Every enlightened, educated guy with some sense in his brain will say the world is a tough place and that there’s a need to fix it. I see myself as one of those guys, but everytime I start to think about a solution more problems surface up :smack: .
Lets just take the economy, for instance, and say that we want no poverty, so than comes the problems of competition and free market vs. jobs that needs to be done with low pay- How can that be done, say, with a democratic capitalistic state? In a hypothetical world how would things work making things equal and fairest as much as possible (I know there is no perfect way to run the world, :dubious: )?
You might be interested in thisarticle from primatologist Frans de Waal.
He describes, first, how we humans, like apes, are biologically wired to balk when economic inequality gets too blatant, as proved by the Grape versus cucumber experiement:
Then de Waal draws some conclusions about human economics:
The Gini index lists a lot of Western countries with Gini-indexes far, far lower then in the US. You could look at their economics to answer the questions in your OP. Apparently, these countries can solve the problems of free market and competition, and yet minimize social inequality. Socialism is a gliding scale. 
It has been said that free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
Simply look around the world. There are no countries with no poverty, but some with considerably less poverty than we have here, and some where being poor is not as bad as it is here; and I’m talking about democratic capitalist states.
Pardon me, sir, but that’s not an argument; that’s a platitude.
How does inequality foster freedom?
I think the point is that (economic) freedom inevitably leads to (economic) inequality.
Other way around: freedom fosters inequality. The only way to guarantee that people are equal is to deny them the freedom to rise above the lowest common denominator. See Harrison Bergeron.
Thing is, there are different sorts of equality. Equality of opportunity (which IMHO is part of the traditional American ideal) is going to lead to inequality of circumstances, because some people are going to take better advantage of their opportunities than others.
Gotcha.
Anyways, if you define freedom as economic, as well as personal and civic, then certainly, in a free society, you’re going to have inequality as a fact of life. Like Thudlow mentioned, not everyone takes advantage of the opportunities present in a free-market economy equally. But is poverty an unavoidable fact of life in these societies? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that many poverty-reduction measures impinge on the freedoms of both those stricken with poverty, and those who are not — certain welfare programs restrict recipients’ behaviors (i.e. the recipient must work, or be looking for work, and so on), while the taxes that fund these programs impinge in some small way on the freedoms of those who are not impoverished (i.e. if I didn’t have to pay these taxes, I could spend the money as I pleased). Maybe these impingements are significant, and maybe not.
But it could also be said that poverty denies freedoms to the impoverished, because it denies them freedom of opportunity to obtain education and so on, in a way that mere economic inequality does not. In a laissez-faire type society, the only ones truly free are those who control the capital; everyone else is restricted and denied opportunities. In a modern socialist democracy like Scandinavia, no one is ‘perfectly free’, but at least no one is denied opportunities to pursue a good life.
It’s pretty hard to define “freedom” and leave out its economic aspects. What good is freedom to vote or freedom of speech if your property rights are under threat of the government? Great, I can publish a newspaper, but the government can take it away from me if it wants. Property rights are at the base of every other right. If they are not secure, no other right is secure.
That is really stretching the definition of freedom. In a laissez faire society, every one if free to pursue “a good life.” No one is being prevented from doing so. Yes, some people may not have the means to do so, but they are free to achieve those means. No one is denied the opportunity to obtain an education, no one is denied anything. But, on the other hand, no one is being forced to give you anything, either. That’s freedom. It seems a strange concept of freedom to me if you mean that you can only truly be free if you have a good life, however you define it. That’s impossible. Freedom means being able to pursue happiness, not forcing people to give you the things to make you happy.
Good point.
Another good point. In my last post, I was trying to make the point that yes, these rights to various freedoms may exist on paper, but they don’t mean a thing if they can’t be exercised in reality. A hypothetical poor person in the United States might have the right to pursue a better life, but in reality, is prevented in doing so by a number of extra-legal factors, everything from discrimination (and not just racial discrimination) to simply a lack of know-how. I do not believe that this hypothetical poor person is free simply because he or she is permitted freedom on paper.
Yes, they are, by anyone who has more money, a bigger organization, or any other edge they can use to crush anyone they feel like. Economic power can be just as oppressive as military power; someone forced by the threat of starvation to do something isn’t any more free than someone forced at the point of a gun. You are simply pushing the libertarian idea that either government is the only source of oppression, or the only source that counts.
A laissez faire society is one that will inevitably degenerate into something like feudalism, anarchy or a slave state. A society designed primarily for the success of the most predatory isn’t likely to turn out well.
That is contradictory. Such things as universal education require that people be forced to give their money away, in the form of taxes.
Solely based on your posted cite (I can’t read the link where I’m at atm…it’s blocked), my question would be…did they try the experiment in such a way that the harder the apes worked the greater the chance of getting grapes instead of cucumbers? Seems to me that if they arbitrarily gave grapes or cucumbers as a reward then the experiment says one thing, but if they gave grapes as a reward for some quantifiable attribute (better skill, harder work, etc), then it says something entirely different…no?
I’d be interested if anyone can access the link if in fact they did the experiment using arbitrary rewards or if they did it using some other yard stick. It will say quite a bit about the experimenters (and perhaps their motives and preconceptions) if it’s the former…
I don’t believe it’s possible to eliminate poverty in a free society…it’s only possible to mitigate against the worst forms of poverty (such as starvation, disease, complete lack of even the possibility of upward mobility, lack of any kind of representation or say in government, etc). I think most ‘free’ nations do this with varying degrees of success (or failure), depending entirely on the populations goals and desires. That of course is the rub…in a free society, society gets to pick what the priorities are. So…in the US you have one set of priorities that the majority of people here are comfortable with, and in, say, Europe (or various European countries at any rate) you have a populace with different priorities, and different goals and desires for how things should be. And of course, being free societies the pendulum will be in constant flux and their societies needs, wants, goals and desires subtly change over time.
Don’t blink…we may be in for one such sea change here in the US in the next decade as our own pendulum shifts and priorities change…
-XT
I was unaware that proponents of laissez faire endorsed the use of violence against “anyone they feel like.” Perhaps a cite from Friedman, Hayek, Bastiat, or anyone of that ilk to back up your assertion would be nice.
It is. No one can force me to do anything except the government. My neighbor cannot force me to give him money or buy his goods and services. The government can. Sure, if I’m hungry and my neighbor offers me a job it is in my interest to take it. How is that “oppression”?
People freely exchanging goods and services in transactions tha make both better off is highly unlikely to result in “feudalism, anarchy or a slave state.”
Education is capable of being provided by private entities. As is clearly shown in this country, when the government runs schools it often does a piss poor job.
You state this person is “prevented by doing so,” but by whom? If someone is prevented from something that implies an actor working against this person. If that person has nothing to offer prospective employers, is that really a lack of freedom? If someone does not want to employ him at a certain job, even for discriminatory reasons, how is that a lack of freedom? Does your definition of freedom require that people give things to this hypothetical poor person even if they do not want to do so? How is that freedom?
It has been a very long time since I stayed in Denmark, but I travelled in that country extensively and didn’t see any poverty.
I wasn’t implying that the government or some large over-arching organization was actively preventing the hypothetical poor person in my example from achieving what I call a ‘good life’. I was not implying an actor intentionally working these effects upon my example, though my word choice may very well have implied that.
Certainly, I concede that economic freedom and other freedoms are inextricably intertwined. But my point is simply that factors other than the existence or absence of property rights can affect a person’s freedoms (or at least impact his or her ability to act on these freedoms). What good is the right to vote, if conditions are such that you can’t afford to take a day off from work to vote, or can’t get to the polling center because it had been placed in a location impossible to reach by someone with limited means?
Certainly, if that person were really serious, he could bite the bullet, take the day off from work, and get to the polling center by any means possible (and not be able to pay the bills because of the missed work), but the consequences outweigh any potential benefit of exercising his freedoms. Likewise, that person may have the *right *to free speech, but if he’s dismissed from his work because of something he said (perhaps by means of something like Florida’s ‘at-will’ employment laws). Therefore, his freedom (at least in part) is essentially nullified by factors that don’t exist ‘on paper’ in a free society. The Constitution may state that he has the right to vote, but reality nixes that pretty handily. What good is a freedom if it only exists on paper, and is hobbled by reality?
I disagree – it’s just referring to a different type of freedom. Debates about the concept tend to focus on political freedom, but that shouldn’t be the end the discussion. For instance, I am politically and theoretically free to own a helicopter, but for all practical purposes that is a right I do not enjoy. More relevantly, perhaps, I am both free and not free to own a television station that promotes my views, or to donate so much money to political campaigns that I can secure direct access to my elected officials. Money, fundamentally, is freedom (which is not to say that it is the only thing that constitutes freedom).
Thus, it may be (ironically) that freedom is maximized by some degree of political coercion. For example, while it’s unfortunate that the relatively well-off aren’t free to not spend tax dollars on programs for the poor, that debit may well be more than made good by the credit that comes from giving poor people the freedom to obtain decent health care (through Medicaid, state-run free clinics, etc.). I’m not arguing that such programs necessarily (or even generally) are net positives, only that they can be.
This is a proclamation, not an argument. On what do base your claim?
I didn’t say violence; you don’t need violence to ruin or kill people if you have enough economic power. Suffering or dead by a weapon; suffering or dead by deprivation or coercion; one is just as bad as another.
“Give me your daughter as a sex toy or you starve. Don’t bother trying to get another job; disobey me and you’re blacklisted and unemployable.” Economic coercion is just as much coercion as pointing a gun at someone’s head. Companies that can get away with it have never minded working people to death or crippling them. It’s the evil oppressive government that forces them to act in a semi-civilized fashion; remove that restraint and they’ll cheerfully show you why the Communists looked so attractive to so many people.
Except that only happens when the government squeezes down with a heavy hand on would-be robber barons and frauds. NOT in a laissez faire society. Without government restriction, you’ll just end up with an exploited underclass and plutocrats lording it over them. Just like the good old days.
Which is better than the nothing millions would get without it. Or worse than nothing, like madrasas.
History. Remove government restrictions on people’s behavior, and you end up with tyrannies or chaos. Our attempt to turn Iraq into a free marketer’s paradise, for a recent example.
If you define poverty with specific and relatively constant (but real [inflation adjusted])terms, like, say, living on less than 10 bucks a day, or whatever, there is no economic reason that poverty can’t be eradicated completely. That is, I don’t believe in limits to growth. The average person is better off today than yesterday, and will continue to be so.
If you define poverty as wealth relative to others (bringing out Gini), or keep raising the bar (will not having the internet put someone in poverty?) then that is a horse of a different color. The OP needs to define poverty.
I should also note that many quoted poverty statistics are relative, not absolute, definitions of poverty. For example, nearly half of those “in poverty” in the United States own a home. Living like that would be pretty sweet for a lot of the world’s population.
For discussions like these, absolute poverty is more useful. The World Bank defines poverty as living below $2 a day, PPP adjusted. Under this definition, the percentage of people living in poverty is shrinking fast, and can easily be cut to almost 0 in 100 years, with Africa being a wild card.
I’m a cornucopian economist, and my views are certainly open to debate, but I think we can all agree that relative and absolute poverty are two very different things.
Are you arguing against anarchy or laissez-fair economics?
This is not a satisfactory example. In the first place, Iraq is hardly a model of free market economics, with huge portions of the economy relying on money or contracts doled out by the (highly corrupt) government and military.
More importantly, Iraq is a war zone. It was ruled for decades by a tyrant, fought three ruinous wars, suffered two invasions and one outright conquest, saw its middle-class flee the country for safety, just fought (or is fighting) a low-grade civil war, enjoys a thoroughly corrupt government, and is, again, currently hosting a war which has been going on for over five years. And yet you’ve implied that “our attempt to turn Iraq into a free marketer’s paradise” is the cause of the “tyrannies or chaos” in that country. That just doesn’t follow.