Hi E@N!
So today’s talk was a little different from the others. It was a lot more like a standard political philosophy lecture than the applied ethics discussions that we normally get. As I have strong interests in political philosophy, the lecture was right up my alley, but I suspect some of you found it less interesting than I did. (But if you did find it interesting, do check out PHIL171: Justice. It’s offered every year and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in political theory, political philosophy, or ethics.)
I would like to open today’s discussion up to very broad issues that you might want to write about. Because Dr. Arnold’s talk was, in effect, about what a just society should look like, any post about a social issue will be sufficiently relevant. So feel free to write about the theory, but feel just as free to try to examine some concrete issues.
Thanks for a great quarter, and good luck on finals!
John Rawls completely changed the way I view the world. Before, I was more sympathetic to the view that some people simply deserved more than others– whether it be from working harder or even being in a position to offer the other people in society the things they want. This seemed intuitive, but now I really question the moral desert involved by simply possessing a greater skillset, work ethic, or richer parents with greater access to resources. The argument is that all these things are morally arbitrary in the sense that they are just chance empirical features of the world that no one really can take credit for themselves. Even the position that people who work harder should reap more benefits runs into problems (for example, if a puny and a strong construction worker have the same output, but the stronger one barely broke a sweat, should they be paid according to effort or output?)
Talents as well as money can be inherited. Young musical prodigies clearly have something the rest of us don’t have. Talents and money can both be used to gain advantages in life, yet people will resent the inheritance of money but not the inheritance of talent. This is because they believe the person who has inherited skills somehow “deserves” the advantages it brings, but as soon as we realize that the characteristics that enable a better life (money, talent, work ethic, good looks) are mostly chance, we have to start acknowledging that what any given person “deserves” in a moral sense is hard to pin down.
The counter-argument I have not heard refuted is the notion that people with money do not just happen to have money (usually). Political and social institutions themselves can affect how much output talented individuals choose to bequeath upon the rest of us. There are apparently quite clear examples of government intervention that failed and made people demonstrably worse off, so the social safety net = better results for poor people equation might be an oversimplification.
A major problem I have with Rawls is the difference principle that only allows inequality if it benefits the least well off the most. How could it possibly be moral to forgo higher utility overall (and for every individual) simply because the rich might benefit more by a given inequality inducing action? Imagine the poor group A with 100 utils per person and the rich group B with 500 utils per person. Now imagine a social action or event that might change this to 110 utils per person in group A and 1000 utils per person in group B. Since the action doesn’t benefit the least well off members the most, it suggests that the just thing to do is to forgo these benefits, even though everyone is demonstrably better off!
First, I wanted to touch on the interpretation of the difference principle spoken of in earlier comments. I had always understood the difference principle not to require that the least off be benefited the MOST by inequality, but simply that the worst off must be put in an improved condition. So if there are two groups, one with 100 utils, and one group with 500 utils, what the difference principle does not allow is for the 500 group to increase to 700 utils by a process which drops the first group to 90 utils. However, as long as the first group is increased from 100 utils to 110 utils, the second group can increase by any amount.
I forget if Rawls provides a test for choosing between multiple societal conditions, all of which have inequalities that benefit the least well off. For example, if there was one form of inequality that added the most to the overall pie AND improved the worst off, and another form of inequality that added an extremely large amount to the worst off but didn’t improve the overall pie as much. Which would Rawls say was the most just?
In listening to the talk, I found myself very curious what a right wing argument would be for free-market capitalism in the face of Rawls’ requirement of equal opportunity. If your life chances shouldn’t be tied to the socio-economic conditions that you came from, it seems extremely far-fetched to me that the invisible hand would provide this on its own. Take the school argument mentioned in class. If education was completely privatized, it was suggested that the private sector would give poor inner city kids a better chance at a comparable education as middle class suburban kids. First of all, free market competition always has winners and losers, and I don’t know why this would be any different. The people with the money to pay for good schools would pay for it, and there is no guarantee that poor kids would be provided any education without government intervention. But even if you could make the argument that the education would be better than it is now if given over to the free market, that is not enough. The real issue is whether the free market would provide a fairer and more equal education system than a system with extreme government intervention that forces equality of opportunity. That would be a much more difficult argument to make, and even less plausible than the idea that the free market would be better than what we have now.
This was an interesting lecture in that I havn’t spend a great deal of time contemplating over political theory. It was interesting to learn Rawl’s theory on how a society can be fully just. I don’t think his principles are fully plausible to our society. I think Rawl has to much faith in society, that society would act justly if given the economic and social freedoms discussed. I don’t have such a high opinion. People take advantage of those less fortunate. Even with his difference principle, there is still a way where the poor are left worse off.
I’m also very interested in how this just society that Rawl talks about would look. I know Sweeden was mentioned in class, but Sweeden is much different than the US. Could we inaction a just society in the US with our population and the corruption that goes on in our government and big businesses.
I really enjoyed listening to Sam Arnold’s talk, as it was quite different than the usual format. With that said, I walked away from that talk not caring one bit what John Rawls might have or might not have meant in his ideas on a just society. Societies are not just, and this nation is not solely built on the concept of a just society, but one that abides by the American constitution. Although many things may go awry in a capitalist society, I think it’s entirely necessary to the success of the United States as a whole, and it’s what this society was built on. As the Declaration of Independence famously declares, governments are instituted among men to insure the preservation of the inalienable rights given to men inherently: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Once these rights are secure, American history demonstrates that the free market does a magnificent job of providing jobs, economic growth and prosperity.
Economic freedom invokes competition and the necessary growth that keeps our country viable. Only capitalism maximizes both growth and individual freedom, unlike the interventionist state. Unlike socialism, capitalism is adaptive, not rigid; private ownership of the means of production flourishes wherever it takes root, regardless of culture. Redistribution of wealth is ideological and utopian in nature and often times results in failure of its intended goal. So perhaps this nation isn’t entirely just, but I just can’t seem to agree that it’s the government’s job to redistribute the wealth of this nation by intervening with the economy. Sorry John Rawls!
I once heard lecture on social equality in which the speaker insisted that the words “social equality” are in and of itself an oxymoron – within every society, it is impossible for everyone to have the same chances, opportunities, etc. If everyone were to have the same “white collar” job, then this society would be nonfunctioning. An counter-argument is that if people in the society can never be equal, then why bother trying to reach equality? My few cents on this issue is that it’s neither about achieving absolutely equality nor is it about maintaining the status quo. I feel like the most important aspect about achieving social equality is the very process of reaching equality as it acts as a curb on the rich getter richer (though it’s arguable that this may happening right now, but it could be worse I suppose), and it serves as a driving force for societal development as a whole.
I agree with what Tevin T mentioned, that “talent as well as money can be inherited.” I feel like the reason that people may feel that inheriting talent is more justified than inheriting money is because acquiring talent seems less plausible than money, since genes do not mutate as often to generate the favorable predispositions associated with being talented. Money, on the other hand, could be acquired postnatally, and therefore may seem more achievable. Yet if talent is something people are born with, then what’s the point of hard work? I think what matters more about possessing talent is how people use it. The same hard work that is needed to express one’s talent to its full potential is needed to earn the money that makes them rich. That said, this rationale does not justify the dramatic social inequality gap. However, I feel like this rationale provides an alternative perspective on the hatred toward the rich. Energy in achieving social equality should be devoted to working as a whole rather than the notion of punishing the rich and helping the poor. The latter perspective is inherently unequal and is detrimental to the society.
I don’t think that social justice requires anything so strict or calculating as Rawls’ difference principle. Firstly, I think we should resist as much as possible the temptation to throw around concepts like “100 utils here versus another 300 there”. Putting aside for a minute the difficulty involved in calculating something as ambiguous as a ‘util’ it’s still not at all clear what we mean by the term. I think we find that the answer to the question, what constitutes ‘more utility’ for someone is itself a deeply divisive question. It might be tempting to think of it as just equivalent to money, but, ignoring for a minute the materialist slant to this view, anyone who has taken an introductory economics class will be able to tell you that you can’t just hand out an extra $100 to everyone and expect everyone to be that much better off, as presumably you should be able to do with ‘utils’.
Rather obsessing over how to calculate happiness for each person, I think we would be better off simply asking, in qualitative terms, what kind of society we want. And I think there is a lot more consensus in that arena than people like to let on. I think we can agree that everyone should have roughly equal access to the same quality of education; that no one should go wanting in food, shelter, or basic healthcare; that no one should feel that his voice is being drowned out in the political process; and, crucially, no one should have to live under the inevitably coercive power of someone who is much much richer than she is. Currently, our society does not ensure these basic rights, and I think we should focus on delivering them before we start worrying about tweaking our imaginary utility machine to try to guarantee perfect equality.
The theories of social justice that Dr. Arnold presented were interesting but I didn’t start thinking of them in practical terms until the discussion. One man asked, “How can you maintain power without secrecy?” His point: information is power. This is clearly seen nowadays with the growth of the Internet. Not everyone actually has Internet access and those people who are disconnected are surprisingly at a disadvantage. Now especially at a place like Stanford one cannot survive as a student without being online. That’s where students sign up for classes, get all the latest updates, and surprisingly build their networks. If there are students who come in without laptops or cell phones, they will in time acquire those gadgets. It seems as if society has evolved to a point where one could say that Internet access is a basic right and that without it we cannot sufficiently live a fulfilling life. As much as one could vow to get offline for a day or a week, everyone else continues to be online. At some point doing work and maintaining relationships means using these 21st century gadgets and websites.
Beyond access, the initial social issues and question posed should also be considered from the side of the website providers. Is information really that important? Look at Facebook. They have millions of users online who access their site for free. Why? Because those users are giving the company SO much information that they inevitably use to make money. Take Google. Searching on their website gives them so much data on how to market things to users just by the behavior of user browsing routines. All this information again turns into money.
There is definitely people out there with more information than others. If Internet access is a basic right, at least everyone would be on somewhat equal footing. Everyone could at least log on and have the opportunity to acquire that information. Then of course there are other factors in play such as education and time to go on sites that offer the most useful information.
As the Internet and these websites grow, the issue of privacy is becoming important. With less transparency on what these websites do with all the information that users provide, the people with the most information are acquiring even more information. This gap is continuing to grow which could be a significant challenge for society to address in a few years (or even now).
For my blog post, I wanted to first clarify some of the points that were made earlier and offer my own perspective on the matter.
First off, I think that those who have posted before me who leaned left have unintentionally misinterpreted what in America would be labeled as “conservative” or “right wing” economics. On the whole, even though people casually use the terms “laissez-faire” and “free market”, they overextend their intended meaning. Smith, Friedman, Hayek, and other famous names in libertarian thought did not believe in completely unregulated markets or in the lack of government initiatives. People tend to think that laissez faire economics would bring about a sort of anarchy by which the strong would dominate the weak in a win-lose situation. This is simply not true. Conservatives in America and libertarians in general, believe that the government has the role of providing for national defense, creating a system of laws that are conducive to a free and productive society, and other key services. Although wealth would be unequally distributed, the poor would be better off than in a society that didn’t embrace free market ideals.
Additionally, the libertarianism that has emerged in the United States is not adverse to transfers for the poor. People tend to equate laissez faire with a lack of government initiatives for the poor. However, it was the free market economist Milton Friedman who proposed a negative income tax that would redistribute the wealth to the poor. In fact, Friedman was not opposed to many of the initiatives that would be labeled as “liberal” or “democratic”. He pioneered the cap and trade system and recognized the limits of the free market system. Also, he acknowledged the great wealth disparity that is created as a result of capitalism. However, he is not concerned about redistributing wealth for its own sake. In his 2008 debate with then Presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton, President Obama famously said that he would favor an increase in the capital gains tax even if it meant that tax revenues decreased after doing so. For those not familiar with economics, Obama claimed that wealth distribution was at the helm of his agenda even if it meant that his tax policy would reduce wealth without any benefits for the poor. Perhaps this was a slip in his response, but it highlights the prevailing belief that equality must be achieved even if it means destruction of wealth. Without getting too much into politics, I believe that his response was shocking and wholly illogical. People argue for equality on the grounds that some people are born into certain situations that are more favorable than others by pure chance. I agree with the statement of the fact, however, I disagree with the belief that equality should be achieved at a cost of growth or progress. Concentration of wealth among the few might seem unfair but what in life is truly fair? Very little is decided by our own choice and our physical and mental capabilities are largely determined by biology. Therefore, I don’t think that the priority should be maximizing fairness for its own sake. Such schemes have almost always meant that growth is hindered and mediocrity sanctioned. If maximizing happiness is indeed the goal of the government, then the free market system has been the best solution to satisfy the wants of a grasping and needy society. One can argue about the human condition and what needs are innate, but under the assumption that people gain greater utility from better health, wellness, technological progress, and the amenities made available through such progress, the free market system is the best of its alternatives.
This presentation was simply another liberal versus progressivist economic theory debate, which I will now throw my two cents in.
Clearly, what happened in the 2008 banking fail and Wall Street collapse was evidence that humans do not, in fact, need to act in good faith in order to get ahead — and in fact, the opposite was true during the 2008 recession. Even in the Wall Street era of relatively laissez-faire business transactions, the free market did not end up correcting itself before an inevitable, full blown economic depression would have happened, prevented by federal government intervention in the market. Perhaps Tomasi, Friedman, or any other classic liberal economist would defend the position that the market would have corrected itself if a bank bailout would not have happened, however I would be curious to ask Mr. Friedman if letting the US spiral into another Depression would be worth letting the banks fail to again reach market stabilization.
In response to Winston, this country does not stand for simple, innate needs. The United States prides itself on the Civil Rights Movement, women’s suffrage, and other equality movements that give citizens equal opportunities. I see little reason why economic equality should not fit along these lines, and indeed maybe this will be the next successful movement. People who are stuck at the bottom economic rung have a very hard time climbing their way up, and it has become not only a social problem, but also a country-wide economic problem. When the middle class has more purchasing power, it drives consumption as well as production — right now, there has been a lack of consumption because those at the top cannot spend enough money to keep our economy going. Friedman had a great distrust for centralized government, but I think he did not spend enough time worrying about what happens on the other end: What happens when private firms are able to control the purchasing power of the entire country? It becomes dangerous — re: Wall Street morality fails.
Solution? Make sure the middle- and lower-class citizens are protected from the self-serving and money-incentivized private sphere. It’s crazy to believe that in a free-market system, a love for money supposedly corrects transactions and makes everyone in a society better off.
To sum up my point, it’s very hard and round-about to talk about economic theory through ethical arguments. It’s much more effective to look at evidence of economic cycles of the country, then decide if government intervention in the market place is a good thing. Since I mistrust human motivations and greed for money, I interpret Rawls’ theories the exact opposite from Tomasi.
I found a number of things interesting about Friday’s talk. First, Sam Arnold said that Tomasi overstates the importance of economic liberty and Arnold used the example of a worker’s right to work for below the minimum wage. I flat out agree with Arnold and I would not have imagined we would be agreeing on anything at the beginning of the talk!
In fact, I did not agree with Arnold on only a few peculiarities. Namely, in regards to the effects witnessed in capitalism during a financial crisis, Arnold said that if you try to make people act in moral ways in the market you are fundamentally wrong and are undermining capitalism. In addition, Arnold went as far to say that the wall street traders involved in the 2008 crash were not morally wrong. I see where Arnold is coming from but do not agree with him, I think capitalism should exist in a moral setting.
Lastly, I liked the notion Arnold mentioned, via Tomasi, that if the state got out of education, the entire system (public and private education) would flourish. Intriguing! I wish he would have spoken more on this idea, I guess I will have to browse Tomasi to find out.
Thanks for a great quarter everyone!