The video piece is by a successful entrepreneur named Nick Hanauer, who argues that rich men (like himself) are not the real job creators at all. The last thing a business-owner wants to do is create a job, he says: he does it only when consumer demand forces him to hire on another worker. The real thing that makes for flourishing wealth is consumers, which means that you have to have enough distributed wealth to enable the flourishing.
The second article looks at the same problem -- creating a flourishing of economic activity -- from the perspective of the businesses themselves. How much are we able to understand, with our limited algorithms and processing capacity? Where we see real successes in economic flourishing comes from places where we've had leaps in the math:
ORION’s promise was and is clear: For each mile saved, per driver, per year, UPS saves $30 million. The mathematics required to arrive at some solution to the traveling salesman problem, even if approximate, is also clear. But in trying to apply this mathematics to the real world of deliveries and drivers, UPS managers needed to learn that transportation is as much about people and the unique constraints they impose, as it is about negotiating intersections and time zones. As Jeff Winters put it to me, “on the surface, it should be very easy to come up with an optimized route and give it to the driver, and you’re done. We thought that would take a year.” That was a decade ago....The two arguments aren't quite opposed to each other, but there's real tension between them. The first argument suggests that UPS' improvements in efficiency are in some sense harmful: they cut into the wealth of middle-class workers like the drivers and mechanics, in order to maximize concentration of wealth in the corporation. The corporation is of course turning around and re-investing much of that wealth (in projects like ORION), but that kind of investment does little for people outside the highly-educated classes.
For one thing, humans are irrational and prone to habit. When those habits are interrupted, interesting things happen.... People are also emotional, and it turns out an unhappy truck driver can be trouble. Modern routing models incorporate whether a truck driver is happy or not—something he may not know about himself. For example, one major trucking company that declined to be named does “predictive analysis” on when drivers are at greater risk of being involved in a crash. Not only does the company have information on how the truck is being driven—speeding, hard-braking events, rapid lane changes—but on the life of the driver. “We actually have built into the model a number of indicators that could be surrogates for dissatisfaction,” said one employee familiar with the program.
A compromise position would be to raise taxes on the stockholders of UPS, but not on the corporation itself. That would leave the corporation with money to invest in its information improvements, while still ensuring consumers with enough wealth to buy whatever products are being efficiently distributed from factories to stores.
But a compromise is probably not wanted, because there are moral principles underlying -- and overriding -- the economic arguments. The unspoken moral principle underlying the first argument is that it's OK to take from the rich and give to the less-rich; some kind of ideal of fairness or common-good makes this something other than theft. The second argument has the unspoken moral principle that the people at UPS are working very hard to earn that $30M savings. It's their hard work that is making this possible, and it is very hard work involving the best minds and the fastest computers we know how to make. Naturally they are entitled to keep what they earn by the sweat of their brow, aren't they?
We have a fundamental disagreement on the moral principles, which means we cannot even begin to agree about what to do with the practical questions. There's some sense in which it is obviously true that you need consumers to have a consumer economy, and the first author's talk of a feedback loop between consumers and business is really right. It's likewise true that UPS is making new jobs, and better ones, in part out of the destruction of old jobs. But their efficiency is reflected in part in lower prices, which could drive job creation among small businesses that couldn't afford higher structural prices.
Could we come to a compromise? Yes; the two positions are not logically incompatible. Ought we to? People on both sides of the debate are nearly certain to answer, "No." Whether that preference for morality over wealth is praiseworthy or blameworthy, it is in fact the only point of agreement that unites us.
A compromise position would be to raise taxes on the stockholders of UPS, but not on the corporation itself. That would leave the corporation with money to invest in its information improvements....
ReplyDeleteActually, not so much. It's a fundamental problem with taxes: money taken from an entity by government is money that entity cannot use for any other purpose. In the present case, money taken from the shareholders--investors--is money they cannot then invest in, say, UPS. It's true enough that UPS still has the money it has presently, but it'll gain less money from any future round of investment.
Government as intermediary in such a regime? Intermediation is best done by private businesses, which have economic constraints forcing them to prioritize the things they do. If the intermediary fails to do so, or if the market evolves and the intermediary does not keep up, it disappears. Governments have no such constraints: no competition, no money supply limits, no cost of money limits. I've never seen a government that makes a competent middle man. (Although as the NSA is demonstrating, governments can make a fine man in the middle... [/snark]).
We have a fundamental disagreement on the moral principles.... Could we come to a compromise? ...
I'm not convinced we need to compromise on this. In a truly free market, where men are able to see to their own needs and wants, I think there's plenty of room for both of these, and much more. The commercial success of oil drilling, the REIs of the world, and the Greenpeaces all illustrate this.
Free markets are the original do your own thing environment. Certainly free markets can also suck sometimes, but I've seen no other environment that does as well. The hard part is keeping the market free.
Eric Hines
I'll say we have a fundamental disagreement.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting case of how we often end up arguing about things that aren't what we're arguing about at all. We always hear roundabout arguments that try to present these positions as purely practical economic theories (like Rep. Pelosi's claim that food stamps are really just a particularly effective form of economic stimulus).
ReplyDeleteThat's not really what's going on here at all. It's almost pointless to discuss economic theories, because we're really arguing about morality.
Strange. I always thought I was arguing about practicality as well. If wealth is a bad thing, then I can see arguing for a particular kind of economic system. But if it's supposed to be a good idea to avoid poverty, that's different.
ReplyDeletePelosi's argument is a (less well-informed) version of the one being made in the first video. He also thinks (and presumably, so does she) that this is a practical point. If people had more money to spend, they would be consumers who could drive economic growth. This would yield new jobs as businesses would have to hire people to help them keep up with demand. So goes the argument.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's a sense in which we can see that it's really reasonable, presuming that we all agree with the morality of seizing wealth from one group to give to the other. If we did, the rich wouldn't try to flee these taxes by moving to other jurisdictions, for example: they'd agree to the transfer because they agreed it was right they should sacrifice in this way.
The practical arguments you sometimes forward are based on the reality that they don't agree. They will move to other jurisdictions, they will do what they can to avoid this burden, and that will decrease economic activity. The hoped-for gains won't materialize because the damage from capital flight will outweigh any increase in demand or consumption by the poor.
That's true, I think. But it's also true that it's really an argument about the fact that we don't accept their moral picture. Capital doesn't feel it has a duty to stay and pay. They feel it is an affront to have the wealth they have earned taken and given to those who did not earn it, and since they don't agree it must be done against their will. That's a further affront.
In both cases, the practical argument is plausible if and only if you agree to the moral picture undergirding it. When people talk about compromise, I think they sometimes miss this point. We could compromise here. The positions are logically quite compatible. But in order to do it, we'd have to set aside our morals -- both sides would.
Pelosi's argument is a (less well-informed) version of the one being made in the first video. He also thinks (and presumably, so does she) that this is a practical point.
ReplyDeleteWhat they both elide (because I have a hard time accepting that they're so ignorant or stupid) is that in a free society, work has to come first, else there's no wherewithal with which to consume. Henry Ford understood the practicality of this 100 years ago. Adam Smith articulated it some time earlier.
Of course, it's entirely possible that Pelosi and the gentleman venture capitalist don't want a free society. In that case, they're more right (or less wrong): work isn't necessary for there to be consumption. Because we'll always have the rich among us, and we always can tap them.
In that society, the rich cannot flee: they're in the government or in the government-favored enterprises. They're forced to participate in the cock fights that is what's left for the government's wealthy.
Eric Hines
The Bible articulated it before that: "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." But again, this is a moral proposition.
ReplyDeleteIt lines up with practical realities in large part because it's a moral law derived from human nature. We won't be made to work for someone else. We may choose to do it, for reasons of our own like love: but we won't be forced to do it. If you try, you get suboptimal results at best.
One way of saying that -- the way I usually say it -- is to say that violating the moral law has consequences. But another way of saying it would be to say that people are excusing selfishness, and ought to be better people; and if only they would be, we could take advantage of these rational solutions being proposed by the gentleman entrepreneur and the former Speaker of the House.
If I understand you correctly, you think a Robin-Hood state could be compatible with a prosperous economy if you could persuade the owners of capital not to mind having their capital confiscated. But if you could do that, you wouldn't have to confiscate it; you could rely on them to give it away.
ReplyDeleteBy all means, carry on persuading people that they should give their own money to charity. In the meantime, as long as you confiscate it, you'l experience a flight of capital, for the same reason that slaves will cross the border to free states if they can -- unless you can persuade them of the moral proposition that they should give away their labor to their masters. Looked at that way, the whole problem of slavery can be recast as a moral one, too. The slaves should stop being so selfish.
But also, I think you're misunderstanding why people say that having the state confiscate wealth and re-apply it in whatever way the state sees fit is incompatible with prosperity. It's not so much that capital will flee (though it will), it's that centralized control of resource allocations cannot compete in efficiency with dispersed control. Theoretically, the central bureaucrats will make only the most brilliant, efficient, rational decisions, avoiding the short-sighted, greedy mistakes of the blind masses. In practice, no central authority can take all the available information in the economy and act on it in real time in a way that's competitive with the action of hundreds of millions of free actors operating on the basis of their local conditions and preferences. It's weird, but the free market produces more prosperity just by turning loose larger numbers of free, independent agents each taking care of his own perspective, without conscious centralized control.
Commenting directly on the OP: your first guy goes wrong, I think, by focusing on whether job creators want to create jobs. Who cares if they want to? That's like worrying about whether a consumer wants to pay for goods. He'll do it if he absolutely has to, and will avoid it if he possibly can. So what? It still works, because these actors' subjective happiness about giving into necessity is not the point. A surly, reluctant job creator nevertheless creates a real jobs. A do-gooder with only the most merciful thoughts in his head about how great it would be to create jobs does no such thing. Good intentions aren't enough.
ReplyDeleteYour second example involves a business that tries to increase efficiency by micromanaging workers, who then resent the overbearing control and act out by doing bad work in one way or another. Another approach would be to tie the drivers' compensation to the efficiency of their routes. They'd figure it out quick enough without having to be told which corner to turn right on. That's the difference between centralized command and dispersed, self-interested decision-making.
If I am reading the second article right, the claim is that the drivers really can't do it on their own. The complexity of moving that many different shipments via many different routes quickly exceeds human capacity, and in fact is highly problematic for computers to sort.
ReplyDeleteIt's just an interesting additional problem that the computers end up having to sort out how to deal with unhappy drivers. If you're really saving $30M/mile/year/driver, though, I would think you could pay reasonably well for the hassle (and, in fairness, I've always heard that UPS does in fact pay reasonably well, though I'm not sure on specifics).
...it's that centralized control of resource allocations cannot compete in efficiency with dispersed control.
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but it's not actually a flaw suffered by the first thinker. He's talking about distributing resources widely so that the individual consumers can make distributed decisions about what they want.
So you'd still get that virtue here: they aren't talking about a central planning economy, just one in which a great deal of redistribution occurs (allegedly to ensure robust demand, and possibly actually having that effect insofar as everyone really did think it was right and was committed to it; but actually because they feel that a moral community should share more-or-less equally among its members).
How would he know if drivers can do it on their own? Has he ever tried linking the drivers' compensation to how well they do it? They might surprise him. They might come up with innovative ways to communicate among themselves or coordinate.
ReplyDeleteIt's a cinch they're not likely to be "able" to do it on their own if management just instructs them to do it. What's more, management has established that it doesn't work out well with instructions, either.
And how do you figure the first guy wasn't talking about what a problem it is that we rely on guys to create jobs who don't want to create jobs? "Feeling" that a "moral community" would do things their way is not the same as turning individuals loose to make their own decisions: it's wishing that everyone would take their orders from the right-thinking people who'd like to set the tone for everyone else.
The point of the dispersed, self-interested decision-making in a free market is precisely not to expect everyone to be making decisions on the basis of what will benefit the other guy. It's trusting the other guy to make decisions on his own, while we tend to our own knitting.
"Feeling" that a "moral community" would do things their way is not the same as turning individuals loose to make their own decisions: it's wishing that everyone would take their orders from the right-thinking people who'd like to set the tone for everyone else.
ReplyDeleteWhat I understand him to be saying is different. He seems to me to be saying that, if more people had money to act as consumers, more people would be (on your terms) 'turned loose to make their own decisions' in the market. The explosion of productivity and job growth allegedly to follow would come from the same market forces that always generate it; it's just that the market generates more wealth when the people buying things in the market have more wealth to spend.
The only function of the state he's suggesting is to use taxation as a means of shifting America so its average wealth looks more like its median wealth. The claim is that this would only increase the productive power of the economy, because it will increase total demand (i.e., the majority who currently has relatively little of the wealth will be able to actualize its demand).
My point is that what makes this economic claim wrong isn't really anything structural to economics. It has to do with a moral difference of opinion. If in fact we all agreed that was wise and right, we could make it work. Because we don't, we end up with the things like capital flight that end up making it not work. And, in addition, we'd have to agree to do something against the moral law as we understand it to even try.
Lots of people seem to think you can stimulate the economy by putting more cash in the hands of consumers. The confusing thing about this is that the money has to be taken from other people who were equally well positioned to spend it, so I've never understand where the advantage comes in. The idea seems to be that rich people don't spend it as well as poorer people do. In fact, rich people may -- horrors -- invest it in business rather than spend it on goods to be consumed.
ReplyDeleteI think the concept is that fewer people don't have as many needs as many people, which is straightforward enough. Investing in a business is wasted if nobody can afford your goods, so if you were the only person in town with any money, investing in a business in town won't help you either.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of reasonable points here, I think, but they depend on accepting a moral framework that we have reasons to reject. And they depend on accepting it: if you try to force people to live by it who reject it, you get the problems like capital flight that easily outweigh any good these schemes accomplish.
Straightforward but lunatic.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's fair. There are a number of early American cases that are roughly analogous. Land lotteries, for example, distributed resources that were technically owned by the government to create small pools of privately-owned wealth. These lotteries in places like Georgia did indeed spark the formation of flourishing economies in what was then a nation without much infrastructure to support such economies.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, Alexander Hamilton insisted on paying off American war debts at face value in spite of the hardship that imposed on early American finances, because he thought it was better to create small pools of capital throughout America than to have a centralized pool of wealth owned by one actor (the Federal government). Once again, this decision is usually credited by historians with having been an enabling factor in the very rapid growth and development of the US economy.
In both cases, though, we avoid the moral problem -- unless you want to talk about seizing the land from the Indians, say. The government already owned the resources, and was free to distribute them (indeed, in the case of debts, it was morally though not legally obligated to distribute resources to cover them). If we set the moral problem aside as they were able to do, the practical solution seems to be one that has worked reasonably well.
Hamilton also argued There are some who maintain that trade will regulate itself and is not to be benefitted by the encouragements or restraints of government. Such persons imagine that there is no need of a common directing power. This is one of those wild speculative paradoxes among us, contrary to the uniform practice and sense of the most enlightened nations.
ReplyDeleteHe was wrong about that, even though his argument for paying debts with non-debased currency was right. Nobody's perfect.
On the other matter, the government running land lotteries wasn't a matter of taking wealth from some and redistributing it to others (neglecting the Indians and the Rousseau's concept that we are the government (in which latter case, we're simply redistributing among ourselves, anyway)), it was a matter of distributing originally government property to private ownership.
And Investing in a business is wasted if nobody can afford your goods, so if you were the only person in town with any money, investing in a business in town won't help you either.
This simply continues the assumption that consumption must come before jobs. If I'm the only one in town with any money, my moral duty is to help those less well off. The greedy side of me, Smith-like, says use another batch of my money to do something that creates jobs (and me money). Now starts the virtuous circle of others in town have money, too, so they buy stuff, demand goes up, and broadens, and.... My greed serves my morals. And by making even more money, I'm even better situated to support my morals.
I'm with T99 on this one. It may well be a difference in moral matters. But some morals are better than others, and yet others are plain lunatic.
Eric Hines
Mr. Hines:
ReplyDeleteThe differences you're pointing out in these cases are the same differences I just finished pointing out. :) If we choose as analogues cases lacking the things that we think of as moral problems, the practical approach seems to have worked well.
So what are we really arguing about? We think it's practical, or practical-plus-moral. But I suspect it's really simply moral.
Now moral arguments are important, and I don't mean to say otherwise. I simply mean to say that, insofar as we can recognize that these are moral arguments, compromise is and probably should be off the table. That's true, I think, for both sides of the debate. The compromise we could reach is clear enough, but it is only available to people who would set aside morality in favor of prosperity -- and that itself is a violation of our moral law, and our opponents' moral sense as well.
I confess: I have no idea what you're talking about.
ReplyDeleteSo what are we really arguing about? We think it's practical, or practical-plus-moral. But I suspect it's really simply moral.
ReplyDeleteIt sounded to me like you were arguing for a wealth redistributive policy as a worthy moral imperative from a certain perspective. That, and your response to T99's "that's lunatic" sounded like an attempt to refute the lunacy of some of those moral positions. An example that might (or might not; I can get pretty dense) have drawn, e.g., the VC's position better might have been to point to the whole progressive structure of our tax system--which I hold to be immoral.
My going-in position, in response to your going-in question about whether the posited economic moral principles can find compromise stands: it doesn't matter, as compromise isn't necessary. A free market economy has room for both sets, along with the argument concerning progressivity of tax systems and the flexibility of a free market to find ways around that.
It isn't that compromise should or shouldn't be off the table, it's that the idea of this compromise is irrelevant in a free market.
Eric Hines
I'm engaged in a very unusual form of argument, Tex, so don't be too frustrated if you're not following it. It's much more usual to see argument and advocacy conjoined when we talk about politics. I'm not advocating any position beyond this one: we recognize that the real disagreement we have isn't on economics, but morality. That makes our economic discussions with the left wing pointless.
ReplyDeleteMr. Hines:
It sounded to me like you were arguing for a wealth redistributive policy as a worthy moral imperative from a certain perspective. That, and your response to T99's "that's lunatic" sounded like an attempt to refute the lunacy of some of those moral positions.
I'm not refuting the lunacy of their moral positions, but of the economic ones. The point of the examples was that -- where everyone (except the Native Americans) agreed on the morality of doing what they are here advocating doing -- the examples worked. Flourishing economic conditions did prevail when government distribution of resources created small pools of capital.
The problem with their suggestion, then, isn't the one we take it to be -- that it cannot work practically because of some sort of economic law. It can't work because of the moral law, part of which arises from human nature. Where we don't agree on the morality of the (re)distribution, that's where we run into the problems.
Should we therefore agree to redistribution? No, I don't think so. There is a real moral principle at work here that is very well-grounded.
Where we don't agree on the morality of the (re)distribution, that's where we run into the problems.
ReplyDeleteBut that's my point--and it points to a different moral precept (of the left, say I) than simple redistribution.
In a free market, we don't have to disagree or disagree--that's wholly irrelevant, since the freedom of the market lets both sides live their moral precepts, at least as concerns redistribution.
The problem arises from a different moral precept: the left holds that the free market is, itself, immoral: everyone must live under a version of Hamilton's directed economy environment, as that's the only possibly moral one extant. Adam Smith's common man, being greedy, and so morally bereft, is unfit to see to his own ends. Even the man of the left is; there must be that central direction. Ideally by Better men of the left.
It's why I kept, and keep, holding out for a free market, in particular.
Eric Hines
I'm not frustrated, I'm baffled, especially by your insistence (common lately!) that we're in some kind of agreement. The real disagreement between us isn't (merely) on morality, it's on economics. I think your approach inevitably ruins economies and leads to widespread penury, no matter what moral approach any of its adherents adopts.
ReplyDeleteYou have a concept of the "economy" that I can't grasp at all. Take for example your idea of the town with one rich guy and everyone else with no money at all. To you, apparently, the obvious "economic" solution is for the rich guy to hand out a bunch of money so the others can afford to buy things -- that's an "economy" to you, and you seem to think it will work better than letting the rich guy "waste" his money by investing it in a business for which there will be no customers. To me, that's not an economy, it's the model of Detroit.
The strange thing is that, to my way of thinking, it's not even important whether all the other inhabitants of the town don't have any money. It only matters whether they are willing and able to make something or provide a service now, even if they've never made anything or provided a service in the past (the money they don't have would be a symbol of the past work that hasn't yet been cashed in). If they can't -- if they're all coma patients -- then no matter how much money the rich guy spreads around paying for their feeding tubes, that's not an economy, it's a charity. If they can produce goods or provide services, then the town might get an economy going, even if that means going outside the town to find some customers with money. The charity eventually will run out of money and leave everyone helpless. The economy might conceivably provide for everyone's wellbeing far into the future.
I just don't get why you or anyone thinks overall wealth can be increased when you redistribute wealth by fiat. Sometimes you have to give money to people who are in deadly emergencies, but it would be better to acknowledge that it's a cost -- a burden on overall prosperity -- than to imagine that it's some kind of goose that lays golden eggs. That way, we could concentrate on making sure we can afford it, instead of fooling ourselves into thinking it will pay for itself.
Redistribution systems don't fail because we don't agree on the morality of the redistribution. They fail because they lack any mechanism for spurring production in the first place, as well as any mechanism for judging which allocations of resources meet the most real needs of real people. That's why they sputter, run down, and die, even among people who ostensibly agree that they are the most "moral" approach.
Not to put words into Grim's mouth, or anything, but....
ReplyDeleteThat's not his moral argument. That's the moral argument he's suggesting that people of a certain morality make. It presupposes a couple of things: we're fallen and irredeemable, but some of us are better than that. And that those few who are better than that should be--are--glad to share their bounty with the fallen, who, being fundamentally good, if irredeemably fallen, will use that donated largesse, if not wisely, than at least not stupidly.
And it's the disconnect between that morality and the morality that we work for our living (and, yes, separately, we share some of our bounty, but as a hand up and not a hand out) that creates, perhaps, an irreconcilable difference that's beyond compromise: one or the other position must prevail.
Somewhat orthogonal to that, I've been arguing that yes, the two moral principles seem irreconcilable, but that in a free market, that unbridgeable schism is a big so what: a free market (and, likely, only a free market) has room for both.
Eric Hines
I think a part of the problem, Tex, is that you're trying to construct an idea of what I think out of descriptions of what I think other people think. I'm trying to take them fairly, so it may sometimes seem like I'm advocating their position -- to a limited degree I am, against you, because I want you to take them seriously too. I want to make sure we listen to them, and don't just hear them saying what it would be easy for us if they said.
ReplyDeleteWe often end up arguing about things that I don't care about at all, but that I don't want to see dismissed easily or readily. Often if we look closely, there are counterarguments to our own positions that we can find -- analogies that support our opponents.
Do I think overall wealth is created when wealth is redistributed? Not at all -- and I don't think our opponents think that either. I think they view the act (at best) as a kike wake, to borrow a term from Kendo: a kind of tie, or equilibrium. I don't view it that way: I view it as harmful.
But I think they may have a point when they say that creating small pools of capital can go on to create wealth. That seems empirically demonstrable, as in the examples offered.
Do I think we should? No. But I think we should listen carefully, and consider carefully, what our opponents have to say.
I think that even though my final point is that we shouldn't even begin to consider compromising with them at all.
But I think they may have a point when they say that creating small pools of capital can go on to create wealth. That seems empirically demonstrable, as in the examples offered.
ReplyDeleteThat was my nit: the examples provided--the land distribution example, anyway--within a discussion of redistribution, weren't redistribution at all, but original distribution from a commons by an entity that had the credibility to make the distribution stand up. That distribution, further, by transferring from a commons into private ownership, reduced the scope of the commons, not the scope of already held private property.
It worked at the time because it contributed to gutsing up a free market economy in an area where one wasn't well developed. Whether that would work today seems unlikely. It was done in Hawaii with Midkiff, and that turned out badly for all concerned. In no small part because the "commons" that was distributed actually was private property being redistributed. Perhaps a better modern example would be hydrocarbon production leasing on Federal lands (although even this is contaminated to some extent by the amount of "Federal" land that was confiscated from State land, rather than originally Federally owned).
Considerable private wealth, and to a large extent widely distributed private wealth (albeit unevenly so), is created by that more or less original distribution.
Eric Hines
It seems odd to say you don't care at all about a thing, and yet don't want it to be dismissed. But it's not that important -- whether you're discussing it because you care about it or because you don't want it to be ignored, I respond the same way.
ReplyDeleteIt may be that small pools of capital can go on to create wealth, but I'm not sure where that gets us. The question isn't whether it creates wealth, but whether it creates more or less wealth than it would have done if you hadn't confiscated and redistributed it. (And by "you" I mean whoever it is that thinks this is an idea worth considering.)
That was my nit: the examples provided--the land distribution example, anyway--within a discussion of redistribution, weren't redistribution at all, but original distribution...
ReplyDeleteBut of course that's not right, as you know. It was redistribution away from the Cherokee, here in Georgia. They had a claim on the land, a fairly strong one until Jackson found adequate force and determination to overwhelm it.
It seems odd to say you don't care at all about a thing, and yet don't want it to be dismissed.
ReplyDeleteI don't care about the thing, Tex, I care about the people. I've thought there was a war coming for a long time. The position I'm finally advocating probably endorses war, since it won't endorse compromise. But it matters to me that we understand just why we're fighting. It's important to me that we love our enemies, which means among other things hearing them out fairly, and giving them the fullest hearing and best benefit of doubt.
I already understand why we're fighting. If I seem in danger of dismissing an idea, it's not because I've never troubled myself to think it through carefully. It's because I've long since thought it through carefully and judged it pernicious. My duty is to love my neighbor, not agree with his destructive mistakes.
ReplyDeleteAs for whether this disagreement will lead to war: I don't think war is a useful tool for combatting an economic collapse. At best, it will be a sad necessity for dealing with the social chaos in the wake of the collapse. Desperately hungry people do not behave well. But war is unlikely to stamp out redistributionist fantasies or impress on anyone the merits of a free market. More likely, whoever has the biggest guns will glom onto the resources, which is merely the openly armed equivalent of a redistributionist economic policy. A prosperous free market requires peace and order, in which human beings can honor each other's equal dignity in voluntary transactions. If large numbers of people start to get away with unrestrained taking, it falls apart.
I don't think war is a useful tool for combatting an economic collapse.
ReplyDeleteThat seems to be correct, although victors are often able to extract economic success in a colonial manner from the defeated (as the North did from the former Confederate States after the Civil War), and parties who can keep from being devastated at home can sometimes profit (as the US did in both world wars, and to some degree as the North did during the Civil War, since it was chiefly fought in the South). But no, I don't think we'll be fighting the war to avoid the economic collapse -- although, for just the same reason we hear these moral arguments described as economic arguments, I won't be surprised to hear people say that we are doing just that.
Are we hearing economic arguments disguised as moral ones, or vice versa? Maybe both. The redistributionist system often is attempted to be justified by the moral duty to "share" (in quotations because it tends to be a duty projected on others rather than practiced by its proponents), just as the free market can be justified by the moral duty to refrain from theft. If you suspect that the duty to share is a smokescreen for the desire to loot, you'll see naked material aggression prettied up as a moral argument. If you suspect that the prohibition against theft if a smokescreen for the quest to avoid the burdens of charity, ditto.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, my critique of the free market as an economic tool is more practical than moral: I think it demonstrably works better both in terms of overall prosperity and in terms of alleviating the misery of the poorest among us. Of course, that presumes a moral position that it's a good thing to increase prosperity and alleviate the misery of the poorest. I also feel strongly about the moral component of the free market, which is the importance of dealing with other human beings as free people of equal dignity, rather than as objects who can be pushed around by force so that goods and services can be extracted from them. I think the practice of obtaining things from people other than by free consent and bargaining is inherently morally corrupting, and therefore should be limited to the most extreme emergencies. I might well feel this way even if it were not also true, from a strictly economic and practical standpoint, that a free market provides better for the poor than confiscation can ever hope to do.
Re your comment about the Civil War and both world wars: I agree that victors can extract resources at gunpoint, and that societies that have remained relatively free and un-war-torn can outcompete societies ravaged by violence and tyranny. On rare occasions, it may even be possible to argue that armed intervention created a safe haven for free markets that were unlikely to have thrived otherwise. WWII comes to mind, as does the American Revolution. But that's not what drove those people to war; it's only an occasional by-product of people securing some degree of freedom for themselves and their allies. It comes to nothing unless they and their allies then resolutely choose a free economic system in the circle of peace they have created. Otherwise, war has no power to solve economic problems.
I also feel strongly about the moral component of the free market, which is the importance of dealing with other human beings as free people of equal dignity, rather than as objects who can be pushed around by force so that goods and services can be extracted from them.
ReplyDeleteTake the UPS case. Their claim is that centralized planning via an intense computer algorithm is saving them a fortune annually. That's easy to believe, if they really save $30,000,000 every time they can trim one mile/driver/year.
Now UPS is a free association, so people can quit if they don't want to live that way. (Good luck finding another job right now, but we'll assume nobody is trapped in their job.) So we might say, "Well, that's fine, if it works for them and people are doing what they want."
But let's say someone proposes running the state the same way. A few states try it out, and it seems that they really can deliver state services (soon to include all your health care, and for most people including all their education) much more efficiently if citizens submit to ruthless manipulation and micromanagement. (I think this is similar to the actual proposal for health care under the Obama system: they'll know everything about you, and will mandate accordingly, with the concept being that there will be savings.)
Now, this is hypothetical, and an easy thing to do would be to reject the hypothesis: it couldn't be the case that a centrally-planned system outperforms the market. There are good reasons to believe that is usually true, but they have to do with the ability of the market to bring more accurate information to bear more quickly. In theory, a computer that was adequately advanced and given access to enough of everyone's data (like the one planned by the Obama system) might be able to outperform even the market. It's certainly UPS' claim that they're already there in terms of their routing system: this kind of central planning achieves them great savings over local planning. So let's say it's theoretically possible, for the sake of the hypothesis.
Is the loss of dignity too great a price for any practical gain? Or is there some level at which you'd accept being ordered around ruthlessly by the state if the savings were great enough?
If it's the first, then you're really making a moral argument. The practical argument is disposable: if it supports you, you'll make it, but if it goes against you, you'll still support the idea of human dignity over practical gains.
If it's the second, then you're really balancing between two arguments, moral and practical. If there were enough gains (for you personally? for the community as a whole?), you'd be willing to set aside the kind of life you take to be the good life for a human being.
For me, it doesn't matter if the system works better or not. I prefer the dignity and human freedom. Even if you could prove to me that we could provide free health care for everyone (including me) and better education, at the price of the government knowing everything about you and having the power to order your life for you, I wouldn't make the trade. There's no set of benefits great enough such that I would make the trade.
That means that the economic arguments aren't really the important arguments at all. For me, at least, they're disposable. I don't care if it works better or not.
It seems odd to say you don't care at all about a thing, and yet don't want it to be dismissed.
ReplyDeleteThe value of this sort of argument, to me, is in the category of knowing one's enemy. The Progressive Left are making exactly this sort of argument; we can't merely dismiss it. The right's inability to answer it over the last 80-ish years flows, at least in part, from not understanding the argument, and so not being able to form an answer to it. Simply insisting that my way is better doesn't hack it. Nor does a gradualist series of compromises.
It was redistribution away from the Cherokee....
Hence my caveat. Externalities are always a problem.
Eric Hines
I did say that I might well prefer the human dignity of the free market approach even if I were not persuaded that it also does a better job alleviating the misery of the poor. If the free market could be demonstrated to make us all poorer, those of us who feel an obligation to alleviate the misery of the poor would still have that obligation, but it would hurt us deeper in the pocket. So my economic and moral interests are happily aligned in my preference for a free market.
ReplyDeleteIf and when someone persuades me that a redistributionist system does not gratuitously impoverish the entire society and wind up hurting the very poor people it's intended to help, I'll face a choice. No one has ever yet persuaded me that I face such a choice. So in the meantime, it matters a great deal to me whether the system works better or not, in part because I care whether we are moving in a direction that ameliorates the desperation and pain of the most helpless among us. Also in part because I prefer a system for alleviating their pain that doesn't rely unrealistically on the charitable impulses of most people (which are mostly theoretical and confined to a preference for the spending of money by almost anyone but themselves). And finally in part because I prefer a system in which our consciences need not be brutalized either by indifference to the poor or by the need to deal with each other by force.
When it comes right down to it, I'm not sure I ever can be induced to believe that our charitable obligations can be fulfilled by forcing other people to give generously. That's corrupting in two ways: the human corruption inherent in a reliance on force in human relations, and the corruption of hypocrisy. That leaves me only one path open to avoid the third corruption, which is indifference to suffering, and that is to give of my own resources, relying on nothing more forceful than persuasion to induce other people to give of theirs.
If it's the second, then you're really balancing between two arguments, moral and practical.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that an attempt to balance the moral with the practical is, itself, a moral argument.
As is supporting an argument that's convenient to me and tossing it as soon as it loses its usefulness. Only less so.
In theory, a computer that was adequately advanced....
It's hard to credit this argument, even on a utilitarian basis. A free market, like evolution itself, has a measure of randomness in it that then is pushed in directions (or not pushed in other directions) by local pressures. Computers cannot achieve randomness, if only because they can't even write pi beyond a certain number of digits. Nor can they experience intuition.
Eric Hines
That's corrupting in two ways: the human corruption inherent in a reliance on force in human relations, and the corruption of hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteIt's corrupting in a third (fourth) way, also: it creates and maintains the "beneficiary" as a dependent of the benefactor, denying him the freedom and dignity of his own responsibility. And a fourth (fifth) way: that dependence is addictive to the benefactor.
It's why I do my best to provide hands up, rather than handouts, and to do it anonymously.
Eric Hines
A free market, like evolution itself, has a measure of randomness in it that then is pushed in directions (or not pushed in other directions) by local pressures. Computers cannot achieve randomness, if only because they can't even write pi beyond a certain number of digits. Nor can they experience intuition.
ReplyDeleteThis is a separate topic, but an interesting one! We should probably do a post on artificial intelligence theory sometime soon. Have you read anything good on it lately?
...corrupting...
I agree, but that's a moral concept.
This is a separate topic, but an interesting one! We should probably do a post on artificial intelligence theory sometime soon. Have you read anything good on it lately?
ReplyDeleteMy "knowledge" in this area comes from empirical experience in using computers in developing simulations and in their incorporation into developed simulations, and being a power user of computers. And in being a successful investor.
The artificial intelligence discussion would be interesting to me, but from a lurking perspective: I wouldn't have a lot to contribute.
There are some interesting things being done with neural networks and training them, but even their success is limited to cut and dried environments, and not anything where "tomorrow" only looks a lot like "today." Or tomorrow turns out, this time, to have no resemblance to today. Part of that stems from that fact that the brain has something like 86B neurons and 100B to 100T connections among those neurons; even neural networks aren't even as complex as a worm's ganglion. And that doesn't even begin to address whether intelligence flows from complexity, or whether a threshold complexity is only a foundation for some addendum, or whether the addendum is what creates intelligence, or.... Nor does it address whether an understanding of what is life is necessary to understand what is intelligence.
On the corrupting as a moral concept bit, you bet it is.
Eric Hines
I agree, but that's a moral concept.
ReplyDeleteYou'd be hard-pressed to find any concept we're likely to find interesting enough to discuss here that doesn't involve some kind of moral component. The question is whether the argument can be usefully distilled to its pure moral qualities, or whether the practical aspects remain equally interesting.
The question is whether the argument can be usefully distilled to its pure moral qualities, or whether the practical aspects remain equally interesting.
ReplyDeleteThat strikes me as a false dichotomy (of the trivial kind). The answer to both, because they're independent questions, is yes.
The first because I believe in the power of the human mind; the second because that sort of thing has always interested my august self.
In the first, I think the hypocrisy bit is immoral by itself. The other three (T99's first and my addenda) all represent limits on a man's inalienable rights to his own property and to his own ability to pursue of his happiness--they cap those rights at a necessarily artificial level (although it's the cap that's immoral, not any level of the limit).
Eric Hines
The question is whether the argument can be usefully distilled to its pure moral qualities, or whether the practical aspects remain equally interesting.
ReplyDeleteThey may be interesting; I find economics to be at least somewhat interesting, which is why we occasionally discuss it. But I also think morality has priority. We have to decide the moral questions, and then adopt an economic system compatible with those decisions.
So in a sense, you say you'd have a choice if it proved that a command system could outdo a free market system given adequate computing power and information. I don't think I'd have a choice. My support for the other and not the one is predicated on a prior inquiry, a superior set of facts about what I both think and believe that the moral law requires.
I don't think I can agree that one or the other must be decided first. I need to know whether a tool works before I can consider whether to use it to fulfill the moral goal I have in mind. My good intentions are not enough if the tool does the opposite of what I claim to support morally. As far as I can tell, I'm obligated to keep both aspects in mind all the time.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. Maybe you design your tools once you know what you want to use them for. That gives priority to the use, not to the tool: the tool's design and function are wholly determined by the use to which you'd like to put it.
ReplyDeleteI can't get very enthusiastic about a moral analysis that takes no account of what we're able to do. That approach always seems to degenerate into empty aspirations, while we neglect the real good we know how to achieve.
ReplyDeleteWhen we're doing the most we know how to do with the tools we have, then we can work on how to build even better tools. What we must never do, in my opinion, is adopt tools we know don't work, or jettison those we know do work, simply because the nonfunctional tools seem more compatible with a moral ideal.
What you can do is important to moral inquiries. One can't have a duty to do the impossible, for example. Even if it were derivable on very strong grounds otherwise, if it's not possible, it can't be a duty.
ReplyDeleteIf you prefer virtue ethics, courage can't exist except in reference to things that can be done. It isn't courageous to wrestle a unicorn, because you can't wrestle one.
But if you could it would be at least somewhat so, just as steer wrestling is courageous. And if you could construct a command system that was more efficient than the market, it still would be wrong to force people to live by it.
On the other hand, when something has to get done and can't get done without compulsion, I live with the need for compulsion, as in epidemic emergencies, pulling over for ambulances, or taxation to pay for national defense. Not all compulsion is wrong, only gratuitous or needless compulsion. It's not always easy to determine what's needless, but the availability of other effective tools to achieve the same (or a better) result comes into consideration.
ReplyDeleteGood. But all of those cases you chose as examples are not economic, they're existential. Now economics can become existential if it goes wrong enough. So how do you want to sort that out?
ReplyDeleteWe may not use the word "economic" to mean the same thing. The way I look at it is that the moral duty is to alleviate the suffering of the helpless, and economics is a tool to allocate resources effectively. An analogy would be to the duty to feed one's children and the tool of cooking. If a food is indigestible until cooked, then our duty becomes to cook it so the children might not starve. Is that existential or economic? I suspect I don't order things according to those categories as you see them.
ReplyDelete...those cases you chose as examples are not economic....
ReplyDeleteThey sound pretty grounded in economics to me. How are you defining economics?
And where do you place the threshold of "wrong enough" that economics becomes existential, if not at zero?
Eric Hines
The examples in which compulsion was justified were these: in epidemic emergencies, pulling over for ambulances, or taxation to pay for national defense.
ReplyDeleteIn the first case, the threat to existence is obvious. In the second, again, at least one human life is plausibly at stake -- and as we'll all probably end up riding in an ambulance one day or another, we can generalize on the case in which it's our life at stake. A nation that doesn't provide for national defense will cease to exist -- at least as a genuinely independent people. In addition the horrors of war often destroy the existence of many individual people.
Existence is a plausible candidate for a ground for moral concerns (in fact it is Aquinas', as he believes that God is Being). So you can ground a very plausible moral argument about why compulsion -- ordinarily not morally acceptable -- becomes acceptable when existence itself is at stake.
As for a definition of economics, I like Wikipedia's pretty well because it explains the origin of the word: Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία (oikonomia, "management of a household, administration") from οἶκος (oikos, "house") + νόμος (nomos, "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)".
It's not an overarching field, in other words. This is not where we determine what is good, or when compulsion is proper, or whether a system of taxation is just. Morality is to economics as strategy is to logistics, perhaps. There is a discourse between ends and means (it's pointless to set ends you cannot possibly reach with your means), but the ends belong to strategy. Figuring out how to make available means support the attainment of the ends belongs to logistics.
Wiki's definition of economics is rather narrow.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of fundamental areas of human interaction--indeed, primates generally and many apparently lesser animals share these: social interaction and economic interaction, and there's considerable overlap between the two.
Virtually everything we do falls into one of these areas. I don't see economics any less an existential factor in individual interrelationships, in community relationships, in compact relationships than any other aspect of our existence. We can't function, except in individual isolation, without economic interaction (and we don't function at all well in solitary).
The examples in which compulsion was justified have an economic nature as well as social, and at least two of them are mostly economic.
Accordingly, I don't see any place other than zero for identifying the threshold of economics being "wrong enough" to become existential.
Eric Hines
It's your view that compulsion is justified only when a life is threatened?
ReplyDeleteNo, I have a much more robust embrace of violence in certain cases. But I think a plausible, principled view could be constructed that was rooted on those grounds.
ReplyDeleteSurely you know I don't require that people agree with me! There are several views of morality and the world that I hold in high respect, even though I don't share them. There is room here for a plausible, principled view.
ReplyDeleteJust as well, since there's no way to require people to agree with you! :-)
ReplyDeleteBut my question marks referred to this confusion in my own mind: you seemed to be saying that compulsion must be avoided at all costs, and perhaps even that we were heading for war, perhaps because of the intolerable compulsion we're facing. I then wondered whether compulsion wasn't justified in a number of contexts, and you seemed to be responding, "Only when it's life or death." I asked whether compulsion really was limited, in your view, to those extreme circumstances, and your answer didn't help me understand your own view.
I do understand that other people may hold a number of different positions, but I'm not trying to reconcile those other positions with things you're arguing here. Is that problem that I'm incorrectly assuming that any of the arguments you've made above are your own? If they represent a variety of potential approaches adopted by a variety of other people, not necessarily compatible with with each other, then this is not a line of inquiry I should be pursuing.
Yes, I think the problem is that you're attributing positions I'm arguing to me as if I actually held them. I thought perhaps you were reading me that way, so I tried to warn you! "It's much more usual to see argument and advocacy conjoined when we talk about politics. I'm not advocating any position beyond this one: we recognize that the real disagreement we have isn't on economics, but morality."
ReplyDeleteMy point about war wasn't that compulsion was so awful that it might lead to it; it was that, if we're going to fight about something, we ought at least to be clear in our minds about what it is. We're not going to fight (if we do) because of a clash of economic theories, because the economic theories could be logically compromised. We're going to fight over a clash of moral frameworks, because the two moralities are not logically compatible. They can't compromise on this point. That's why we have an intractable conflict of the sort that might lead to war.
People can and do compromise peacefully on all kinds of things that aren't logically compatible, including moral disputes.
ReplyDeleteThe one position that you acknowledge to be your own, which is that we're disagreeing about morality rather than economics, is one I still am having trouble understanding. I thought you were supporting that position with arguments of your own -- ? If they were arguments held by other people that you don't agree with, I'm not sure how to probe the basis for your principal position.
That people quarrel over morality I can certainly agree with. I think, though, that people also quarrel over control of scarce resources, and that a fundamental misunderstanding of what causes resources to grow or shrink is very likely to lead to clashes that might have been averted.
It's easy to compromise on moral disputes if the compromise is, "You go your way, and I'll go mine." That's essentially the 10th Amendment argument I keep proposing as a desirable alternative to war. There are other cases where the alternatives are immorality on both sides, or submission by one side to the morality of the other side. I think we're talking about the middle case here: we won't see a compromise because a compromise would mean both sides agreeing to act immorally. It's easier to come by submission (at least by compulsion) than to get everyone to agree to do what they think is wrong. In a sense that's fair, but in just the wrong sense. :)
ReplyDeleteAs to how to untangle the arguments -- there are many arguments I've offered here for positions I'm trying to offer because I want to see them fairly defended, but that lack a real advocate in this discussion. There are other arguments here that are mine purely. I haven't said anything I think is false or untrue, of course, but there are positions I'm defending in the spirit of 'to be fair, there may be an argument here,' and others I'm defending in the spirit of 'I really think this is surely right.'
I'm sorry if that's confusing, but I wanted to explore the one set of arguments because I think they deserve to be taken seriously. We don't have a lot of vocal liberals around here anymore, and even if we did they might not be economically inclined. So I'm doing my best to defend the interests of some absent parties, who deserve (I think) to be recognized as morally-interested agents whom we may just have to fight. But we can respect them, indeed even more while fighting them because we aren't assuming they could be talked into abandoning their moral core.
I'll say that a different way. A person might abandon an economic principle for mere empirical evidence that the new position will result in material gain (after all, that's what economics is about). But if you abandon a moral principle for material gain, you're doing something that is not worthy of respect.
Disputes can be compromised without a decision to part ways completely. Adam Smith described his amazement that people of radically different views on fundamental questions could nevertheless identify their areas of partially overlapping interests, set aside their differences for limited and temporary purposes, and work together for mutual benefit (that is, in a market).
ReplyDeleteI hear what you're saying about wanting to see arguments receive some advocacy even if you may not agree with them yourself. (Remember what I do for a living?) But if you're going to be the advocate (and there's no one else here doing it), then don't you also take on the burden of rebutting the counterarguments? Is it really enough at that point to say the original arguments aren't really yours, and you just want them not to be dismissed? If I hear an argument, and I make a counterargument, and I don't hear a rebuttal, of course I'm going to dismiss the argument. I'll reconsider it on some other occasion if someone comes up with an answer. It's not that important to me whether the person who reports the answer really believes it, but is it important to me whether he can defend it persuasively.
I think I began my part in this discussion by observing that I assumed redistributionists considered material wealth to be a good thing; otherwise they wouldn't be worrying about the dilemma of the poor. I therefore assume that it's reasonable to point out how the system I prefer will do a better job of delivering material wealth to the poor.
If the moral dilemma is not how to alleviate the misery of the poor, then it's true we're not really having an economic dispute. In that case, I guess the question is: what's the dilemma we're trying to solve? The argument I hear most often is that it's necessary to equalize wealth, even if that means everyone will be a little poorer. Again, if that's what we want, it's not an economic argument: we should be willing to damage the economy in order to foster equality.
But if someone tries to argue that redistributionism will actually improve the economy and increase overall prosperity, THEN we're having an economic argument.
Perhaps I have failed to adequately defend the people I wished to defend, but partially it may be because I was concerned about confusing you further as to whether I was in favor of, or merely doing my best for, a given position. I'm not in the same business as you: in philosophy, the protocol can sometimes embrace what I'm trying to do here. E.g., "I think Avicenna would say, in defense of an Islamic state..." does not require me to rebut all counterarguments, especially given that I probably agree with many of them. It's merely intended to point out that he has an argument, and in his absence we ought to respect that it is receiving only a limited defense -- with the understanding that a further one is possible, given someone convinced of the point.
ReplyDeleteWe have different methodologies. Philosophy doesn't require a decision be made on a current case. Questions can remain open, well, for as long as philosophy continues in some cases. So there isn't the same urgency to respond to counterarguments as fully as possible yourself, when another might do it better. It can be enough to suggest that there is probably a counterargument along general lines, to be pursued perhaps more fully when the advocate is present (today, or in a thousand years).
And here I thought we were talking about urgent issues that might lead us to war!
ReplyDeleteThey might. But we can still argue about them when the war is over. I assume you've seen people debating causes and the right of the Civil War, and this 2013?
ReplyDeleteChesterton used to say that we are monsters. We have a part in the divine, which is eternal and not living in time. But at the same time we have a part in the bestial. I won't be surprised if soon we are killing each other -- and people I respect, on the other side -- over these matters. And I will continue to respect them, but I will, if I live to see such times, choose sides and take a sword.
I think I'd prefer to figure out if my ideas hold water before I go to war over them (or even vote). That won't get in the way of people continuing to argue about them as long as they like afterwards.
ReplyDeleteOf course. But that kind of 'figuring out if this holds water' involves accepting much lower standard of truth than we are interested in finding in philosophy. Many times in life you'll end up fighting for things (actually or metaphorically) that, later in life, seem foolish even to you. But you had reasons at the time, reasons you'd thought about as well as you could right then, and made a decision to support.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, where I can only indicate the argument in lieu of one who could do better (because they believe in it, and therefore do not as I do accept certain counterarguments), if you want to press it further you should seek out one of the thinkers who believes it true. Most professors of economics or philosophy will answer email, even from strangers, provided their questions are reasonably polite and their arguments are seriously intended.
I take my interlocutors as I find them, and haven't ever had any trouble finding them.
ReplyDeleteHah! I don't doubt that you have no trouble commanding the attention of interlocutors. I only mean that you might want a better one than me on these questions, if you are serious about wanting to ensure your correctness before committing to the fight. I can only do so much, because I don't accept their arguments. I can do no more than to try to show that they have a kind of validity, not that they are right.
ReplyDeleteBut they may be right, and I might be wrong. It could be worth your time, if you really want to know for sure, to seek out the best defenders of these ideas. I am not among them, because these ideas are not mine.
I rather thought it was you who were concerned about whether you'd given the opposing viewpoint adequate attention! The possibility is not troubling me.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry that I'm getting all my opposition research from you. It's not as though I developed my ideas in a bubble. When I was younger, I absorbed all kinds of Keynesian and redistributionist assumptions, and voted Democrat for many years. I changed after encountering arguments I found more cogent, starting in about the mid-1990s.
Lordy, when I think back: I actually thought the Democrats were the fiscally responsible ones, and that they were the bulwarks against tyrannical government.
I fear nothing but God, dear lady. But I fear that one thing more and more, as I ponder what seems to be a coming conflict, and our incapacity to be certain of the right of what we do.
ReplyDeleteSee? On these issues, at least, I'm in little doubt; it's you who are unsure. Which is why I keep arguing with you. I think you're letting false assumptions trip you up and turn you in circles.
ReplyDeleteThat could be. Or it could be the other side has points you have yet to consider when they are defended fully. In the end the sin is mine, so I am careful to hear my brothers out before the hour comes when there is no more time, and we must choose and fight.
ReplyDeleteTake this to the new post, on the 'blip.' The ideas apply there. Are they right? Can we achieve some sort of passage to the new economy without mechanisms to ensure distribution of wealth? That's not obvious, though it may be so all the same. We continue, as best as we can and as long as we can.
Oh, no. You can't make me repeat myself on the subject of that last post. You know very well what I think! You'll just quote Schumpeter to me again, and I'll continue unconvinced.
ReplyDeleteI think there has to come a time when you conclude that we've heard the other side out thoroughly, and there aren't any nuggets of wisdom among their redistributionist ideas that haven't been thoroughly exploded long since. It can't be an issue held in suspense forever.
I don't have to make you repeat yourself again. I suspect you'll elect to do it all on your own. It's the beauty of the marketplace (of ideas). :)
ReplyDeleteBesides, in the new post the claim will be that the forces that gave us the rules we rely on have stopped existing. The economist -- at least the hook story economist, but to some degree even the others -- doesn't argue that the rules weren't what you think they are, but that there has been a significant change such that there is a new game, with new rules.
So a third possibility: you could be totally right about how things were through the second industrial revolution; but in the new era, expecting things to remain the same as they were those forces were in play could be disappointed.