I also don’t think the vast inequalities in say, the US result from purely Malthusian factors
I don’t know what this means, because I can think of several interpretations of it.
I do know that characterizing your position as being not “purely” the result of one factor, in “conflict with the majority consensus here” is almost certain to be denotationally incorrect. People are reasonable and you do not distinguish yourself by thinking a result stems from more than one cause.
You might say that you mean to say that they ascribe more importance to these factors than you do, and that meaning was clear. My point, other than not knowing exactly what “Malthusian” means here, is that you are phrasing your position in a way that makes your opponents wrong almost by definition—it’s a dark art thing to do, even if it can be inferred that you mean to say you only disagree about how much more important they think a factor than you do.
genuinely able to choose freely...uncoerced
This is a spectrum of conditions.
the difference between myself and most free-market advocates
I think you put this very well because the idea of a free market is almost independent from questions of distribution. A society could, for example, heavily tax, incomes, property, and sales and provide no or few services other than a large stipend to each individual. So it is a matter of demographics alone, “most” people’s beliefs, rather than being essential.
I don’t know what this means, because I can think of several interpretations of it
Put simply: I do not buy the idea that poverty in the society I live in is caused by scarcity as a limiting factor on available resources for them (there’s plenty of nutritious, nourishing food around, and enough land currently tapped agribusiness that in a purely abstract sense we already produce enough food for everyone currently alive on Earth to hypothetically be eating 3500 calories a day; there’s tons of land and even unoccupied homes), or that the numbers of people caught by it reflect primarily those who aren’t capable of making and doing something bigger and more value-creating for themselves and others around them.
Who disagrees with “in a purely abstract sense we already produce enough food for everyone currently alive on Earth to hypothetically be eating 3500 calories a day; there’s tons of land and even unoccupied homes”?
the numbers of people caught by it reflect primarily those who aren’t capable of making and doing something bigger and more value-creating for themselves and others around them.
You mean slightly different circumstances would see most people primarily in poverty be not caught in it, and people not caught in it caught in it? I think LW has some unusual beliefs about the relative unimportance of character traits in decision making.
I don’t know what this means, because I can think of several interpretations of it.
I do know that characterizing your position as being not “purely” the result of one factor, in “conflict with the majority consensus here” is almost certain to be denotationally incorrect. People are reasonable and you do not distinguish yourself by thinking a result stems from more than one cause.
You might say that you mean to say that they ascribe more importance to these factors than you do, and that meaning was clear. My point, other than not knowing exactly what “Malthusian” means here, is that you are phrasing your position in a way that makes your opponents wrong almost by definition—it’s a dark art thing to do, even if it can be inferred that you mean to say you only disagree about how much more important they think a factor than you do.
This is a spectrum of conditions.
I think you put this very well because the idea of a free market is almost independent from questions of distribution. A society could, for example, heavily tax, incomes, property, and sales and provide no or few services other than a large stipend to each individual. So it is a matter of demographics alone, “most” people’s beliefs, rather than being essential.
Put simply: I do not buy the idea that poverty in the society I live in is caused by scarcity as a limiting factor on available resources for them (there’s plenty of nutritious, nourishing food around, and enough land currently tapped agribusiness that in a purely abstract sense we already produce enough food for everyone currently alive on Earth to hypothetically be eating 3500 calories a day; there’s tons of land and even unoccupied homes), or that the numbers of people caught by it reflect primarily those who aren’t capable of making and doing something bigger and more value-creating for themselves and others around them.
Who disagrees with “in a purely abstract sense we already produce enough food for everyone currently alive on Earth to hypothetically be eating 3500 calories a day; there’s tons of land and even unoccupied homes”?
You mean slightly different circumstances would see most people primarily in poverty be not caught in it, and people not caught in it caught in it? I think LW has some unusual beliefs about the relative unimportance of character traits in decision making.