“I don’t think that’s how it works in reality. To start with, consider the difference between elected politicians and the permanent government bureaucracy.”
No disagreement here; but that’s a matter of how a particular democratic system is laid out, not a necessary property of democracy.
“It’s quite a bit more complicated. Let me do a short run through terminal desires towards which having a great amount of wealth contributes:
•consumption: maybe I like to consume expensive things
•freedom: wealth buys a lot of freedom, both positive and negative
•safety: wealth buys safety as well, both directly and as a buffer against volatility in the future
•welfare of children: a large inheritance lets you pass the benefits of wealth to your kids
•power: wealth can be transmuted (to a limited degree) into power
•status: wealth can be and often is used as currency in status competitions
The level of wealth which would satisfy all these terminal desires fully is pretty high :-)”
That’s really not the point. The point is that wealth isn’t the only conceivable way to attain these goods, and that if there are better ways of doing so, wealth stops serving its purpose. I’m trying to lay out a vision of a better way of doing so, which you’re being fairly helpful in helping my figure out slightly better.
“Compare it to alternatives—real ones, not imaginary.”
All abstract concepts are imaginary. You can’t point to anything that anyone can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell and say, “this is capitalism”. The realm of abstracts is pretty damn enormous; to carry this site’s favorite metaphor, you mean to tell me that you don’t believe that there’s any map which could better describe the territory of our world than capitalism? Again, I ask—really??
I understand it may be difficult, but I thank us for trying in any case.
The point is that wealth isn’t the only conceivable way to attain these goods
Maybe not, but “wealth” is a very general concept. It can be defined as an amount of value where the value itself is defined as the quality of being wanted by someone.
I’m trying to lay out a vision of a better way of doing so
Well, then you probably should start by showing that your way actually does contribute towards these terminal desires. At the moment you just assert that this is so but do not show how and why.
All abstract concepts are imaginary. You can’t point to anything that anyone can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell and say, “this is capitalism”.
I can point to specific societies, both historical and contemporary, and say “This one I say belongs to capitalism” and “This one I say does not belong to capitalism”.
So I’ll rephrase my suggestion: compare actual, existing societies using your yardstick of “make everyone rich, or even just modestly comfortable”. Check if the societies at the top of your list are better described as capitalist or not capitalist.
Nowhere in the definition of capitalism does it say “There should be no social welfare programs” or “The state should not own even a tiny little itty bitty factory”.
I would call all of Western Europe capitalist easily enough, for example. There are, of course, many different flavors of capitalism.
Some people call western Europe socialist. The problem is lies in drawing contrary conclusions from the same evidence as a result of labeling it differently.
We are now in this discussion thread where aquaticko has actually defined what does he mean by “socialist”. So within this particular context these “some people” are just using different terminology.
A .has also defined what A. means by “good/successful” nation, and it isn’t what you mean, so you are nto actually refuting A. with any evidence that the successful nations are all capitalist: you are instead able to attach a different truth value to a string by interpreting the terms in it differently.
I still maintain that Western European nations are best described as having mixed economies. There is a failure mode associated with describing them as a capitalist. people go on to conclude that they are successful because they are capitalist, that the non-capitialist elements need to be removed and so on. People think that is an argument based on a fact, but it is actually based on the way they have labelled a fact.
A .has also defined what A. means by “good/successful” nation, and it isn’t what you mean
That is not true. In this subthread we are both using the same definition: “make everyone rich, or even just modestly comfortable”.
I still maintain that Western European nations are best described as having mixed economies.
You are, of course, free to use whatever labels you like.
people go on to conclude that they are successful because they are capitalist
That seems a valid conclusion to me. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
that the non-capitialist elements need to be removed
And that doesn’t follow. I am not sure what “non-capitalist elements” are, anyway. If you mean something like less state ownership of companies (e.g. in France) I would agree that it would be a good thing.
People think...
So are you objecting to some unnamed people not present in this thread… OK, but how is this relevant to anything here?
“Maybe not, but “wealth” is a very general concept. It can be defined as an amount of value where the value itself is defined as the quality of being wanted by someone.”
All the more reason why it doesn’t make sense to measure wealth in terms of profit or income.
“Well, then you probably should start by showing that your way actually does contribute towards these terminal desires. At the moment you just assert that this is so but do not show how and why.”
So you really think that I’ve been speaking a nonsense through this whole debate? I’ll never claim perfection, but that seems a little unfair.
“So I’ll rephrase my suggestion: compare actual, existing societies using your yardstick of “make everyone rich, or even just modestly comfortable”. Check if the societies at the top of your list are better described as capitalist or not capitalist.”
Anything short of constant conjunction is insufficient to assume causation. I don’t think I’ve said that capitalism makes everyone worse off, but it has made some people worse off, and I do think there’s a lot of room for different concepts to do better.
So you really think that I’ve been speaking a nonsense through this whole debate?
Nope. I think that you focused on, to quote you, “egalitarianism, equality, and communitarianism” to the exclusion of other values. Notice how the terminal desires that we’ve been talking about in this sub-thread do not include any of those.
I do think there’s a lot of room for different concepts to do better.
Sure. There’s only one problem with that—ideas similar to yours were quite popular at the beginning of the XX century. They were also “different concepts” aiming to do better than capitalism.
“Nope. I think that you focused on, to quote you, “egalitarianism, equality, and communitarianism” to the exclusion of other values. Notice how the terminal desires that we’ve been talking about in this sub-thread do not include any of those.”
As I said in the other comment thread, it’s an issue of universalizability of moral laws. It’s inconsistent to write a moral rule stating that any one person ought to be sacrificed for another against his/her will because it’s not what I would consent to myself. Similarly, it’s inconsistent with reality to state a moral rule saying that everyone ought to own an entire continent by themselves. Unless you start from a base of egalitarianism and equality, nothing a person can say has any merit because anything which conflicts with those values is ultimately hypocritical and inconsistent.
“Sure. There’s only one problem with that—ideas similar to yours were quite popular at the beginning of the XX century. They were also “different concepts” aiming to do better than capitalism. What was the price for trying them out?”
Undoubtedly quite high, but as a consequentialist and utilitarian, I see no problem in saying that, if they had worked out in reaching their ends, they would’ve been worth it from the perspective of someone who believed in those ends. The ends always justify the means because from the perspective of our consciousness, time only ever moves forward.
I’d like to think I’d be willing to sacrifice myself for some greater good if I agreed with it and thought my sacrifice would help achieve it. I’ll concede I might chicken out—I’m only human—but that would be a poor thing for me to do.
Unless you start from a base of egalitarianism and equality, nothing a person can say has any merit
You may want to think carefully about this claim. Assuming charitably that you are only talking about moral questions not other statements, this ignores the issue that even if one thinks that “egalitarianism and equality” should be basic moral axioms, one can still have derived common conclusions from a different moral base. For example, Lumifer and you almost certainly both think that say torturing cats is wrong and that deliberate genocide of human populations is also wrong (for a suitably narrow definition of genocide). So any conclusion Lumifer draw from those results will still be valid in your moral framework.
To use a different analogy, one person might be using ZFC as their axioms for math, while another uses ZF with Foundation replaced by the axiom of Anti-Foundation. The two will derive different theorems, but the vast majority of mathematics will be agreed on by both people. It wouldn’t make sense for the Foundationalist to ignore a proof that the Anti-Foundationalist did that only used Peano Artihmetic.
As I said in response to Lumifer’s post, the problem is this still leaves it up to chance. We may come to the same conclusions on one thing or another, but that is purely by accident, and if we should begin to come up with different moral axioms, I have no reason to respect his viewpoint if a.) I have no guarantee that he’ll respect mine, or b.) I have no axiom which states that I should respect other moral frameworks even if they’re different from mine. Certainly, there are many instances in which both parties to a discussion discover an idea they agree upon, but the debate continues because of how the agreement was come upon, when it shouldn’t matter.
We may come to the same conclusions on one thing or another, but that is purely by accident,
You may want to look at the ZFC example again. Is the shared commonality of Peano Arithmetic there purely by accident?
In general, humans occupy a pretty small piece of mindspace, and the ethical and moral attitudes of people influenced by Western thought occupies a small piece of that.
a.) I have no guarantee that he’ll respect mine, or b.) I have no axiom which states that I should respect other moral frameworks even if they’re different from mine.
I’m confused by a how a guarantee why personal respect is necessary. It doesn’t impact whether or not one of his arguments should be at all persuasive. As to the second, given your emphasis on equality and egalitarianism, I’m surprised that some form of respect for other moral frameworks would fall out from that.
Unless you start from a base of egalitarianism and equality, nothing a person can say has any merit
I think we’ll have to disagree about that.
I’d like to think I’d be willing to sacrifice myself
The point of that mention of history wasn’t that certain people were ready to sacrifice themselves. The point was that they were perfectly willing to sacrifice others.
If people aren’t treated as though they’re inherently equal, then why should any one person’s agency or vision be respected? If I’m not willing to abide by the obligation created by the existence of others’ rights, what obligation do others have to abide by the existence of my rights? And if there is no obligation in either direction, to what extent can we be said to have or acknowledge the existence of rights? I think you’d agree: none at all.
“The point of that mention of history wasn’t that certain people were ready to sacrifice themselves. The point was that they were perfectly willing to sacrifice others.”
You’ve been pointing out, throughout much of our discussion, a common definition of rights: they are both the right itself and an accompanying obligation. It’s misguided to expect a moral right without any accompanying obligation to hold much water, because whether something is a right or obligation is just a matter of perspective between the two different parties who claim them. E.g., I have a right to free religion, but this appears to be an obligation for others not to restrict my religious practice, and vice versa. It’s basic social contract theory, really, the only dysfunction in it arising when not all people affected by it are given equal say in its construction, hence the importance of egalitarianism and democracy.
Besides, we already have a form of voluntary sacrifice of agency which is practiced on a global scale; private property. We use private property laws because, while I may want to exercise my agency to get some of the resources someone else accumulates, I can’t condone thievery and pillaging because I wouldn’t want it to happen to me. So it doesn’t seem totally out-there to suggest this mutual-benefit mentality could be shifted away from or extended past private property to something else (and it seems to me that we have done that quite a lot already, e.g. laws against violence or in protection of intellectual property). I’m just suggesting a new kind of property right, but I think we’ve talked about that particular idea enough for now.
If people aren’t treated as though they’re inherently equal, then why should any one person’s agency or vision be respected?
I recommend observing real life and learning history. People have rarely been treated as inherently equal and yet it very often happened that “one person’s agency or vision” was respected.
Do note that people’s capabilities vary greatly and reality doesn’t care at all about equality or fairness.
whether something is a right or obligation is just a matter of perspective between the two different parties who claim them.
Yes, this is correct, but I don’t see how is this related to the willingness to sacrifice others.
“I recommend observing real life and learning history. People have rarely been treated as inherently equal and yet it very often happened that “one person’s agency or vision” was respected. Do note that people’s capabilities vary greatly and reality doesn’t care at all about equality or fairness.”
That essentially relies on chance. A person’s agency is most likely to be respected by me if, by chance, I see that person as roughly my equal. Most people don’t worry about violating the agency of a dog nearly as much as they worry about violating the agency of another human (although this obviously depends on one’s definition of personhood). The agency of African American people in the U.S. was frequently violated because they were perceived as being different from, and lesser than, white people.
Proximity plays a noted role, here. There’s generally a greater concern for the agency of those near you than those you don’t know about, because the only violations of agency you care about are those that seem to be a threat to you. I just think that personhood is a valuable enough thing that we ought to be more systemic in how we protect the agency of things which fit whatever definition of personhood we agree to.
“Yes, this is correct, but I don’t see how is this related to the willingness to sacrifice others.”
You cannot say that there is a right for you to sacrifice other people against their will, because, definitionally, you cannot willingly abide by the obligation to sacrifice yourself against your will for other people.
You cannot say that there is a right for you to sacrifice other people against their will, because, definitionally, you cannot willingly abide by the obligation to sacrifice yourself against your will for other people.
That is subject to the “what counts as the ‘same thing’?” objection. I would indeed willingly abide by the obligation to sacrifice non-Jiro people for Jiro so by your reasoning it’s okay to expect other people to abide by the same thing.
A person’s agency is most likely to be respected by me if, by chance, I see that person as roughly my equal.
No, I don’t think so. I think a person’s agency is most likely to be respected by you if that person has shown you evidence that he is superior to you.
“I don’t think that’s how it works in reality. To start with, consider the difference between elected politicians and the permanent government bureaucracy.”
No disagreement here; but that’s a matter of how a particular democratic system is laid out, not a necessary property of democracy.
“It’s quite a bit more complicated. Let me do a short run through terminal desires towards which having a great amount of wealth contributes: •consumption: maybe I like to consume expensive things •freedom: wealth buys a lot of freedom, both positive and negative •safety: wealth buys safety as well, both directly and as a buffer against volatility in the future •welfare of children: a large inheritance lets you pass the benefits of wealth to your kids •power: wealth can be transmuted (to a limited degree) into power •status: wealth can be and often is used as currency in status competitions
The level of wealth which would satisfy all these terminal desires fully is pretty high :-)”
That’s really not the point. The point is that wealth isn’t the only conceivable way to attain these goods, and that if there are better ways of doing so, wealth stops serving its purpose. I’m trying to lay out a vision of a better way of doing so, which you’re being fairly helpful in helping my figure out slightly better.
“Compare it to alternatives—real ones, not imaginary.”
All abstract concepts are imaginary. You can’t point to anything that anyone can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell and say, “this is capitalism”. The realm of abstracts is pretty damn enormous; to carry this site’s favorite metaphor, you mean to tell me that you don’t believe that there’s any map which could better describe the territory of our world than capitalism? Again, I ask—really??
I understand it may be difficult, but I thank us for trying in any case.
Maybe not, but “wealth” is a very general concept. It can be defined as an amount of value where the value itself is defined as the quality of being wanted by someone.
Well, then you probably should start by showing that your way actually does contribute towards these terminal desires. At the moment you just assert that this is so but do not show how and why.
I can point to specific societies, both historical and contemporary, and say “This one I say belongs to capitalism” and “This one I say does not belong to capitalism”.
So I’ll rephrase my suggestion: compare actual, existing societies using your yardstick of “make everyone rich, or even just modestly comfortable”. Check if the societies at the top of your list are better described as capitalist or not capitalist.
The societies at the top of the top of list are mixed economies, of a sort. It’s kinda glass-half-full to label them capitalistic.
Nowhere in the definition of capitalism does it say “There should be no social welfare programs” or “The state should not own even a tiny little itty bitty factory”.
I would call all of Western Europe capitalist easily enough, for example. There are, of course, many different flavors of capitalism.
Some people call western Europe socialist. The problem is lies in drawing contrary conclusions from the same evidence as a result of labeling it differently.
We are now in this discussion thread where aquaticko has actually defined what does he mean by “socialist”. So within this particular context these “some people” are just using different terminology.
A .has also defined what A. means by “good/successful” nation, and it isn’t what you mean, so you are nto actually refuting A. with any evidence that the successful nations are all capitalist: you are instead able to attach a different truth value to a string by interpreting the terms in it differently.
I still maintain that Western European nations are best described as having mixed economies. There is a failure mode associated with describing them as a capitalist. people go on to conclude that they are successful because they are capitalist, that the non-capitialist elements need to be removed and so on. People think that is an argument based on a fact, but it is actually based on the way they have labelled a fact.
That is not true. In this subthread we are both using the same definition: “make everyone rich, or even just modestly comfortable”.
You are, of course, free to use whatever labels you like.
That seems a valid conclusion to me. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
And that doesn’t follow. I am not sure what “non-capitalist elements” are, anyway. If you mean something like less state ownership of companies (e.g. in France) I would agree that it would be a good thing.
So are you objecting to some unnamed people not present in this thread… OK, but how is this relevant to anything here?
One way to try to sidestep this issue is to explicitly use something like aquaticko!socialist, but that might cost more awkwardness than it saves you.
“Maybe not, but “wealth” is a very general concept. It can be defined as an amount of value where the value itself is defined as the quality of being wanted by someone.”
All the more reason why it doesn’t make sense to measure wealth in terms of profit or income.
“Well, then you probably should start by showing that your way actually does contribute towards these terminal desires. At the moment you just assert that this is so but do not show how and why.”
So you really think that I’ve been speaking a nonsense through this whole debate? I’ll never claim perfection, but that seems a little unfair.
“So I’ll rephrase my suggestion: compare actual, existing societies using your yardstick of “make everyone rich, or even just modestly comfortable”. Check if the societies at the top of your list are better described as capitalist or not capitalist.”
Anything short of constant conjunction is insufficient to assume causation. I don’t think I’ve said that capitalism makes everyone worse off, but it has made some people worse off, and I do think there’s a lot of room for different concepts to do better.
Nope. I think that you focused on, to quote you, “egalitarianism, equality, and communitarianism” to the exclusion of other values. Notice how the terminal desires that we’ve been talking about in this sub-thread do not include any of those.
Sure. There’s only one problem with that—ideas similar to yours were quite popular at the beginning of the XX century. They were also “different concepts” aiming to do better than capitalism.
What was the price for trying them out?
“Nope. I think that you focused on, to quote you, “egalitarianism, equality, and communitarianism” to the exclusion of other values. Notice how the terminal desires that we’ve been talking about in this sub-thread do not include any of those.”
As I said in the other comment thread, it’s an issue of universalizability of moral laws. It’s inconsistent to write a moral rule stating that any one person ought to be sacrificed for another against his/her will because it’s not what I would consent to myself. Similarly, it’s inconsistent with reality to state a moral rule saying that everyone ought to own an entire continent by themselves. Unless you start from a base of egalitarianism and equality, nothing a person can say has any merit because anything which conflicts with those values is ultimately hypocritical and inconsistent.
“Sure. There’s only one problem with that—ideas similar to yours were quite popular at the beginning of the XX century. They were also “different concepts” aiming to do better than capitalism. What was the price for trying them out?”
Undoubtedly quite high, but as a consequentialist and utilitarian, I see no problem in saying that, if they had worked out in reaching their ends, they would’ve been worth it from the perspective of someone who believed in those ends. The ends always justify the means because from the perspective of our consciousness, time only ever moves forward.
I’d like to think I’d be willing to sacrifice myself for some greater good if I agreed with it and thought my sacrifice would help achieve it. I’ll concede I might chicken out—I’m only human—but that would be a poor thing for me to do.
You may want to think carefully about this claim. Assuming charitably that you are only talking about moral questions not other statements, this ignores the issue that even if one thinks that “egalitarianism and equality” should be basic moral axioms, one can still have derived common conclusions from a different moral base. For example, Lumifer and you almost certainly both think that say torturing cats is wrong and that deliberate genocide of human populations is also wrong (for a suitably narrow definition of genocide). So any conclusion Lumifer draw from those results will still be valid in your moral framework.
To use a different analogy, one person might be using ZFC as their axioms for math, while another uses ZF with Foundation replaced by the axiom of Anti-Foundation. The two will derive different theorems, but the vast majority of mathematics will be agreed on by both people. It wouldn’t make sense for the Foundationalist to ignore a proof that the Anti-Foundationalist did that only used Peano Artihmetic.
As I said in response to Lumifer’s post, the problem is this still leaves it up to chance. We may come to the same conclusions on one thing or another, but that is purely by accident, and if we should begin to come up with different moral axioms, I have no reason to respect his viewpoint if a.) I have no guarantee that he’ll respect mine, or b.) I have no axiom which states that I should respect other moral frameworks even if they’re different from mine. Certainly, there are many instances in which both parties to a discussion discover an idea they agree upon, but the debate continues because of how the agreement was come upon, when it shouldn’t matter.
You may want to look at the ZFC example again. Is the shared commonality of Peano Arithmetic there purely by accident?
In general, humans occupy a pretty small piece of mindspace, and the ethical and moral attitudes of people influenced by Western thought occupies a small piece of that.
I’m confused by a how a guarantee why personal respect is necessary. It doesn’t impact whether or not one of his arguments should be at all persuasive. As to the second, given your emphasis on equality and egalitarianism, I’m surprised that some form of respect for other moral frameworks would fall out from that.
I think we’ll have to disagree about that.
The point of that mention of history wasn’t that certain people were ready to sacrifice themselves. The point was that they were perfectly willing to sacrifice others.
If people aren’t treated as though they’re inherently equal, then why should any one person’s agency or vision be respected? If I’m not willing to abide by the obligation created by the existence of others’ rights, what obligation do others have to abide by the existence of my rights? And if there is no obligation in either direction, to what extent can we be said to have or acknowledge the existence of rights? I think you’d agree: none at all.
“The point of that mention of history wasn’t that certain people were ready to sacrifice themselves. The point was that they were perfectly willing to sacrifice others.”
You’ve been pointing out, throughout much of our discussion, a common definition of rights: they are both the right itself and an accompanying obligation. It’s misguided to expect a moral right without any accompanying obligation to hold much water, because whether something is a right or obligation is just a matter of perspective between the two different parties who claim them. E.g., I have a right to free religion, but this appears to be an obligation for others not to restrict my religious practice, and vice versa. It’s basic social contract theory, really, the only dysfunction in it arising when not all people affected by it are given equal say in its construction, hence the importance of egalitarianism and democracy.
Besides, we already have a form of voluntary sacrifice of agency which is practiced on a global scale; private property. We use private property laws because, while I may want to exercise my agency to get some of the resources someone else accumulates, I can’t condone thievery and pillaging because I wouldn’t want it to happen to me. So it doesn’t seem totally out-there to suggest this mutual-benefit mentality could be shifted away from or extended past private property to something else (and it seems to me that we have done that quite a lot already, e.g. laws against violence or in protection of intellectual property). I’m just suggesting a new kind of property right, but I think we’ve talked about that particular idea enough for now.
I recommend observing real life and learning history. People have rarely been treated as inherently equal and yet it very often happened that “one person’s agency or vision” was respected.
Do note that people’s capabilities vary greatly and reality doesn’t care at all about equality or fairness.
Yes, this is correct, but I don’t see how is this related to the willingness to sacrifice others.
“I recommend observing real life and learning history. People have rarely been treated as inherently equal and yet it very often happened that “one person’s agency or vision” was respected. Do note that people’s capabilities vary greatly and reality doesn’t care at all about equality or fairness.”
That essentially relies on chance. A person’s agency is most likely to be respected by me if, by chance, I see that person as roughly my equal. Most people don’t worry about violating the agency of a dog nearly as much as they worry about violating the agency of another human (although this obviously depends on one’s definition of personhood). The agency of African American people in the U.S. was frequently violated because they were perceived as being different from, and lesser than, white people.
Proximity plays a noted role, here. There’s generally a greater concern for the agency of those near you than those you don’t know about, because the only violations of agency you care about are those that seem to be a threat to you. I just think that personhood is a valuable enough thing that we ought to be more systemic in how we protect the agency of things which fit whatever definition of personhood we agree to.
“Yes, this is correct, but I don’t see how is this related to the willingness to sacrifice others.”
You cannot say that there is a right for you to sacrifice other people against their will, because, definitionally, you cannot willingly abide by the obligation to sacrifice yourself against your will for other people.
That is subject to the “what counts as the ‘same thing’?” objection. I would indeed willingly abide by the obligation to sacrifice non-Jiro people for Jiro so by your reasoning it’s okay to expect other people to abide by the same thing.
No, I don’t think so. I think a person’s agency is most likely to be respected by you if that person has shown you evidence that he is superior to you.