Take a simple scenario of two cities—one is high-tech and one is a big stone-age village in the hills of New Guinea. The high-tech city is much richer.
You take half of the city’s technological bounty and bring it over to New Guinea—you redistributed wealth.
Fairly quickly the technology becomes completely useless in New Guinea, but the villagers liked it for the short period that it worked—so they abandon working in the fields and build something resembling air strips with mock airplanes sitting on them...
I must be misunderstanding. I can imagine many hypothetical scenarios where redistribution of wealth would have a net negative effect, in terms of technological advancement, economic growth, etc.
In the globe we currently inhabit, there exists some huge chunk of people who live in utter poverty and, therefore, have no wealth. In strictly economic terms, they cannot being doing any worse than they are right now. Therefore, any redistribution of wealth will either (a) not affect them or (b) benefit them. This seems to me to be true in the short term, as well as the long term.
there exists some huge chunk of people who live in utter poverty and, therefore, have no wealth.
That is not true. A small value does not equal zero. The number of people who literally have nothing is vanishingly small. Almost everyone who lives in utter poverty has some wealth, just little.
In strictly economic terms, they cannot being doing any worse than they are right now.
This is not true either. Consider a country like Haiti where a large chunk of population is very very poor. A few years ago they had a large earthquake. Beyond the loss of life, you are arguing that the poor did not become worse off in the aftermath of the earthquake. I don’t think this is so.
Since you are talking about a large number of people, presumably you have in mind somebody like Chinese and Indian peasants. Do you really believe they “cannot being doing any worse than they are right now”?
From my Wikipedia research, there were 923 million undernourished people in the world in 2008… where undernourishment is (roughly) a cumulative or average situation where the average person is not consuming enough nutrients to remain in good health while performing light physical activity.
Of course, I can dream up a “worse” situation. (Like they are malnourished and in a deep hole.) But I think that is beside the point. You have ~12-15% of the global population that is progressively dying via malnutrition. Any way which you define “wealth” in which these people 923 million people have non-zero wealth values is fine. I guess I’d technically agree. But practically, these people seem to have maxed out the possibilities of “worst”, short of being in a deep hole. Or being in a natural disaster.
My view of wealth has something to do with abundance beyond the minimum requirements for living. If I have a ham sandwich, it’s just hard for me to count that as wealth. And I guess a hungry guy with one ham sandwich could be doing worse in your view, correct?
But practically, these people seem to have maxed out the possibilities of “worst”
Try Central Africa—multiple civil wars, child soldiers, mass rapes as standard operating procedure, limbs hacked off as punishment for minor things, an occasional bona fide genocide...
I’m quite confident now we aren’t understanding one another. I’m aware of how bad things are in many parts of Africa.
My view is that redistribution of wealth and other oppression-proofing liberal policies are a good choice because of emergency situations like poverty in Africa, among other places. From a strictly economic standpoint, I think they’ve maxed out “bad”. Clearly there are other bad things you can add to economic “worst” to make it “worse”. Often times, these things are tangled up, if not caused directly by, poverty.
redistribution of wealth and other oppression-proofing liberal policies
You’re a healthy, wealthy, educated person. Being educated, you know you shouldn’t have more than, say 2 children, to be able to afford their education and ensure their good standard of living. You’ll have first child at age 25+.
I’m poor and uneducated third-world citizen. Being uneducated I don’t know how many children I can afford. Or I just don’t care, don’t think about it. I’ll have my first child at age of 18.
Now you give me half of your wealth and now you can only afford one child.
25 years from now you and your one educated child have to support me, 8 of my uneducated children… and 40 of my uneducated grandchildren. Your child can’t afford having children at all.
This is what redistribution does, exaggerated. You’re assuming the person you’ll give wealth to will use it in a sane way from your point of view. They won’t. You don’t want to admit the possibility that it may be long term better to let them die to stop this. Of course this is not ideal, not even good. Ideally you’d teach them, but will they listen?
You’re assuming the person you’ll give wealth to will use it in a sane way from your point of view.
Redistribution doesn’t have to mean giving money. It can mean giving food, education, health care..it’s not as if on-one has thought about this issue before.
Of course I won’t argue against effective altruism or charity and I suppose charity is technically a kind of “wealth redistribution”. However, it’s different than taxes in one very important way: it’s redistributing excess wealth after my own goals have been achieved, not before.
I just used charity as an example; the same argument applies to taxes as well. The only difference is that taxes are enforced. It’s still a priority to ensure that taxes are given and used correctly. In many countries with welfare, for instance, to stay on welfare you are required to prove that you have been looking for a source of independent income. Now, scandals do happen, and they happen often, and I agree with you that it’s an important priority to make sure that welfare is only used in a positive way. I would even support a limit on having children unless someone can prove they have the financial means to take care of them. This seems both humane and efficient.
I just used charity as an example; the same argument applies to taxes as well.
That does not follow. Why would I care about money I have no control over? Why would a politician care about efficiency over publicity? Why wouldn’t the recipient try to take more than he needs? There’s no incentive for anyone to do anything right.
How do prove your assets, when money in the bank is no longer money in the bank? And what you do with violators? Fine them? Sterilise them? Seize their children?
You’re a healthy, wealthy, educated person. [...] I’m poor and uneducated third-world citizen. [..] Now you give me half of your wealth and now you can only afford one child. [..] 25 years from now you and your one educated child have to support me, 8 of my uneducated children… and 40 of my uneducated grandchildren. Your child can’t afford having children at all.
In this account, how did I get so much more healthy, wealthy, and educated than you are? Is there any way to do whatever that was to you, as well, or is it better to just let you die (or kill you)? Would it have similarly been better to let me die (or kill me) before doing whatever it was that made me so much more healthy, wealthy, and educated? How can we tell?
I can’t shake off the impression that you’re implicitly assuming the thesis. I’ll try to answer what I can.
In this account, how did I get so much more healthy, wealthy, and educated than you are?
Why the implicit assumption that redistribution has a net positive impact here? Another implicit assumption here is that we’re all born equal. Genetics aside, don’t the children inherit the mindset of their close ones to a large degree? Aren’t societies semi-stable, self-reinforcing, whatever their current wellbeing is? Africa is still poor, despite years of foreign aid. Middle east is still fighting, despite years of foreign interventions… What you need to do is to create incentives to break out of the current state of things and survival instinct is an excellent incentive which can be applied to poor people. What redistribution does is removing this powerful incentive and creating opposite ones. Basically, you’re rewarding people for making poor economic decisions.
Is there any way to do whatever that was to you, as well
Assuming it was redistribution that made you wealthy and educated, does it work reliably on the majority of poor people? Without forcing them somehow out of their current environment? That’s along the same lines of thought as that giving someone a million dollars reliably makes them a millionaire.
Would it have similarly been better to let me die (or kill me) before doing whatever it was that made me so much more healthy, wealthy, and educated?
This argument only makes sense if you already believe that redistribution reliably works, or anything reliably works, for that matter. People are notoriously difficult to change.
nother implicit assumption here is that we’re all born equal.
If your relative wealth is a result of genetics, not effort, do you still have an absolute moral claim on it?
Aren’t societies semi-stable, self-reinforcing, whatever their current wellbeing is?
Well, I’m not an illtetrate farm labourer like my ancestors.
Assuming it was redistribution that made you wealthy and educated, does it work reliably on the majority of poor people?
Why would it have to? You can argue that people have a right to the opportunity of an education, irrespective of outcomes, and you can argue that educating people up to their potential has a nett positive effect. Neither argument requires education to lead to positive outcomes in every individual case.
This argument only makes sense if you already believe that redistribution reliably works,
Western societies introduced universal free education over a century ago, and are now much richer.
The question I asked was, in your scenario, what creates/maintains/justifies the disparity between us.
Your answer seems to be that (genetics aside), in your scenario the root cause is innate advantages due to differences in early environment, which are themselves the result of self-reinforcing patterns in our societies, which causes me to make better decisions than you do.
Is that right? (It’s hard to tell, because you don’t answer my question so much as you treat it as an unarticulated assertion with which you argue.)
Yes, that’s correct. I’m arguing that redistribution in any form of giving “stuff” for free makes it worse by providing strong incentives to maintain status quo.
I’m arguing that redistribution in any form of giving “stuff” for free makes it worse
On your account does redistribution in the form of, for example, using my “stuff” to educate others in how to make better decisions necessarily make it worse?
On your account does redistribution in the form of, for example, using my “stuff” to educate others in how to make better decisions necessarily make it worse?
Well, my point was more limited—in the example the rich high-tech city lost wealth (which they will replenish eventually) and the poor village didn’t gain anything.
You can get into a deeper analysis which would involve e.g. motivations and incentives (what happens to people who get used to living on free handouts?), necessary concentration of capital (a semiconductor fab costs a few billions of dollars, who will build it?), etc. but it’s a large topic.
Several comments up you conceded that deregulation and libertarianism maximize economic growth. Thus redistribution by reducing economic growth causes there to be less to redistribute in the future and thus makes everyone worse off in the long run.
Look beyond the short term.
Okay. Please help me understand a scenario where everyone was worse off in the long term because of the redistribution of wealth.
Take a simple scenario of two cities—one is high-tech and one is a big stone-age village in the hills of New Guinea. The high-tech city is much richer.
You take half of the city’s technological bounty and bring it over to New Guinea—you redistributed wealth.
Fairly quickly the technology becomes completely useless in New Guinea, but the villagers liked it for the short period that it worked—so they abandon working in the fields and build something resembling air strips with mock airplanes sitting on them...
I must be misunderstanding. I can imagine many hypothetical scenarios where redistribution of wealth would have a net negative effect, in terms of technological advancement, economic growth, etc.
In the globe we currently inhabit, there exists some huge chunk of people who live in utter poverty and, therefore, have no wealth. In strictly economic terms, they cannot being doing any worse than they are right now. Therefore, any redistribution of wealth will either (a) not affect them or (b) benefit them. This seems to me to be true in the short term, as well as the long term.
That is not true. A small value does not equal zero. The number of people who literally have nothing is vanishingly small. Almost everyone who lives in utter poverty has some wealth, just little.
This is not true either. Consider a country like Haiti where a large chunk of population is very very poor. A few years ago they had a large earthquake. Beyond the loss of life, you are arguing that the poor did not become worse off in the aftermath of the earthquake. I don’t think this is so.
Since you are talking about a large number of people, presumably you have in mind somebody like Chinese and Indian peasants. Do you really believe they “cannot being doing any worse than they are right now”?
From my Wikipedia research, there were 923 million undernourished people in the world in 2008… where undernourishment is (roughly) a cumulative or average situation where the average person is not consuming enough nutrients to remain in good health while performing light physical activity.
Of course, I can dream up a “worse” situation. (Like they are malnourished and in a deep hole.) But I think that is beside the point. You have ~12-15% of the global population that is progressively dying via malnutrition. Any way which you define “wealth” in which these people 923 million people have non-zero wealth values is fine. I guess I’d technically agree. But practically, these people seem to have maxed out the possibilities of “worst”, short of being in a deep hole. Or being in a natural disaster.
My view of wealth has something to do with abundance beyond the minimum requirements for living. If I have a ham sandwich, it’s just hard for me to count that as wealth. And I guess a hungry guy with one ham sandwich could be doing worse in your view, correct?
Try Central Africa—multiple civil wars, child soldiers, mass rapes as standard operating procedure, limbs hacked off as punishment for minor things, an occasional bona fide genocide...
I’m quite confident now we aren’t understanding one another. I’m aware of how bad things are in many parts of Africa.
My view is that redistribution of wealth and other oppression-proofing liberal policies are a good choice because of emergency situations like poverty in Africa, among other places. From a strictly economic standpoint, I think they’ve maxed out “bad”. Clearly there are other bad things you can add to economic “worst” to make it “worse”. Often times, these things are tangled up, if not caused directly by, poverty.
Tap out.
You’re a healthy, wealthy, educated person. Being educated, you know you shouldn’t have more than, say 2 children, to be able to afford their education and ensure their good standard of living. You’ll have first child at age 25+.
I’m poor and uneducated third-world citizen. Being uneducated I don’t know how many children I can afford. Or I just don’t care, don’t think about it. I’ll have my first child at age of 18.
Now you give me half of your wealth and now you can only afford one child.
25 years from now you and your one educated child have to support me, 8 of my uneducated children… and 40 of my uneducated grandchildren. Your child can’t afford having children at all.
This is what redistribution does, exaggerated. You’re assuming the person you’ll give wealth to will use it in a sane way from your point of view. They won’t. You don’t want to admit the possibility that it may be long term better to let them die to stop this. Of course this is not ideal, not even good. Ideally you’d teach them, but will they listen?
Redistribution doesn’t have to mean giving money. It can mean giving food, education, health care..it’s not as if on-one has thought about this issue before.
Effective charity is ensuring that the money will be used in a sane way. Hence all the discussion on this site about effective altruism.
Of course I won’t argue against effective altruism or charity and I suppose charity is technically a kind of “wealth redistribution”. However, it’s different than taxes in one very important way: it’s redistributing excess wealth after my own goals have been achieved, not before.
I just used charity as an example; the same argument applies to taxes as well. The only difference is that taxes are enforced. It’s still a priority to ensure that taxes are given and used correctly. In many countries with welfare, for instance, to stay on welfare you are required to prove that you have been looking for a source of independent income. Now, scandals do happen, and they happen often, and I agree with you that it’s an important priority to make sure that welfare is only used in a positive way. I would even support a limit on having children unless someone can prove they have the financial means to take care of them. This seems both humane and efficient.
That does not follow. Why would I care about money I have no control over? Why would a politician care about efficiency over publicity? Why wouldn’t the recipient try to take more than he needs? There’s no incentive for anyone to do anything right.
How do prove your assets, when money in the bank is no longer money in the bank? And what you do with violators? Fine them? Sterilise them? Seize their children?
It would seem to me that discouraging people from hiding their money away would be a good thing?
Is that still a clinching argument if redistribution can be justified consequentialistically?
In this account, how did I get so much more healthy, wealthy, and educated than you are? Is there any way to do whatever that was to you, as well, or is it better to just let you die (or kill you)? Would it have similarly been better to let me die (or kill me) before doing whatever it was that made me so much more healthy, wealthy, and educated? How can we tell?
I can’t shake off the impression that you’re implicitly assuming the thesis. I’ll try to answer what I can.
Why the implicit assumption that redistribution has a net positive impact here? Another implicit assumption here is that we’re all born equal. Genetics aside, don’t the children inherit the mindset of their close ones to a large degree? Aren’t societies semi-stable, self-reinforcing, whatever their current wellbeing is? Africa is still poor, despite years of foreign aid. Middle east is still fighting, despite years of foreign interventions… What you need to do is to create incentives to break out of the current state of things and survival instinct is an excellent incentive which can be applied to poor people. What redistribution does is removing this powerful incentive and creating opposite ones. Basically, you’re rewarding people for making poor economic decisions.
Assuming it was redistribution that made you wealthy and educated, does it work reliably on the majority of poor people? Without forcing them somehow out of their current environment? That’s along the same lines of thought as that giving someone a million dollars reliably makes them a millionaire.
This argument only makes sense if you already believe that redistribution reliably works, or anything reliably works, for that matter. People are notoriously difficult to change.
If your relative wealth is a result of genetics, not effort, do you still have an absolute moral claim on it?
Well, I’m not an illtetrate farm labourer like my ancestors.
Why would it have to? You can argue that people have a right to the opportunity of an education, irrespective of outcomes, and you can argue that educating people up to their potential has a nett positive effect. Neither argument requires education to lead to positive outcomes in every individual case.
Western societies introduced universal free education over a century ago, and are now much richer.
The question I asked was, in your scenario, what creates/maintains/justifies the disparity between us.
Your answer seems to be that (genetics aside), in your scenario the root cause is innate advantages due to differences in early environment, which are themselves the result of self-reinforcing patterns in our societies, which causes me to make better decisions than you do.
Is that right? (It’s hard to tell, because you don’t answer my question so much as you treat it as an unarticulated assertion with which you argue.)
Yes, that’s correct. I’m arguing that redistribution in any form of giving “stuff” for free makes it worse by providing strong incentives to maintain status quo.
Have you read Yvain’s non-libertarian FAQ?
Thanks for being clear about that.
On your account does redistribution in the form of, for example, using my “stuff” to educate others in how to make better decisions necessarily make it worse?
Good question.
Yes, I am, too, quite confident that we aren’t understanding each other.
Lumifer’s point is that if you do an extreme enough redistribution, what will happen is that the whole technological system will just collapse.
Well, my point was more limited—in the example the rich high-tech city lost wealth (which they will replenish eventually) and the poor village didn’t gain anything.
You can get into a deeper analysis which would involve e.g. motivations and incentives (what happens to people who get used to living on free handouts?), necessary concentration of capital (a semiconductor fab costs a few billions of dollars, who will build it?), etc. but it’s a large topic.
Several comments up you conceded that deregulation and libertarianism maximize economic growth. Thus redistribution by reducing economic growth causes there to be less to redistribute in the future and thus makes everyone worse off in the long run.
No. I’ll tap out now.