The Beautiful Dream II

Welcome friends!

Last time out I suggested the determination of American economic conservative to portray a rather overly simplistic and idealized mental construct they call “The Free Market” as a panacea for all of society’s ills may be related more to the world of dreams and fantasy than ethical or empirical theory.  In other words, I suggested those who would argue against this false and anti-social ideology on the basis of ethics, logic, or historical evidence may be barking up the wrong tree.  In some cases people live for their dreams and whether their dreams have any basis in reality or cohere in any rational or logical sense is really beside the point.  The narcotic effect of these sorts of life sustaining dreams has of course been noted before but more typically in the context of religious or spiritual beliefs as in Karl Marx’s famous description of religion as the opium of the masses.  However, I think a case can be made for essentially the same phenomenon playing out in terms of secular beliefs relating to economic issues.  I suggested it was likely not coincidental that here in the USA social conservatives attracted to religious modes of thinking tend to also be or at least make common cause with economic conservatives attracted to conservative economic ideology.  However, I didn’t really draw out what I consider the interesting ethical implications of this train of thought last week so I thought I do that now before I forget the whole thing entirely.

The ethical issue I wanted to take up this week is basically if one sees some junkies on the street corner and one is concerned for their welfare should one buy them some stuff or drag them struggling and screaming to rehab?  More to the point if one sees some people clinging to religion like drowning people clinging to a life raft should one bother explaining the rather obvious intellectual deficiencies and moral pitfalls of religious modes of thought or should one just light a bit of incense and sing a little song with them?  Even more to the point if one sees some poor economically struggling people working feverishly to shrink and minimize the influence of democratic government, outlaw unions, eliminate health and safety regulations, and do away with social safety net programs under the belief that doing so will usher in a golden age in which all their economic problems will evaporate should one bother trying to  explain why that is most likely not what will happen or should one just buy them a six pack and a funny cap and help them on their way?

It seems to me now the answer is not as obvious as I previously supposed.  Well, OK, I suppose the answer is still pretty obvious under some conditions.  If one is suffering oneself and unfortunately also educated enough to be immune to the mind numbing power of the conservatives’ pipe dream then of course I suppose one should speak up for oneself and try to talk sense to those in a similar situation.  Similarly if one isn’t really suffering oneself but notices signs of uncertainty or mental distress in the minds of those who are suffering then one might feel some urgency in helping them come quickly to their senses.  But I’m thinking about the case, all too common here in the USA because of the close relationship between liberalism, intelligence, and higher education, in which one is relatively well to do oneself but motivated in no small degree by one’s concern for economically struggling people who appear to be in the deep trance of conservative ideology.  That’s a tougher one right?  

One’s natural inclination may be to recoil at the sight of people essentially emasculating themselves (or whatever the equivalent would be for women) by endorsing the conservative mantra of shrinking and weakening the role of democratic government thus negating their own relatively equal voting power, of endorsing the fanciful conservative fairy stories that portray wealth as largely a function of individual merit and moral rectitude and poverty conversely as mostly a personal failing befalling only the morally compromised, and of supporting the elimination of government programs designed to address the inequities and imbalances and essentially instabilities of real market systems.  One may want to avert one’s eyes at the spectacle of these unfortunate people putting their own livelihoods and modest homes at risk and allowing their children to succumb to the social pathologies that inevitably accompany poverty and neglect.  

But I think to be realistic one must balance these sentiments with the knowledge that in many cases these people are benumbed and ensnared in the beautiful dream of conservatives.  They feel no pain or material hardship of any sort.  Indeed they live on a dream that if only we give The Free Market full rein we will attain a care free society in which all good people do well, activist government will become unnecessary and fall away (that is, any government beyond simply endorsing property rights and possibly a few other functions), and we need never think about the difficult and contentious issues associated with economic distributions again.  How happy life will be when we get to that promised land that never seems to quite arrive but is always just around the next bend.  Would one want to take this life sustaining dream from these people and replace it with the cold reality of empirical fact, the real variety of shifting market structures, the pros and cons of real market systems, the difficult trade-offs and complicated discussions that would really be required to reconcile conflicting notions of distributional fairness and ethically optimal results?  Many of these people simply don’t have the intellectual capacity or educational background to entertain such issues or deal with such a world.  Without their beautiful dream they may very well sink into the dark blue depths of reality never to emerge again.

Justice and fairness for the economically weak is always something worthwhile to fight for but I think we all need to keep things in perspective.  Fight the good fight of course but have a bit of a laugh and a song in one’s heart along the way.  Think of the wealthy conservative elite not simply as unscrupulous villains intent on preying on the intellectually and economically weak to further engorge themselves but more charitably as possibly more akin to greedy pushers selling their overpriced poison to desperate strung out junkies on the street corner.  Heroes to some, villains to others, but in a better world unnecessary to all.

The Beautiful Dream of Economic Conservatives

Welcome friends!

I was just reading yet another article about how the poorer salt of the earth variety of conservatives here in the USA are still very enthusiastic about the performance of our ongoing national embarrassment President Trump.  They are absolutely convinced he is on the right track.  This phenomenon has long been interesting to me because these are the people who have been losing out over the past several decades of conservative / neoliberal free market economic ideology and policies and there is really no reason to suppose they will not continue to lose out exacerbated now by any number of additional burdens such as the shredding of the social safety net, trade wars, elimination of worker health and safety rules, elimination of Obamacare and with it some of these people’s only realistic hope for affordable health care, elimination of Wall Street oversight, growth slowing restriction of legal immigration, destruction of the environment, and many other important conservative objectives and priorities.  I’ve generally considered that because these people tend to not be the most educated or informed they are simply prone to being easily deluded by fast talking con artists such as, well, President Trump and other leading figures in the Republican Party and the conservative hot air industry.  However, I must admit it’s always seemed a bit of a mystery to me why they don’t seem to ever catch on even after decades of getting the short end of the stick.  One would think a rock would have caught on by now.  Recently I’ve been thinking I may be the looking at the issue the wrong way round.  Perhaps what is important to these people is not their material conditions but something belonging more to the world of etherial fantasy: keeping their conservative dreams alive.  Perhaps it simply doesn’t matter to them how they actually make out in this world as long as they can continue to dream the happy dream of conservative economic ideology.

What is the happy dream of conservative economic ideology?  I think you must have come across it somewhere.  It’s basically the notion that we can set up a market system that captures all relevant ethical considerations relating to the thorny issue of distribution such that we will never need to bother discussing them again.  The people who should do well will automatically do well.  The people who shouldn’t do well will automatically get exactly what they deserve.  Democratic government and voting and policy making and so on will become irrelevant at least as far as economic issues.  Presumably private charity will likewise become irrelevant unless one has a personal  interest in undermining the ethically correct market distribution.  We can all look after our own selfish interests with nary a thought for our fellow humans or indeed nary a thought relating to any economic issue at all and the invisible hand of the market will ensure it all comes out right in the end.

What’s not to like right?  All our problems solved in one fell swoop.  We can all sit on our recliners drinking beer and watching fulminating conservative pundits excoriate their many enemies on the TV.  The problem of course with this particular pipe dream is that even a moment’s serious thought or attention to history will reveal it doesn’t really work.  It’s very difficult to set up a system that rewards that which we all agree on an ethical basis should be rewarded.  And once one loses that unanimity well it all becomes a matter of conflict between the haves and the have nots wouldn’t you say?  Not very magical nor necessarily all that happy.  And or course there are many well known conditions under which even perfectly competitive free markets can be shown to have problems even using the stripped down utility lite favored by the economics profession for its simplistic misleading baby social philosophy.  There are also many real world market structures other than the much discussed perfectly competitive market and without constant supervision or oversight there is not reason to suppose market structures will maintain constant over time.  In other words the pipe dream of the economic conservative is not something most reasonable educated thinking people can take very seriously.

However, I think one has to consider the issue from the perspective of people who just aren’t very educated and who really really don’t like complications or discussions.  It’s quite possible that for such people thinking and talking seriously about such matters is more burdensome than maintaining their simplistic dreams come what may and allowing their actual material conditions to deteriorate.  In that sense I suppose one might say free market ideology is for many of these people a sort of secular religion that like all religions must be shielded from the cold light of reason, evidence, and critical discussion.  Indeed I’ve long commented on the fact that the same people tend to be attracted to both economic conservatism and social conservatism involving religion.  It also fits in with the clear preferences for many of these conservatives to not subject themselves to real news or real information that might potentially challenge their beliefs and values and instead hew closely to the biased unreliable fake news of the conservative infotainment industry.  As reported in the papers surveys show many of these people consider a news source reliable and unbiased to the extent it protects and facilitates their dreams and not for any of the rather more prosaic considerations the rest of us tend to rely upon.  It also explains the anger and rudeness of many conservatives because of course if one is frustrated and trying to avoid serious discussion of an issue the best way to shut it down is to become angry and rude.

I find it an interesting idea because in my youth conservatives were typically portrayed as hard headed realists while liberals with their endless attempts to improve things were typically cast as starry eyed dreamers.  However, now that I’m older and have a seen a bit of the world I suspect that old saw had it exactly backwards.  Liberals with their willingness to confront evidence from the material world and take up the real world complications that make free market systems less than the panacea conservatives want them to be are the realists.  Economic conservatives at least of the salt of the earth variety are the starry eyed dreamers clinging confidently or perhaps desperately to the happy dream that would allow them to thrive without the hurly burly of debate and discussion or indeed education or even information of any sort.  Of course we must also recognized economic conservatives of another sort, the calculating schemers of the wealthy classes and their allies and cheerleaders and hangers on in the economics profession and conservative infotainment industry, who cynically use free market ideology as a rhetorical tool to amass more wealth for themselves with scant regard for the welfare of others.  Those elite economic conservatives are I suppose as much realists in their own way as liberals.  The difference is that liberals apply their realism to their sincere interest in the national welfare and honest intellectual exchange and discussion while elite economic conservatives apply their realism to making a buck for themselves any way possible and use words and arguments disingenuously and strategically in an attempt to keep other people in a sort of dream world with little or no sincere interest in the truth or national welfare. We should all resist the narcotic pipe dreams peddled by the economic conservative elite.  Fight for liberalism and the good of all humankind.

Conservatives Proliferate in the USA

Welcome friends!

So many types of conservatives trying to do a number on the old USA these days it’s getting a little hard to keep track of who’s who.  Fortunately I ran across an article this week that discussed a little political typology prepared by the Pew Research Center based on some opinion surveys they conducted this past summer.  According to their interpretation of the results conservatives of one sort or another comprise 42 percent of the American electorate compared to 51 percent who lean more toward the liberal side of the aisle with an addition 8 percent classified as bystanders, which adds to 101 percent so I suppose must be a bit of rounding in there somewhere.  That bit isn’t exactly news.  I think we all figured out some time ago we weren’t really all on the same page.  No, the interesting bit for me was the way Pew divided conservatives into four separate groups based on distinctive and sometimes contradictory attitudes and beliefs.  If you’ve been reading my little blog at all you’ll know that trying to figure out the various types of conservatives and what they really think is something of a hobby of mine.  Indeed I’ve previously come up with three types of conservatism based on what appear to me to be different intellectual frameworks as opposed to shared attitudes or beliefs although I suppose they might equally represent simply different styles of talking: economic conservatism, political conservatism, and social conservatism.  This week I thought I’d take a quick look at the Pew classification scheme and compare it the scheme I’ve been using in my previous posts.  So let’s get to it... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Conservative Ideology and Socialism Two Ways

Welcome friends!

I must apologize for the breakdown in my scheduling the last few weeks.  It’s been a little crazy around here and I’m not just talking about President Trump and the Republican Party.  So let’s make up for lost time and dive right in shall we?  What caught my eye this week was an amusing online comment about wealthy American “socialists” who live in gated communities and high rises not caring that immigrants and “black” people are taking jobs from hapless “white” people.  Always fun to read these sorts of posts if one can get past the fractured syntax and inventive spelling because it’s a little window into how other people see the world and by other people I mean in this instance people one might not otherwise engage in conversation in everyday life.  Ah yes the beauty of the internet.  Bringing people together, right?  Of course I’m not entirely sure if I was connecting with a semi-literate American redneck or a professional Russian troll still learning the English language but anyway they seem to get along quite well these days so doesn’t really matter much to me.  I am on the other hand always interested in how conservatives use and understand others (such as Russian trolls for example) to use the term “socialism.” It occurred to me although all conservatives are trained from early childhood to despise “socialists” with a passion verging on clinical paranoia they quite often display certain socialistic tendencies themselves.  Ironic.  Anyway, I thought I’d say a few words about that this week.

When American conservatives excoriate  domestic “socialists” what they have in mind is what you and I might call liberal / progressive democrats who support social programs designed to help struggling people.  I’m sure we all understand the haughty Ayn Randian elitist conservatives who despise that sort of thing on the principle if struggling people are destined to die they should get on with it and reduce the surplus population.  That type of conservative has been common both here and abroad for a very long time most likely from at least the time of the ancient pharaohs.  I talk about those conservatives often enough but they’re not really the focus of this post.  No, there’s another species of conservative in the USA that is more of the economically struggling salt of the earth “populist” variety.  It’s a running joke of course the latter group of conservatives finds common cause with the former group because the former group clearly views the latter group as little more than a mildly amusing species of vermin they need to play with in the name of political expediency until they manage to sufficiently shrink and neutralize democratic government to render such distasteful interactions unnecessary.  It may seem superficially curious these struggling working class conservatives would have such a rabid hatred of the people who have their best interests at heart.  Some of these conservatives are convinced liberal “socialists” are only concerned about struggling immigrants and racial minorities and funneling resources to them in particular.  Humorous of course because although there may be a few programs specifically tailored to immigrants and racial minorities most of the programs under consideration are means tested programs available to all.  Others are convinced the reason some people are struggling is that liberal “socialists” are trying to help them and if we just got rid of the programs designed to deal with these social problems the problems themselves would evaporate.  Also rather comical because historically of course the social problems predate the programs designed to address them and there is no reason at all to suppose something has changed in the interim that would prevent them reappearing if we no longer attempt to address them.  But that’s the story fed to them by the traditional conservative elite that has never seen the need to deal with social problems or I suppose more accurately has always refused even to acknowledge social problems as such and that’s the story they’re going with.

The funny thing about recent developments of course is conservatives of the struggling salt of the earth variety have re-discovered their own version of socialism in the guise of former presidential advisor Mr. Bannon’s pet project“economic nationalism.” Many conservatives seem to be struggling to recognize this agenda for what it is.  So let’s just set the record straight.

The non-socialist traditional conservative elitist response to white working class Americans losing their jobs is a big shrug of the shoulders.  So what?  What happens to you or your family is none of our concern.  We’re not your nannies.  If you lose out in the modern competitive economy that’s your problem not ours.  If insufficient jobs are available on the free market then it’s right and fitting you not have a job.  You should just go someplace and die.  Did an immigrant take your job?  So what?  You competed and the immigrant was either willing to work for less or had some other advantage.  Did some sort of minority take your job?  So what?  No one is entitled to a job.  The non-socialist approach is open borders, free movement of labor, free markets both domestically and internationally, and whatever happens happens.

What one may call the traditional liberal or at least neoliberal brand of “socialism” is to have the same sort of free market for labor and goods and services traditional conservatives embrace but to acknowledge and attempt to address the rather obvious distributional issues associated with that approach by coming up with programs to help people who may be losing out or temporarily struggling.  We’re talking about help for people having trouble finding a job.  Help with education.  Help with housing or food if necessary.  The most drastic option is probably spending tax dollars to generate jobs that would otherwise not be forthcoming on the market.  As many people have pointed out these fixes aren’t the same as dumping money down a hole in the ground as many traditional conservatives might suggest.  When we find a way to get money to struggling people they spend it, consumer demand increases, and the economy inevitably grows.  People are a lot happier as well and that has to count for something.

The new / old “economic nationalism” implicitly acknowledges the drawbacks of the free market but instead of allowing it to function and trying to fix problems after they appear it attempts to manipulate the conditions surrounding the market to head off potential problems.  Examples of this approach would be laws to buy only products made in America (regardless of whether those products are the best or the cheapest) or to prevent companies relocating to other countries (despite the potential competitive advantages of doing so) or to prevent companies from automating or using labor saving technology (despite the potential cost savings).  Depending on the “society” this form of socialism is meant to address it might involve preventing people immigrating or I suppose even ensuring that members of some ethnic or racial groups get certain jobs, etc.  As any traditional conservative or neoliberal will tell you these types of market restrictions and manipulations come at a cost.  One may be unable to get the cheapest or most qualified worker.  One may lose out relative to foreign competitors.  The problems are in the same category as those associated with other more common market manipulations like minimum wage laws and union contracts.  However, this rigging of the market approach is one way to keep everyone or at least some people in the game.  Nothing is free in this world including trying to help struggling people.  And to the extent we’re getting money to struggling people we may at least still get the consumer demand effect.  My point in this post is not to adjudicate which type of socialism works best or makes the most sense.  It’s simply to point out they’re both forms of what is essentially socialism.  They’re both predicated on the proposition we should care what happens to other people in our “society” however we choose to define it.  We should care if our neighbor has a job.  We should care if people can afford housing.  Other people matter.

Now if one is truly opposed to socialism that’s fine with me.   Everyone is free to hold his or her own opinion on the matter.  I tend to think what happens to other people in our society is important.  Other people should have jobs and a way to make a living.  We need to keep thinking and working until we have a system that does that.  But that’s just me.  If one supports one type of socialism over another that’s also fine with me.  As I just explained I’m not entirely sure what would work best myself.  But you know what I really can’t abide?  Someone who rants on and on about the evils of socialism from one side of his or her mouth all the while promoting a form of socialism out the other side.  We’re not going to get anywhere at that rate.  Can we at least agree to try to talk sensibly about these issues?

Dishonest Don and the Moral and Intellectual Rot of Modern Conservatism

Welcome friends!  

I was just sitting around contemplating the rather remarkable level of dishonesty issuing forth from the White House on a daily basis as well as the complete absence of concern let alone outrage on the part of our current president’s conservative base and it occurred to me that beyond merely damaging the USA in the more obvious ways, economically, militarily, politically, socially, legally, diplomatically and so on contemporary American conservatism seems intent on destroying the very soul of the USA: our moral integrity and respect for the truth.

What got me started thinking about this issue this week in particular was an article I read about our president apparently making up a story relating to a recent speech he gave at the National Scout Jamboree, the annual meeting of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), in which he rather predictably annoyed quite a few people by telling the boys Washington DC is a “sewer,” attacking Hilary Clinton, attacking the media, and basically engaging in the usual sort of lowbrow rabble rousing he has used to such great effect when speaking to his adoring army of angry redneck supporters.  The story he apparently made up about the event for the benefit of the tarted up conservative rag Wall Street Journal was that he had received a call from the “head of the Boy Scouts” who told him “it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them.”  ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Inequality, Fairness, and Poverty

Welcome friends!

Did you ever have one of those depressing moments when you realize a problem you noticed and delved into many years ago still exists in nearly identical form and no progress of any sort appears to have taken place in the intervening decades?  I had that sensation the other day while reading an article on economic inequality.  Apparently some researchers who study people’s attitude to wealth disparity discovered ideas of fairness or what we used to social justice can play a role.  To quote a younger and slightly more uncouth version of myself, “No shit Sherlock!”  Sorry to get all juvenile and sarcastic but is this really as far as we’ve advanced in terms of the social discussion of distributional issues?  One’s ideas about fairness may play a role?  Someone had to write it up in a newspaper article?  It’s especially disheartening to me because as I’ve probably mentioned before I feel distributional issues are behind a good deal of what’s wrong with human societies today.  I don’t mean just in terms of the ethical issues and costs associated with inappropriate distributions but also in terms of the social conflict and instability our inability to come to grips with distributional issues generate.  How to explain the feeling I was having?  To put the phenomenon in a different context let’s imagine one was concerned with some basic health issue, let’s say long term behaviors that reduce the risk of heart attack, and one noticed an article in a newspaper that looked potentially relevant only to find on closer examination the article revealed merely that some doctors suspect having a beating heart might be important for one’s health.  Just give me a moment to calm down again.  Perhaps I’m being unreasonable.  Given our collective aversion to any serious discussion of distributional issues most likely because the haves of the world don’t really like the have nots of the world talking or thinking about such matters perhaps it’s not really all that remarkable each generation has to discover rudimentary features of the issue and write newspaper articles informing one another of their insights.  But I can play that game too.  In the grand tradition of reinventing the wheel let me take a few moments this week to say a few words about distributional issues, again, and how ideas about fairness may play a role, again.  Hey, anything worth saying once is worth saying a million times, right?

Let me first just quickly summarize the article so we all know what we’re talking about.  By way of introduction the authors mention what most literate people must surely already know: the resources of the world are currently distributed very unequally and more so every day.  Indeed, the top one percent of the world’s economic elite apparently now controls about fifty percent of the world’s wealth.  However, they note some researchers have recently suggested income (and I suspect they also meant wealth) disparity itself may not be the “main problem.”  No, the researchers in question apparently feel the “main problem” may be unfairness and in particular how unfairness relates to poverty.  Yes, it seems a team of researchers from Yale University recently published a journal article establishing that people tend to prefer unequal societies because they find legitimate reasons for some degree of inequality and they feel having everyone attain exactly the same outcome would not be entirely fair.  These researchers noted that in the present day USA as well as much of the rest of the world there is so much inequality some people just assume it must be unfair and have started talking about inequality in the abstract rather than sticking with the more central issue of fairness.  They argue this complicates the situation and note there are three separate but related ideas that typically feature in discussions of inequality: 1) equal opportunity, 2) fair distribution, and 3) equality of outcome.  To make any progress addressing “inequality” they argue we should first reach some agreement on what aspect of inequality we have in mind.  They go on to suggest people pay too much attention to the relative standing of the one percent and so on and suggest we instead focus on helping people who are unable to improve their situation because of a lack of fairness.  The article cites Harry Frankfurt, professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, who argues in his book On Inequality that the moral obligation in question should involve eliminating “poverty” and striving to make sure everyone has “the means to live a good life” rather than achieving “equality.”

Got the picture?  Then let’s dive right in shall we?  The first point I would make is it seems eminently plausible to me many people think fairness is relevant to distributional issues.  This makes it all the more remarkable the textbook defense of the distributional system associated with the generally market based system by which we conduct our affairs in this country and many others doesn’t really mention fairness at all but instead involves the competing philosophical framework of utilitarianism.  According to utilitarianism something that generates greater utility is preferable to something that generates less utility, which in practice and under the conventional philosophical versions of utilitarianism amounts to the notion it’s nice when people are happy.  (I suppose using the idiosyncratic and just plain peculiar version of utility that appears in neoclassical economic theory one might say when some person is happy since we might be talking about one of those superconductors of utility allowed for in that system.  If you’re not getting what I’m driving at here you should take a glance at any of my previous posts on this topic filed most likely under utility or economic theory or something of that nature.  I’d go over it again here but I’m afraid this post is already destined to be overly long).  In the utilitarian framework there isn’t really any discussion of whether the people (or possibly the person in the case of economic theory) in question ought to be happy or deserve (or deserves in the one person case) to be happy or even why we should be concerned with people being happy.

So how does one square the fact that although most people think fairness is relevant to distributional issue the main theoretical context in which we tend to talk about distributional issues, the neoclassical demonstration of the ostensibly desirable outcomes associated with a free market, says nothing at all about it?  Well, that gets to something I’ve discussed before many times and that I’ve long associated with conservative rhetoric and ideology in general.  Basically my perception is many conservatives don’t discuss issues in what one might call a real or genuine way.  They use words and arguments and theories strategically or rhetorically.  If it gets them where they want to go they don’t worry too much about the actual meaning.  They spout off about economic theory and what it says about markets not because they necessarily agree with the philosophical framework used in economic theory to talk about markets but because it happens willy nilly to support what they support on some entirely different basis they are unable or unwilling to discuss.  I suspect that must be the main reason they continue to use the flawed and implausible version of utilitarianism in economic theory no matter how many times I or anyone else may demonstrate its rather obvious shortcomings.  It just doesn’t really matter to them.  They don’t take it that seriously or to put in the context of the discussion of how arch conservative President Trump’s supporters view their champion, they may take it seriously but not literally.  It’s more in the nature of useful rhetoric than a serious intellectual endeavor.

Along the same general lines I can’t help but detect a certain straw man element in the focus of “inequality” in some abstract and absolute sense rather than in terms of acceptable levels of inequality.  I doubt very much if anyone expressing concerns about inequality has ever argued a need for absolute equality.  I strongly suspect most people who talk about such matters are more concerned with the level of inequality and in particular the level of inequality justified by concerns relating to fairness.  It’s hard to avoid the implication that like those who talk about the glories of the free market in terms of economic theory without really buying into the moral philosophizing that informs that theory the authors in this case are setting up some sort of irrelevant dichotomy between absolute equality and fairness as a way to basically encourage people to stop talking about inequality and to think about fairness in some implausible way that doesn’t involve inequality in the sense of relative outcomes.

I’m picking up a bit of the same feeling from the passage in which the researchers note the three separate but related ideas that typically feature in discussions of inequality: 1) equal opportunity, 2) fair distribution, and 3) equality of outcome.  These issues seem to me entirely complementary and compatible.  One may feel one prerequisite for a fair distribution is equal opportunity.  Similarly one’s feeling about acceptable levels of inequality may hinge on one’s notion of fairness.  I don’t really see any reason we can’t take up these interrelated issues as a unit or anyway simultaneously.  Again, it’s almost as though the authors are trying to separate out issues of equality and get people talking and thinking about opportunity and fairness divorced from inequality but I’m just not sure I can take that objective very seriously.  If we have a very unequal sort of society where some kids have all the advantages wouldn’t that affect one’s feelings relating to equal opportunity?  If we’re discussing what we think is a fair distribution based on some consideration X wouldn’t we want to know something about the relative standing of those possessing or expressing X relative to those who do not?  If it’s fair such a person has let’s say twice the economic power of the other person does it necessarily follow it must be fair that person has one million times the market power of the other?  Again it’s hard to avoid the feeling the authors are trying to build a sort of wall around inequality or offer up a sort of indirect defense of inequality rather than sincerely trying to improve our understanding of the subject.

I might also mention I’ve never been a huge fan of discussions relating to distributional issues that focus on “poverty” and things like “the means to live a good life” as opposed to relative economic power.  I get relative economic power but “poverty” seems so subjective and arbitrary and anyway is just as relative as just looking directly at inequality in general.  Most likely we’re all doing pretty well relative to let’s say some Stone Age tribe eking out a subsistence living in a jungle somewhere.  Does that mean all distributional issues have been resolved?  Not to my mind.  And what is a good life anyway?  Sitting in a lawn chair with a glass of wine and a nice book?  Actually that does sound pretty good to me but I wonder what other people have in mind.  A big TV?  A computer?  A vacation?  A nice car?  Superior health care?  No I think we’re going down the wrong path when we stop thinking about inequality in relative terms and start thinking about “poverty” and “the means to a good life.”

Let me just end with some random thoughts of my own on the topic of inequality and fairness.  I’ve probably mentioned most of these before but what the heck.  First of all, I don’t see any reason one can’t combine the utilitarian insight it’s nice when people are happy with the insight people like fairness as well.  Setting aside the peculiar super conductor conceptualization of utility used in economic theory I don’t see much wrong with the notion it’s nice when as many people have as much utility as possible relative to their own maximum utility.  If one also accepts the notion of diminishing marginal utility and the notion one tends to address one’s most basic and important needs and wants first I believe that does generate a certain tendency toward egalitarianism and spreading the wealth around.  But I also don’t see much wrong with supposing we’re also willing to give up some of that social utility to address fairness.  I suppose if one wanted to get all philosophical about it one could relate one’s feelings about a system expressing fairness to one’s utility from living in such a system and try to work it all out in that way but that sounds a bit of a parlor game to me.  I don’t have any particular problem mixing philosophical systems.  For example, even with respect to neoclassical economic theory I think it’s fine as far as it goes but as I’ve explained before it just doesn’t really go very far and certainly not as far as many people would like to present it as going.  I don’t see anything wrong with supposing maximizing utility is good as far as it goes with the proviso fairness is also important.   (Incidentally aside from utility and fairness the other big philosophical approach to thinking about distributions one tends to hear a lot about involves various conceptions of rights so if one wishes one can just imagine we’re including that line of thinking as well.  I’m not doing that literally here because we’re talking about inequality and fairness but if one wants to bump it up in one’s mind so to speak and think about distributions in general I think some of these same points probably apply there as well.)

So what are the issues that might justify at least some level of inequality on the basis of fairness?  As a general point I would say given my individualistic outlook on such matters the relevant consideration for the issue of fairness is whether an individual is doing something that suggests he or she deserves higher compensation than someone doing something else.  Let’s look at some specific instances of this general idea.

I think right at the top of the heap must be a willingness to accept the market incentive structure.  One might like writing poetry on a breezy hill top but if no one really wants to pay one to do that but is willing to pay one to do something else he or she finds more personally useful like let’s say digging in the old salt mine I guess it makes sense the person who agrees to work in the old salt mine should make more than the person who insists on the breezy hill top.  Trying to get along with other people and so on should probably count for something.  The nicest way to get money from other people is to do something they’re willing to pay one to do.  Of course other values may be involved as well and in this context I think one is in real danger of putting one’s ethical cart before the horse.  Depending on the distribution of economic power the most highly paid activity on the market might be something like, I don’t know, installing golden toilets in the palaces of the hereditarily wealthy.  I mean, if they have all the money and that’s what they value then that will be what the market recommends one spends one’s time doing.  Indeed under the right conditions that be the only activity called forth on the market.  However, taking a somewhat broader view I suppose one could make an argument a nice bit of poetry or something else like let’s say providing housing or health services or what have you for the poor or something like that might be more valuable to humanity in some ultimate way.  Of course, it’s quite possible the only way to pay someone to do things like that in a market system geared to gold toilet installation might be to tax those with money and subsidize the people doing those other things, which I suppose depending on one’s ethical frame of mind might seem a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  I suppose one could also directly alter the market incentive structure by changing the pattern of economic power if one could find some generally acceptable basis on which to do that.  In our example if a few poetry lovers and poor people had a bit of money that would also solve the ostensible problem.

It may be worthwhile to note this is where the perspectives of liberals and conservatives relating to the merits of democracies and market systems really begin to diverge.  To me as a liberal democracy must take precedence.  There is no legitimate distributional system until we set one up via democratic government and what makes it legitimate is we agree to support it.  If enough of us decide something isn’t working quite right it seems eminently reasonable to me we should be able to step in and redistribute resources in some way that makes a little more sense.  Tax a bit here.  Subsidize a bit there.  This sort of thing of course drives conservatives bonkers.  They see redistribution even resulting from democratic government as a great crime against the individual.  They believe once one sets up a distributional system it becomes sacrosanct and takes on a life of its own and the only legitimate political objective from that point on is to prevent democracy from altering it in any way.  Not surprisingly this view seems most attractive to those prospering under the current system and wanting to keep it that way but sometimes they manage to pull in people who feel they should be prospering under the current system but suspect other people have been interfering with it in some way that has prevented them from getting their due.  I personally think a more middle of the road approach is more attractive.  That is to say, I suppose it’s perfectly fine to say people who go along with what those with economic power want them to do should end up better off than those who do not but I wouldn’t want to go all crazy in that respect.

How much better would avoid the implication we’ve gone crazy in that respect?  Ah, well, that’s the tricky part isn’t it?  I wouldn’t expect someone trying to do something that isn’t called forth by the economic power expressed in the market to be justified in wanting to live like royalty.  I suppose a middling amount that leads to a more or less reasonable style of life?  Or I suppose rather less since they have the breezy hilltops.  Just throwing out ideas. It’s all relative. Some percentage of the average?  In a sense it depends on the other side of the coin.  How much better off should someone be who pays greater attention to market incentives?  Well, I don’t know.  I guess part of it might be what level of relative income can reasonably be expected to change what people decide to do.  Writing poetry on breezy hill sides sounds a lot more enticing to me than working at the old salt mine at least if one has some modicum of interest and ability with respect to poetry so I suppose without adequate relative compensation we might very well end up with an awful lot of questionable poetry and no one working at the old salt mine.  Doesn’t seem very reasonable.  We may arguably need a bit of poetry but we probably also need some salt.  So I don’t know.  Maybe some people don’t even like writing poetry on hill tops.  Double?  Triple?  Something like that?  Perhaps see what happens?  I would think the issues must be related in some way because of course if one expects the entire incentive system to crash if one alters relative compensation at all then one would might need to be very careful indeed with redistribution at least if one places some significance on the current distribution of economic power and hence the incentive patterns flowing from that distribution but on the other hand if one sees quite of a lot of flab in relative compensation in the sense everyone would end up doing pretty much the same things anyway then maybe it becomes more of an open question even if one were trying to maintain the significance of the current distribution.

I suppose another generally acceptable basis for at least some level of inequality must be one’s level of effort or let’s say willingness to work hard.  Now certainly in our system if two people have identical jobs and let’s say they do work of roughly comparable quality and one person is willing to put in more hours than another person it makes sense the person working more hours should end up better off.  I suppose relative effort while on the job holding hours equal follows a similar path as long as one is holding everything else equal but of course the problem there is in practice everything else is typically not equal, which raises the question of whether one thinks fairness in terms of effort has to do with effort relative to a person’s maximum effort or some sort of standard criterion like output.  For example, let’s say we’re looking at some sort of physical labor like I don’t know picking fruit.  If the aspiring Olympic athlete desultorily picks more fruit than frail and asthmatic grandma is it fair he is compensated more on the basis of effort?  Or would that involve some other consideration having to do with rightful compensation based on one’s contribution to the system?  I don’t know.  My general point is figuring out how hard work relates to inequality in realistic contexts gets pretty complicated pretty quickly because of differences in talents, abilities, and situations.  Some of the hardest working people I know work at some of the lowest paying jobs while some of the most casual workers I know work at some of the most high paying jobs.  Indeed some fat cats have sufficient money to invest they make quite a nice living expending no effort at all beyond the effort involved in hauling their fat behinds to the local wine bar every afternoon.  So yes I suppose I think differences in effort justify some level of inequality when it can be identified and the general level of inequality justified might be commensurate with the relative amount of effort in that case.  If someone works twice as long I suppose they should earn twice as much.  Do I suspect there are people out there putting in let’s say a million times more effort than other people?  No, not really.

I’m trying to think of some other things that would justify inequality on the grounds of fairness but I find I’m already starting to hit a bit of a wall here.  A good part of the reason is many of the things I suspect account for a good deal of the inequality we see in our system aren’t really based on any sort of commendable activity on the part of the people involved but are more along the lines of things that just happen to people.  Let’s go over a few of these.

A big one for me is inborn talents and abilities.  Let’s take intelligence as a prime example.  I hate to be the one to point it out but some people are just not very smart.  Unfortunately lots of fields require a bit of brains.  I think this has been changing over time.  At one point probably there may have been quite a lot of demand for relatively mindless labor.  However, now that many things are automated the emphasis is more on brain work.  So is it fair someone who was born a bit of a dummy be poor or suffer materially because of it?  What if he or she is a very hard worker and is willing to go along with market incentives or otherwise do what people want them to do to the extent of their abilities?  Again, I just don’t know.  Doesn’t seem particularly fair to me although I suppose if one switches to some other line of justification like output or contributions to the system then maybe it makes more sense.

How about environment and support provided by one’s birth family?  It’s no secret if one has the good sense to be born to wealthy and well connected parents one will end up with a much cushier life than otherwise.  Not only can they provide a nice environment to study and pay for the best education and keep one healthy and happy and so on but one would not feel compelled to make decisions based on helping them out or be in any particular rush to get a paycheck and one could probably afford to try some things with the expectation one should be able to recover from any missteps and one might reasonably expect some useful connections and introductions to be forthcoming that might smooth one’s way and indeed one might reasonably expect to be installed directly into a nice job at the family firm.  But of course one doesn’t really have any say with respect to one’s birth family.  One just pops out into the world one day and looks around and is either pleasantly surprised or a bit miffed.  Not sure I can see much inequality based on this consideration justified on the basis of fairness.

How about luck?  I think a big component of the inequality we really see in the world today is little more than being in the right place at the right time.  Honestly, many years ago when I actively studied such matters I found it rather interesting that even though the economic models meant to predict wages might include everything one might reasonably expect to be involved including the proverbial kitchen sink they could in fact only explain in a statistical sense a small portion of the observed differences in wages.  I always assumed that unexplained bit must just involve old fashioned luck.  Hard to think of what else it might be.  I’m not suggesting we banish luck but again I’m not sure I’d consider sufficiently related to fairness to justify much inequality on that account.

Maybe that’s enough talk for now.  To sum up I would suggest that as far as I can tell our current system has a good deal of both inequality and unfairness.  Not the worst system in the world of course.  I’m sure there are plenty of even more unequal and unfair systems out there.  But on the other hand I’m not ready to suggest we’ve hit the jackpot and have no room for further improvement just yet.  Even granting some level of inequality is justified due to considerations relating to fairness I don’t see the extreme levels of inequality we see here in the USA to be anywhere near the levels I would find likely to be justified by those considerations and indeed I see extreme inequality as presenting a significant and ever increasing impediment to fairness.  As such I don’t think we really need to get bogged down on parlor games involving what we really mean by inequality and so on.  We should probably just get to work.  Our system is out of kilter in the sense some people lay claim to more resources than can reasonably be justified on any ethical basis be it utilitarian or social justice.  Some undeserving people hoard billions of dollars.  Some deserving people suffer material want.  We could adjust the system to make it fairer and at the same time end up with a great many more happy people than we have now.  But do to do that we have to fight conservatives hell bent on defending the status quo levels of inequality both through fanciful anti-democratic rights based arguments of the sort that no matter how bad things get we have no ethical rationale or justification for changing anything because it’s all a matter of unchanging rights and also through purposeful attempts to obscure the issue and shut down the conversation including bogus appeals to the incomplete and let’s just say sham utilitarianism presented in economic theory and unnecessarily convoluted and unhelpful suggestions to first reach agreement on interrelated and complicated philosophical issues of questionable practical significance such as what one definition or aspect of inequality is most important.  Let’s try to keep it simple shall we? Fight conservatism.  Make the world a better place.

References

There’s a problem with the way we define equality.  Bryan Lufkin.  July 7, 2017.  BBC.  http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170706-theres-a-problem-with-the-way-we-define-inequality

The Wisdom of Age: Cher v Trump

Welcome friends!

I was watching a music award show on the TV the other night and was pleasantly surprised to see a tribute to the singer Cher who came out and did a few numbers.  Maybe her voice was a bit stronger when she was younger, it would be rather strange if that were not the case, but she sounded fine.  And the lady certainly knows her way around a stage.  Never one to be coy she mentioned during her short and gracious acceptance speech she had recently turned seventy-one and had been in the music business more than fifty years.  I find that sort of thing quite impressive.  How many flash in the pan musical acts have come and gone over the years?  But that wasn’t the most impressive thing to me.  No, the most impressive thing to me was that rather than tooting her own horn as one might expect any successful American to do she instead attributed her success mostly to a combination of luck and working with good people.  Such humility and I think honesty.  It made me reflect on the traditional association of age and wisdom one finds in many cultures.  Don’t get me wrong.  I certainly don’t think we’re all destined to become wise with age.  I doubt anyone has ever thought that in the history of the world.  A lot of older people become downright insufferable.  But sometimes one meets old timers who have lost interest in playing the game and puffing themselves up and so on and just want to let you know something they’ve found to be true during their lifetimes.  So valuable when one meets someone like that.  But then for some reason my thoughts wandered to that dishonest, greedy, grasping, boastful, old man American conservatives recently installed in the White House.   Must be about the same age right?  But gosh what a contrast.  Can one imagine Mr. Trump claiming that his vast fortune was due to anything other than his own perspicacity and hard work?  It occurred to me the difference wasn’t in the nature of a random interpersonal variation in temperament and personality.  President Trump talks and acts pretty much the way I would expect an enormously wealthy conservative old man to talk and act.  Cher talks and acts the way I would expect a female liberal of a certain age to talk and act.  So do one’s beliefs shape one’s character or is one drawn to certain beliefs because of one’s character?  I don’t know but I thought today I’d speculate a bit about the first possibility.

Let me first get pesky reality out of the way and just say that of course I believe what happens to one during one’s lifetime is due to all three factors I just mentioned: personal effort, luck, and outside forces... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Economic Inequality And The End Of The World As We Know It

Welcome friends!

I probably mentioned the two reasons I often talk about distributional issues such as economic inequality, poverty, unemployment, etc.  One has to do with social ethics: equity, fairness, and so on.  The other has to do with social stability and sustainability.  I’ve talked often enough about the social ethics part.  Conservatives tend to buy into the idea that whatever happens on “the market” is above ethical reproach because of how the system is set up and therefore if some people are unemployed or poor or homeless or starving or sick and uninsured or what have you there’s really no problem with that and it’s exactly what we ought to see in an ethical society.  I along with most other liberals I presume most heartily disagree.  I suppose in some cases this rather notable difference of opinion could be from real differences in our underlying moral senses.  However, I can’t help but wonder if a big part of conservative thinking on the subject comes mostly from a lack of awareness of how real world markets actually operate (an issue that could equally well be expressed as a lack of awareness of the limitations of neoclassical economic theory) and perhaps more practically a deficiency in the variety of one’s life experiences or powers of imagination.  Listening to conservatives talk about social justice brings to mind little darlings emerging from gated cocoons and trying to explain why it’s natural and acceptable to find a dead hobo lying in the street.  Always a bit too quick to think they have an answer and always a bit too outraged when someone points out it doesn’t really make sense.  Of course, sometimes people just put self interest first and let their philosophy follow.  It’s called greed.  Lots of it about.  And you know for conservatives greed is good.  So that’s certainly another possibility.  Anyway, what I wanted to discuss today is not social ethics but the other half of the issue: the relationship between economic inequality and social stability.  Usually I just sort of state this as something that should be pretty obvious to everyone based on common sense and the most casual historical research.  However, this week I read about an article published a few years ago in which some social scientists developed a computer model for investigating social collapse.  They found the two engines of collapse are environmental breakdown and … drum roll please … economic inequality.  So there you go.  I’ve got at least one computer modeling geek on my side!  Regardless of one’s views on the ethics of the matter I would think even the most smugly self-adoring rich conservative might be a little concerned about social collapse.  So let’s talk a little bit about that this week shall we? 

Yes, it seems a systems scientist named Safa Motesharrei along with some colleagues published an article in 2014 that used computer models to delve into the causes of social collapse... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Size Matters for Conservative Proto-Fascists

Welcome friends!

Do you ever have the annoying feeling of not being entirely sure you’ve said something you meant to say and indeed thought you probably said?  I’ve been having that feeling recently.  Certain things set me off and I’m thinking no need to bring it up again because I’ve discussed it all before but then I hesitate.  I hope I didn’t accidentally write it the wrong way around or bury it in the middle of some long winded digression or whatever.  I could look it up but I suppose there’s no great harm repeating myself.  With that thought in mind let me just banish one of these demons right now.  It involves one aspect of the multifaceted relationship between contemporary American conservatism and fascism: the tendency of American conservatives to equate what they characterize as big government with fascism.  Just grates on my ears on so many levels.

First of all I find something a little weird about this whole notion of big versus small government.  What are we talking about anyway?  The number of government employees?  The number of laws and regulations?  The complexity of the laws and regulations?  The areas of life affected?  The significance of the effects?  Because different definitions may imply different things... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

The American Dream

Welcome friends!

I have to say one good thing about having a conservative like Donald Trump in the White House is that some of us are hearing a lot more from the conservative man and woman in the street now than previously.  I think in the recent past they must have been hanging out mostly in their own alternative fact universe of wacky radio shows, tacky and casual with the truth supermarket tabloids, and insane conspiracy theory websites.  I remember they were responsible for a great deal of ugliness, hatred, turmoil, and violence in my youth but recently not so much.  I thought maybe they had fallen into a great hole in the ground or gone somewhere. Kind of hard to engage with people when one can’t find them or anyway is unwilling to go where they reside.  I’ve always heard plenty from professional conservative pundits and spokespeople and so on but as I’ve explained many times in this blog those people talk such transparent rot one never knows what they really think about anything.  I always sort of wished I knew what the people who listen to such people thought they were hearing but honestly I just don’t know too many conservatives.  But they’re all coming out of the woodwork now aren’t they?  Ever time I glance at an online news comment stream there they are trying their best to explain their warped, incoherent, contradictory, horrifying worldview to the rest of us.  Fired up I suppose by having gotten their man in the White House and having taken control of both houses of Congress as well as the Supreme Court.  I suppose it is a bit disgusting in many ways but from a purely intellectual standpoint there are some interesting bits.  One interesting bit for me is that the recent debate on national health care policy has reminded me we have some pretty fundamental disagreements about what American is or should be all about. Let’s take a moment to consider the issue.

The American Dream.  We all hear about it from time to time.  But what the heck is it?  Well, I don’t know.  I think it’s different things to different people.  I’ve gradually come to understand that for many if not most conservatives it’s basically the dream of getting very rich... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Distribution and Redistribution

Welcome friends!

I was taking a few moments the other day to register an opinion on a news website comment page and I ventured to mention what I consider an interesting distributional issue raised by recent technological developments including e-commerce and automation.  (Yes, I sometimes enjoy mixing it up a bit with the conservative trolls and comment botskies.  Hey, everyone needs a good laugh now and then.)  My general point was productive technology in the past may have generated a demand for a relatively large number of workers, which was great because a large number of workers with disposable cash means robust demand and hence economic growth.  In contrast, recent technological change has tended to concentrate wealth in particular sectors, such as IT and technology more generally, and more than that to specific people, the owners and CEOs of certain dominant companies in those sectors.  Basically technological development seems to be helping us devolve into a nation split between a rather small number of zillionaires and a very great number of impoverished fry cooks.  (The ever increasing domination of our political process by the wealthy elite probably plays a role as well but I’m determined to not discuss Mr. Trump this week in honor of his impending inauguration.)  So is that just fine because fate in the form of the almighty marketplace has ordained it?  Or should we do something to mix it up?  Should we think of some way to spread the output of our productive machine around a bit?  Make work for some people?  Pay some people more than a market wage?  Don’t get all angry now.  I never said I have the answers.  Just thinking out loud.  Anyway, as one might expect if one has ever ventured into such places I was immediately set upon by an army of conservative trolls incensed at my use of the word “distribution,” which I suspect they translated in their minds to the version more familiar to conservative ears “re-distribution,” which like “socialism” is something they’ve been trained since childhood to rage against.  One of the specific charges lobbed in my direction was that I apparently supported picking the pockets of hard-working billionaires to facilitate poor wastrels sitting on their assess doing nothing all day.  Another was that I had a nerve talking about other people’s money as though I had anything to do with it.  Being familiar with the dispassionate discussion of distributional and other economic issues from my days at the academy I was rather taken aback.  I’ve said for a long time on this blog I think one of our great weaknesses as a society is our inability to calmly and rationally discuss distributional issues and here was that exact problem not only rearing its ugly head but trying to take a big bite out of my backside.  So this time I thought I’d backtrack a bit and just go over some basics about distributional issues broadly conceived.

All economic systems function in part as distributional systems.  That is to say, they not only bring people together to co-operate on making things but they provide some mechanism by which those things are then distributed to people to use.  Even if we determined to not make a distributional system we’d still have one.  It’s called the guy with the gun economic system.  I think many places around the world actually use that system.  Fortunately given today’s political and economic rhetoric we don’t really have to decide whether to make one or not.  We’ve got one.  And it didn’t fall from the sky one day or rise up from the center of the earth.  We made it the old fashioned way through the crafting and enforcing of laws.  Remember Adam Smith and that lot?  They were writing the way they did because at that time they still had to convince some other people of the value of certain types of market arrangements.  The rudimentary market systems of Mr. Smith’s day were supplemented and hedged about by remnants of the old feudal system, which basically involved the king and other nobles and I suppose the church as well appropriating things at sword point more or less and then assigning it to their minions this way or that.  Some people liked it that way.  Not everyone was on board with the sort of market institutions we have today.  Someone had to make the case.  Anyway, it seems many people must have eventually found the case persuasive because market systems obviously became more and more dominant.  Of course, we subsequently learned market systems work best when regulated and supplemented in various ways by purposeful interventions of democratic government leading to the mixed system one finds in most places today but that’s neither here nor there for this post.  And yes guys with guns enforce our system but at least it’s something we’ve agreed upon the democratic way.

I’m pointing this out right now because I think many conservatives are prone to a certain distortion of perception in which supporting the status quo distributional system is thought to raise a fundamentally different set of issues from arguing for changes in the status quo distributional system even though the two sets of issues are entirely the same.  In other words, the conservatives incensed I would presume to pronounce upon distributional issues apparently did not recognize that they themselves are implicitly doing exactly the same thing, the only difference being I implied the possibility of supporting a distributional system other than the one we have now while they support the current one.  I suspect this is related to a common misperception of the conclusions of neoclassical economic theory I’ve alluded to a number of times over the years: the peculiar notion one is being neutral between two Pareto optimal market results if one uses their supposed equivalence to argue in effect one should stay at one or the other.  The true implication of an inability to compare such outcomes would of course be agnosticism with respect to staying at one or moving to the other.  Pretending it implies staying at one because one has no reason to move to the other seems quite similar to me to the notion we can avoid the issues associated with distributional systems by just sticking with the one we have and not discussing changing it.  In the language I’ve used in many other posts: resolving interpersonal conflicts of desires is going to happen one way or the other as long as humans live together in a society.  It doesn’t disappear if no one talks about it.

For conservatives who recognize we’ve already created a distributional system and the same general sort of issues are raised by retaining it or changing it the next level of concern is the potential ethical issues associated with changing it and in particular how unfair it would be to change the rules in the middle of the game so to speak.  I certainly get that argument.  Imagine one based one’s life on the desire to become phenomenally rich and possibly made some awkward decisions and difficult tradeoffs along the way only to find later in life someone decided the distributional system was a little out of whack and slapped a great whopping tax on you at least ostensibly to spread things around a bit?  I imagine you’d be rather annoyed.  Seems like something we’d all like to avoid.  But the problem is we’re always in the middle of the game for someone.  And I really doubt the wisdom of painting ourselves into a corner by saying the inevitable implication is we can never revisit the issue again.  When we developed our current system we changed the rules in the middle of the game for the old nobility or someone anyway.  And I mean let’s face it, we change laws all the time.  Some or perhaps many of those changes have financial consequences for at least some people.  The only thing different about the scenario I just mentioned is maybe it has a relatively larger effect on one’s finances than some other changes.  It’s not really a difference in kind.  But I do think if ever we agreed upon any such changes we could try to find some way to do whatever it was gradually and with the least amount of sudden economic dislocation and ill will as possible.  Anyway, we’re nowhere near that point now so I suppose little reason to get into the detail of how one would actually ameliorate the shock of adjusting a distributional system.

Having set that aside let me just say a few words about this notion that changing the distributional system in some way, the dreaded (by conservatives) re-distribution, means taking money from hard working productive people and giving it to people who prefer to sit on their asses all day long doing nothing.  This I think sums up pretty well a common conservative take on why anyone would discuss these issues but it is all a bit of a straw man isn’t it?  Our current system is already set up to allow rich people to sit on their asses all day doing nothing and yet earn a heck of a lot more money than many hard working productive people.  Yes, I hate to get all awkward about it but once one gets a certain amount of money one can invest it, have the earnings taxed at a much lower rate than an equivalent amount of earnings generated the old fashioned way, and do quite well for oneself.  In some cases getting the money in the first case may involve some respectable level of effort but honestly I don’t know if it really adds up to the lifetime of work some less financially fortunate people put in.  I’m not arguing it’s illegitimate.  Not in this post anyway.  I’m just saying I think it’s pretty clear our current system is rewarding some things beyond “hard work” and “not sitting on one’s ass.”  Let’s have an example.  Say I write a successful blog and make a few million dollars.  (I’m partial to counterfactual thought exercises.  If you’re a realist and just can’t think that way just say I write a bit of code or whatever.)  I then proceed to sit on my ass doing nothing the rest of my life and live quite nicely on the returns from my investments.  As I just suggested I’m perfectly fine if you have an argument of why that makes sense but if it involves the notion that overall I worked harder than let’s say my elderly neighbor who’s been getting up at six in the morning the past fifty years to work in the old salt mines I’m bound to say I’m not sure you’re speaking in earnest.  And in my example at least I did something myself at some point in my life.  Conservatives in the US have long desired and are now in a position to do away with the estate tax (that would be the death tax in their own parlance) so increasingly the rich person sitting on his or her ass making more money by doing nothing than working people will be in that position because he or she had the good sense to be born to wealthy parents rather than anything he or she may have once added to the world.

What’s my point?  Pretty much the same as always I suppose.  I think we should be able to talk about distributional issues objectively and dispassionately and get past the knee jerk keep your hands off my stack Jack conservative mentality.  We’re going to be in for a bumpy ride if we can’t even manage that.  I’ve discussed how I feel about our current distributional system in the past and I’m not sure there’s much point of going over it again just now but the short version is I don’t think it’s all it’s sometimes cracked up to be.  Here are a few random thoughts on the subject.  There’s no mechanism in a market system to automatically ensure sufficient jobs let alone good jobs for the available population of prospective workers.  The distribution system I’d like to see would provide people willing and able to work and contribute to do well enough.  Yes, we need incentives to encourage people to go the extra mile or get into things they would otherwise not be inclined to get into but we probably don’t need to go overboard in that area.  Not sure we need to reward people being born to wealthy parents.  We should find a way to ensure the development of labor saving technology improves everyone’s lives and if that technology means some people lose their jobs we should do something about it and help them out in some way.  If we find our population is suddenly out of whack with the demand for labor we should do something until we get back to some sensible equilibrium.  I don’t think we just tell people they’re superfluous and maybe they’d like to go somewhere and drop dead.  The population is to me a separate issue we would then have to address in some way if that proves to be a problem.  In short, we shouldn’t just accept whatever happens on the market as though it were the result of some natural law we can neither assess nor alter.  Markets are meant to serve us; we’re not meant to serve markets.  But it’s fine with me if you have other notions.  Let’s talk about it.  Because you know not talking about problems has never yet made them go away.  They just fester in silence until funny things happen.  And I don’t meant ha ha funny.  Let’s not let the all too pervasive greed and egotism of the human race be our downfall.