute for the prohibited responsibility of the chief magistrate, which serves in some degree as a hostage to the national justice for his good behavior. In the American republic, it would serve to destroy, or would greatly diminish, the intended and necessary responsibility of the Chief Magistrate himself”(Hamilton). Hamilton suggests that everyone, including members of the government, should be subject to the laws of the nation and the judgement of the people. The significance of this excerpt highlights how any government official, including executives, must be subject to common law and popular scrutiny.

 Hamilton uses real comparisons to strengthen his observations. Using real examples of flawed governments, his ideas are much more plausible, opposed to arguments based off of theoretical examples. Without such comparisons, his arguments would be severely weakened.

Other Paper

I thought this paper was relatively strong, but a little bit on the short side. I probably could have extended it without diluting my point.

For some time now, partisan leaders globally have gone back and forth over past and present spending policy. Particular points of contention, specifically, stimulus packages and bailouts, are of a larger debate on spending policy called Keynesianism. Keynesianism is an economic policy that came into prominence in the early Twentieth Century largely as a reaction to the Great Depression. Under Keynesianism, spending is increased despite deficits and debts to boost aggregate demand and aid an economy. Keynesianism is the true subject of debate in the midst of fiscal policy debates . While it is well intentioned, Keynesianism causes more harm than good because it encourages reckless risk taking, and unsustainable long-term deficits.

Firstly, Keynesian economics ignore human motivation,  causing economic harm by encouraging reckless risk taking; when people have very little to lose through investments and loans, they will not be careful in their actions. Ayotte describes one of the flaws of Keynesianism, moral hazard:

The principal incentive problem is moral hazard. Moral hazard is the familiar concern that someone who is protected against the consequences of a risk has less incentive to take precautions against the risk. If the investors who fund a financial institution by lending money or buying stock anticipate that the firm will be rescued if it runs into trouble, they may extend funding beyond what they would extend otherwise. This willingness to continue funding may enable the firm to delay a needed restructuring of operations or a merger with a healthy acquirer (485).

The moral hazard here is that without risks involved, people will not have the motivation to cautiously invest, implicitly promoting reckless spending. As a result, this will harm the economy because when firms pursue bad investments, it is at the expense of the public, both through bailouts and through recession. This same recklessness is what caused the last economic collapse, when firms were willing to sell loans to unqualified applicants, leading to toxic assets. Some proponents of Keynesianism argue that intervention is helpful as it encourages short-term growth. For example, in the case of the recent insurance bailouts, Keynesians state, “Future operating performance of insurance firms will improve following the repurchase announcement” (2). However, they ignore that it tells particularly large firms that they are above reproach and will not face the consequences of their poor choices. If just a single member of a failing firm were to be prosecuted, the bailouts may be acceptable, but as neither corporate nor human persons have anything to lose, they will continue to make poor investment decisions.

Secondly, at some point, it becomes no longer credible to lend to a nation running consistent deficits with high debt, and it is very difficult for said nation to clamber out of a downturn. For example, in Greece, a government financed economic boom rapidly turned into collapse furthered by austerity. As Tsoukalas discusses in Greece’s scenario: “the speculative attack against a currency peg is the deterministic outcome of an unsustainable fiscal expansion pursued by a myopic government and financed by excessive money creation depleting foreign currency reserves.” (175). In Greece’s case, after debt reached a certain point, speculators began doubting Greece’s fiscal solvency, triggering economic collapse. In Greece’s situation, unsustainable fiscal expansion occurred when Greece entered into a period of economic boom, with annual GDP growth rates hovering around four percent.  This expansion was financed through excessive money creation in the form of an influx of loans from stronger EU economies.  After growth stalled, speculators grew skeptical of Greece, leading to an end of the influx of foreign capital, causing a feedback loop resulting in depression. What Greece’s example teaches us is that long-term deficits are extremely destructive because they must be paid back or the nation will lose all credibility. Alternatively, if the nation addresses the debt during a period of economic vulnerability, it may cause economic collapse.

Maintaining fiscal solvency is similar to limiting greenhouse gases and preventing pollution; while we may not see the benefits of our actions in our lifetimes, people in the future will. It is our duty to future generations to keep our fiscal house in order as much as it is to keep our planet livable.

Reflection

This reflection in particular was particularly honest, which is why I chose it over my other reflections.

In writing my personal statement I learned how much one’s intended audience influences one’s writing. If I was writing something similar to a personal statement for a job application, I would describe my qualifications for the job and completely ignore my education and personal life. Up until this point, I had not considered audience a huge factor in my writing, as everything I have written thus far has been intended for my teachers. However, because of the emphasis placed upon personal statements being used for a wide variety of applications, I took audience into consideration in writing this essay.

I feel that I was challenged over what to include and exclude in my personal statement; I was not only unsure of how to summarize myself in a few pages, but which details of my life I wanted my teacher and peer-editors to know. The best contrast to writing my personal statement is writing a resume for myself. With my audience largely undefined and my writing unbound by grammar, I think that I was better able to communicate the details of my life. However, I feel as if I was unable to describe in detail the events which shaped my life and education in a resume. Ultimately, I found writing a personal statement to be more challenging than writing a resume because I felt like I needed to tailor everything I wrote to my audience, opposed to listing all potentially significant events in my life.

To me, the final result felt somewhat watered-down from who I am and what my experiences have been. My limitations were not limited to the cap on page numbers, I think I was limited by the prompt itself as well. Because the prompt directly asks me about why I am taking college courses I feared irrelevance in discussing topics other than my education and current life.

If asked to write another essay like this one, I would probably start from scratch unless if it were for another college or graduate school course. The reasoning behind this is how much I tailored this individual piece to my likely audience. Upon writing another piece similar to this, I would take great care in writing this for a specific viewer, opposed to writing for an undefined reader or simply replying to the prompt I receive.

Personal Statement

With this one, the piece itself doesn’t seem terribly focused, but neither is the life it is describing, so this lack of focus is excusable. However, the piece itself is relatively well written

My name is Noah Glaser, I am sixteen years old and currently enrolled in high-school. However, I have completed the highest level of high-school English and would like to further my studies of the English language and accumulate units in college courses.

Education has generally carried weight in my family, both my parents being teachers at the moment, and I am no exception to this. For example, in order to gain the credits I need to be eligible for this course, I had to spend time most people would spend socializing on extra coursework. For me this has payed off. Seeing as I can graduate a year early, and if I pass all my AP exams, I may be able to finish college a year early as well.

I was about three when my father taught me how to read; the first book I remember reading is Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad are Friends. My favorite book thus far has been Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I particularly enjoyed his vivid descriptions of the scenes because they allow me to envision what the scenes looked like. Furthermore, I enjoyed the beauty of how in which Santiago destroys the marlin, a symbol of himself. The books which I have struggled with tend to heavily use vernacular which I am unfamiliar with. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a particularly difficult read because I could not understand much of what the characters were saying and the version I was reading did not have footnotes. Currently, I still read regularly, but now, news articles are nearly everything I read, opposed to novels.

My favorite teacher so far has been my Seventh Grade History teacher, Mateal. Before Mateal’s class I considered history to be irrelevant, and incredibly boring. However, she completely changed my perceptions of the subject with her untraditional style of teaching. For example, she took a hands-on approach to history; setting up a mock dig site for the class. Under her, history became my favorite subject and it remains so today.

I am hoping to accumulate enough units over the next year or so to transfer into a four-year college, hopefully UC berkeley. However, I am keeping my options open for other four-year colleges as well. At the moment, I would like to major in Political Science or Philosophy. However, due to the scant job opportunities which accompany these majors, the chances of me going through with either one of these are less than likely, leaving me open to other fields. Over this semester in English, I am hoping to hone the skills in reading comprehension and composition which I have attained over the past several years of my education. Throughout this semester in general, I am hoping to precisely determine the general direction of my life.

Book Review

I found this paper to be rather generic, I just ran through what the prompt told me to say.

My book is titled Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. The main subject of Blink is something Gladwell defines as “thin-slicing”: our intuitive system of judging information based on what little information we have. Gladwell argues that ideas created through “thin slicing” comparable to those we make consciously. Gladwell discusses how everyone’s process of “thin-slicing” is corrupted by his or her individual, and sometimes unconscious prejudices. Two particular examples of experiments exposing bias are IATs (Implicit Association Tests) and psychological priming. Gladwell also tells of how humans have an instinctive ability to read the minds of others, which is demonstrated through reading the emotions of another person via facial expressions. Humans accomplish this by “thin-slicing,” to come to a conclusion without needing to actively think about it. For example, most people won’t need to analyze a person’s face to tell how that person feels. Gladwell argues that under some conditions, “thin-slicing” is superior to conscious thinking as excess information is more likely to cloud one’s judgment in addition to the bonus speed. He defines this hindrance by information “Analysis paralysis.” In conclusion, Gladwell says how we should take our snap judgments as seriously as our well thought out decisions.

My favorite quotes from the book include: “What do we tell our children? Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don’t judge a book by its cover. We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation.” And “We don’t know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don’t always appreciate their fragility.”

New York Times critic, David Brooks says, that “Blink moves quickly through a series of delightful stories, all about the backstage mental process we call intuition.” Brooks says of Blink, “My first impression of ”Blink” — in blurb-speak — was ”Fascinating! Eye-Opening! Important!” Unfortunately, my brain, like yours, has more than just a thin-slicing side. It also has that thick-slicing side. The thick-slicing side wants more than a series of remarkable anecdotes. It wants a comprehensive theory of the whole. It wants to know how all the different bits of information fit together.” Overall, Brooks says “If you want to trust my snap judgment, buy this book: you’ll be delighted. If you want to trust my more reflective second judgment, buy it: you’ll be delighted but frustrated, troubled and left wanting more.”

I personally like Blink more than Brooks does, but perhaps that is because I, unlike him, have not read books in direct conflict with Blink’s main idea. Blink, like any other Gladwell is pleasingly well written, yet notably ‘cherry-picky,’ for the entirety of the novel, Gladwell does not even pay heed to any contradictory evidence, which is somewhat excusable, as his position is relatively unprecedented. One will certainly enjoy Blink if they have read other Gladwell books and enjoyed them; it is very much in his style of jumping between various stories confirming his evidence. However, stylistically, Blink does not vary significantly from Outliers. Overall, there is no specific demographic for which this book is best suited or who will enjoy particularly, aside from Gladwell enthusiasts, so If one has a spare ten dollars, this is a decent buy.