Let me just bring up one historical parallel to put complaints like this (“if we ease up on controlling and punishing some particular group, this will greatly decrease society’s productivity”) in context. Such rhetoric was very common in the 18th and early 19th century, and its object was the proletariat and poverty. Here’s a paper and an article about old-time Malthusian/anti-worker beliefs held by elites.
“The possession of a cow or two, with a hog, and a few geese, naturally exalts the peasant. . . . In sauntering after his cattle, he acquires a habit of indolence. Quarter, half, and occasionally whole days, are imperceptibly lost. Day labour becomes disgusting; the aversion in- creases by indulgence. And at length the sale of a half-fed calf, or hog, furnishes the means of adding intemperance to idleness.”
“Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilization. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.”
In my opinion, this justification for class warfare from the top is analogous to such justifications for anti-feminism as seen today.
Tl;dr, from the outside view, the author is not in a good reference class.
Of course! Innovations such that we won’t need to work as much are great, but innovations such that they won’t need to work as much are awful! Didn’tcha know?
It appears this is a little earlier than the 19th century. The author of this passage is John Billingsley), writing in 1795. The whole pamphlet, “General View of the Agriculture of the County of Somers,” is here. There are a lot of old books, by many different authors, with the title “General View of the Agriculture of the County of X,” they seem to be reports for the predecessor of MAFF).
In spite of the ugly quotation, the wikipedia article makes him sound like basically a good person (but kind of a historical nobody).
Edit: I didn’t get the links to webpages with parentheses in them working. Add a ‘)’ at the end of the first and third.
Edit 2: Oops, Multiheaded gives two quotations in the two paragraphs. I only tracked down the first.
Do you know of anyone who argued both that the lower classes should be kept busier and that inherited wealth was bad because it discouraged industriousness?
Adam Smith, one of the quoted people, said that gentry practice of dividing their estates was good because make them work just to return to the wealth they had grown up with. Actually, I think his point was less about effort than about overcoming risk aversion.
Don’t know; it’s quite intellectually consistent, sure, but my point is that the argument in favour of poverty was pure 110% motivated cognition, and its full absurdity can be seen much better in retrospect . At the very most, I’d suspect that someone paid lip service to the latter part after a long attack on the poor—like, say, a right-libertarian like Tyler Cowen spends much more time condemning labour regulation (and I agree with him that private companies shouldn’t be charities in disguise) than he does advocating for more ample welfare to compensate the proletariat.
Let me just bring up one historical parallel to put complaints like this (“if we ease up on controlling and punishing some particular group, this will greatly decrease society’s productivity”) in context. Such rhetoric was very common in the 18th and early 19th century, and its object was the proletariat and poverty. Here’s a paper and an article about old-time Malthusian/anti-worker beliefs held by elites.
In my opinion, this justification for class warfare from the top is analogous to such justifications for anti-feminism as seen today.
Tl;dr, from the outside view, the author is not in a good reference class.
EDIT: Downvotes, really? :tips fedora:
Of course! Innovations such that we won’t need to work as much are great, but innovations such that they won’t need to work as much are awful! Didn’tcha know?
It appears this is a little earlier than the 19th century. The author of this passage is John Billingsley), writing in 1795. The whole pamphlet, “General View of the Agriculture of the County of Somers,” is here. There are a lot of old books, by many different authors, with the title “General View of the Agriculture of the County of X,” they seem to be reports for the predecessor of MAFF).
In spite of the ugly quotation, the wikipedia article makes him sound like basically a good person (but kind of a historical nobody).
Edit: I didn’t get the links to webpages with parentheses in them working. Add a ‘)’ at the end of the first and third.
Edit 2: Oops, Multiheaded gives two quotations in the two paragraphs. I only tracked down the first.
Do you know of anyone who argued both that the lower classes should be kept busier and that inherited wealth was bad because it discouraged industriousness?
Adam Smith, one of the quoted people, said that gentry practice of dividing their estates was good because make them work just to return to the wealth they had grown up with. Actually, I think his point was less about effort than about overcoming risk aversion.
Don’t know; it’s quite intellectually consistent, sure, but my point is that the argument in favour of poverty was pure 110% motivated cognition, and its full absurdity can be seen much better in retrospect . At the very most, I’d suspect that someone paid lip service to the latter part after a long attack on the poor—like, say, a right-libertarian like Tyler Cowen spends much more time condemning labour regulation (and I agree with him that private companies shouldn’t be charities in disguise) than he does advocating for more ample welfare to compensate the proletariat.