Still, it would be very wrong to describe rightists as thinking that everyone should starve who can’t support themselves. Many people on the political right also practice and/or believe in charity.
As a rightist myself I’d like to point out that there is a massive difference in our belief system between being forced to support folks who don’t work (you are a slave, changing this intolerable state is the primary goal of your life) and choosing to do so (a righteous act, golf claps).
And I’d like to point out that there is a massive difference between maybe getting charitable support that keeps you alive and having a right to welfare. You don’t know you going to be in the position of the giver from behind a veil.
I think this subthread is a good summary of why we should just leave politics out of LW, and why trying to summarize a single dimension of difference is hopeless.
So I’ll continue :) Here goes the anti-turing definition (each side will agree it applies to the other, but not to themselves):
Progressives/leftists believe it’s OK to define rights over things that don’t exist yet (say, food that isn’t yet planted or care from a future doctor who might prefer to golf that day instead of exposing himself to your disease). The conservatives/rightists think it’s OK to define rights that make it easy to ignore others’ suffering.
Progressives/leftists believe it’s OK to define rights over things that don’t exist yet (say, food that isn’t yet planted ..
No, leftists thinks you have rights to things, not over things. Insisting that a right can only be over something pretty well begs the question in favour of property rights.
Progressives/leftists believe it’s OK to define rights over things that don’t exist yet (say, food that isn’t yet planted or care from a future doctor who might prefer to golf that day instead of exposing himself to your disease). The conservatives/rightists think it’s OK to define rights that make it easy to ignore others’ suffering.
I don’t understand this—it doesn’t make sense to me.
It was my attempt to rephrase the “massive difference” posts by WalterL and TheAncientGreek, above.
WalterL taking the rightist side, asserting a right to freedom from coercion and that being forced to support others is a form of slavery. TheAncientGreek takes the leftist side in asserting a right to welfare being far preferable than a charitable state of support.
These rights are in direct conflict. Person A’s right to welfare requires that person B is mandated to provide it. Person B’s right to choose her own activities implies that person A might not get fed or housed.
It was my attempt to rephrase the “massive difference” posts by WalterL and TheAncientGreek, above
Then or was completely wrong. I was drawing a distinction between he kind of outlook you might have if you know you are in a winning position, and the kind you might take if you don’t know what position you are going to be in,
TheAncientGreek takes the leftist side in asserting a right to welfare
Um, to quote TheAncientGeek, “there is a massive difference between maybe getting getting charitable support that keeps you alive and having a right to welfare”—I think you misunderstand him.
But still, how is the right to welfare a right “over things that don’t exist yet” and how is the right to be not taxed (more or less) a right that “make[s] it easy to ignore others’ suffering”?
The first is the right to support and the matching duty falls onto the government. It could be (see Saudi Arabia) that it can provide this support without taking money out of any individuals’ pockets. The second is basically a property right and has nothing to do with the ease of ignoring suffering.
Perhaps I do misunderstand him. I took his “massive difference” comparison to mean that he doesn’t believe charity is sufficient, and he would prefer welfare to be considered a right.
In the long term, the government is just a conduit—it matches and enforces transfers, it doesn’t generate anything itself. The case of states that can sell resources is perhaps an exception for some time periods, but doesn’t generalize in the way most people think of rights independent of local or temporal situations.
In any case, a right to support directly requires SOMEONE to provide that support, doesn’t it? If everyone is allowed to choose not to provide that support, the suffering must be accepted.
Perhaps I do misunderstand him. I took his “massive difference” comparison to mean that he doesn’t believe charity is sufficient, and he would prefer welfare to be considered a right.
That what I meant , butit it has nothing to with things that don’t yet exist.
In the long term, the government is just a conduit—it matches and enforces transfers, it doesn’t generate anything itself.
So, can we just get rid of it, then? :-/ I don’t think we should take a detour into this area, but, let’s say, a claim that government does not create any economic value would be… controversial.
a right to support directly requires SOMEONE to provide that support, doesn’t it?
Yes, correct. All rights come as pairs of right and duty. Whatever is someone’s right is someone else’s duty.
I’m still confused about “rights over things that don’t exist yet” and “rights that make it easy to ignore”.
Asserting a right to eat is not just a statement about current food supply ownership or access. It’s saying that, if food is later created, the right applies to that too. Conversely, if I have the right not to grow food or not to give it to someone else, I am allowed to ignore their pain.
Asserting a right to eat is not just a statement about current food supply ownership or access. It’s saying that, if food is later created, the right applies to that too.
Don’t most rights work this way? I think it’s just the default.
I am allowed to ignore their pain.
I don’t quite understand the “allowed to ignore” part. What is the alternative, Clockwork Orange-style therapy?
I would guess that people on the political right are more likely to donate to charity than people on the political left.
At least when I look at people around me, those on the left are more likely to say “why should I care about this problem; isn’t this one of those things that government should do?”. And those on extreme left will even say something about how ‘worse is better’ because it will make the capitalist system collapse sooner, while donating to alleviate problems delays the revolution.
This analysis suggests that any relationship between political affiliation and charitable donation isn’t very strong. For what it’s worth, the sign of the coefficient in the regression suggests that lefties give more than righties. (The paper also looks at volunteering, and finds that lefties volunteer quite a lot more than righties.)
I wouldn’t make any large bets on the basis of that paper, though. There are lots of interrelated things here—politics, wealth, religion, etc., etc., etc. -- and even if those regression coefficients indicate something real rather than just noise it may be much more complicated than “group X is more generous with their time/money than group Y”. And it looks like it’s the work of a single inexperienced researcher, and doesn’t seem to be a peer-reviewed publication.
This paper—not available for free, but there’s an informal writeup by someone else here says that other research has indicated that righties give more than lefties (contrary to what the paper above says), and purports to explain this by saying that righties are more religious and the religious give more. More precisely, it looks as if religion leads to giving in two ways. There’s giving to religious charities, which obviously religious people do a lot more of than irreligious ones; and there’s other giving, which church attenders do and so (to a comparable extent) do people involved in other sorts of socially-conscious meeting up. (“Local civic or educational meetings” is the thing they actually looked at.)
If you control for religion, then allegedly the left/right differences largely go away.
Make of all that what you will. (What I make of it is: it’s complicated.)
“charity” is a political term that makes measuring this very difficult. If you count donations to private-charity art museums and to activism/signaling groups rather than only looking at poverty impact, you’ll get results that don’t really tell you much about useful donations.
Still, it would be very wrong to describe rightists as thinking that everyone should starve who can’t support themselves. Many people on the political right also practice and/or believe in charity.
As a rightist myself I’d like to point out that there is a massive difference in our belief system between being forced to support folks who don’t work (you are a slave, changing this intolerable state is the primary goal of your life) and choosing to do so (a righteous act, golf claps).
And I’d like to point out that there is a massive difference between maybe getting charitable support that keeps you alive and having a right to welfare. You don’t know you going to be in the position of the giver from behind a veil.
I think this subthread is a good summary of why we should just leave politics out of LW, and why trying to summarize a single dimension of difference is hopeless.
So I’ll continue :) Here goes the anti-turing definition (each side will agree it applies to the other, but not to themselves):
Progressives/leftists believe it’s OK to define rights over things that don’t exist yet (say, food that isn’t yet planted or care from a future doctor who might prefer to golf that day instead of exposing himself to your disease). The conservatives/rightists think it’s OK to define rights that make it easy to ignore others’ suffering.
No, leftists thinks you have rights to things, not over things. Insisting that a right can only be over something pretty well begs the question in favour of property rights.
I don’t understand this—it doesn’t make sense to me.
It was my attempt to rephrase the “massive difference” posts by WalterL and TheAncientGreek, above.
WalterL taking the rightist side, asserting a right to freedom from coercion and that being forced to support others is a form of slavery. TheAncientGreek takes the leftist side in asserting a right to welfare being far preferable than a charitable state of support.
These rights are in direct conflict. Person A’s right to welfare requires that person B is mandated to provide it. Person B’s right to choose her own activities implies that person A might not get fed or housed.
Then or was completely wrong. I was drawing a distinction between he kind of outlook you might have if you know you are in a winning position, and the kind you might take if you don’t know what position you are going to be in,
Um, to quote TheAncientGeek, “there is a massive difference between maybe getting getting charitable support that keeps you alive and having a right to welfare”—I think you misunderstand him.
But still, how is the right to welfare a right “over things that don’t exist yet” and how is the right to be not taxed (more or less) a right that “make[s] it easy to ignore others’ suffering”?
The first is the right to support and the matching duty falls onto the government. It could be (see Saudi Arabia) that it can provide this support without taking money out of any individuals’ pockets. The second is basically a property right and has nothing to do with the ease of ignoring suffering.
Perhaps I do misunderstand him. I took his “massive difference” comparison to mean that he doesn’t believe charity is sufficient, and he would prefer welfare to be considered a right.
In the long term, the government is just a conduit—it matches and enforces transfers, it doesn’t generate anything itself. The case of states that can sell resources is perhaps an exception for some time periods, but doesn’t generalize in the way most people think of rights independent of local or temporal situations.
In any case, a right to support directly requires SOMEONE to provide that support, doesn’t it? If everyone is allowed to choose not to provide that support, the suffering must be accepted.
That what I meant , butit it has nothing to with things that don’t yet exist.
So, can we just get rid of it, then? :-/ I don’t think we should take a detour into this area, but, let’s say, a claim that government does not create any economic value would be… controversial.
Yes, correct. All rights come as pairs of right and duty. Whatever is someone’s right is someone else’s duty.
I’m still confused about “rights over things that don’t exist yet” and “rights that make it easy to ignore”.
Asserting a right to eat is not just a statement about current food supply ownership or access. It’s saying that, if food is later created, the right applies to that too. Conversely, if I have the right not to grow food or not to give it to someone else, I am allowed to ignore their pain.
Don’t most rights work this way? I think it’s just the default.
I don’t quite understand the “allowed to ignore” part. What is the alternative, Clockwork Orange-style therapy?
“I am allowed to X” in this context means “X is not worthy of moral condemnation, and forcibly stopping X is worthy of moral condemnation”.
Moral condemnation or application of force are the common responses.
I would guess that people on the political right are more likely to donate to charity than people on the political left.
At least when I look at people around me, those on the left are more likely to say “why should I care about this problem; isn’t this one of those things that government should do?”. And those on extreme left will even say something about how ‘worse is better’ because it will make the capitalist system collapse sooner, while donating to alleviate problems delays the revolution.
This analysis suggests that any relationship between political affiliation and charitable donation isn’t very strong. For what it’s worth, the sign of the coefficient in the regression suggests that lefties give more than righties. (The paper also looks at volunteering, and finds that lefties volunteer quite a lot more than righties.)
I wouldn’t make any large bets on the basis of that paper, though. There are lots of interrelated things here—politics, wealth, religion, etc., etc., etc. -- and even if those regression coefficients indicate something real rather than just noise it may be much more complicated than “group X is more generous with their time/money than group Y”. And it looks like it’s the work of a single inexperienced researcher, and doesn’t seem to be a peer-reviewed publication.
This paper—not available for free, but there’s an informal writeup by someone else here says that other research has indicated that righties give more than lefties (contrary to what the paper above says), and purports to explain this by saying that righties are more religious and the religious give more. More precisely, it looks as if religion leads to giving in two ways. There’s giving to religious charities, which obviously religious people do a lot more of than irreligious ones; and there’s other giving, which church attenders do and so (to a comparable extent) do people involved in other sorts of socially-conscious meeting up. (“Local civic or educational meetings” is the thing they actually looked at.)
If you control for religion, then allegedly the left/right differences largely go away.
Make of all that what you will. (What I make of it is: it’s complicated.)
“charity” is a political term that makes measuring this very difficult. If you count donations to private-charity art museums and to activism/signaling groups rather than only looking at poverty impact, you’ll get results that don’t really tell you much about useful donations.