Is Income Inequality Immoral?

[Winchester]

How is it the norm?

It's my anecdotal experience that I don't have to defend my stuff with violence on a regular basis. It is my impression that most others don't, as well. Looking at crime reports, theft is less common than not theft or attempted theft. I leave my laptop on a table in a cafe. Nobody walks up and starts using it, nor do they take it. The word 'thief', is a pejorative, and if someone left with my laptop, others would apply that pejorative to his action. They do this by free agreement. Humans recognize the right to property and that it is not based on the ability to defend that property. Steal a purse from a weak old lady and you are a thief. Break into an undefended home and you are a burglar. 

[Era Might]

Do you regard education/literacy and a greater variety of employment opportunities as negative things?

 

This is a useful place to direct my response, because it relates to my essential point, which is that our world system does not arise spontaneously. We live in a world of nationalism, and national governments have a HUGE stake in the direction and health of the economy. You mentioned India. Do you realize how easy it would be for India to fall of the economic map?

 

 

 

The Indian rupee has dropped by nearly 4% to a new low of 68.7 to the US dollar amid growing concerns over the health of the country's economy.

 

The decline comes a day after India approved infrastructure projects worth $28.4bn (£17.7bn) to try to revive the economy and prop up its currency.

The rupee has lost 20% of its value this year and is one of the world's worst-performing currencies.

It has also been hit by fears that the US will scale back stimulus measures.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23860458

Foreign investment is good, but investors aren't going to stick around when your country collapses, which can happen in a matter of days. And the stakes aren't just private fortunes, but there are political, international consequences to economic crisis. The government has a huge stake in all this...it does not exist in some separate sphere from the economy. And the government has to set policy and create infrastructure for decades...the government is not just focused on getting ROI for investors. In a nationalist system, which I do not think is unproblematic, but it is the system we have, the government plays a central role.

 

Ideology is well and good, but statesmen live in the real world. I mentioned here or another thread that I'm reading Kissinger's book On China, and one of the points he raises is the balancing act presidents / leaders had to play between making things work between the U.S. and China, while satisfying domestic critics who call for purer application of ideology. As someone acquainted with the business world, I know firsthand how inefficient and useless management can be, and I can only imagine what that's like on a large-scale level. I certainly don't think "government control" of anything is some ideal in itself. China learned that in the 80s and 90s that it had to move away from central planning and give more initiative. But that doesn't mean the Chinese government was irrelevant in China's rise to economic power.

 

The world is not a bunch of little Americas. The American model has its own history and context. And we live in a global economic system where the government has to have its hand in a lot of things. Going back to your point of education, there is a reason why the government is involved here. In the modern world, governments understand that education is tied to national emergence. That doesn't mean public schools are ideal or more efficient than private schools, but it does mean that the government cannot just abandon education to "the private sector." Education policy is also foreign policy is also economic policy etc. These things are all interconnected.

Edited August 28, 2013 by Era Might

[4588686]

It's my anecdotal experience that I don't have to defend my stuff with violence on a regular basis.  It is my impression that most others don't, as well. Looking at crime reports, theft is less common than not theft or attempted theft. I leave my laptop on a table in a cafe. Nobody walks up and starts using it, nor do they take it. The word 'thief', is a pejorative, and if someone left with my laptop, others would apply that pejorative to his action. They do this by free agreement. Humans recognize the right to property and that it is not based on the ability to defend that property. Steal a purse from a weak old lady and you are a thief. Break into an undefended home and you are a burglar. 

 

 

That's a pretty weak argument since you're talking about being who have been raised in a society where property rights are violently enforced.  

[Winchester]

That's a pretty weak argument since you're talking about being who have been raised in a society where property rights are violently enforced.  

 

Except they aren't. Property rights when violated are subject to reclamation, which includes violence. People don't often have to resort to violence. I don't avoid stealing simply because there's possible violence. I recognize property. I was taught as a child to respect property, and it wasn't based on retribution, but on the right people had to their property and the right I lacked to their property. Perhaps you were raised differently. The other children I've seen raised were also raised in the same manner.

 

I don't have to prove everyone is, I just have to prove that it's possible. It clearly is possible to have property with voluntary agreements to respect property rights.

[4588686]

Except they aren't. Property rights when violated are subject to reclamation, which includes violence. People don't often have to resort to violence. I don't avoid stealing simply because there's possible violence. I recognize property. I was taught as a child to respect property, and it wasn't based on retribution, but on the right people had to their property and the right I lacked to their property. Perhaps you were raised differently. The other children I've seen raised were also raised in the same manner.

 

I don't have to prove everyone is, I just have to prove that it's possible. It clearly is possible to have property with voluntary agreements to respect property rights.

 

Sure.  And it's possible to have a totally voluntary state with a criminal justice system and police force and drug laws and everything else.  But this is why Anarcho-Capitalism is Utopian.  It completely breaks down and becomes self contradictory unless you contextualize it within a totally idealized world that bears absolutely no resemblance to the world as it actually exists.  

[Socrates]

This is a useful place to direct my response, because it relates to my essential point, which is that our world system does not arise spontaneously. We live in a world of nationalism, and national governments have a HUGE stake in the direction and health of the economy. You mentioned India. Do you realize how easy it would be for India to fall of the economic map?

 

 

 

Foreign investment is good, but investors aren't going to stick around when your country collapses, which can happen in a matter of days. And the stakes aren't just private fortunes, but there are political, international consequences to economic crisis. The government has a huge stake in all this...it does not exist in some separate sphere from the economy. And the government has to set policy and create infrastructure for decades...the government is not just focused on getting ROI for investors. In a nationalist system, which I do not think is unproblematic, but it is the system we have, the government plays a central role.

 

 

 

I never claimed the government has no stake in the economy (obviously, the more prosperous the economy, the greater the government revenue), nor am I arguing for the abolition of absolutely all government.

 

However, it does not follow that because governments have a stake in a prosperous economy, more government interference in an economy is best for it, or that government officials and politicians will always do what is in their countries' best economic interests.  

For instance, North Korea's government has a stake in it's country's economy, and heavily regulates and controls it, yet it's economy is an absolute disaster by anyone's standards.  As was the economy of the USSR and all its failed Communist satellites.

 

I am simply arguing that a free market economy is superior to an economy centrally planned and controlled and/or heavily regulated by the state (as in the various forms of socialism), and leads to the most wealth and prosperity for people.

 

Our own government's increasingly socialistic policies are leading to long-term economic decline for America.

 

I read the article concerning India, yet I see no compelling evidence there that India's current economic problems are caused by too much economic freedom, nor that they will be solved by a return to more state regulation of the economy (before greater economic freedom, more of its people were in fact poorer than they are today.)

 

 

Ideology is well and good, but statesmen live in the real world. I mentioned here or another thread that I'm reading Kissinger's book On China, and one of the points he raises is the balancing act presidents / leaders had to play between making things work between the U.S. and China, while satisfying domestic critics who call for purer application of ideology. As someone acquainted with the business world, I know firsthand how inefficient and useless management can be, and I can only imagine what that's like on a large-scale level. I certainly don't think "government control" of anything is some ideal in itself. China learned that in the 80s and 90s that it had to move away from central planning and give more initiative. But that doesn't mean the Chinese government was irrelevant in China's rise to economic power.

 

 

 

Yes, those noble and wise "statesmen," who know what's best for us all.

 

Your remark about inefficient and useless management brings up a very relevant point.  In a free market, companies that are incompetently managed, or that screw over or fail their clients and customers, go out of business, losing to their better run competitors.  Those that are well run, and satisfy their clients and stakeholders survive and thrive.

 

Unlike in government and  "crony capitalism," where inefficient and useless organizations survive and grow at the expense of the taxpayer.

 

The whole notion that politicians and government bureaucrats somehow magically know better than everyone else how to manage all their own respective businesses is on-the-face-of-it absurd, yet it seems countless socialists and "liberals" continue to believe this ridiculous superstition.

 

 

As for China, while it remains a brutal totalitarian regime, it became much more prosperous when it adopted much of "capitalism" in practice, and increased its economic freedom.  That's not a coincidence - more economic freedom led to greater economic prosperity, and a rapidly growing middle class.

It's not communism or totalitarianism that was responsible for this increase in wealth.

 

 

 

 

The world is not a bunch of little Americas. The American model has its own history and context. And we live in a global economic system where the government has to have its hand in a lot of things. Going back to your point of education, there is a reason why the government is involved here. In the modern world, governments understand that education is tied to national emergence. That doesn't mean public schools are ideal or more efficient than private schools, but it does mean that the government cannot just abandon education to "the private sector." Education policy is also foreign policy is also economic policy etc. These things are all interconnected.

 

 

I think the need for our public school system is itself debatable, as we pour ever more money into public schools with dwindling results - yesterday's high school students were more literate than many college grads today.

 

But the fact remains that overall, private schools are educationally superior to most public schools.  This is because of free market competition and consumer choice.  

Those failed public schools which churn out illiterates at taxpayer expense would simply not exist in a free market, but would be replaced by schools which actually educated children.

 

 

Again, while you've been critical of the free market economy, you've never actually explained what your preferred system is.  Since you argue against a free market economy, presumably you want more government control of the economy in some form, yet you've failed to make a case for it.

[Socrates]

A market economy required violent force to regulate itself.  That's what property rights are.  It's the state violently enforcing what the powerful dictate ought to belong to them.  Obviously that's a simplification but it's roughly true.  That doesn't make the system of property rights illegitimate but it does point our how silly your presentation of a market economy is.  

 

Property is theft, man!

 

"Come see the violence inherent in the system!"

 

 

 

I suppose since property rights are nothing more than a silly fiction imposed by state violence to support the powerful, you'd be perfectly cool with me hot-wiring your car and driving off with it never to return, or with me choosing to use it as a port-a-pottie.

[4588686]

Property is theft, man!

 

"Come see the violence inherent in the system!"

 

 

 

I suppose since property rights are nothing more than a silly fiction imposed by state violence to support the powerful, you'd be perfectly cool with me hot-wiring your car and driving off with it never to return, or with me choosing to use it as a port-a-pottie.

 

 

I would point out that I specifically said that the violence used to maintain property does't make it illegitimate (just like the violence of the state system doesn't delegitimatize the state system).  Or that earlier I described property as socially useful.  But that would require you being able to read a few sentences, analyze the ideas contained in those individual sentences, and then make connections as to how the different ideas in those different sentences connected to each other.  

[Era Might]

Again, while you've been critical of the free market economy, you've never actually explained what your preferred system is.  Since you argue against a free market economy, presumably you want more government control of the economy in some form, yet you've failed to make a case for it.

 

I don't have an "ideal economy." For me the economy, as we currently speak about it, is a mechanical matter. It's a very technical affair and an increasingly big data affair where software runs things.

 

For me, economy is not a mechanical matter but a human matter. I don't start from the standpoint of "what kind of economic mechanism will produce the society I want," but rather, "what kind of society I want," and then I judge mechanics from that standpoint.

 

Many people believe that capitalist society is the kind of society they want. I'm not particularly thrilled with capitalist society. That doesn't mean I don't think the mechanics of economic capitalism aren't efficient or even useful and beneficial in many ways. But I don't start with an abstract idea like "free economy" and move from there. I start with an idea like "the earth exists to nourish everyone, and human society exists to make sure everyone is nourished," and move from there.

[4588686]

And obviously property isn't theft since the idea of 'theft' is only meaningful in relation to a system of property.  Which is also why taxes can't be theft. 

[Socrates]

That's a pretty weak argument since you're talking about being who have been raised in a society where property rights are violently enforced.  

 

You could just as easily dismiss people having a right to not be murdered or raped, as these are likewise violently enforced in our society.

 

 

What Winchester's saying is that generally people in all societies tend to have a basic idea of property rights and that stealing or maliciously damaging other's property is wrong.

 

Or as we benighted ignorant Catholic types would say, "Thou Shall Not Steal" is part of the natural law engraved in men's hearts.

 

 

But I guess a morally relativist atheist could easily say that all moral principles are nothing more than rules enforced by violence by those in power.  But it's rather pointless to argue with such nihilism.  

If I recall, you deny there being an intrinsic right to life, so it's dubious you'd recognize a right to property.  The only morality then is "the strength of the strong" - or the law of the jungle. 

[4588686]

You could just as easily dismiss people having a right to not be murdered or raped, as these are likewise violently enforced in our society.

 

 

What Winchester's saying is that generally people in all societies tend to have a basic idea of property rights and that stealing or maliciously damaging other's property is wrong.

 

Or as we benighted ignorant Catholic types would say, "Thou Shall Not Steal" is part of the natural law engraved in men's hearts.

 

 

But I guess a morally relativist atheist could easily say that all moral principles are nothing more than rules enforced by violence by those in power.  But it's rather pointless to argue with such nihilism.  

If I recall, you deny there being an intrinsic right to life, so it's dubious you'd recognize a right to property.  The only morality then is "the strength of the strong" - or the law of the jungle. 

 

 

You keep trying to conflate legal nihilism with moral nihilism.  Which is weird for a small government conservative.  

[Winchester]

And obviously property isn't theft since the idea of 'theft' is only meaningful in relation to a system of property.  Which is also why taxes can't be theft. 

This is only true if there is no such thing as will. If there's no such thing as will, then this entire conversation is the product not of choices, but of chemical reactions giving us the illusion of choices.

[4588686]

This is only true if there is no such thing as will. If there's no such thing as will, then this entire conversation is the product not of choices, but of chemical reactions giving us the illusion of choices.

 

 

Sure.  I believe in freeish will

[Winchester]

Sure.  I believe in freeish will

Likewise. There are very few choices free of some type or degree of coercion, whether external or internal.