What would you think if I were to propose a socialist system for people’s basic needs, and a capitalist system for everything beyond that? I.E., it’s ok for you to be rich as long as nobody is poor?
Arguments:
We have the right to life and liberty. Not the opportunity to acquire same; the right. That means, if we are losing our life and liberty due to poverty, it is a violation of our rights. Since those rights are guaranteed us by the state, the state ought to provide the necessaries of same, to wit: food, clothing, shelter, emergency service, medicine (for life); education, legal representation, and the vote (for liberty). These could be provided by welfare, direct provision, or a mixture.
Telling people “If you don’t work, you won’t be able to afford that lovely Mazda Miata” is a choice. Telling people “If you don’t work, you won’t be able to afford to eat” is not a choice. It is an ultimatum: work or die. In other words, it is slavery.
We cannot be free as humans to make existential decisions about our lives unless we have all of the possible routes of life open to us. Summarily closing off the ones that do not conform to the desires of the market is an attack on the freedom of self-determination.
Frankly, offering people Mazda Miatas for their work is enough of an incentive. (Maybe not a Mazda Miata specifically, but you get the idea.) Heaven knows, the people (like myself!) who are scraping by and paying most of their salary to the grocery store and the landlord would like to have luxury items. If their work really was going to items they don’t need, more of those things would have to be produced and the economy would expand. If you don’t make people pay for the things they need, they have more money to pay for things they don’t need, and they will.
There is quite enough wealth, at least in first-world countries, to pay for all of this. The problem is that it is not effectively taxed. I’m not talking as much about personal taxes (heaven knows there are enough of those) as I am about business taxes. Governments are afraid to tax businesses because they’re afraid they’ll move away, a problem we would not face if all the first-world nations decided together to effectively tax the wealth on their territories. (That’s a topic for another day, though.)
I would argue that my proposal is not an “equality of outcome” one, but in fact a higher emanation of “equality of opportunity”. Life and liberty are opportunities, not outcomes. They are guaranteed to us as human beings, and if we take those guarantees seriously, they ought to be provided us.
What I’m proposing is capitalism for the extras. Discussion?
BTW, to clarify: when I say “guaranteed us by the state”, I mean that we have those rights by virtue of our being human, but that they are respected, upheld, and realized by the state.
I’m a bit tired so maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t this be something like having, say, food stamps and subsidized housing for people with lower incomes or no income, with a progressive tax rate for anything over the first few thousand dollars?
The problem I have with this scheme - along with most other communist/socialist ideas - is There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Yes, I think it would be wonderful if we could guarantee that no one would ever go hungry, or be without shelter, or get sick and not be able to afford a doctor. However, there is no way of supplying these things without taking them out of someone else’s pocket.
Someone decides not to work. Fine, that’s her decision. She’s still got to eat, though. And pay rent. And get medical care. And so on. Where do these resources come from?
From me, and all the other people who’ve made the decision to work. All of a sudden, I’m working not only to get that Mazda Miata, I’m working to pay for her food, rent, medical care and other things. And, I’m paying for myself to, because there really ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Excuse me. I didn’t sign up for this. She’s got all her limbs attached, all her faculties are in order, there’s nothing wrong with her that keeps her from working. So why is it that I’m paying for both of us? Hell, I might as well stop working so I can kick back and get free food, housing, medical care and so on. I’ll just let some poor schlub on down the line pick up the tab for both of us.
The only way this might work - and there’s no guarantee it would - is if someone created the equivalent of a molecular transmogrifier. A black box you could shove piles of dirt, shit, bricks, old laundry, and soylent green into one end and get food, houses, freshly ironed shirts, and and the latest video release out of the other end. Of course, there still ain’t no free lunch. Someone has to invent the damn thing first.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good dipped in chocolate.
I don’t agree with this at all, and people usually call me a flaming liberal. (Not that I’m not.)
In the first place, I have little respect or sympathy for any able-bodied and mentally capable person who refuses to contribute in the most basic way to their own survival.
Second, imagine the impact on human development. Nature sort of selects against creatures who refuse to attempt to survive, and I see no reason why it should be otherwise.
John Rawls A Theory of Justice I think 1971. The book argues that from behind a “veil of ignorance” (where loosely speaking, you know how society works but don’t know your place in it) people would unanimously choose a minimum standard of access to what he calls primary goods - equality before the law, various non-discrimination type things, health, housing, food and income.
What he suggests is that since incentive effects matter, deviations from complete equality would clearly be desireable. He posits that people would agree (behind the veil)to inequality only insofar as it makes the poorest (say) 10% better off.
Obviously this is fairly controversial, others like (Economics Nobel winner) James Buchanan argue using the same method that people would agree on rather different things when placed behind a veil of ignorance. I believe Rawls has backed away from his original position. Nonetheless, this constitutional perspective - where you think about what rules of the game you would choose whilst abstracting from your own vested interests - is a pretty useful way of thinking about what the rules ought to be, and is very influential in the fields of political philosophy and public choice (economics of politics).
Golly, Matt, you sure don’t waste anybody’s time with anything trivial!
Have to say, though, that I think you’ve got a Big Problem right there in the first half of the first sentence of your OP: "What would you think if I were to propose a socialist system for people’s basic needs…"
How in the name of all the gods of Hollywood, Wall Street, and Madison Avenue would you EVER get people to agree on what “basic needs” are?
The mind boggles.
Unless you’re talking about some kind of 1984 scenario, a totalitarian state, or at least a well-controlled socialist state, which I think automatically precludes any form of capitalism. “Capitalism” means “me and mine”. “Socialism” means “me and mine and Joe Blow down the street who I can’t stand.”
“Capitalism” means “gimme”. “Socialism” means “here, share with me, you worthless sack of guts who can’t even keep his lawn mowed”. Socialism as a system of government is completely against human nature, and it takes a strong governmental arm to even have a hope of making it work.
They’ve evidently got some kind of modified socialism/capitalism in Great Britain, which sounds kind of like what you’re describing, and look how well THAT works. Paul McCartney keeping all his money in the Isle of Man, to get out of paying taxes, people on the dole, standing around with nothing to do but go to soccer (pardon me, football) games, poor quality national health care…
Tell me this is simply baseless prejudice, a highly skewed view of Great Britain based on media sound bites.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
You appear to be confused by the word “right”. You seem to be translating it into “are entitled to have”. A more correct translation would, be “are entitled to not have taken away”. Strictly speaking, you are not entitled, by God or the Pink Unicorn, to have anything. If you were, you would have it. The government attempts to protect your right to life and liberty by not allowing them to be taken from you, and by not allowing you to take them from me. To say that you need food, clothing, shelter, etc. is to talk about quality of life, which no one can guarantee. You didn’t mention the right to personal property, which is also supposed to be protected. This isn’t to guarantee you personal property, it is to guarantee that, if you have it, I won’t take it away, be food, shelter, or a Mazda Miata. A necessary requirement for providing food and shelter (which someone must produce) to people is to take it away from someone else. If that someone is me, you have violated my right to my property in support of some “right to life and liberty” that is nothing short of bizarre.
Telling people “If you don’t work, you won’t be able to afford that lovely Mazda Miata” is not a choice; it is an observation. “If you don’t work, you won’t be able to afford to eat” is also an observation. You may view it as an ultimatum or as slavery, but you need to think about the source. Your requirement for food is not imposed upon you by me. If you are enslaved, you are enslaved by the natural condition of being a living human, as are the rest of us.
We cannot be free as humans to travel in space until someone builds a bunch of spaceships. Someone’s going to have to pay for them. If you are not working for your food, so that your time can be better spent pondering your “existential decisions”, then someone else is working to produce your food, and giving up time they could be spending on their own existential decisions. How does your need for existential thought outweigh mine? How about if none of us choose to work to produce food. Guess what happens then? We all starve. Goddamn slave drivers.
No, it is the most effective mechanism we have found for allowing people to make individual decisions. The marketplace ensures that you are not forced to make a sacrifice for something greater than what you perceive its worth to be. If you don’t think my apples are worth the price I charge, the market does not force you to buy them. If my prices really are too high, you may choose to sell apples for a lower price. If I have to give you my apples for free, my sacrifice gains me nothing while your lack of sacrifice feeds you. You honestly think this is more fair?
If you don’t make people pay for the things that they need, someone is working without getting paid. If you use taxes to fund the venture, then someone is working without receiving the full benefits they have earned. If you wanted a Mazda Miata badly enough, you would eat less to save money for it. The fact that you aren’t making enough money to afford one now means that whatever you are producing is in low demand, meaning there are too many other people doing the same thing. I suggest you consider another line of work.
And if you are taxing businesses more, just where exactly do you think the money is going to come from? They’re going to have to raise their prices. Which means your Mazda Miata just got harder to come by, even for those of us who don’t mind paying for our food.
“Life” and “liberty” are concepts. They are neither opportunities nor outcomes. If you continue to continue to redefine them, along with the definition of “right”, you are trying to make the system unworkable. No one (or ones) can guarantee you life or liberty as you are interpreting them. You still have your life and liberty; you just don’t have a Mazda Miata. How is that you have the nerve to act as if someone has taken from you something that you never had to begin with?
Only a small number of people are truly awake. These people go through life in a state of constant amazement.
There was a sci-fi series (by Anne McCaffery, I think) where every non-working person was given a identification band which entitled him to free food, clothing and living space in a high-rise shelter. The clothes were some kind of durable paper, the food was nutritious but bland and the rooms were only as big as necessary.
Of course, each person thus classified was only allowed one child. When periodic raids turned up dozens of unregistered children, they would be given ID bands and allowed to live, but would be forcibly sterilized.
The big problems I see are:
A) Who pays for even that minimum level of care? (Answer: the working individuals, even if it comes from their businesses)
B) What incentive does this lowest class have to abide by laws? What’s to deter them from raping, stealing, etc. unless we are ultimately willing to kill them or perpetually imprison them for their crimes? (Answer: nothing… but then, of course, we have the same trouble today)
No matter how difficult it may be on a personal level, we have to let natural selection continue to work on the human race. It’s one thing to support those who cannot work – their experiences and progeny are still worth something to society. Coddling those who refuse to work, however, is placing an unfair and ultimately repressive burden on the others. Better to drop them off in the woods and let them feed themselves or die, by the laws of nature.
There are rights to life and liberty and these shouldn’t be violated, but violation is an active thing, not a passive one. If I kill you, I’ve violated your right to life. If I am sitting at my desk at work, and you die in your home from lack of food, then I have not done anything in violation of your rights. (Assuming my job isn’t related to your lack of food.) To say that my inaction is violation is wrong; it’s a poor use of the word “violation” because it doesn’t refer to anything specific. An action is specific, an inaction isn’t; while I’m sitting here not providing you with food, I am also not doing an infinite number of things. “Not helping” isn’t violation, in the same sense that “not hurting” isn’t virtue.
“Work or die” – this may seem bad, but it is a choice (or un-choice) imposed by nature, not by people or governments. Don’t hold people responsible for the unfairness of the indifferent, amoral universe.
I’m not quite sure what you mean here, can you elaborate?
Where is all this “free” food, shelter, medicine, etc. going to come from? If people are spending their “extra” money on things you consider extras, how will the providers of the necessities be paid? You’re having us pull ourselves us up by our bootstraps. If the necessities are provided by government, then taxes will have to be high enough to pay for them at least as much as is now being paid in the market. Thus there is no “extra” wealth now suddenly available for people to buy the extras.
I guess this is where the “extra” wealth is to come from, by taking it from someone. But don’t forget that ultimately citizens pay all the taxes. Taxes on business merely hide this from them in the form of higher costs.
You’re right in that you aren’t proposing equality of outcomes, as many wealth re-distributors do. But I’m not sure what you mean by life and liberty as “opportunities” vs “outcome.” You are saying that we not only have the right to live, but that our living should not cost us anything in terms of our labor. Again, the fact that living has a cost that has to be borne by someone is a fact of nature, not of human laws. We can’t eliminate this cost, only spread it around. But by doing so, we abandon liberty, for now someone other than you can claim your labor; they “need” it to have their cost of living eliminated. This is slavery.
This is piffle: the idea that a society ought, must or even can choose to do what natural selection dictates is a misunderstanding of natural selection and the human animal. It also commits the naturalistic fallacy (trying to get ought from is).
Human society has (perhaps temporarily) shortcircuited natural selection: there is little or no selection pressure, at least in above-subsistence countries.
Second, there is no presumption that survival of the fittest is good, bad or indifferent.
Third, what matters to us is us, not our genes. We are not “programmed” to want to do what is good for the species, or even our own genes, it is merely that we have behaviours which advanced fitness in the stoneage. If what we want to do is not in the interests of our genes, that’s tough (to paraphrase Pinker).
Simple guide to the usefulness of Darwinian arguments about policy questions: such arguments may be relevant for asking what we can do, they can never determine what we ought to do. Feasibilty yes, desireability no.
Let’s take your definition of liberty as being the opportunity to do things. And let’s assume that this opportunity requires wealth.
If money is taken from me, my opportunities are diminished, hence my liberty is taken away, thus moving my liberty to someone else.
This is all of course BS, but it is the logical conclusion of you argument.
In reality what you are saying is that being unsuccessful should be rewarded and success should be penalized.
Your system basically discounts any form of personal responsibility and rewards lack of such. Now tell me, do you know of any such system that results in an overall increase in the success of the participants?
Imagine if they did this in college: well, jimmy got a 98 on the test and Bill got a 43. Bill;s opportunity is diminished so we have to give some of Jimmy’s points to Bill.
1.) Matt, ol’ buddy, you seem to expect a lot from the state. What are you going to put back in?
2.) Your second comment insults all black Americans and those who have fled tyrannies to come to this country. Working to support yourself is not slavery; it is self-reliance. You throw the word liberty about quite a bit. I maintain it infringes my liberty to take money from me to support slackers. To be brutal about it, if you are able-bodied and don’t want to support yourself, I could care less if you were to die.
3.) All routes in life will never be open to anyone. If you lack brains, you will not succeed as a scientist, an engineer, a lawyer or a doctor. If you lack talent, you will not succeed as a musician, an artist or a writer. If you lack initiative, you aren’t going to make it as a salesperson or an entrepreneur. If you don’t want to work hard, don’t go into farming or construction.
4.) Right now, just about all of my income goes to my landlord, the grocery store, gasoline stations and utilities. I am living without any luxuries – hell, I haven’t bought any reefer in more than two months – but I don’t expect other people to buy them for me. I don’t even expect my fellow citizens to buy me the basics of life. If you want luxuries, get off your dead ass and earn them. It is not the state’s responsibility to give you an incentive to improve yourself.
5.) Businesses are not going to pay taxes just so slackers can have it easy. The taxes you suggest will be passed off to consumers in the form of higher prices.
6.) Life is not guaranteed to us as human beings. A man drowning in the Pacific does not have a right to life, to quote Robert A. Heinlein, nor would the human race have a right to life if the sun were to nova (I don’t think it can, but you get the idea). Are you really dumb enough to believe socialism will enable you to cheat the Reaper?
Despite your high-flown rhetoric about liberty, I grok a desire to sponge off of others.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. It’s obvious, but, unfortunately for those Leftists among us, it’s true.
The point is that, there is NO societal benefit in supporting those who refuse to work. When a fully-capable adult is unwilling to make any effort to provide for his basic needs, he is a “pet” not a “person”. If you want to support him because you think he’s cute, go ahead, but don’t ask me to chip in. I’d just as soon leave him in the wild to fend for himself.
[Note: To protect those who just screwed up and aren’t completely hopeless, I’d support having public workhouses where you could work 4 hours a day for food and a bed while trying to find a job.]
The problem with equating “work” with “money” is as follows: work does not equal money. Tres simple, non? Farmers in Manitoba work damn hard, much harder than people in suits on Bay Street, and yet the people in suits on Bay Street make a shitload more money than the farmers.
This is unnecessarily exaggerated, in my opinion. You are (or at least, you are if you are making more than a certain amount) paying a portion of this which represents the level of your wealth as a fraction of all the total wealth in the country. If you’re rich, you pay more; if you’re poor, you pay less or nothing; either way, it’s a fraction.
Ethics? Compassion?
No. (smiles graciously)
I proposed a list, based on the rights to life and democracy; maybe you would like to add some.
I don’t know anything about Great Britain, but I do know something about Canada, having lived here my whole life. We come pretty close to the system I’m describing, or did, until our neoliberal governments decided that our well-functioning system was not competitive (on the basis of what evidence I don’t know), and has been taking or selling it a bit at a time ever since no matter how loudly we tell them not to.
Oh. So you feel nobody should pay taxes?
Nature imposes quite enough inevitabilities on us already; society should impose the minimum possible. Just because nature says something doesn’t mean we have to agree with it, which is why we live in houses.
The difference being that, now that they have the choice, they are working to produce the food in accordance with that choice and are therefore existentially fulfilled. (Farmers do choose to farm, by the way. Otherwise, given that they are currently operating on a loss, there wouldn’t be any.)
In other words, you suggest I consider permitting my life path to be imposed on me by artificial systems, which is exactly what I was complaining about.
So you don’t take them seriously?
The purpose of a society is to give relief from the indifferent, amoral universe. If we do this, we’re a society of civilized humans. If we don’t, we’re a bunch of naked apes.
Which provides a choice: Work for me or die, or Work for me or I will die?
I am going to put in my participation as a citizen of a democracy and my labour in the field which I rather than the market choose.
My experience of human nature tells me that all but a few people would choose to work if given the choice but not the coercion, simply because they’d get bored. I intend to go into social work, not because it’s profitable (heaven knows), but on the basis of an ethical sentiment of responsibility to society and a personal inclination. Fortunately, I am free to make that choice, because it pays enough to support me. Or it will until the next genius decides to cut the social work budget. The same is not true of those whose inclinations are not within the fairly narrow template of possible choices approved by our society.
Ah. So the state ought to install laziness as a capital crime. Yes?
Oh, and I reject your accusation of racism for the slander that it is. Accusations of injustice here do not dishonour a history of injustice there.
Right. What’s your point? I doubt a 98-pound weakling (or a 180-pound weakling like myself) is gonna want to go into construction work anyway. I have skills to contribute in other areas, and I should not be denied the capacity to go into those areas because they’re not profitable and I won’t be able to support myself doing them.
If you’d do me the courtesy of reading my OP, you’d find that my dead ass agrees with you.
That’s why I suggest price controls for the necessities.
Not one given to him by nature. But he does have the right to be rescued by the Coast Guard.
No, you grok a desire not to have my contributions to society go punished in the form of starvation.