What is Your Definition of A Fair and Just Society ?

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 hours ago, Eggegg said:

That makes the massive assumption that everyone would firstly want to spent their time working hard to become lawyers, and secondly that everyone would be naturally good at it. 

The good thing about equality of opportunity is that people get out of life what they put in. 

Id also say that equal distribution of resources, depending on what you meant by that, could be incredibly unfair: if I sat on my arse all day why should I have access to the same things as someone who contributes massively to society?

I think when people talk about equal distribution of resources, especially progressives, we're talking about affordable food and housing, affordable healthcare, clean drinking water, and  robust public education.   And that natural resources like arable land, fisheries, and natural sources of energy need to be considered public property and not things that can be privately owned.

 

Personally I'd go a little bit further with regard to private property, bit I'd be satisfied with half of my list for now.

 

And 'equality of opportunity' is really dependent on a society where everyone already is starting with the exact same set of material possessions, social status, and and financial resources.  Which is why  a true libertarian should recognize the need for everyone to go full Marxist first and then try out the libertarian stuff.

[Altherion]

The best attempt at this that I've seen is from Rawls, but even that one is very flawed. Realistically, there is no way to implement anything of the sort without widespread application of something like genetic engineering. The problem is that we're simply too different: some people are stronger, some are smarter, some are lazier, some have diseases which are expensive to treat, etc. etc. As long as resources are limited, there are always going to be questions of how much the people whose abilities are valued by the community should pay for those whose abilities are not, how much the healthy should pay for the sick and so on.

It's even worse than that though: suppose we manage to construct the Overabundance Utopia where everyone gets all of the goods and services they want and there is so much of everything that it doesn't matter some people need more and some need less. Though to us this looks like an incredible improvement on the existing situation, I suspect the residents of this place would still find it unfair because whatever it is that they value in the absence of resource constraints would still not be equally distributed. The world just isn't designed to contain a fair society and neither are human beings.

[felice]

2 hours ago, Eggegg said:

That makes the massive assumption that everyone would firstly want to spent their time working hard to become lawyers, and secondly that everyone would be naturally good at it. 

Not everyone would, which is the problem with equality of opportunity. Why should those who aren't lucky enough to have an aptitude for a type of work that our current society values highly be penalised? Society needs toilets cleaned rather more than it needs patent applications filed; why should people who do the latter be rewarded with a bigger share of society's resources?

2 hours ago, Eggegg said:

The good thing about equality of opportunity is that people get out of life what they put in. 

Even if that were true, what people have to put in to start with varies wildly, and I don't see any practical way to achieve equality on that front, especially on a multi-generational basis. And outcomes are actually nowhere near 100% correlated with effort. In practice, equality of opportunity is like giving everyone an identical box of ingredients and telling them to make their favourite recipe - irrespective of how skilled a cook you are or how much effort you put in to preparing the meal, some people have top quality fresh ingredients to make exactly what they want, other people have to settle for making something they don't really want because the box doesn't have what they need for their favourites, and others can only make substandard versions of their favourites using awkward substitutions and some of the lesser quality or past-use-by ingredients. And some people don't even have kitchens.

(Without equality of opportunity, everyone gets different boxes - some people have to rummage through trash cans, and a few get entire high-class supermarkets and trained chefs to do the actual cooking for them.)

2 hours ago, Eggegg said:

Id also say that equal distribution of resources, depending on what you meant by that, could be incredibly unfair: if I sat on my arse all day why should I have access to the same things as someone who contributes massively to society?

Equitable, not equal. Where distribution isn't equal, there should be a good reason for it. Eg medical resources should be distributed according to need, so people with cancer should get more time in hospital and more chemotherapy than healthy people - not at all equal, but entirely equitable. In general, it's probably reasonable to give a bigger share to people who work harder, but payment based on a labour market isn't fair, since it rewards skill scarcity more than effort or the actual value of the work. And the current system where the easiest way to acquire a bigger share is to already have an excessively large share is ridiculously unfair.

And why are you sitting on your arse? Is there no work you can do? Are you depressed?

[Altherion]

45 minutes ago, felice said:

medical resources should be distributed according to need, so people with cancer should get more time in hospital and more chemotherapy than healthy people - not at all equal, but entirely equitable.

I don't think most people will agree with this. I can think of two kinds of objections:

1) The Libertarian: if you want hospital time and chemotherapy, you find a way to pay for it. The same exact thing goes for me and everyone else in our society so this is perfectly equitable. If you want to band together with other people to come up with insurance schemes, you are of course free to do that... but you have no right to pull in anyone who does not want to take part.

2) The Rawlsian: I acknowledge that there is significant variance in healthiness among human beings and so if you were unlucky enough to get cancer for no apparent reason, I will contribute to your treatment -- after all, it could have been me. However, if your misfortune is clearly of your own doing (e.g. if you smoked for the past 20 years and now you have lung cancer), you are on your own.

1 hour ago, felice said:

In general, it's probably reasonable to give a bigger share to people who work harder, but payment based on a labour market isn't fair, since it rewards skill scarcity more than effort or the actual value of the work.

How do you determine "the actual value of the work" without resorting to a market? Some kind of God or similar entity that tells everyone what something is worth?

[felice]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

1) The Libertarian: if you want hospital time and chemotherapy, you find a way to pay for it. The same exact thing goes for me and everyone else in our society so this is perfectly equitable.

But medical problems are not distributed equally, the people afflicted most often had no choice in the matter, and they frequently have no real choice about obtaining treatment if they can (death generally being considered an undesirable option), and they have to give up everything else they'd otherwise have spent that money on. And people's ability to pay varies wildly, also often for reasons outside their control. Not much fairness or liberty in any of that, as far as I can see.

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

2) The Rawlsian: I acknowledge that there is significant variance in healthiness among human beings and so if you were unlucky enough to get cancer for no apparent reason, I will contribute to your treatment -- after all, it could have been me. However, if your misfortune is clearly of your own doing (e.g. if you smoked for the past 20 years and now you have lung cancer), you are on your own.

An argument with some merit, but I don't think the average Rawlsian would want smokers to be left to die from untreated lung cancer, either. Possibly some kind of penalty would be appropriate in some cases where people's own decisions contribute to their need for medical assistance?

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

How do you determine "the actual value of the work" without resorting to a market? Some kind of God or similar entity that tells everyone what something is worth?

I don't think you can determine it. IMAO, everyone's time and effort is equally valuable to them, so they should all be compensated accordingly. Value is only relevant to the extent of deciding whether it's worth getting someone to do the job at all or not.

[Eggegg]

10 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I think when people talk about equal distribution of resources, especially progressives, we're talking about affordable food and housing, affordable healthcare, clean drinking water, and  robust public education.   And that natural resources like arable land, fisheries, and natural sources of energy need to be considered public property and not things that can be privately owned.

 

Personally I'd go a little bit further with regard to private property, bit I'd be satisfied with half of my list for now.

 

And 'equality of opportunity' is really dependent on a society where everyone already is starting with the exact same set of material possessions, social status, and and financial resources.  Which is why  a true libertarian should recognize the need for everyone to go full Marxist first and then try out the libertarian stuff.

Well yes on some level I think that providing everyone with the very basics of survival is what a society should be doing. What we consider to be the basics is really open for debate.. is it food? Is it water? Is it the internet. I mean the market delivers the solution to providing food for people in a far more efficient manner than any centralised government ever could, so I don't believe the Marxist solution is really ever the answer. 

And then if you have a large government sector how do you prevent it being inefficient and not hugely corrupt, as most of them do end up going that way if they are allowed to.

Personally I think that some level of inequality is baked into the system and absolutely necessary to provide the motivation for people to work harder to achieve greater things, and thereby provide benefits to society through innovation and competition. Of course high levels of inequality are bad and thats where they really ruin the 'equality of opportunity', because the 'haves' often concentrate on making sure that they don't lose what they have, and nor do their children. 

If we were talking about extreme equality, where say if I worked my whole life to make a load of money but I cannot use that money to provide for my children or give them a head start, then would I have any incentive to work hard in the first place? Its very debatable, and I'd say no. 

[Eggegg]

6 hours ago, felice said:

In general, it's probably reasonable to give a bigger share to people who work harder, but payment based on a labour market isn't fair, since it rewards skill scarcity more than effort or the actual value of the work. 

And why are you sitting on your arse? Is there no work you can do? Are you depressed?

I agree with most of your post, I think these are the bits I might have an issue with. The labour market isn't really that fair if talk about the value of the work. But then i don't see a better system than rewarding people on the basis of skill scarcity. Cleaning bins might be valuable to everyone, but its also a job literally anybody could do. Not very many people can be brain surgeons. 

The ideal society would allow anyone to become a brain surgeon if that was what they REALLY wanted to do. At the moment there are too many obstacles in front of anyone wanting to do that, it requires already existing wealth or taking on massive debt.

But also, some people simply don't want to work that hard, they want to enjoy their lives and maybe sitting around is about the extent of their ambition. Not due to depression, but due to them just not seeing the point of working. People should be allowed to do that, but it also shouldn't be something that is incentivised, and society shouldn't just enable that behaviour either.

[Seli]

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

I don't think most people will agree with this. I can think of two kinds of objections:

1) The Libertarian: if you want hospital time and chemotherapy, you find a way to pay for it. The same exact thing goes for me and everyone else in our society so this is perfectly equitable. If you want to band together with other people to come up with insurance schemes, you are of course free to do that... but you have no right to pull in anyone who does not want to take part.

...

We are talking about societies The Libertarian model doesn't really fit.

[Werthead]

Quote

And then if you have a large government sector how do you prevent it being inefficient and not hugely corrupt, as most of them do end up going that way if they are allowed to.

If you have a small government sector, how do you prevent it being inefficient and hugely corrupt as you concentrate power in fewer and fewer hands with less and less oversight? Both approaches have serious weaknesses. Basic psychology tells us that power can corrupt and warp people's perspectives no matter what noble intentions you have (see Tony Blair, a well-meaning Christian, enabling the slaughter of the better part of a million civilians in Iraq for no readily explicable reason), and people with no noble intentions whatsoever (the Goves and Duncan-Smiths and the Johnsons of the world) can ride that wave of power much further than their meagre talents would ordinarily support (people in politics, moreso on the right, are often there because they could not cut it in private business so need to take another path to influence and profit).

Quote

 

The good thing about equality of opportunity is that people get out of life what they put in. 

 

The problem with being that if you extrapolate that to the natural limit, people who are incapable of putting much into life due to illness, lack of schooling opportunities or plain bad luck are suffering in poverty whilst people with much greater advantages are springboarded into success, even if they are less intelligent and less resourceful than those with a more unfortunate start in life.

Full equality would only be possible if it mean ensuring that everyone had the same advantages when they were young, which is not the case at the moment and unlikely to be so in the future. There are models which are more successful than the UK/US one, such as in Scandinavia where a lot of emphasis is placed on equally excellent schooling for everyone but at an increased tax burden.

 

Quote

 

We are talking about societies  The Libertarian model doesn't really fit.

 

Libertarianism is Diet Coke Objectivism, which argues for Social Darwinism which would logically end in outright anarchy. There's a reason both Libertarianism and Objectivism are considered fucknut-fruitcake ideas outside of the United States.

[PyroclasticFlow]

The Helvetic Confederation.

Hopp Schwiiz!

[OldGimletEye]

On 12/24/2017 at 7:08 AM, Seli said:

We are talking about societies The Libertarian model doesn't really fit.

Well that’s not really fair. Maybe it’s like libertarians just prefer a different kind of societal set up.

Let’s say we have this guy. And let’s say this guy owns all the land in random country X. And will call this guy “The King”. Now it turns out The King can’t do everything by himself, so he hires some guys. And he writes some contracts that these guys sign, that they will pledge to do certain services in exchange for being able to holding land and benefiting from the incomes the lands produce. We’ll call these guys “lords”. 

Of course the guys or “the lords” can’t work the land themselves. So they hire some more guys to work the land. We’ll call these other guys “peasants”. And these other guys, the “peasants”, sign contracts (though probably very one sided) agreeing to do certain things, in exchange for farming the land and keeping some of it to feed themselves and their families. 

What we have here is a system of private contracts that binds everyone from the king to the lowest peasant. Seems like libertarian paradise to me. Libertarians, I should think, would really like this set up. Society is ordered around a system of private contract rights, so there is no need for any kind of legistlaty thingy to make rules, and since most of the exchanges or services are done with real goods or services, there is no reason to print up any kind of evil fiat money. In fact, you probably don’t even need any kind of money in this system, not even, gasp!!, Bitcoin.

It seems to me that we had libertarianism for several hundreds years, shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire. Maybe in the future we'll have a hit TV show, called Game of Libertarians.

Now Libertariannnnnish sorts of people, might bulk and say, I’m making a very poor caricature of their philosophy, but, you know, it’s not like I’m just making this shit up on my own. I’m just readin’ what your own guys are writing basically.

And it would seem to me, that under the ideal libertarian set up, there would be little place for the system of markets that liberaniannnnnish sorts of people claim to love for so much. In order for that to work, you’d need I’d imagine a system of money, where the money gets it’s value by taxing libertarians. And you’d need some kind of system where the rules can be changed or amended as markets go dynamic change. Some might call this system “democracy”. And to make this system work, you’d probably have to do things like, oh I don’t know, build roads, bridges, and have public schools and such. And to make this system work you’d probably need some kind of reasonable system of finance, which likely would need some kind of informationally insensitive interest bearing debt, that would have to be provided by the government. And finally of course, to make this market thingy work, people would have to believe in it’s legtimacy, and they might not if they are fed a bunch of libertariannnisth bull pucky that they know is kind of horse shit. And people might think it’s a bunch of liberteriannnnish horseshit if libertarinnnish people try to explain income disparity by resort to very clownish and crude marginalist arguments.

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Werthead said:

Libertarianism is Diet Coke Objectivism, which argues for Social Darwinism which would logically end in outright anarchy. There's a reason both Libertarianism and Objectivism are considered fucknut-fruitcake ideas outside of the United States.

It turns out that Ayn Rand couldn't stand libertarians, but then again who doesn't?

But anyway, her reasons were that she basically accused them of "stealing her ideas without giving her due credit". She had a pretty high opinion of herself.

[OldGimletEye]

Libertarianism in action.

Margaret Thatcher: "There is no society, there is only families and individuals."

Falkland War rolls around.

Then does her best Vera Lynn and belts out  “There’ll Always Be An England”.

[GAROVORKIN]

11 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Libertarianism in action.

Margaret Thatcher: "There is no society, there is only families and individuals."

Falkland War rolls around.

Then does her best Vera Lynn and belts out  “There’ll Always Be An England”.

 

The quote that I most often remember by Margaret Thatcher: " The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money"  

 

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

 

The quote that I most often remember by Margaret Thatcher: " The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people money"  

 

If I recall correctly the UK had about a 240% debt/GDP ratio right after World War 2. By the 1970s, before Thatchers', election that was down to about 50% or so. Now I think it was reasonable to assume that the UK was more "red", before her election. Not too shabby for a bunch of socialist.

[Eggegg]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

If I recall correctly the UK had about a 240% debt/GDP ratio right after World War 2. By the 1970s, before Thatchers', election that was down to about 50% or so. Now I think it was reasonable to assume that the UK was more "red", before her election. Not too shabby for a bunch of socialist.

I don’t know many people who’d want to live in 1970’s Britain 

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Eggegg said:

I don’t know many people who’d want to live in 1970’s Britain 

Well if you "know lots of people who'd......" that settles things.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I think there are three ways to go:

Libertarian: where the individual is the focus of all rights and responsibilities and the collective is ignored.

Communitarian:  where communities are empowered and individuals have the ability to move between communities when they don’t care for the communities’ standards and controls.  This creates small scale collective action bit leaves the individual free to move between communities.

Collective: Where individual desires are ignored and the collective good is the sole focus of society.

Obviously there are sub permutations and combinations of each that could be made.

I don’t think any of them are perfect and all involve trade offs depending upon what the individuals and groups involve want.

there will always be tension between individual desires and collective action.

[Altherion]

10 hours ago, felice said:

But medical problems are not distributed equally, the people afflicted most often had no choice in the matter, and they frequently have no real choice about obtaining treatment if they can (death generally being considered an undesirable option), and they have to give up everything else they'd otherwise have spent that money on. And people's ability to pay varies wildly, also often for reasons outside their control. Not much fairness or liberty in any of that, as far as I can see.

Well yes, there are reasons why purely libertarian societies are hard to find. I just wanted to point out that this position exists and is mostly self-consistent.

10 hours ago, felice said:

An argument with some merit, but I don't think the average Rawlsian would want smokers to be left to die from untreated lung cancer, either. Possibly some kind of penalty would be appropriate in some cases where people's own decisions contribute to their need for medical assistance?

It's possible, but once we start going down this path, there is no chance at all that everyone will agree the implementation is fair. The general problem is extracting discrete values from a continuum. Suppose we all agree to the idea of a penalty. In this case, what should the penalty be? Is it something like 5% of the cost or more like 50%? And in either case, why 5% and not 4% or 6% or why 50% and not 49% or 51%?

The same thing happens with the idea of determining responsibility: can we be absolutely sure that the smoking led to the lung cancer? After all, non-smokers get lung cancer too, just much more rarely. And what do you do with, say, kidney cancer, which is also more likely in smokers, but only twice as likely and not 20 times (the latter is roughly the number for lung cancer)? And of course smoking is not the only contributing factor. Are we going to construct some ridiculously large matrix of causes, degrees of responsibility and the like? To get a fair and just society this way requires something rather close to omniscience.

[Martell Spy]

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well that’s not really fair. Maybe it’s like libertarians just prefer a different kind of societal set up.

Let’s say we have this guy. And let’s say this guy owns all the land in random country X. And will call this guy “The King”. Now it turns out The King can’t do everything by himself, so he hires some guys. And he writes some contracts that these guys sign, that they will pledge to do certain services in exchange for being able to holding land and benefiting from the incomes the lands produce. We’ll call these guys “lords”. 

Of course the guys or “the lords” can’t work the land themselves. So they hire some more guys to work the land. We’ll call these other guys “peasants”. And these other guys, the “peasants”, sign contracts (though probably very one sided) agreeing to do certain things, in exchange for farming the land and keeping some of it to feed themselves and their families. 

What we have here is a system of private contracts that binds everyone from the king to the lowest peasant. Seems like libertarian paradise to me. Libertarians, I should think, would really like this set up. Society is ordered around a system of private contract rights, so there is no need for any kind of legistlaty thingy to make rules, and since most of the exchanges or services are done with real goods or services, there is no reason to print up any kind of evil fiat money. In fact, you probably don’t even need any kind of money in this system, not even, gasp!!, Bitcoin.

It seems to me that we had libertarianism for several hundreds years, shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire. Maybe in the future will have a hit TV show, called Game of Libertarians.

Now Libertariannnnnish sorts of people, might bulk and say, I’m making a very poor caricature of their philosophy, but, you know, it’s not like I’m just making this shit up on my own. I’m just readin’ what your own guys are writing basically.

And it would seem to me, that under the ideal libertarian set up, there would be little place for the system of markets that liberaniannnnnish sorts of people claim to love for so much. In order for that to work, you’d need I’d imagine a system of money, where the money gets it’s value by taxing libertarians. And you’d need some kind of system where the rules can be changed or amended as markets go dynamic change. Some might call this system “democracy”. And to make this system work, you’d probably have to do things like, oh I don’t know, build roads, bridges, and have public schools and such. And to make this system work you’d probably need some kind of reasonable system of finance, which likely would need some kind of informationally insensitive interest bearing debt, that would have to be provided by the government. And finally of course, to make this market thingy work, people would have to believe in it’s legtimacy, and they might not if they are fed a bunch of libertariannnisth bull pucky that they know is kind of horse shit. And people might think it’s a bunch of liberteriannnnish horseshit if libertarinnnish people try to explain income disparity by resort to very clownish and crude marginalist arguments.

Okay, I'll attempt to address this. No need for Kings and Lords, just a bunch of white men in nice business suits.

So, in Libertaria, roads and bridges can be handled by the states. Note, this does not mean a complete slashing of federal funds for roads and bridges. Just a lot less. Also, the funds are block granted. This is important, because then the state governments can even use the funds in other areas than infrastructure if they wish.

Federal funds for education are not block granted, but are severely slashed. Also, a lot less regulations are attached to the funds. And if things fall apart in state eduction, perhaps corporations or even churches can step in.

We'll likely have some initiatives for private-funded toll roads and bridges as well.