GM Spirals the Drain (Part 2)

[Asher]

Previous: http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...hreadid=179386

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Agathon


You're talking crap here.

No, I'm not.

More accurately: welfare states are established to satisfy various preferences that the market cannot satisfy as efficiently as state action. Our fairness preferences fall into this class. Hence our economy is in part set up to respect that value. It's not rocket science.

Welfare states as currently implemented mainly redistribute wealth irrespective of moral inputs. It redistributes based solely on outcomes. They reduce somewhat the unfairness due to certain factors at the tail end of the distribution. On the other hand, they increase unfairness insofar as the individuals at the lower end are there due to their moral failings. In sum, it is merely a floor on outcomes. Not a serious attempt to rectify fairness.

I said this. Why should I be accused of not making clear something I explicitly said in my post?

a) I didn't accuse you of anything
b) I was taking the opportunity to mock what passes for attempts to increase fairness

No. Because fairness is not the only value that we have. Again, I made this clear in my previous post.

I understand exactly what you said. And if you paid any attention to contemporary discourse you would notice that the argument AGAINST an inheritance tax is usually couched in terms of fairness as well. Which should tell you exactly how much value you should place on political discourse about "fairness". It's used as a catchall term to argue for whatever policy the user is in favour of.

We do in fact do the last. Most states have a (admittedly less than perfect) inheritance tax.

The inheritance taxes currently charged are ridiculously low. Usually far lower than taxes on earnings. So how does such a tax promote fairness?

Ronald Dworkin demonstrated decades ago that this can be justified as a tax on talents (more accurately, as insurance that persons would pay against a lack of talent if they were in a position to buy such insurance).

No, it's a tax (as far as it goes) on OUTCOMES.

In practice (since the hypothetical insurance market would fail if everyone tried to insure themselves against not being super talented so that they would gain a super talented person's income).

Errr. No. This is not the market failure (and this statement demonstrates how profoundly you misunderstand the argument of the veil of ignorance). The failure is the same as in a market for lemons (by the time individuals can purchase insurance they already have some idea of their talents) as well as (and this is not part of the original argument) moral hazard (to fake the symptoms of lack of talent).

Dworkin demonstrated that talent is a justifiable basis for redistribution, given certain uncontroversial normative claims.

Good luck implementing that. IQ test taxation? How about height taxation (height is strongly correlated with outcomes, even controlling for quality of nutrition). Does this fit the common understanding of "fairness"?

Concern for others can, and often is, motivated by a sense of justice.

And such a sense of justice usually just obscures what the real benefit here is: a wish to avoid needless suffering. When examined closely, justice usually boils down to a floor on outcomes combined with some ridiculous, counterproductive notions which vary wildly from individual to individual.

In fact, it may have to be in most cases because it is concern for others in the abstract rather than towards individuals I know as individuals.

I do not understand the logic here. Why is justice the only possible motivation for concern for individuals in the abstract (I would say "individuals in aggregate")

Or we could take it the other way and argue that our sense of fairness is in some sense an expression of our concern for others.

One is probably correct. So you're just splitting hairs here.

No. Concern for others (in the abstract) is an ideal we can act on rationally. Concern for fairness or justice is not, because (as we've seen) most people are unable to even provide a cogent definition of these concepts. When forced to accept a cogent definition, the impracticality of actually aiming for them becomes obvious.

Yes, one has quotation marks around it that don't appear to be doing any real work.

They are demonstrating that what is usually argued for is a concept of fairness which doesn't stand up to serious scrutiny.

[Dinner]

I'm surprised the other thread made it to 600.

[KrazyHorse]

KH: I suggest that people have the innate ability to develop later abilities, or talents, or whatever you want to call them; and that, while the sum total of those 'talents' as you call them might not be equal, they are generally above a certain line that I would define as 'adequate to live comfortably'. Those that are not I would suggest are 'disabled', ie those with down's syndrome and such. If you are born theoretically normal, but do not have the potential to develop abilities adequate to live a comfortable life with hard work and education, then you are no better off than someone with down's syndrome, and probably should be categorized as such.

So now you're stating that average people can be expected to live average lives? The economic system is therefore fair!

'Fairness' is not, in my definition, the equality of outcomes (or probable outcomes). That is, shockingly, 'equality'.

I never proposed equality of outcomes as fairness. I proposed equality of outcomes GIVEN EQUALITY OF MORAL INPUTS.

Fairness is having the potential to arrive at a satisfactory outcome with a reasonable amount of effort. Not all satisfactory outcomes, and not even equally satisfactory; but simply, a satisfactory outcome, with a reasonable amount of effort (not requiring herculean effort, but not guaranteed without effort either).

So according to you: "fairness" means that average people live average lives and, marginally, additional moral rectitude leads to increased outcomes. How is that different from a tautology + a basic requirement of efficiency?

The definition of satisfactory is a bit malleable, but I'd say it could reasonably be defined as a comfortable life with no lack of food, water, housing, and luxuries up to a certain point (not 5 BMW's and a 3 acre ranch, but something that I'd probably define as 'middle to upper middle class' by 40, say, something on the order of a family of 4 making $120k total per year.

Your definition of satisfactory is one which very few individuals born into the lower half of society will ever achieve, but which is normal for somebody born into similar circumstances. The idea that this is the floor for somebody with reasonable moral rectitude is laughable on its face. And as previously stated, your definition of fairness is laughable even if you were to provide reasonable numbers, rather than the unreasonable ones (as above). Saying that normal people should be able to achieve normal outcomes is a tautology. Not part of any useful definition

Arrian, I suggest that capitalism is actually designed to allow equality of opportunity - in that it the free market works off of products (whether that be actual products, or services, or labor) competing equally with no restrictions (thus, no limitations of opportunity). The equality of opportunity is really freedom of opportunity - having 100% opportunity for all is equality, is it not?

This is, quite simply, retarded.

[KrazyHorse]

Arrian:

KH, I don't know Strauss. Have I invoked him?

Noble lies.

[KrazyHorse]

snoopy:

Your definition is rather circular, though, in that it encodes your opinion of the matter into the definition...

A circular definition is one which defines a concept in terms of itself. The fact that my definition leads you to the conclusion that it is stupid to promote fairness as an ideal is a consequence of logic, not a flaw with my definition. If you'd like to operate off another definition please feel free to propose one which does not contain manifestly idiotic requirements (as in "people live decent lives") as well as requirements which are better covered by other concepts (as in "there is a marginal expected outcome benefit from morality").

It is patently false, in any event. I think it is flagrantly harmful to equalize talents, for example; that would be effectively like a tariff, neutralizing the comparative advantage of the user's innate talents. Luck is silly to attempt to neutralize - that would be like taking a game of Civ and removing the RNG. You might as well become a Calvinist, if you want to go that route. Luck is what it is, and you must accept that sometimes you will be lucky and get the job because the manager was having a good day when he interviewed you, and sometimes he will have just been served divorce papers and you don't get the job

What is patently false? My definition is false because you don't like the implications of it? Do you think before you type, or do you just urinate on the keyboard and hope that something cogent comes out?

Circumstances of birth, though, are the one that can and should be normalized to some extent; I think it is harmful to overly normalize that (you would have to eliminate parents raising their own children, which is not a beneficial outcome in my opinion), but rather than bringing down some, you can instead bring up those below a reasonable standard of 'circumstances of birth' up to said reasonable standard. We attempt to do that to some extent (both with direct need-based aid such as AFDC, and with more indirect actions such as public education), but certainly we could attempt to do more.

So now you want to accept my definition? Yes, some aspects of the current system ameliorate unfairness. According to all evidence, they are extremely expensive and do very little to actually alter outcomes. They are a sop to the lower classes, and a salve on the conscience of the upper classes. But God forbid we take effective action to normalize outcomes due to birth circumstances. Say, by handing out cheques throughout their lives to those born poor. Instead, we should spend masses of money on public education which have very little impact on where they actually end up. That way we can believe that they're poor because they didn't try hard enough in school, right? Not because they were born poor or stupid or both.

[KrazyHorse]

Then you have a strange understanding of what counts as fair. I dislike John Rawls intensely, but he more than anyone else demonstrated that this mode of thinking is obsolete.

??????

This is my point. True fairness is impossible to implement. There are many appeals to the public concept of "fairness". Most of them are in favour of policies which are either simple redistributions of outcomes (this is what maximal utility schemes would do, and is only tangentially related to what a scheme maximizing fairness would do). The rest strike some people as fair and others as unfair (say, the inheritance tax).

Given that Rawls conception of justice is justice as fairness, and he explicitly allows that outcomes will be unequal

Of course he does. I've never said that outcomes would be identical. I said that outcomes given equal moral inputs would be equal.

There's a very strong correlation between our modern societies and the kind of society Rawls describes.

That's merely because Rawls elevates other concepts well above that of fairness. The redistributive schemes we have in place are trimmings on the tree, are mainly aimed at ideals like maximal utility, not fairness and, I suspect, are in place merely to obscure the naked unfairness of capitalism.

This is just wrong. Efficiency is a weak normative value. Justice is a strong normative value, as is welfare.

Filosofy speak. Put it in terms I can understand, or don't bother.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

No, I'm not.

Yes you are. In fact, you are so out of your depth here, it's comical.

Welfare states as currently implemented mainly redistribute wealth irrespective of moral inputs.

Only if you understand this in a deliberately silly way.

It redistributes based solely on outcomes. They reduce somewhat the unfairness due to certain factors at the tail end of the distribution. On the other hand, they increase unfairness insofar as the individuals at the lower end are there due to their moral failings. In sum, it is merely a floor on outcomes. Not a serious attempt to rectify fairness.

Look, you're just being daft here. This has been sorted out long ago by people who actually know what they are talking about. You sound like one of those Ron Paul nuts.

I understand exactly what you said. And if you paid any attention to contemporary discourse you would notice that the argument AGAINST an inheritance tax is usually couched in terms of fairness as well. Which should tell you exactly how much value you should place on political discourse about "fairness". It's used as a catchall term to argue for whatever policy the user is in favour of.

So is "science". Now please come up with an actual argument.

The inheritance taxes currently charged are ridiculously low. Usually far lower than taxes on earnings. So how does such a tax promote fairness?

Look, as I have said repeatedly, fairness in that sense is just one value we have, so it isn't surprising that the tax is low (we don't want to discourage people saving, but they often save to pass on to their children, etc. etc.). There are a number of ways such a tax could promote fairness such as, restoring some degree of equality of opportunity, or being (in Dworkin's sense) justified under the rubric of equality of resources, and there are others.

The argument is quite simple. Without the tax, society would be worse off with respect to satisfying such principles than it currently is, so society is fairer than it would otherwise have been, because of policies deliberately designed to increase fairness. Ergo fairness plays a (limited) role in the economy, ergo you were wrong - and in a completely transparent manner.

No, it's a tax (as far as it goes) on OUTCOMES.

So. taxes are crude. Big deal. The issue here is to determine whether the outcomes after tax are fair and to what degree they are fair.

Errr. No. This is not the market failure (and this statement demonstrates how profoundly you misunderstand the argument of the veil of ignorance). The failure is the same as in a market for lemons (by the time individuals can purchase insurance they already have some idea of their talents) as well as (and this is not part of the original argument) moral hazard (to fake the symptoms of lack of talent).

To be super-accurate, in Dworkin's scheme they have some idea of their talents, but not of the income that these talents will generate, so it isn't quite the same as Rawls' veil (there are reasons for this, but they don't matter here). People insure against not having a marketable talent, but the market can only pay out based on what people actually earn, so it would never get going if everyone (hypothetically) attempted to insure themselves against not being super-talented (by which it is meant having a talent that generates a large income). To cut a long story short, you end up with a minimum guaranteed income based on the premium any rational person would pay.

But you miss the whole point of these kinds of arguments. There is no moral hazard because they are hypothetical. In Dworkin's scheme there is no faking of one's talents, because that is not strictly speaking what is being insured against. But it isn't a real insurance market anyway. All it is designed to do is demonstrate that our current situation can be justified on grounds of fairness (to be super-accurate for Dworkin, on grounds of equality of resources).

Dworkin's point is essentially this: when we look at our society it seems massively unfair and inegalitarian, but it is nowhere near as unfair and egalitarian as it appears. This is because in liberal societies we allow people to be responsible for their own lives, and this produces inequality of outcomes. This inequality is not in itself objectionable. However, people will differ in their initial allotments of resources, in particular, they will differ in their marketable talents and some may even have handicaps (there will be inheritance too). In a very real way people are not responsible for those initial allotments, so it is unfair that they be penalized for them. We might think that this means completely equalizing all income based on marketable talent and allotments, but that would prevent people making anything of their own lives. The insurance scheme equalizes, as far as people are prepared to agree, for lack of marketable talents in the initial allotment, but no more. In actual practice, this ends up being a welfare state.

Dworkin took your "problem" and demonstrated how it can be resolved.

Good luck implementing that. IQ test taxation? How about height taxation (height is strongly correlated with outcomes, even controlling for quality of nutrition). Does this fit the common understanding of "fairness"?

It's not an actual tax, you plonker. Nor is Rawls' veil of ignorance process a procedure that we actually engage in. The whole point of Dworkin's argument is to demonstrate what a society founded on the principle of equality of resources would look like. Insofar as the distribution in our society is more or less like that one, our society passes that test of fairness. Similarly, Rawls' test is simply a way of generating a measure of a just society.

All they are doing is providing a response to people who say that taxing the rich is unfair, or that massive disparities in income are unfair.

I do not understand the logic here. Why is justice the only possible motivation for concern for individuals in the abstract (I would say "individuals in aggregate")

Because concern for others is usually personal and involves sentiments. Justice is impersonal and directed towards people in the abstract. There's a fairly long argument here, but it doesn't make much of a difference in the end.

No. Concern for others (in the abstract) is an ideal we can act on rationally. Concern for fairness or justice is not, because (as we've seen) most people are unable to even provide a cogent definition of these concepts.

So what? Most people are incapable of providing a cogent definition of anything, yet they are quite capable of doing the right thing for the most part.

When forced to accept a cogent definition, the impracticality of actually aiming for them becomes obvious.

Except if Dworkin and Rawls are right, then we're already there for the most part, so there's no point in worrying about it.

You're trying to resurrect an argument that was done and dusted decades ago.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

Of course he does. I've never said that outcomes would be identical. I said that outcomes given equal moral inputs would be equal.

Which Dworkin has shown would compromise another important value that we have – allowing people to be responsible for their own life projects. As I said before, we can't have our cake and eat it too. Inequality of outcomes is just a natural consequence of our commitment to individual liberty.

Hell, even some libertarians agree to something like this. Nozick IIRC argued that a minimal welfare state was justifiable because we had no way of being sure that all past transactions were just, and we could be pretty sure that some of them were manifestly unjust. Yet Nozick does not think that this compromises his own principles of fairness, which are different from those of liberal political philosophers.

That's merely because Rawls elevates other concepts well above that of fairness. The redistributive schemes we have in place are trimmings on the tree, are mainly aimed at ideals like maximal utility, not fairness and, I suspect, are in place merely to obscure the naked unfairness of capitalism.

Oh for God's sake. Rawls' theory is justice understood as fairness. He doesn't elevate other concepts above fairness, because the whole damn thing is based on an ideal of fairness (something that all reasonable people could agree to).

You might want to count the number of times Rawls wrote the phrase "Justice as Fairness"

He's not a utilitarian either. His point when it comes to incomes is that wide disparities in incomes are just/fair if they end up making the poorest people better off (in absolute terms) than they would have been under any other distribution.

[Agathon]

“Fairness” does not have to mean “substantive equality of welfare or resources”. It does not even have to mean “Equality of opportunity”. Both Dworkin and Rawls operate with the idea that a necessary condition of fairness is that it is something that two rational people in a state of equal power and equally well informed could voluntarily agree upon. This understanding of fairness permeates our society and is implicit in what we call “fair dealings” with others, as opposed to “unfair dealings” such as when one person defrauds or coerces another. Even the Libertarians agree that whatever is decided by the voluntary rational agreement of equals would be fair. I think it is reasonable to agree that this is an understanding of “fairness” in our society that almost everyone, with the exception of sociopaths, holds. For example, the golden rule is perceived as a rule of fairness, and is presupposed by the idea of voluntary rational agreement between equals being fair, and by the restriction that we treat others as ends in themselves, and the whole Kantian kit and kaboodle.

Rawls’ strategy is to use this “core” notion of fairness to construct a substantive theory of justice that every rational individual could agree to (i.e. a society that is “fair”). All he needs to do, in order to avoid KrazyHorse’s criticism is to demonstrate that free, informed and rational individuals could agree to be subject to an economic system in which people are allowed to profit from their unearned allotment (talents, inheritance, etc.). His thought experiment of the original position does just this, and it does not necessarily generate a radically egalitarian society. Nor does it generate a society where people’s talents are measured and they are taxed in proportion to them. Nor does it generate a society where there necessarily is or is not an inheritance tax. What it does generate is an economic system where inequalities are allowed only insofar as they serve the worst off (because no rational person confronted with the possibility of being on the bottom of the heap would settle for anything less than the optimal situation if that were true). Such a system, since it is based on the agreement of rational persons, is for that very reason fair. Oddly enough it looks like our society, where people are allowed to be incredibly rich as long as that is compatible with raising the welfare of those at the bottom. If you want to argue against an inheritance tax or against affirmative action, you may do so in a Rawlsian fashion by demonstrating that these things will in fact leave the lowest stratum of society worse off. Moreover, it is possible in theory for a deeply stratified class system to satisfy Rawls’ conception of fairness if there is no other possible society that produces a better result for the lowest class than that one. In particular, it won’t be the case that the talented and the handicapped are treated the same way. People will be allowed to benefit from their talents as long as they help make the worst off better, but people who have handicaps will benefit, since they will likely be at the bottom end (perhaps the handicapped children of rich people will be exempt from public benefits, but that’s another story).

So you can see that the Rawls/Dworkin conception of fairness is both shared by almost everyone and does not necessarily generate radically egalitarian outcomes, such that a fair society need not fit KrazyHorse’s restricted conception of what would count as fair.

[Asher]

I need everyone's cooperation to steer this conversation back to reality. The filosofer has tried to hijack the discussion to make himself look relevant in at least one way, in which he is not.

I'll refute Agathon's verbose filosofical meanderings with my own: Life is not fair -- get over it.

Can we resume discussion of business and finance and let the little filosofy guys go back to the kids' table?

[Agathon]

By the way, I think Rawls is wrong, and his theory produces a sociopathic society, but that will have to wait for another day.

[Asher]

Two can play at this game

In the works of Rawls, a predominant concept is the concept of subtextual culture. The subject is contextualised into that which includes art as a whole. Thus, Rawls uses the term 'dialectic libertarianism' to denote a modern totality.

Debord promotes the use of neotextual capitalist theory to deconstruct sexism. It could be said that Rawls' analysis of dialectic libertarianism implies that the raison d'etre of the writer is social comment.

If one examines pretextual nihilism, one is faced with a choice: either reject dialectic libertarianism or conclude that the media is capable of significance, but only if the premise of socialist realism is invalid. The main theme of the works of Rawls is not, in fact, narrative, but postnarrative. In a sense, if neotextual capitalist theory holds, we have to choose between the dialectic paradigm of context and Debordist situation.

The subject is interpolated into a that includes sexuality as a reality. It could be said that neosemantic dematerialism states that class, perhaps surprisingly, has significance.

Long holds that we have to choose between neotextual capitalist theory and Batailleist 'powerful communication'. In a sense, any number of narratives concerning a self-fulfilling totality exist.

The primary theme of Bailey's model of semantic Marxism is the role of the participant as writer. It could be said that the subject is contextualised into a that includes culture as a paradox.

If the neocapitalist paradigm of expression holds, we have to choose between socialist realism and semioticist deappropriation. Thus, Finnis states that the works of Tarantino are postmodern.

The subject is interpolated into a that includes language as a reality. Therefore, Lyotard uses the term 'socialist realism' to denote not discourse as such, but subdiscourse.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Asher
I need everyone's cooperation to steer this conversation back to reality. The filosofer has tried to hijack the discussion to make himself look relevant in at least one way, in which he is not.

I'll refute Agathon's verbose filosofical meanderings with my own: Life is not fair -- get over it.

Can we resume discussion of business and finance and let the little filosofy guys go back to the kids' table?

How can life be fair or unfair?

It seems that people agree it is a result of chemical reactions, so it seems to me that it just is what it is. Existence in the petri dish of the cosmos.

In the end it sucks when the lab gets cleaned up.

[Asher]

Originally posted by notyoueither


How can life be fair or unfair?

It seems that people agree it is a result of chemical reactions, so it seems to me that it just is what it is. Existence in the petri dish of the cosmos.

In the end it sucks when the lab gets cleaned up.

But to say "it is what it is" is to say life is unfair -- unfair just means the lack of a sense of "fairness".