Capitalist Philosophers And Fundamentalist Protestants

[pvn]

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He doesn't. Reread his post. He's saying that your patterns of spending and abstention from spending are all the "vote" anyone needs (or indeed should have). I.e., he's on your side.

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Duh. :|

[Misfire]

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Heart surgeons who have sacrificed their twenties, work hard and study, deserve to be millionaires. So do many entrepreneurs who have risked bankrupcy...

But there are planty of people who are wealthy because of the nature of the capitalist system. Options traders, baseball players, rock stars etc. Almost all of them would continue to do what they do if their salary was cut by 80% whether they liked their job or not...

People who are rich for technical capitalistic reasons do not truly deserve to be a lot better off than hardworking chemists in Burma. Period. Philosophers who try to claim otherwise are rationalizing.


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Many heart surgeons and entrepreneurs would also continue to do what they do if their salary was cut by 80%. Many rock stars did in fact risk bankruptcy to achieve their success. In fact, there is very little difference in the "social value" of a rock star and an entrepreneur who created, say, a video game system or a record label. Why should one deserve his wealth and another not?

The fact is, the value of someone's work is measured in the money people will voluntarily pay for it, and there's nothing wrong with that.

P.S. I noticed you didn't throw in poker players and authors among your list of those who become wealthy because of the nature of the capitalist system.

[andyfox]

"I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you'll find out how much this tlaent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil. I will be struggling 30 years later. I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well--disproportionately well."

"If you're a marvelous teacher, this world won't pay a lot for it. If you are a terrific nurse, this world will not pay a lot for it. Now, am I going to try to come up with some comparable worth system that somehow redistributes that? No, I don't think you can do that. But I do think that when you're treated enormously well by this market system, where in effect the market system showers the ability to buy goods and services on you because of some peculiar talent--maybe your adenoids are a certain way, so you can sing and everybody will pay you enormous sums to be on television or whatever--I think society has a big claim on that."

[sweetjazz]

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Ok. So it is your contention that "obviously" everyone should objectively agree that everyone deserves to have a physical impossibility.

Have a nice life.

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I didn't use "obviously" in that context. I said that identical and equal obviously don't mean the same thing.

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You didn't use "obviously" at all, it was implied by your contention that you couldn't imagine anyone could disagree with you.

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Dismissing the contention that it makes sense objectively that all people "deserve" equal opportunities for happiness/quality of life because they can't live identical lives is just absurd.

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I do not think that word means what you think it means, "opportunity." People cannot have equal opportunities without leading identical lives. For example, I do no have the opportunity to grow up in a beach house if my parents do not live at the beach. Yet you would claim that everyone "deserves" the opportunity to grow up at the beach.

I.e.,

Some have the opportunity to grow up at the beach.
Everyone "deserves" equal opportunities.
Therefore everyone "deserves" to grow up at the beach.

Of course, a little thought makes clear that if this is true, everyone "deserves" everything. Hence this concept of "deserves" is utterly meaningless.

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You make an interesting point, but the theory as presented can be salvaged. (I am not arguing whether one should or should not accept the revised version below, only that you can modify his proposal to avoid your problem.)

We agree that not everyone can have the same life-pattern, so in some they cannot have the same opportunities. Still we could (in theory) come up with a measure of level of opportunity. In practice, nobody has proposed a cardinal theory of levels of opportunity, nor is there a compelling argument that one exists. Indeed, most people have a fairly limited understanding of an ordinal theory. That is, they can identify extreme differences in levels of opportunity -- a man who grows up in a nice resort town and inherits a large estate has a much greater level of opportunity than one who grows up in extreme poverty and constantly exposed to lethal diseases in a rural village in Africa. Of course, they don't have the same opportunities. The rich man does not have the opportunity to raise himself from extreme poverty and achieve world success starting from nothing. Nevertheless, the intuition is that the opportunities available to the rich man have (considerably) more value than those available to the poor man.

One can argue that people deserve the same levels of opportunity, not necessarily in some exact quantitative sense but in a general qualitative sense. Levels of opportunity should be of the same order of magnitude for everyone, even though no two people will have the same exact opportunities.

In terms of public policy, this might imply that governmental policies should not increase discrepancies in levels of opportunity, or (in a more extreme form) that certain government policies should be implemented in order to actively decrease discrepancies in levels of opportunity.

There are lots of grounds to object to these arguments, based on moral skepticism, practical considerations, or an analysis of some of the steps in the argument (which I am sure could be improved, and might lead to different conclusions).

However, I don't think the objection that people cannot have the same exact opportunities is particularly damaging. The intuition behind the argument relies on the fact that people can reliably distinguish between levels of opportunity in extreme cases. (People as a whole can agree that the wealthy man had more opportunities in his life than the poor man.) Whether the conclusions that I subsequently drew using this intuition are correct is highly debatable (and I am not particularly arguing for them). But I think that it is an objective fact that people can grasp the concept of level of opportunity (maybe there's a better term for this concept?) and can identify extreme discrepancies.

Just my two cents. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Mickey Brausch]

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"If you're a marvelous teacher, this world won't pay a lot for it. If you are a terrific nurse, this world will not pay a lot for it. Now, am I going to try to come up with some comparable worth system that somehow redistributes that? No, I don't think you can do that.."

[/ QUOTE ]This is perhaps where Warren and me part ways. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

If we accept that the current system is man made (and not given to us by a higher authority, e.g. Allah), then it is certainly within Man's ability to critique it and try for a better one.

But perhaps what Mr Buffet is saying is that he has examined the various ways that the system can become more "fair" and "just", but he has concluded that the perils of any alternative or vastly different system are such that it is better to stick with the current system, along with its "injustices".

The question, of course, then becomes, To what extent can we tolerate the "failings" of the system (e.g. "unfairness", threat to the environment, etc) until we decide to go for something else. In other words, at what point do the perils of the current system (e.g. survival?) outweigh the perils of the alternative system (e.g. authoritarianism?).

Mickey Brausch

[Mickey Brausch]

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This kind of wording:
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"He feels nausea at people who try to rationalise that mistake just because it serves their self-interest."
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is non-arrogant, non-magalomaniacal, non-intrusive and non-offensive.
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This kind of wording:
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"People who are rich for technical capitalistic reasons do not truly deserve to be a lot better off than hardworking chemists in Burma. Period. "
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is quite the opposite.
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Reason: the first wording implies that DS is not God, nor the center of the universe making rules for mankind, but just has a position/opinion on an issue. [The second] is a sign that, in at least some moments, some states of mind, those megalomaniacal thoughts are indeed present.

[/ QUOTE ]You are exaggerating.

Expressing the opinion that certain people are not worthy of their big fortunes relative to others, for some reason or other, is NOT "playing God". It's just that : expressing an opinion. You are equating Sklansky's proclamations with social engineering (and social engineering is indeed like "playing God"), but I have not seen Sklansky suggesting here a social engineering method to change the status quo.

See this post post by Andy Fox which contains Warren Buffet's take on this. Buffet acknowledges the injustices of the system but explicitly refrains from proposing a better one.

Mickey Brausch

[Mickey Brausch]

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I noticed you didn't throw in poker players and authors among your list of those who become wealthy because of the nature of the capitalist system.

[/ QUOTE ]These people are getting justly and deservedly rewarded within the current system. You have missed the point.

[MidGe]

On an aside, it is interesting that a model for AC'ers, fundamentalist protestants (of the life wasn't meant to be easy outlook) and John Galt's wish to be clones, that one of their model or idol, Warren Buffet, in this case, is on record as saying that his success was not attributable to the sweat of his brow, personal exertion or developped skills but to a certain psychological profile (with regard risk aversion) that he has, that would not have been so succesful in any other time but the one in lived in. He thus had the honesty and modesty to attribure his success to luck, and further decided to give most of it away.

This was stated by Buffet in an interview following his examplary donation to the Gates foundation.

[FortunaMaximus]

If pressed, I'm sure Gates would say he had a similar profile. And that Foundation is going to do some amazing things this century.

[chezlaw]

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On an aside, it is interesting that a model for AC'ers, fundamentalist protestants (of the life wasn't meant to be easy outlook) and John Galt's wish to be clones, that one of their model or idol, Warren Buffet, in this case, is on record as saying that his success was not attributable to the sweat of his brow, personal exertion or developped skills but to a certain psychological profile (with regard risk aversion) that he has, that would not have been so succesful in any other time but the one in lived in. He thus had the honesty and modesty to attribure his success to luck, and further decided to give most of it away.

This was stated by Buffet in an interview following his examplary donation to the Gates foundation.

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Dead on but its also the refutation of one of the silly objections to AC that somehow it means that no-one would do anything to help others.

WB would likely have done similarly well in an AC society and would still give the money away.

chez