There is a moral question here: should I take money from rich people to give it to poor people? Reasonable people I know tend to say yes, at least in the world as it is today, and I agree.
My own answer is “Yes, with caveats, and acknowledging the real-world context we live in makes a difference to this question.”
In a purely abstract sense I find it, well, problematic at best, but I also take note of the fact that most functional, somewhat wealthy (in their own ecological and economic context if not by present-day Western standards) societies existing prior to capitalism had gentle, largely-voluntary methods that had normative rather than authoritative sway over people. Potlatch, for example—throwing a fantastic party and giving away your stuff is socially upvoted, but it’s not actually compulsory, and the population sizes and living patterns ensure you’re going to to benefit from someone else’s potlatch later, so it’s in your own interests if you’re wealthy to trade permanent access to specific material items for reputation, secure in the knowledge that you will get back items you need to make your living and accrue wealth later.
We don’t have anything quite like that in Western culture; our own tax system seems to be more a mutation of the feudal “tribute-paying” behavior set, which is quite different (everyone pays a portion of their production into a central pool, leaders decide what to do with it, only now we have some democratic legislative access built into that). Redistributive mechanisms seem to stabilize a society, and enable the generation of collective forms of wealth (case in point: the national highway system here in the US); I don’t think everyone having the exact same outcome is a realistic, achievable or even desireable goal, but I do think that everyone being genuinely able to choose freely is—the difference between myself and most free-market advocates there being I do not think our current state of affairs looks much like that, or that it’s even achievable from our current standpoint until there’s no significant cluster of people unable to vote with their dollar about life necessities (just as you cannot make an uncoerced choice at the barrel of a gun, neither can you do so when you’re starving or facing death from a treatable disease).
I also don’t think the vast inequalities in say, the US result from purely Malthusian factors (much less conditions like global food unavailability), beliefs I’m willing to defend here if asked for sources but which at any rate seem to conflict with the majority consensus here.
I also don’t think the vast inequalities in say, the US result from purely Malthusian factors (much less conditions like global food unavailability), beliefs I’m willing to defend here if asked for sources but which at any rate seem to conflict with the majority consensus here.
Why do you believe this conflicts with the majority consensus here?
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.
My own answer is “Yes, with caveats, and acknowledging the real-world context we live in makes a difference to this question.”
In a purely abstract sense I find it, well, problematic at best, but I also take note of the fact that most functional, somewhat wealthy (in their own ecological and economic context if not by present-day Western standards) societies existing prior to capitalism had gentle, largely-voluntary methods that had normative rather than authoritative sway over people. Potlatch, for example—throwing a fantastic party and giving away your stuff is socially upvoted, but it’s not actually compulsory, and the population sizes and living patterns ensure you’re going to to benefit from someone else’s potlatch later, so it’s in your own interests if you’re wealthy to trade permanent access to specific material items for reputation, secure in the knowledge that you will get back items you need to make your living and accrue wealth later.
We don’t have anything quite like that in Western culture; our own tax system seems to be more a mutation of the feudal “tribute-paying” behavior set, which is quite different (everyone pays a portion of their production into a central pool, leaders decide what to do with it, only now we have some democratic legislative access built into that). Redistributive mechanisms seem to stabilize a society, and enable the generation of collective forms of wealth (case in point: the national highway system here in the US); I don’t think everyone having the exact same outcome is a realistic, achievable or even desireable goal, but I do think that everyone being genuinely able to choose freely is—the difference between myself and most free-market advocates there being I do not think our current state of affairs looks much like that, or that it’s even achievable from our current standpoint until there’s no significant cluster of people unable to vote with their dollar about life necessities (just as you cannot make an uncoerced choice at the barrel of a gun, neither can you do so when you’re starving or facing death from a treatable disease).
I also don’t think the vast inequalities in say, the US result from purely Malthusian factors (much less conditions like global food unavailability), beliefs I’m willing to defend here if asked for sources but which at any rate seem to conflict with the majority consensus here.
Why do you believe this conflicts with the majority consensus here?
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.