The first part of this turned seemed like mostly politics—oversimple and flat-out non-real example being used to justify a policy without any nuance or sense. Point 1 is just unsupported and hard to argue for or against, other than by saying your example is wrong and doesn’t justify any specific type or level of redistribution, and you haven’t specified even what “redistribution” means, especially in a dynamic equilibrium where wealth and income are related but distinct.
Point 2 is completely missing the fundamental question of what people want—Friedman’s point that if people actually were self-aligned that they care about feeding specific poor people rather than getting a new iPhone, they’d do it. Instead, they want abstract poor people to get fed, and only if they can force others to do so (along with themselves, in many cases, but rarely just unilaterally). You don’t address this disparity.
Point 3 is actually a reasonable start to laying out the fundamental puzzle of large-group behaviors. I’ll say that I am a consequentialist, and that I consider myself somewhat altruistic, but not an Altruist with a capital A. And I’m in the first group: I consider myself many orders of magnitude more important (to me) than very distant strangers. Not zero, but for some of ’em, more than tens of millions of times more important. For some, much less discount, maybe half as import for very close friends and relatives.
Other people have a declining marginal utility for me, and for a given level of resources, it CAN go negative. There are almost 8 billion of them currently, and I think that’s probably more than I prefer while we’re still at today’s tech level and limited to one planet. I don’t know if concentrations of resources are necessary to large-scale endeavors, but I suspect it, and I don’t worry too much about it.
The first part of this turned seemed like mostly politics—oversimple and flat-out non-real example being used to justify a policy without any nuance or sense.
The example is just to illustrate that it’s possible for everyone to prefer taxation but not want to donate unilaterally. Maybe this is an easy enough point that it wasn’t worth illustrating with an example. I tried to make the example obviously silly so that it wouldn’t be taken as politically live, but I think that failed.
you haven’t specified even what “redistribution” means, especially in a dynamic equilibrium where wealth and income are related but distinct.
e.g. policies justified by benefiting poor people at the expense of rich people, e.g. an income tax which the state then spends to benefit people equitably.
I absolutely agree that this is not a case for an income tax, it’s one argument for an income tax (which is different from arguments about justice or fairness and seems worth having in a separate mental category).
Point 2 is completely missing the fundamental question of what people want—Friedman’s point that if people actually were self-aligned that they care about feeding specific poor people rather than getting a new iPhone, they’d do it. Instead, they want abstract poor people to get fed, and only if they can force others to do so (along with themselves, in many cases, but rarely just unilaterally). You don’t address this disparity.
It seems consistent for me to prefer that all poor people get food than that all rich people get iPhones, yet to prefer that I get an iPhone than that a particular poor person get food (since I care more about myself than the average rich person). Do you disagree that this would be a consistent set of preferences? Do you agree that it’s consistent but just disagree that it’s empirically plausible? At any rate, it seems like we should agree that Friedman’s argument doesn’t work without some additional assumptions.
Sure, it’s consistent to prefer non-you poor people get food over non-you rich people getting iphones. But most actual people prefer THEY get an iphone over feeding any specific poor person. People aren’t fungible, and no actual humans are fully indifferent to which humans are helped or harmed.
The first part of this turned seemed like mostly politics—oversimple and flat-out non-real example being used to justify a policy without any nuance or sense. Point 1 is just unsupported and hard to argue for or against, other than by saying your example is wrong and doesn’t justify any specific type or level of redistribution, and you haven’t specified even what “redistribution” means, especially in a dynamic equilibrium where wealth and income are related but distinct.
Point 2 is completely missing the fundamental question of what people want—Friedman’s point that if people actually were self-aligned that they care about feeding specific poor people rather than getting a new iPhone, they’d do it. Instead, they want abstract poor people to get fed, and only if they can force others to do so (along with themselves, in many cases, but rarely just unilaterally). You don’t address this disparity.
Point 3 is actually a reasonable start to laying out the fundamental puzzle of large-group behaviors. I’ll say that I am a consequentialist, and that I consider myself somewhat altruistic, but not an Altruist with a capital A. And I’m in the first group: I consider myself many orders of magnitude more important (to me) than very distant strangers. Not zero, but for some of ’em, more than tens of millions of times more important. For some, much less discount, maybe half as import for very close friends and relatives.
Other people have a declining marginal utility for me, and for a given level of resources, it CAN go negative. There are almost 8 billion of them currently, and I think that’s probably more than I prefer while we’re still at today’s tech level and limited to one planet. I don’t know if concentrations of resources are necessary to large-scale endeavors, but I suspect it, and I don’t worry too much about it.
The example is just to illustrate that it’s possible for everyone to prefer taxation but not want to donate unilaterally. Maybe this is an easy enough point that it wasn’t worth illustrating with an example. I tried to make the example obviously silly so that it wouldn’t be taken as politically live, but I think that failed.
e.g. policies justified by benefiting poor people at the expense of rich people, e.g. an income tax which the state then spends to benefit people equitably.
I absolutely agree that this is not a case for an income tax, it’s one argument for an income tax (which is different from arguments about justice or fairness and seems worth having in a separate mental category).
It seems consistent for me to prefer that all poor people get food than that all rich people get iPhones, yet to prefer that I get an iPhone than that a particular poor person get food (since I care more about myself than the average rich person). Do you disagree that this would be a consistent set of preferences? Do you agree that it’s consistent but just disagree that it’s empirically plausible? At any rate, it seems like we should agree that Friedman’s argument doesn’t work without some additional assumptions.
Sure, it’s consistent to prefer non-you poor people get food over non-you rich people getting iphones. But most actual people prefer THEY get an iphone over feeding any specific poor person. People aren’t fungible, and no actual humans are fully indifferent to which humans are helped or harmed.