Would it have taken care of the problem to say "it seems that S's paper has a problem given the relationship between RP & SWB discussed in such-and-such thread"?
No, actually what I was saying was, given the previous discussion you could probably be much less deferential than "If this is right" etc. Whence this wee sleekit cowering timorous Labs?
I want there to be unified strategy as to whether we should boost Wolfson's or LB's candidacy, because settling on whose candidacy we should boost could lead to an entertaining blogfight.
Dream scenario: Wolfson appears to have won, but comments with minor grammatical errors are thrown out because of some obscure variant of Robert's Rules; LB carries home the trophy.
It's quite good, in fact; as Schmidtz is almost always.
Okay, onto the content.
Why is equality important? Schmidtz offers a couple of reasons:
1) when equality enables liberation
2) when equality enables prosperity
I might offer two additional cases where equality could have moral salience:
3) when equality is essential for respect of humanity
4) when equality yields useful results
Although I think most of recent philosophical egalitarianism is bunk (c.f. Dworkin, Ronald) justification #3 (perhaps similar to Scmidtz's #1) for equality is an immensely powerful one. I can get behind it. For a man to have more rights, two votes in a general election, a need to be convitcted by a unanimous jury of 13, these inequalities seem to me insufferable. Yet discussion of Schmidtz's critique of egalitarianism, here and at CT, have largely focused on reason #4: equality may be important because of consequentialist (and perhaps frankly utilitarian) reasons. That's what the positional goods talk indicates.
To the consequentialist arguments for egalitarianism, one is tempted to respond as one does to the consequentialist arguments for everything. Namely: who cares? Yes, inequality makes people envious and unhappy. No, we should not therefore redress that inequality. Brad Pitt's sole (and unequal!) enjoyment of Angelina Jolie's company no doubt makes lots of people envious and unhappy. They can cordially screw themselves. Like the man says, mates are not to be redistributed. So too, professorships in the humanities and publication in Mind are not to be redistributed. Is money so different? Why? And even if one could distinguish economic inequality from inequaltiy in esteem and prestige, should we not suspect that heirarchy and envy would not reestablish itself along whatever axis is not equalized? High school, I recall, had a fair amount of positional goods, but no market economy.
As an argument contra monetary redistribution, "other status hierarchies would spring up" strikes me as being perfect as the enemy of the good style.
Is the response that there would be ian mprovement of well-being at all? So it's the perfect as the enemy of the status quo. Because that just seems false.
Why not? Have there not been times and places where distributing mates was indeed seen as the legitimate function of government? Could we not choose to re-establish such a system?
The Cato article concludes
A truly foundational theory would start by acknowledging that there is a prior moral question about which inequalities are ours to arrange.
But I don't see how he gets to that conclusion. He recognizes that no individual alone produces much of anything: "If we truly were on our own, producing something as mundane as a slice of pizza would be out of the question." Yet he somehow makes a left turn into a conclusion that we each own our contributions: "We weave our contribution into an existing tapestry of contributions, and within limits, are seen as owning our contributions, however humble they may be." The only justification for this I see is simply an affirmation of faith: "That is why people contribute, and that in turn is why we have a system of production."
But not all individuals, nor all societies, act out of rationally calculated economic self-interest. If you assume everyone does, then you conclude that your system must allow ownership of contributions. But that seems, well, like cheating.
So why don't we distribute mates? Isn't it for some reason independent of the the question of the ownership of mates? Similarly, shouldn't we recognize that allowing ownership of one's product is a choice, made (if it is made) for other reasons, rather than a necessary assumption? Aren't all inequalities ours to arrange?
As I said, more or less, over at CT, there are a lot of people who believe that inequality is a good thing, but who can't quite say so because the ideal of equality has been institutionalized. So we get surrogate arguments that equality really means equality of opportunity, or that attempts to reduce inequality do more harm than good because inequality is, unfortunately, inevitable, or because government action is parasitical on the economy and usually bad.
Equality of opportunity -- lots of people believe this in theory, but not to the extent of letting their own kids sink and swim, to find their own natural place in the class system.
Reasons why inequality can be called good: because it's a just assignment of rewards and punishments, because fear of misery motivates people to effort and frugality, and because a large proportion of the population is just by nature no damn good.
Why on earth would fungibility be salient? Does this mean that in a barter economy we shouldn't seek equality? I'll just ask to get paid in handicrafts and heirloom vegetables, then...
The Prior Question:
Michael, I think Schmidtz's point here is just obviously true. I'd gloss it as follows. For a category X, we may think it would be nicer/better/more aesthetically pleasing if it were distributed more (or conceivably less) equally. Before we redistribute it, we just need to ask: do we have a right to do so? Is it the type of thing that "we" have a right to distribute?
This is what mate distribution (or Angelina Jolie distribution) is meant to show: it is unjust for a political system (much less a liberal one!) to force citizens into marriage. Could such a system be instituted? Sure. We could also choose to re-institute chattel slavery. That's not an argument for the consistancy of slavery with liberal democracy.
For a category X, we may think it would be nicer/better/more aesthetically pleasing if it were distributed more (or conceivably less) equally. Before we redistribute it, we just need to ask: do we have a right to do so? Is it the type of thing that "we" have a right to distribute?
Doesn't this argument (or rather, the argument that I'm understanding you to make, that society does not have the right to redistribute goods), as applied to money, prove the wrong thing? Government has no functions that cannot be glossed as redistributive -- even, say, the courts, an arm of government which most libertarians have no trouble with, take resources from some citizens to fund their administration of disputes between other citizens. Someone who thinks that it is wrong for government to redistribute property at all is a full scale anarcho-libertarian (which very, very few people actually are.)
So, once you've conceded that some measure of property redistribution is appropriate and not wrongful, as most people do, you need an argument that says that X amount of redistribution is okay, but Y is too much. I haven't seen such an argument being made here or on CT.
Michael, I think Schmidtz's point here is just obviously true. I'd gloss it as follows. For a category X, we may think it would be nicer/better/more aesthetically pleasing if it were distributed more (or conceivably less) equally. Before we redistribute it, we just need to ask: do we have a right to do so? Is it the type of thing that "we" have a right to distribute?
Baa, I could sign on to the simple point that we should ask that question, but it also seems to me that it immediately follows that economic inequality is ours to remedy, to whatever extent is not destructive to motivation or doesn't create instability, because the means by which contributions are judged of value and worthy of financial compensation are largely arbitrary and entirely socially constructed. "Day trader" is not infinity times more valuable than "mother" on any sensical scale of value I can formulate. So society giveth, and society taketh away. It may be that certain efforts to remedy inequality will have worse consequences than the consequences of inequality; that's a reason not to embark on them, but the right to property is constructed, not natural.
p.s. I apologize for the fact that I don't know anything about philosophy and may use words wrong.
It's not meant to be an argument that all redistribution is unjustifiable. You're right that one would need to say a great deal more about that. I think all Schmidtz means is that prior to asking whether redistribution X or Y (and note: this need not be an egalitarian redistribution) has good consequences, one must ask whence the right to redistribute. Trivially true, no?
Trivially true that the question must be asked, but it's a question that has been answered along the following lines: 'a government has the right to redistribute property of its citizens for the common good through the democratically agreed upon mutual consent of its citizens,' by anyone who accepts that the existence of a redistributing government is acceptable at all. At that point, isn't the question of "Does government have a right to redistribute?" answered (or, rather "Does redistribution by government violate the rights of its citizens?), leaving the salient question as "Is redistribution X a good idea?"
Furthermore, it's pretty much trivially obvious that the present distribution of resources in our society is deeply unequal.
Those asking for a justification for redistribution tend to be arguing either explicitly or implicitly *for* a particular type of distribution of resources -- the status quo. A distribution that seems on the face of it to be deeply unjust.
The anti-redistribution crowd aren't taking the default neutral position against which the redistribution crowd must provide an argument and it's disingenuous of them to imply that they are.
Frat-boy argumentation tricks make me lose my temper.
Are you sure that's not just a side effect of whatever medication you're on, Emerson? Baa may be the least frat boy-ee of any of the guys who comment here regularly.
There is an understanding of rights and property according to which redistribution is guilty until proven innocent, and freemarketers assume this understanding right at the beginning. Then they do the math and find that lo! some given public program is redictruibution, and it's wrong. If you don't share the original understanding their arguments are worthless, but if you allow them to assume that understanding, there's usually not much for you to say.
Anti-redistributionist arguments always begin by assuming that some given initial distribution is natural, good, and darn near holy.
I'd be stunned if baa wasn't substantially more a conservative than a libertarian. I'd be stunned if I, and even you, weren't more libertarian than him. If you're saying that his reference to sex as enjoyable, or comodifiable, or Jolie as particularly attractive, is out of character for everyone else here, I disagree.
Anyway, fine. You were offended by that bit of the argument. I'd thought he'd pulled it, in some fashion, from the underlying argument. But whatever; ignore it. You've seen baa around here often enough to know he's an honest and responsive conservative interlocutor.
Dropped end: "If he spoke offensively, it wasn't intended. And it's pretty rare. Maybe you just wanted to get that one shot in. Fair enough. My fault for making something of it."
>'a government has the right to redistribute property of its citizens for the common good through the democratically agreed upon mutual consent of its citizens,'
But we acknowledge lots and lots of limitations on that argument. Are these limitations all of degree, and none of kind? I think Schmidtz is suggesting that there are some inequalities (and I would add, some equalities) that are not "ours" to rearrange. (some things which are not "ours" to redistribute). "Property" might be too broad a category here.
I'd say is, rather than, might be. Plainly, to pick up your example, redistributing the attentions of Angelina Jolie is impermissible, but that's not because of a problem with redistribution, but because of the 13th Amendment and the human rights recognized therein. Likewise plainly, some redistribution of money is fine, or we have to shut down the fire department.
If you want to argue that there's a rights problem with some categories of monetary redistribution, you have to make an argument that distinguishes those categories from the redistribution necessary to keep the fire department running in terms of rights, rather than utility.
Whoops, missed my setting Emerson off. I seem to have a knack for that. Thanks, SCMT, for the nice defense. And who said I was talking about sex? Get your minds out of the gutter.
Does the Wilt Chamberlain argument do the same thing? It's the same strategy: find a case where enforcement of some sort of equality results in the loss of intuitively permissible decisions (paying to see basketball, Jolie's choice of spouse). Now I'm just being cranky.
Emerson's just cranky today. It's either the day or the subject matter, and I think it's the subject matter. There are, after all, a lot of irritating and disingenous libertarian arguments made in this area, and Emerson's probably been assaulted with all of them in his time. But I don't believe for a second that it's really the Angelina Jolie bit.
The Wilt Chamberlain argument as presented in FL's link seems to be a much more general point about free exchanges than about how enforcing a certain monetary distribution would restrict choices in a squicky way. The point is that for an given initial distribution of money over a population in a society, the presence of free exchange is going to cause the distribution to wander off in some direction.
(It also says that if we view free exchange as just, and the initial distribution as just, then any succeeding distribution that results purely from free exchange will also be just. But we're not living in a free exchange society, and I don't think anyone's arguing here that we want to, so I don't know if that's relevant.)
My one-size-fits-all response to rights-based libertarianism is: Property rights are enforced by the government. I don't see an answer to the question "Why does the government have the right to shoot me if I refuse to leave my hovel on the edge of your property?" that doesn't also answer the question "Why does the government have the right to redistribute some of your money, where the fact that it's yours is enforced by the government in the first place?" (And yeah, those questions aren't parallel, but it's a much quicker path to getting shot from violating someone else's property rights than from not paying your taxes.)
I do think that there is a good liberty-based argument to limited private property rights, since the person who can be arbitrarily stripped of everything is powerless in the face of that threat; and a good consequentialist argument to limited private property rights too. But neither of those will help against the consequentialist argument for redistribution. (See DeLong's typically uncharitable reading of Nozick, which I think is accurate in this case.)
So the answer to "Why do we have the right to redistribute property?" is "Why do we have the right to enforce property in the first case?"
I haven't read the Schmidtz; as I said, this is one-size-fits-all.
I don't think I disagree with that, pdf. The WCA point is that free exchanges result in violations of any particular distribution specified in end-state terms (rather than, say, "a distribution resulting from just starting points and just exchanges"). Hence maintaining favored distribution D would require violations of liberty. I took the Angelina Jolie Argument to be claiming that enforcement of a particular Jolie distribution would violate liberty in an analogous way.
Tim, you and I obviously know very different sets of frat boys. baa reminds me of almost every single one such of my acquaintance. This is not a knock on him or the frat boys.
For the record, I was impaired when I refrained from flaming baa, and unimpaired when I did. You guys are just lucky that I'm impaired most of the time.
Hah! I almost started that post with "why are you trying to steal Wilt Chamberlain's money"? And yes, one could gloss the Angelina Jolie case as self-ownership (justified original distribution) + just action (freely choosing Brad as husband) = just distribution. I was also trying to evoke the viscerally response that some things (one's 'plan of life', one's body, e.g.) are not proper subjects for redistribution. And "ownership" in these cases does seem to many people 'natural' or 'pre-social'.
Off topic, I think there are good reasons (Hegelian, even!) for thinking that rights to property are like rights to one's body, or one's life in not being merely social convention. That doesn't mean that property rights can't be overridden, but only that there is a moral presumption in favor of (many) property rights that needs something more than a mere "it would increase aggregate utility" argument to trump. (candidate argument that would trump: "this property could rescue Mr. X from an chasm, rescuing him from this chasm will give him the opportunity of living a meaningful human life, and we have a reasonable plan for using this property to accomplish the rescue).
(candidate argument that would trump: "this property could rescue Mr. X from an chasm, rescuing him from this chasm will give him the opportunity of living a meaningful human life, and we have a reasonable plan for using this property to accomplish the rescue).
This seems like an argument that's absolutely adaptable to, say, redistributing property to fund universal preschool.
67: Here's an unsupported assertion: The theoretical arguments in favor of massive one-time redistribution are quite strong, even accepting the vast majority of liberterian thinking. By liberterian I mean Robert Nozick, since he's the only liberterian whose work I'm familiar with, except for certain bloggers.
I use "theoretical" because I'm also of the opinion that the practical problems are insurmountable, in particular that I'm fairly sure it would require a world government.
w/d: More Nozick-bashing from DeLong. This I think is dead on. The problem for Nozick is even worse IMO; his original argument, as I read it, is that people's rights to their property are a side constraint, preventing us from doing all sorts of stuff that otherwise we might kind of like to; but if no one actually has such rights to anything, then there are no such side constraints.
OTOH there are other kinds of libertarian, like that consequentialist libertarian guy DeLong linked.
(Also, keep in mind that I am also an extremely uncharitable reader of Nozick.)
Matt: You actually say one thing in that thread which is positively charitable to Nozick, namely that "taxation is theft" is an uncharitable reading. Nozick, in ASU, is uncertain whether or not taxation actually is slavery or just very similar to slavery.
And you're right--I described that as a caricature because I hadn't read Nozick recently at the time. My memory turned out to have softened some of his edges rather than the other way round.
I'm curious about reasonable libertarian responses to this initial state problem. There are, after all, reasonable libertarians, whose existence very much cheers me in the present circumstances. Are they more focused on individual liberties than on property rights? Or is there a standard libertarian response to this other than, "It all works out in the wash"? (Bat Signal - Jim Henley!)
Well, there is the libertarian left. People like Kevin Carson of the Mutalist blog and mutualist.org identify themselves as libertarians but are anti-capitalist and see libertarianism, properly understood, as having much more in common with anarcho-socialism and various mutualist flavours of anarchism like Proudhon's.
Of course they are diametrically opposed to the self-serving apologists for big business capitalism and state-protection of the right of the wealthy to stay wealthy that normally serve for 'libertarians'.
And there are people who vote Republican on foreign policy and economic issues, but are reasonably concerned with civil liberties -- they often seem to describe themselves as libertarians, but don't have any particular connection with philosophical libertarianism. People like that can be reasonable (albeit misguided) but aren't going to have any insight into the intitial state problem.
Tyler Cowen is one, isn't he? What about Matt Welch, Julian Sanchez, Jacob T. Levy? If you're libertarian on more or less consequentialist grounds--gov't messes up, or the free market ususally works best--then I don't think you have to worry about the initial-state problem so much. Though maybe the free-marketeers actually don't have grounds for an objection to massive one-time redistribution, so long as it was guaranteed to be one-time; you could let the market run after that. Hm. (Of course there would be practical problems in the way of that.)
The concepts of property, and of free exchange, are rather problematic.
Every re-distribution is an exchange, even if the items exchanged may appear to be disparate in value or even incommensurable. One exchanges taxes for the freedom to continue to live in society, even if the tax money is immediately given to your neighbor.
Societies are held together by exchange systems, and in large part they are non-economic. I exchange pleasantries with my neighbors to establish myself as a part of the community. I exchange gifts at Christmas, or oaths are exchanged in a feudal system, as a re-enactment of social obligations. (see Marcel Maus, The Gift, and the Kula ring among the Trobrianders).
Maus said that there's no such thing as a free gift because all gifts incur obligations of reciprocity (I'll buy this round, you buy the next). Those obligations of reciprocity reaffirm the predictability of future action that underpins cooperation. Without predictable cooperation, society collapses. Thus all exchanges are a part of the larger social system, and as with any part of a system, freedom is constrained.
Property is necessary to any exchange system because without some concept of property there's nothing to exchange. But property only has meaning with reference to the exchange system.
English common law recognized varieties of property in terms of the part they played in the exchange system of feudalism. There was inalienable property, such as grave markers and church hangings (heirlooms, IIRC). There was the alienable right to consume the increase of inalienable property such as fields and orchards (glebes and the like). There was a right to use inalienable property (dower, endowment, mentioned in the Magna Carta - YAY! Usufruct!).
Somehow, perhaps following Adam Smith, we've collapsed that concept of property. Now all property is construed as if the ideal form were a fee simple absolute. That, of course, makes fine sense ideologically but is social nonsense. In other words, what Tia said: ... the means by which contributions are [valued are] arbitrary and entirely socially constructed. ... the right to property is constructed, not natural.
Washerdreyer -- WRT your theoretical massive one-time redistribution of wealth, what comes after? Do you mean something along the lines of returning to a "state of nature" type of equality of circumstance and then seeing what develops? I don't see what would be the point of it besides being kind of fun to watch if you were outside it. I mean unless you have a dictatorship of the proletariat or something along those lines in conjunction with your redistribution, class lines will quickly reemerge as individuals accumulate wealth or lapse into poverty and immiseration. Like I say -- fun to watch how history develops this time and if there are any differences from the last time around, not so much fun to be a part of, I should think. Global thermonuclear war is probably a more feasible way of acheiving the same result.
An English major I know began including "problematic" in all her papers (ironically, for the most part), and noted a five-point up-tick in average grade. There was a graph and everything.
Correlation is not causation, but hey, there you go.
My dad fancies himself a libertarian. To which I always retort, "Dad, dude, you were on the local planning commission for years, and you favor your native Canadian model of health care!" But, if he were pressed, he'd admit the source that financed his college education was his father's copper mines and pre-environmental and monopolistic hydroelectric dam--ie, some of those first-to-get-to-it original claims of property. Again, this was all in the Yukon, which might be considered the frontier.
Didn't we already go over this?
Sorta, I think. This is Will Wilkinson turf, right?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:11 PM
Oh, wait, that was way too earnest. What slol should have said was,
Keeping up with the Joneses? In my pants!
Posted by gliblernr | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:13 PM
gliblernr's pants are banned!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:15 PM
Would it have taken care of the problem to say "it seems that S's paper has a problem given the relationship between RP & SWB discussed in such-and-such thread"?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:16 PM
A neighbor is, first and foremost, the Nachbar—the one who is capable of being brought near, for whatever purpose.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:17 PM
Would it have taken care of the problem
No, actually what I was saying was, given the previous discussion you could probably be much less deferential than "If this is right" etc. Whence this wee sleekit cowering timorous Labs?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:22 PM
I thought the question to be asked of Labs was not whence but whither.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:26 PM
Back in the old days, unfogged was like the due diligence of scholarship. I'm so glad we started reposting the old threads-- that was fun to reread.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:28 PM
I thought the question to be asked of Labs was not whence but whither.
Depends what you want to know.
Back in the old days
Dude, that was all of eight months ago. I can remember the exact crummy hotel room in which I was sitting when commenting on that.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:32 PM
"Nobody needs to do X" = "Nobody who isn't me needs to do X."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 5:05 PM
I haven't seen mention of the fact that LizardBreath is up for a Koufax. Yes it's OT. So sue me.
Posted by anon | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 6:30 PM
I mentioned it! And no one made any suggestions!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 6:42 PM
About what we should do, that is.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 6:45 PM
Why should one commenter compete with another? As long as people are able to comment "well enough" that should be fine.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 6:52 PM
I want there to be unified strategy as to whether we should boost Wolfson's or LB's candidacy, because settling on whose candidacy we should boost could lead to an entertaining blogfight.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 7:03 PM
Dream scenario: Wolfson appears to have won, but comments with minor grammatical errors are thrown out because of some obscure variant of Robert's Rules; LB carries home the trophy.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:36 PM
Dream scenario
pwesome.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:38 PM
Weiner declares himself here. I do something or other here, and here.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:45 PM
I think Matt's declaration was unjust.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:47 PM
David Schmidtz on the meaning of life.
It's quite good, in fact; as Schmidtz is almost always.
Okay, onto the content.
Why is equality important? Schmidtz offers a couple of reasons:
1) when equality enables liberation
2) when equality enables prosperity
I might offer two additional cases where equality could have moral salience:
3) when equality is essential for respect of humanity
4) when equality yields useful results
Although I think most of recent philosophical egalitarianism is bunk (c.f. Dworkin, Ronald) justification #3 (perhaps similar to Scmidtz's #1) for equality is an immensely powerful one. I can get behind it. For a man to have more rights, two votes in a general election, a need to be convitcted by a unanimous jury of 13, these inequalities seem to me insufferable. Yet discussion of Schmidtz's critique of egalitarianism, here and at CT, have largely focused on reason #4: equality may be important because of consequentialist (and perhaps frankly utilitarian) reasons. That's what the positional goods talk indicates.
To the consequentialist arguments for egalitarianism, one is tempted to respond as one does to the consequentialist arguments for everything. Namely: who cares? Yes, inequality makes people envious and unhappy. No, we should not therefore redress that inequality. Brad Pitt's sole (and unequal!) enjoyment of Angelina Jolie's company no doubt makes lots of people envious and unhappy. They can cordially screw themselves. Like the man says, mates are not to be redistributed. So too, professorships in the humanities and publication in Mind are not to be redistributed. Is money so different? Why? And even if one could distinguish economic inequality from inequaltiy in esteem and prestige, should we not suspect that heirarchy and envy would not reestablish itself along whatever axis is not equalized? High school, I recall, had a fair amount of positional goods, but no market economy.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:12 PM
Is money so different? Why?
Fungibility?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:15 PM
Brad Pitt's sole (and unequal!) enjoyment of Angelina Jolie's company no doubt makes lots of people envious and unhappy.
Right there's where you lost me, baa.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:16 PM
Is money so different?
Yes.
Why?
It's fungible, and without intrinsic value.
should we not suspect that heirarchy and envy would not reestablish itself along whatever axis is not equalized?
We should, but at least people wouldn't be eating as much dirt.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:19 PM
Hey, slol. Great minds do many things, but apparently previewing isn't one of them.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:21 PM
I think one difference between money and those other things you mention, baa, might be fungibility.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:22 PM
As an argument contra monetary redistribution, "other status hierarchies would spring up" strikes me as being perfect as the enemy of the good style.
Is the response that there would be ian mprovement of well-being at all? So it's the perfect as the enemy of the status quo. Because that just seems false.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:22 PM
Fungibility!
(I just wanted to write that word. Carry on.)
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:17 PM
Mates are not ours to distribute.
Why not? Have there not been times and places where distributing mates was indeed seen as the legitimate function of government? Could we not choose to re-establish such a system?
The Cato article concludes
A truly foundational theory would start by acknowledging that there is a prior moral question about which inequalities are ours to arrange.
But I don't see how he gets to that conclusion. He recognizes that no individual alone produces much of anything: "If we truly were on our own, producing something as mundane as a slice of pizza would be out of the question." Yet he somehow makes a left turn into a conclusion that we each own our contributions: "We weave our contribution into an existing tapestry of contributions, and within limits, are seen as owning our contributions, however humble they may be." The only justification for this I see is simply an affirmation of faith: "That is why people contribute, and that in turn is why we have a system of production."
But not all individuals, nor all societies, act out of rationally calculated economic self-interest. If you assume everyone does, then you conclude that your system must allow ownership of contributions. But that seems, well, like cheating.
So why don't we distribute mates? Isn't it for some reason independent of the the question of the ownership of mates? Similarly, shouldn't we recognize that allowing ownership of one's product is a choice, made (if it is made) for other reasons, rather than a necessary assumption? Aren't all inequalities ours to arrange?
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:44 PM
besides, the whole concept of "mate" is so capitalist. We need to talk of a contingent terminable usufruct, limited by the doctrine of waste.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:48 PM
baa is gesturing at this, methinks.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:56 PM
As I said, more or less, over at CT, there are a lot of people who believe that inequality is a good thing, but who can't quite say so because the ideal of equality has been institutionalized. So we get surrogate arguments that equality really means equality of opportunity, or that attempts to reduce inequality do more harm than good because inequality is, unfortunately, inevitable, or because government action is parasitical on the economy and usually bad.
Equality of opportunity -- lots of people believe this in theory, but not to the extent of letting their own kids sink and swim, to find their own natural place in the class system.
Reasons why inequality can be called good: because it's a just assignment of rewards and punishments, because fear of misery motivates people to effort and frugality, and because a large proportion of the population is just by nature no damn good.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 5:42 AM
Fungibility:
Why on earth would fungibility be salient? Does this mean that in a barter economy we shouldn't seek equality? I'll just ask to get paid in handicrafts and heirloom vegetables, then...
The Prior Question:
Michael, I think Schmidtz's point here is just obviously true. I'd gloss it as follows. For a category X, we may think it would be nicer/better/more aesthetically pleasing if it were distributed more (or conceivably less) equally. Before we redistribute it, we just need to ask: do we have a right to do so? Is it the type of thing that "we" have a right to distribute?
This is what mate distribution (or Angelina Jolie distribution) is meant to show: it is unjust for a political system (much less a liberal one!) to force citizens into marriage. Could such a system be instituted? Sure. We could also choose to re-institute chattel slavery. That's not an argument for the consistancy of slavery with liberal democracy.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 6:17 AM
For a category X, we may think it would be nicer/better/more aesthetically pleasing if it were distributed more (or conceivably less) equally. Before we redistribute it, we just need to ask: do we have a right to do so? Is it the type of thing that "we" have a right to distribute?
Doesn't this argument (or rather, the argument that I'm understanding you to make, that society does not have the right to redistribute goods), as applied to money, prove the wrong thing? Government has no functions that cannot be glossed as redistributive -- even, say, the courts, an arm of government which most libertarians have no trouble with, take resources from some citizens to fund their administration of disputes between other citizens. Someone who thinks that it is wrong for government to redistribute property at all is a full scale anarcho-libertarian (which very, very few people actually are.)
So, once you've conceded that some measure of property redistribution is appropriate and not wrongful, as most people do, you need an argument that says that X amount of redistribution is okay, but Y is too much. I haven't seen such an argument being made here or on CT.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 7:36 AM
Michael, I think Schmidtz's point here is just obviously true. I'd gloss it as follows. For a category X, we may think it would be nicer/better/more aesthetically pleasing if it were distributed more (or conceivably less) equally. Before we redistribute it, we just need to ask: do we have a right to do so? Is it the type of thing that "we" have a right to distribute?
Baa, I could sign on to the simple point that we should ask that question, but it also seems to me that it immediately follows that economic inequality is ours to remedy, to whatever extent is not destructive to motivation or doesn't create instability, because the means by which contributions are judged of value and worthy of financial compensation are largely arbitrary and entirely socially constructed. "Day trader" is not infinity times more valuable than "mother" on any sensical scale of value I can formulate. So society giveth, and society taketh away. It may be that certain efforts to remedy inequality will have worse consequences than the consequences of inequality; that's a reason not to embark on them, but the right to property is constructed, not natural.
p.s. I apologize for the fact that I don't know anything about philosophy and may use words wrong.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 7:48 AM
It's not meant to be an argument that all redistribution is unjustifiable. You're right that one would need to say a great deal more about that. I think all Schmidtz means is that prior to asking whether redistribution X or Y (and note: this need not be an egalitarian redistribution) has good consequences, one must ask whence the right to redistribute. Trivially true, no?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 7:48 AM
Trivially true that the question must be asked, but it's a question that has been answered along the following lines: 'a government has the right to redistribute property of its citizens for the common good through the democratically agreed upon mutual consent of its citizens,' by anyone who accepts that the existence of a redistributing government is acceptable at all. At that point, isn't the question of "Does government have a right to redistribute?" answered (or, rather "Does redistribution by government violate the rights of its citizens?), leaving the salient question as "Is redistribution X a good idea?"
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 7:54 AM
one must ask whence the right to redistribute
This is just a fancy way of asking whether we ought to redistribute, but with a bonus bias against the answer "yes".
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 7:59 AM
If rights exist, in the sense that violating them can't be justified just be greater utility in an instant case, I don't buy SB's restatement here.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:02 AM
Sorry, baa. Not enough caffeine.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:02 AM
Furthermore, it's pretty much trivially obvious that the present distribution of resources in our society is deeply unequal.
Those asking for a justification for redistribution tend to be arguing either explicitly or implicitly *for* a particular type of distribution of resources -- the status quo. A distribution that seems on the face of it to be deeply unjust.
The anti-redistribution crowd aren't taking the default neutral position against which the redistribution crowd must provide an argument and it's disingenuous of them to imply that they are.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:04 AM
37 isn't even responsive to baa's remark. You couldn't buy it if you wanted to.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:04 AM
Agh. Brain—melting. Bye.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:06 AM
I tuned out of baa's piece as soon as I got to the Angelina Jolie argument. Frat-boy argumentation tricks make me lose my temper.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:07 AM
Frat-boy argumentation tricks make me lose my temper.
Are you sure that's not just a side effect of whatever medication you're on, Emerson? Baa may be the least frat boy-ee of any of the guys who comment here regularly.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:13 AM
There is an understanding of rights and property according to which redistribution is guilty until proven innocent, and freemarketers assume this understanding right at the beginning. Then they do the math and find that lo! some given public program is redictruibution, and it's wrong. If you don't share the original understanding their arguments are worthless, but if you allow them to assume that understanding, there's usually not much for you to say.
Anti-redistributionist arguments always begin by assuming that some given initial distribution is natural, good, and darn near holy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:14 AM
He talks like a frat-boy libertarian, of whom I've met far too many in my life. He really should have left out the Angelina Jolie stupidity.
People here are collegiate, but I don't get a frat-boy whiff.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:16 AM
And of course, medications make people cheerful, optimistic, hardworking, and sensible. I would be much nicer medicated.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:17 AM
IP analysis reveals: John Emerson is Brad Pitt! There is an argument underneath the example, though.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:18 AM
I'd be stunned if baa wasn't substantially more a conservative than a libertarian. I'd be stunned if I, and even you, weren't more libertarian than him. If you're saying that his reference to sex as enjoyable, or comodifiable, or Jolie as particularly attractive, is out of character for everyone else here, I disagree.
Anyway, fine. You were offended by that bit of the argument. I'd thought he'd pulled it, in some fashion, from the underlying argument. But whatever; ignore it. You've seen baa around here often enough to know he's an honest and responsive conservative interlocutor.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:22 AM
Dropped end: "If he spoke offensively, it wasn't intended. And it's pretty rare. Maybe you just wanted to get that one shot in. Fair enough. My fault for making something of it."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:24 AM
>'a government has the right to redistribute property of its citizens for the common good through the democratically agreed upon mutual consent of its citizens,'
But we acknowledge lots and lots of limitations on that argument. Are these limitations all of degree, and none of kind? I think Schmidtz is suggesting that there are some inequalities (and I would add, some equalities) that are not "ours" to rearrange. (some things which are not "ours" to redistribute). "Property" might be too broad a category here.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:25 AM
Conservatarian, then.
The Jolie example trivializes the argument with a silly case.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:29 AM
The Jolie example trivializes the argument with a silly case.
You do remember where we are, don't you?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:29 AM
"Property" might be too broad a category here.
I'd say is, rather than, might be. Plainly, to pick up your example, redistributing the attentions of Angelina Jolie is impermissible, but that's not because of a problem with redistribution, but because of the 13th Amendment and the human rights recognized therein. Likewise plainly, some redistribution of money is fine, or we have to shut down the fire department.
If you want to argue that there's a rights problem with some categories of monetary redistribution, you have to make an argument that distinguishes those categories from the redistribution necessary to keep the fire department running in terms of rights, rather than utility.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:30 AM
Whoops, missed my setting Emerson off. I seem to have a knack for that. Thanks, SCMT, for the nice defense. And who said I was talking about sex? Get your minds out of the gutter.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:34 AM
Does the Wilt Chamberlain argument do the same thing? It's the same strategy: find a case where enforcement of some sort of equality results in the loss of intuitively permissible decisions (paying to see basketball, Jolie's choice of spouse). Now I'm just being cranky.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:35 AM
I'm also good at setting SCMT off. He's a nurturing person, really.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:42 AM
Emerson's just cranky today. It's either the day or the subject matter, and I think it's the subject matter. There are, after all, a lot of irritating and disingenous libertarian arguments made in this area, and Emerson's probably been assaulted with all of them in his time. But I don't believe for a second that it's really the Angelina Jolie bit.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:44 AM
The Wilt Chamberlain argument as presented in FL's link seems to be a much more general point about free exchanges than about how enforcing a certain monetary distribution would restrict choices in a squicky way. The point is that for an given initial distribution of money over a population in a society, the presence of free exchange is going to cause the distribution to wander off in some direction.
(It also says that if we view free exchange as just, and the initial distribution as just, then any succeeding distribution that results purely from free exchange will also be just. But we're not living in a free exchange society, and I don't think anyone's arguing here that we want to, so I don't know if that's relevant.)
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:45 AM
My one-size-fits-all response to rights-based libertarianism is: Property rights are enforced by the government. I don't see an answer to the question "Why does the government have the right to shoot me if I refuse to leave my hovel on the edge of your property?" that doesn't also answer the question "Why does the government have the right to redistribute some of your money, where the fact that it's yours is enforced by the government in the first place?" (And yeah, those questions aren't parallel, but it's a much quicker path to getting shot from violating someone else's property rights than from not paying your taxes.)
I do think that there is a good liberty-based argument to limited private property rights, since the person who can be arbitrarily stripped of everything is powerless in the face of that threat; and a good consequentialist argument to limited private property rights too. But neither of those will help against the consequentialist argument for redistribution. (See DeLong's typically uncharitable reading of Nozick, which I think is accurate in this case.)
So the answer to "Why do we have the right to redistribute property?" is "Why do we have the right to enforce property in the first case?"
I haven't read the Schmidtz; as I said, this is one-size-fits-all.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 9:06 AM
I don't think I disagree with that, pdf. The WCA point is that free exchanges result in violations of any particular distribution specified in end-state terms (rather than, say, "a distribution resulting from just starting points and just exchanges"). Hence maintaining favored distribution D would require violations of liberty. I took the Angelina Jolie Argument to be claiming that enforcement of a particular Jolie distribution would violate liberty in an analogous way.
Weiner, you're a goddamned Communist.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 9:11 AM
Baa may be the least frat boy-ee
Tim, you and I obviously know very different sets of frat boys. baa reminds me of almost every single one such of my acquaintance. This is not a knock on him or the frat boys.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 9:18 AM
baa reminds me of almost every single one such of my acquaintance.
Including me?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 9:29 AM
For the record, I was impaired when I refrained from flaming baa, and unimpaired when I did. You guys are just lucky that I'm impaired most of the time.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 9:37 AM
Hah! I almost started that post with "why are you trying to steal Wilt Chamberlain's money"? And yes, one could gloss the Angelina Jolie case as self-ownership (justified original distribution) + just action (freely choosing Brad as husband) = just distribution. I was also trying to evoke the viscerally response that some things (one's 'plan of life', one's body, e.g.) are not proper subjects for redistribution. And "ownership" in these cases does seem to many people 'natural' or 'pre-social'.
Off topic, I think there are good reasons (Hegelian, even!) for thinking that rights to property are like rights to one's body, or one's life in not being merely social convention. That doesn't mean that property rights can't be overridden, but only that there is a moral presumption in favor of (many) property rights that needs something more than a mere "it would increase aggregate utility" argument to trump. (candidate argument that would trump: "this property could rescue Mr. X from an chasm, rescuing him from this chasm will give him the opportunity of living a meaningful human life, and we have a reasonable plan for using this property to accomplish the rescue).
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 9:46 AM
apo, sorry, I didn't think of you in that connection.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 9:46 AM
re: 60
Billy Connolly tells a joke to this effect.
He and his friends are camping in a farmer's field. The farmer asks him to leave. Connolly says "why?" and is told by the farmer that it is 'my land'.
So Connolly asks how it became his land and is told that 'it was my father's land'.
'And how did he get it?'
'He got it from his father.'
'And him..'
'From his father'.
'And him..?'
'The land goes all the way back to my great-great-great-grandfather'.
'And how did he get it?
Farmer: 'He fought for it'.
Connolly: 'OK then, *I'll* fight you for it...'
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 10:06 AM
(candidate argument that would trump: "this property could rescue Mr. X from an chasm, rescuing him from this chasm will give him the opportunity of living a meaningful human life, and we have a reasonable plan for using this property to accomplish the rescue).
This seems like an argument that's absolutely adaptable to, say, redistributing property to fund universal preschool.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 10:07 AM
67: Here's an unsupported assertion: The theoretical arguments in favor of massive one-time redistribution are quite strong, even accepting the vast majority of liberterian thinking. By liberterian I mean Robert Nozick, since he's the only liberterian whose work I'm familiar with, except for certain bloggers.
I use "theoretical" because I'm also of the opinion that the practical problems are insurmountable, in particular that I'm fairly sure it would require a world government.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 10:14 AM
w/d: More Nozick-bashing from DeLong. This I think is dead on. The problem for Nozick is even worse IMO; his original argument, as I read it, is that people's rights to their property are a side constraint, preventing us from doing all sorts of stuff that otherwise we might kind of like to; but if no one actually has such rights to anything, then there are no such side constraints.
OTOH there are other kinds of libertarian, like that consequentialist libertarian guy DeLong linked.
(Also, keep in mind that I am also an extremely uncharitable reader of Nozick.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 11:52 AM
Matt: You actually say one thing in that thread which is positively charitable to Nozick, namely that "taxation is theft" is an uncharitable reading. Nozick, in ASU, is uncertain whether or not taxation actually is slavery or just very similar to slavery.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 11:58 AM
I just thought of this: Nozick's comments about rectification illustrate his theory of self-pwnership.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 12:12 PM
And you're right--I described that as a caricature because I hadn't read Nozick recently at the time. My memory turned out to have softened some of his edges rather than the other way round.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 12:15 PM
I'm curious about reasonable libertarian responses to this initial state problem. There are, after all, reasonable libertarians, whose existence very much cheers me in the present circumstances. Are they more focused on individual liberties than on property rights? Or is there a standard libertarian response to this other than, "It all works out in the wash"? (Bat Signal - Jim Henley!)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 12:21 PM
I'll give you Henley, but who's the other one?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 2:20 PM
Well, there is the libertarian left. People like Kevin Carson of the Mutalist blog and mutualist.org identify themselves as libertarians but are anti-capitalist and see libertarianism, properly understood, as having much more in common with anarcho-socialism and various mutualist flavours of anarchism like Proudhon's.
Of course they are diametrically opposed to the self-serving apologists for big business capitalism and state-protection of the right of the wealthy to stay wealthy that normally serve for 'libertarians'.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 2:30 PM
And there are people who vote Republican on foreign policy and economic issues, but are reasonably concerned with civil liberties -- they often seem to describe themselves as libertarians, but don't have any particular connection with philosophical libertarianism. People like that can be reasonable (albeit misguided) but aren't going to have any insight into the intitial state problem.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 2:40 PM
Tyler Cowen is one, isn't he? What about Matt Welch, Julian Sanchez, Jacob T. Levy? If you're libertarian on more or less consequentialist grounds--gov't messes up, or the free market ususally works best--then I don't think you have to worry about the initial-state problem so much. Though maybe the free-marketeers actually don't have grounds for an objection to massive one-time redistribution, so long as it was guaranteed to be one-time; you could let the market run after that. Hm. (Of course there would be practical problems in the way of that.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 2:45 PM
Hooray, the chorus of support for theoretical massive one-time redistribution grows louder.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 2:55 PM
The concepts of property, and of free exchange, are rather problematic.
Every re-distribution is an exchange, even if the items exchanged may appear to be disparate in value or even incommensurable. One exchanges taxes for the freedom to continue to live in society, even if the tax money is immediately given to your neighbor.
Societies are held together by exchange systems, and in large part they are non-economic. I exchange pleasantries with my neighbors to establish myself as a part of the community. I exchange gifts at Christmas, or oaths are exchanged in a feudal system, as a re-enactment of social obligations. (see Marcel Maus, The Gift, and the Kula ring among the Trobrianders).
Maus said that there's no such thing as a free gift because all gifts incur obligations of reciprocity (I'll buy this round, you buy the next). Those obligations of reciprocity reaffirm the predictability of future action that underpins cooperation. Without predictable cooperation, society collapses. Thus all exchanges are a part of the larger social system, and as with any part of a system, freedom is constrained.
Property is necessary to any exchange system because without some concept of property there's nothing to exchange. But property only has meaning with reference to the exchange system.
English common law recognized varieties of property in terms of the part they played in the exchange system of feudalism. There was inalienable property, such as grave markers and church hangings (heirlooms, IIRC). There was the alienable right to consume the increase of inalienable property such as fields and orchards (glebes and the like). There was a right to use inalienable property (dower, endowment, mentioned in the Magna Carta - YAY! Usufruct!).
Somehow, perhaps following Adam Smith, we've collapsed that concept of property. Now all property is construed as if the ideal form were a fee simple absolute. That, of course, makes fine sense ideologically but is social nonsense. In other words, what Tia said: ... the means by which contributions are [valued are] arbitrary and entirely socially constructed. ... the right to property is constructed, not natural.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 3:48 PM
Washerdreyer -- WRT your theoretical massive one-time redistribution of wealth, what comes after? Do you mean something along the lines of returning to a "state of nature" type of equality of circumstance and then seeing what develops? I don't see what would be the point of it besides being kind of fun to watch if you were outside it. I mean unless you have a dictatorship of the proletariat or something along those lines in conjunction with your redistribution, class lines will quickly reemerge as individuals accumulate wealth or lapse into poverty and immiseration. Like I say -- fun to watch how history develops this time and if there are any differences from the last time around, not so much fun to be a part of, I should think. Global thermonuclear war is probably a more feasible way of acheiving the same result.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 6:20 PM
Man I hate misspellings. You spend all that time on a post, look it over to make sure it reads smooth, still they bite you in the ass.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 6:21 PM
An English major I know began including "problematic" in all her papers (ironically, for the most part), and noted a five-point up-tick in average grade. There was a graph and everything.
Correlation is not causation, but hey, there you go.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 6:48 PM
Stanley: as a noun, or adjective?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 7:23 PM
Perhaps she should test against problematique.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 7:33 PM
My dad fancies himself a libertarian. To which I always retort, "Dad, dude, you were on the local planning commission for years, and you favor your native Canadian model of health care!" But, if he were pressed, he'd admit the source that financed his college education was his father's copper mines and pre-environmental and monopolistic hydroelectric dam--ie, some of those first-to-get-to-it original claims of property. Again, this was all in the Yukon, which might be considered the frontier.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 8:09 PM
I promise to answer 81 at some point.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 8-06 9:50 AM