BBO Discussion Forums: Inequality - BBO Discussion Forums

blackshoe, on 2013-April-30, 22:13, said:

You are welcome to argue against a collection of individuals accruing rights that individuals themselves do not possess, but if you want to be taken seriously do not try to burden your opposition with such an absurd argument as the 'divine right of kings'. That is a strawman argument worthy of al_u_card and you are better than that. I am not even going to articulate an actual counter response to that statement because it is that stupid.

dwar0123, on 2013-May-01, 10:36, said:

FWIW, I can make a (plausible) guess where Blackshoes is coming from:

During the Age of the Enlightenment, various theories of the social contract were often cast as an alternative to the "divine right of kings".
I suspect that Blackshoes is taking all those aspects of society that he doesn't like and assigning these to the earlier tradition, ignoring the fact that any number of political theorists have argued in favor of a social contract without any need to resort to divine right.

I suspect that the root cause of the problem is his rather selective reading list.

Blackshoes seems to exclusively derive his economic insights by reading various crackpots from the Austrian school.

I suspect that he derived his political philosophy from Rothbard, Rockwell, and the like which can't lead to anything good.

blackshoe, on 2013-April-30, 22:13, said:

Libertarians are far closer in their thinking to communists than either would like to admit. Their 'solutions' to social issues are very much opposed, but the underlying approach is much the same in each.

Each philosophy is founded on a set of assumptions about the human animal, considered both as individual and as a social being. The assumptions may be different but what is identical is the lack of any grounding of the assumptions in reality.

We, as a species and not, obviously, as individuals, know and understand far more about how the human animal functions than did the authors of the texts that became the bible, or Marx's Das Kapital, or aynn rand's turgid novels or even the works of Adam Smith or William Shakespeare.

The notion that there are any such things as 'rights' that have some sort of mystical possession arising in humans is akin to the belief that the wine drunk by catholics at mass has become the blood of christ (I've often thought that the Red Cross would be able to avoid a lot of problems with collectiing blood donations if they could find a way to industrialize that process, but I digress).

As anyone with more than a passing interest in actually understanding the concepts would presumably grasp readily if not entrapped in a bubble-world, rights arise only within a society.

A castaway on a desert island has no rights nor any need of them. Rights pertain to the inter-relationships between members of a society. It is meaningless to speak of 'rights' of an individual in any other context: the words one would use to describe such rights would be devoid of any real life meaning.

Rights therefore arise out of society. The development of human civilization is one of the increasingly complex rules that various societies have developed over the millenia to govern their internal workings.

The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights seem to me to reflect not the intention of the destruction of the social contract but, rather, the repudiation of a simpler, more top-down social contract whereby the (white) inhabitants of North America could set up a more complex means of government. The creation of rights, viewed in that manner, is not a repudiation of government but an expansion of it, since rights have no real meaning unless society provides for the protection of those rights.

The more rights society grants to its members, the more frequently will there be a need for some form of enforcement or protection of those rights. And in a society in which social and economic power will inevitable become unequally divided, the less-empowered cannot by themselves enforce or protect their rights against the stronger. Hence the need for society, collectively, to act: and we call the organs of society empowered to act in this fashion: government.

Hence the more a society grants rights to all rather than, say, to an aristocracy, the more one needs government.

Of course, any organ of society is prone to abuse: that is the way the human animal seems to function. The question is whether we choose a complex government, with all the costs and abuses of power and inefficiencies that go with that, or a simple government, with few effective powers, and a largely unregulated society.

History suggests that on the whole, and the balance sheet is not all one way, the more complex the government, the better off are the bulk of the people. The simpler the government, the more power and wealth accrues to the few and the more miserable are the many.

I expect the right wingnuts to point to communist governments as examples of where this breaks down, but the fact is that communist governments, such as the USSR or N Korea are actually fairly simple forms of government, where the rights are given to the elite and the bulk of the population is denied many rights.

blackshoe, on 2013-May-01, 10:09, said:

Rights are just what we define them to be, and rights change over time. We can certainly define governmental rights differently than individual rights, and have found it advantageous to do so.

+1 to what mikeh said.

Libertarianism and communism both seem great in theory. The problem is that theory doesn't match reality. No attempt at a communist utopia has ever succeeded. They assume that all participants will behave altrustically, and that everyone agrees on the philosophy. But people are naturally selfish to some extent, and opinions about the limits of individual rights differ. So you get conflicts, and need some way to resolve them -- oops, we need a government to fill that role.

From last night's Munk Debate about Taxing the Rich: Be it resolved tax the rich (more)

Quote

Spoiler: The good guys prevail.

The USA takes a different view from Mike H concerning rights and where they come from but we can see many many forum members agree with MIkeh. It raises the old issue of does power corrupt and more power lead to more corruption?

http://www.ushistory...ation/document/

Thus we keep coming back to the point Mike raises in his post. Mike views government as expansive rather than limited. That we need more and more central govt power to protect us from something worse, much worse.

Mike argues that a more complex govt is better in general than a simpler one. He rejects the idea of via negativa that less is more.

I have argued in this thread there is something inherent that results in errors, hidden errors, with bigger, be it bigger corporations or bigger central govt, Size matters. That in political systems a good mechanism is one that helps remove the bad guy; its not about what to do or who to put in. A bad guy can cause more harm than the collective actions of good ones.

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the other debate is a very old one, do we grow the pie or debate how we attain justice in splitting the pie.

Or as I mentioned many posta ago do we focus on the small tiny tail of entrepreneurs(risk takers) or do we focus on the mass middle to decrease inequality.

Data confirms that when taxes were progressive and much higher there was less inequality and greater economic activity. The determination is whether or not this is correlation or if there is a causal link. The best argument I have seen for progressive taxation is that when money is added to the income of those who spend 100% or their income demand increases, raising GDP, and thereby encouraging investment and growth, and this argument seems to be born out by the data.

What Mikeh is suggesting is not that rights are given, but that they are taken. Perhaps by a "committee of the whole", perhaps by a "power elite", perhaps by both. In either case, "rights" are not about "rights" per se, but about the distribution of power.

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." -- Attributed to George Washington.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- unknown, attributed to various sources

blackshoe, on 2013-June-01, 08:50, said:

From a purely practical perspective, does this distinction matter?
(Semantic arguments are oh so tiresome)

It would seem to me that it matters a whole lot and is the crux of what we like to think of as freedom. We might give the government (through the police for example) some controlled access to our houses but object strenuously if they ignore the rules and march in to do whatever they want/however they want.

blackshoe, on 2013-June-01, 08:50, said:

I think what MikeH is suggesting is that "power" and "rights" are not synonymous. When a people are dominated, it does not mean they have had rights "taken". It means the winning few gained the power to temporarily ignore the wishes of the many. The "rights" were not lost; only the ability to act upon those "rights" was lost.

Winstonm, on 2013-June-01, 12:33, said:

If you cannot access them then the possibility that they exist seems a trivial point. If they are abided by or if you have redress if they are violated then you have them, otherwise it's just "sound and fury signifying nothing." Telling a starving man that there is food means zip if he hasn't got access to any of it, and is in reality untrue for that man, although it might be true for others.

I think that that's one of the scary things that's happening, we are so conditioned to thinking of ourselves as being "free" that we don't bother maintaining any vigilance to maintaining that, waltzing off to wars in the name of freedom notwithstanding.

An acquaintance had a consultant over from Austria to help work out what he wanted to do with his property. Several times the guy commented that he couldn't believe how many restrictions there were to work around..not safety issues, just regulations. Trivial little things, like many communities having bylaws forbidding anyone to have an outdoor clothes line. "For want of a nail a shoe was lost..(etc)... a kingdom was lost and all for the want of a horseshoe nail".

onoway, on 2013-June-01, 17:13, said:

How about that? We are right back to Richard's post about practical considerations.

hrothgar, on 2013-June-01, 10:15, said:

I do find much of the discussion to be an argument about semantis and I share your frustration with it. But there are some fundamentals, and probably we largely agree:

From a well-know source:

Quote

A lot of conflict involves differing interpretations of what this all means. From context, both of the Declaration and general historical context, I suppose mostly Jefferson meant that the son of a King has no intrinsic right to grow up to be King. Even that much may not really be self-evident, but he is stating it as a fact that he is not willing to compromise on. It gets rickier as we move on to deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Do I get to withhold my consent? Again, n context, they are telling the King to go to hell, but beyond that it gets a little uncertain. Of course the Constitution was the practical manifestation. I guess it's the standard view that the main body sets out how democracy is to work, the first ten amendments sets out limitation on what a government can do, even if the government has the backing of a majority. A nice practical approach that doesn't mention unalienable rights endowed by a Creator.

All in all, government is created by Man, meaning mankind,

A bit about government powers. It is very possible for government to be intrusive. I, just as a factual matter, have not found this to be a problem but then I like getting government services including roads, governemnt funded research, police protection and so on, and I accept that this will happen only if I pay taxes. But no doubt government employees sometimes get swelled heads. Yes we (I at least) like government services, yes I like to be left free to make my own choices. This requires balance, and getting it right requires judgment.

inequality, the title of this thread requires lots of judgment to contend with. I very much favor opportunity and giving a helping hand to those in need. Good for them, but really it's good for the rest of us as well. I also realize that some people exercise ghastly judgment, and no program can really prevent them from making a complete mess of their lives, and quite possibly some programs make the problem worse by disguising the need to make changes in their manner of living. An open mind can be useful in deciding which way to go on some of this.


Anyway, responding to your post, semantics indeed can be very off-putting but sometimes there are actual issues of substance behind them.

I read those same lines while kibbing the USBC last night. I like that distinction between rights, however unalienable they may be, and rights secured by a government that derives its powers from the consent of the governed vs the consent of lobbyists funded by the super rich. In fact, the FFs seem to be saying it is our right and our duty to soak the rich so they can't do this.

y66, on 2013-June-02, 14:06, said:

It took me a moment to figure out who the FFs were. They were no doubt impressive and far-sighted but probably even they did not envision the current complexity. Anyway, whatever they may have thought, every generation confronts issues and I agree that a big one for us is to prevent the super-rich from using their megabucks to totally dominate political choices. Money talks and all that, but the rest of us need a voice as well.

blackshoe, on 2013-June-01, 08:50, said:

Wrong.

Try reading what I wrote. Try just for a moment to understand that a 'right' is not a real object. The drafters of the US constitutional documents chose language suggesting that rights did exist and were inalienable, but that was in the context of trying to justify a rebellion, and the rejection of what was at that time the prevailing societal model: a hereditary monarchy, albeit in the case of the UK a modified, constitutional monarchy.

The fact that the FF used such language doesn't make it true!

Rights are emergent properties that arise from complex human interactions. They evolve over time. Individuals and groups of individuals can drive this evolution to some degree, but I suspect that the mechanisms by which societies move are too complex to be readily perceived let alone understood.

onoway, on 2013-June-01, 17:13, said:

Here's a useful (and true) example

I live in condo with a condo association, a board, etc.

Recently, I wanted to install a bee hive out on my balcony.
The condo board blocked me from doing so.
I'm not particularly happy about it, but its not worth moving.
I've made a conscious decision that the benefits of living at this location outweigh the limitations.

What I don't do is spend my time bitching about the evil collectivist condo board which is abridging my god given rights to raise an urban bee colony. (Especially since the same condo board did a nice job dealing with the drunk down the hall)

kenberg, on 2013-June-02, 11:42, said:

Speaking of semantics, the US Constitution is not about a (pure) democracy, it's about a representative one.

kenberg, on 2013-June-02, 11:42, said:

The problem is that the more you let government do at the start, the more it grows and tries to do even more. While you may not find the government to be intrusive now (neither do I, personally, but I see the camel's nose peeking into the tent) but it's certainly growing more likely that will be a problem.

It may be a good idea for government to fund some things, but there's an awful lot that government funds today that need not be funded by that route. Pick any of the services you mentioned, at least, and if government did not fund it, the private sector would almost certainly find a way to do so. The result would be more choice for the citizenry, and less chance of… shall we call them "errors" on the part of government employees.

Governments are set up by men - men with the power to make their plan stick. The US Constitution was itself a coup, of sorts - the committee was tasked to find a way to modify the Articles of Confederation to avoid future problems of the kind they had - specifically that the States reneged on their share of the debt incurred by the Continental Congress in prosecuting the war. Instead the Committee tossed the Articles out the window, and came up with a completely different form of government.