Inequality

[blackshoe]

If someone violates whatever laws there happen to be, he goes to jail of course.

I gotta wonder: why is "he goes to jail" an "of course"? Why do people immediately think of that, and only that, as a solution? It's not, you know. Guy does harm, physical or economic or whatever, to a bunch of people, and we put him in jail, or fine him, or both. Essentially we tell the people who were harmed "sorry about that, you lose". No. The guy who did the harm should be required to repair that harm.

 

Guy commits murder, and the government puts him in prison and makes the taxpayers pay for his food, shelter and medical care for the duration of his sentence (the rest of his life?) Whyinhell should we taxpayers pay to support this bum? That makes no sense. Find another way.

[mike777]

I understand the cops said don't enter

 

 

thousands said I don't care what the cops say

 

you guys seem to miss the greater point.

 

think about it.....

 

think about the gross bribes....ok I stop with my silly one lines.

 

think about airline crash...many die.....but billions gain....from failure.

[kenberg]

I gotta wonder: why is "he goes to jail" an "of course"?

 

Yes, I agree, at least sort of. I really meant it more as saying that if a person breaks the law then there are ways to deal with that. We were speaking of work place safety and I was saying that this is a work in progress, but acknowledging that there are laws. I didn't mean to imply that jail is the only possible response to law breaking.

 

 

However, on the topic of undoing the damage, I would say good luck. Probably the vast majority of crimes are committed by people who are too incompetent to be self-supporting. You can't get restitution out of someone who has nothing. Other crimes are committed by people who are quite clever. Think Bernie Madoff. It would be great if everyone could get full restitution. Won't happen.

 

A friend worked for a while on a project called Restorative Justice.He has always been an idealist. Mostly, I think, they worked with young people who had done something stupid and instead of incarcerating them the kids had to do something restorative. Rarely was it really possible to do so fully. I imagine that the real purpose was to set them on a better path. Sometimes it works, I guess.

 

 

I am all for requiring criminals to make things right, but I think it is rarely possible and it also may not, by itself, be enough. Saying that if a criminal gets caught stealing he has to give the money back while if he doesn't get caught he gets to keep it is playing heads you win, tails we call it a tie. That has it's limitations as a deterrent. But mostly, from what I have seen, full restitution rarely happens or even could happen.

[WellSpyder]

Saying that if a criminal gets caught stealing he has to give the money back while if he doesn't get caught he gets to keep it is playing heads you win, tails we call it a tie. That has it's limitations as a deterrent.

I know this is the Water Cooler, but I can't help thinking this is all too often exactly what happens at the bridge table with respect to those who (knowingly) use Unauthorised Information....

[Winstonm]

I understand the cops said don't enter

 

 

thousands said I don't care what the cops say

 

you guys seem to miss the greater point.

 

think about it.....

 

think about the gross bribes....ok I stop with my silly one lines.

 

think about airline crash...many die.....but billions gain....from failure.

 

Mike,

 

Air travel is a highly regulated industry. Billions gain from the rare failure because it is considered mandatory by the regulatory body to find the cause and fix it so it is less likely to repeat.

[onoway]

According to the interviews I've heard about this, generally not much changes after each of these disasters. After the one before this where people were trapped in a burning building apparently the only change was a law saying you couldn't lock people in the workplace. Apparently the incidence of child labour has gone slightly down but otherwise conditions are generally still appalling and every time something is done to correct things the business owners find a way around it. There also isn't any compensation for families either as even if anything is designated they seldom if ever get it.

 

Apparently some western businesses have been inspecting the business locations of the companies they do business with directly, but then those businesses subcontracted the orders out and THOSE businesses are NOT inspected as the western companies don't even know about them.

 

Mike: as far as I know, the day before the building collapsed, the workers were ordered out of the building but the next day the owner told them the building was safe and they had to go back to work. Since even with working up to 16 hours a day, many of them are barely able to feed their families, they really had no choice.

 

This is the sort of thing unbridled free enterprise spawns with the ethically challenged.

[blackshoe]

Yes, I agree, at least sort of. I really meant it more as saying that if a person breaks the law then there are ways to deal with that. We were speaking of work place safety and I was saying that this is a work in progress, but acknowledging that there are laws. I didn't mean to imply that jail is the only possible response to law breaking.

 

 

However, on the topic of undoing the damage, I would say good luck. Probably the vast majority of crimes are committed by people who are too incompetent to be self-supporting. You can't get restitution out of someone who has nothing. Other crimes are committed by people who are quite clever. Think Bernie Madoff. It would be great if everyone could get full restitution. Won't happen.

 

A friend worked for a while on a project called Restorative Justice.He has always been an idealist. Mostly, I think, they worked with young people who had done something stupid and instead of incarcerating them the kids had to do something restorative. Rarely was it really possible to do so fully. I imagine that the real purpose was to set them on a better path. Sometimes it works, I guess.

 

 

I am all for requiring criminals to make things right, but I think it is rarely possible and it also may not, by itself, be enough. Saying that if a criminal gets caught stealing he has to give the money back while if he doesn't get caught he gets to keep it is playing heads you win, tails we call it a tie. That has it's limitations as a deterrent. But mostly, from what I have seen, full restitution rarely happens or even could happen.

If the theif doesn't get caught, he gets to keep the money whatever society has decided to do with those who do get caught.

 

Full restitution rarely happens because our legal system isn't designed on that principle. It's designed on the principle that crimes are "against the state" and the state gets to recover or confiscate whatever property the criminal has when caught, and to incarcerate or kill (in some cases) him whether anything is recovered or not.

 

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

[kenberg]

Agreed that if a thief is not caught you can't recover anything from him. I was in no way addressing what to do about the thief who isn't caught.

 

Fortunately my direct experience with victimization has been infrequent and, when it does occur, mild. When I was fifteen, someone stole my athletic supporter from my locker. I coped. but from the modest experience that I have had, there is no realistic chance of getting restitution from a thief who has been caught. Surely you have know people who have no money, have no job, have no plans to get a job. You get restitution from them how? This is, I understand, a major problem in the case of men who do not pay child support to help with the children they have had a role in producing. Perhaps you catch him. Then what? Tell him to pay up? He doesn't have it. Tell him to get a job? Maybe no one will hire him, at any rate he doesn't. Put him in jail? As you say earlier, then we get to feed him.

 

So not being able to catch the thief is, I think, only part of the problem. And really, not everything that goes wrong is the government's fault.

 

 

With regard to the philosophy:

Your syllogism rests, as all syllogisms do, on assumptions. It's easy enough to draw the conclusion I want if I get to stipulate the assumptions. I have mentioned before that a life in mathematics has given me great respect not only for the power of logic but also its limitations.

[hrothgar]

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

 

Nonsense on stilts

 

This claim would come as a great surprise to Hobbes and Rousseau (not to mention Rawls if you want a more modern take on the social contract).

[barmar]

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

That is so not the right way to think about it.

 

When there are no laws, we have "vigilante justice", as in the Old West -- people exacted revenge on their own, and there was more violence due to rash, emotional responses. To curb this activity, society sets up laws. There's a social contract that we'll all abide by these laws. If you do, you get to keep your individual rights. But we empower the government to remove rights (to their property and/or liberty) from those who violate the contract (aka criminals). In other words, the alternative to giving the government the right to incarcerate criminals is one in which people will take the law into their own hands (after all, if the government can't punish the original perpetrator, it presumably can't punish the person taking revenge, either); this leads to a cycle of violence (like feuds or gang wars). Basically, we give the government rights to prevent a worse situation.

 

Read in "The Better Angels of Our Nature" about how violence has declined in societies that have adopted the rule of law.

[Winstonm]

If the theif doesn't get caught, he gets to keep the money whatever society has decided to do with those who do get caught.

 

Full restitution rarely happens because our legal system isn't designed on that principle. It's designed on the principle that crimes are "against the state" and the state gets to recover or confiscate whatever property the criminal has when caught, and to incarcerate or kill (in some cases) him whether anything is recovered or not.

 

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

 

 

To me, this type thinking expresses a self-centered worldview that is inconsistent with reality. I believe it expresses not a belief in individual rights but instead a fear of lost control.

[blackshoe]

Agreed that if a thief is not caught you can't recover anything from him. I was in no way addressing what to do about the thief who isn't caught.

 

Fortunately my direct experience with victimization has been infrequent and, when it does occur, mild. When I was fifteen, someone stole my athletic supporter from my locker. I coped. but from the modest experience that I have had, there is no realistic chance of getting restitution from a thief who has been caught. Surely you have know people who have no money, have no job, have no plans to get a job. You get restitution from them how? This is, I understand, a major problem in the case of men who do not pay child support to help with the children they have had a role in producing. Perhaps you catch him. Then what? Tell him to pay up? He doesn't have it. Tell him to get a job? Maybe no one will hire him, at any rate he doesn't. Put him in jail? As you say earlier, then we get to feed him.

 

So not being able to catch the thief is, I think, only part of the problem. And really, not everything that goes wrong is the government's fault.

 

 

With regard to the philosophy:

Your syllogism rests, as all syllogisms do, on assumptions. It's easy enough to draw the conclusion I want if I get to stipulate the assumptions. I have mentioned before that a life in mathematics has given me great respect not only for the power of logic but also its limitations.

You give him a job. Okay, it's not that simple. I understand that. But perhaps it could be, if we as a society could think outside the box for a bit. For example: The Constitution prohibits "indentured servitude". The reason for this is that, at the time, Indentured servitude had become in essence permanent slavery. If instead we put safeguards around it, indentured servitude might be a mechanism for, to use your example, making sure that men who are responsible for the existence of a child pay child support.

 

No, not everything is the government's fault. But it's close. :P

[blackshoe]

That is so not the right way to think about it.

 

When there are no laws, we have "vigilante justice", as in the Old West -- people exacted revenge on their own, and there was more violence due to rash, emotional responses. To curb this activity, society sets up laws. There's a social contract that we'll all abide by these laws. If you do, you get to keep your individual rights. But we empower the government to remove rights (to their property and/or liberty) from those who violate the contract (aka criminals). In other words, the alternative to giving the government the right to incarcerate criminals is one in which people will take the law into their own hands (after all, if the government can't punish the original perpetrator, it presumably can't punish the person taking revenge, either); this leads to a cycle of violence (like feuds or gang wars). Basically, we give the government rights to prevent a worse situation.

 

Read in "The Better Angels of Our Nature" about how violence has declined in societies that have adopted the rule of law.

I never said there should be no laws, nor that there should be "vigilante justice". Revenge is not a justification for doing violence against others.

 

There is a difference between "right" and "power". We cannot "give the government rights," particularly rights we don't have ourselves. As for power, remember what Lord Acton said.

[hrothgar]

You give him a job. Okay, it's not that simple. I understand that. But perhaps it could be, if we as a society could think outside the box for a bit. For example: The Constitution prohibits "indentured servitude". The reason for this is that, at the time, Indentured servitude had become in essence permanent slavery.

 

And yet, the same constitution had no problem legalizing actual slavery...

 

A quick perusal of Wikipedia indicates that indentured servitude in the US remained in use until 1917 and seems to suggest that it was not prohibited by the Constitution, but rather fell out of use through some combination of

 

1. Decreasing costs for transportation

2. Abolition of debtor's prisons

3. Labor substitution

[hrothgar]

 

We cannot "give the government rights," particularly rights we don't have ourselves.

 

I believe that God lives on a planet called Kolob.

I believe that Jesus has his own planet as well.

And I believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri.

[dwar0123]

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

 

You are welcome to argue against a collection of individuals accruing rights that individuals themselves do not possess, but if you want to be taken seriously do not try to burden your opposition with such an absurd argument as the 'divine right of kings'. That is a strawman argument worthy of al_u_card and you are better than that. I am not even going to articulate an actual counter response to that statement because it is that stupid.

[hrothgar]

 

>> That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo)

>> doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

 

You are welcome to argue against a collection of individuals accruing rights that individuals themselves do not possess, but if you want to be taken seriously do not try to burden your opposition with such an absurd argument as the 'divine right of kings'. That is a strawman argument worthy of al_u_card and you are better than that. I am not even going to articulate an actual counter response to that statement because it is that stupid.

 

FWIW, I can make a (plausible) guess where Blackshoes is coming from:

 

During the Age of the Enlightenment, various theories of the social contract were often cast as an alternative to the "divine right of kings".

I suspect that Blackshoes is taking all those aspects of society that he doesn't like and assigning these to the earlier tradition, ignoring the fact that any number of political theorists have argued in favor of a social contract without any need to resort to divine right.

 

I suspect that the root cause of the problem is his rather selective reading list.

 

Blackshoes seems to exclusively derive his economic insights by reading various crackpots from the Austrian school.

 

I suspect that he derived his political philosophy from Rothbard, Rockwell, and the like which can't lead to anything good.

[mikeh]

If the theif doesn't get caught, he gets to keep the money whatever society has decided to do with those who do get caught.

 

Full restitution rarely happens because our legal system isn't designed on that principle. It's designed on the principle that crimes are "against the state" and the state gets to recover or confiscate whatever property the criminal has when caught, and to incarcerate or kill (in some cases) him whether anything is recovered or not.

 

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

Libertarians are far closer in their thinking to communists than either would like to admit. Their 'solutions' to social issues are very much opposed, but the underlying approach is much the same in each.

 

Each philosophy is founded on a set of assumptions about the human animal, considered both as individual and as a social being. The assumptions may be different but what is identical is the lack of any grounding of the assumptions in reality.

 

We, as a species and not, obviously, as individuals, know and understand far more about how the human animal functions than did the authors of the texts that became the bible, or Marx's Das Kapital, or aynn rand's turgid novels or even the works of Adam Smith or William Shakespeare.

 

The notion that there are any such things as 'rights' that have some sort of mystical possession arising in humans is akin to the belief that the wine drunk by catholics at mass has become the blood of christ (I've often thought that the Red Cross would be able to avoid a lot of problems with collectiing blood donations if they could find a way to industrialize that process, but I digress).

 

As anyone with more than a passing interest in actually understanding the concepts would presumably grasp readily if not entrapped in a bubble-world, rights arise only within a society.

 

A castaway on a desert island has no rights nor any need of them. Rights pertain to the inter-relationships between members of a society. It is meaningless to speak of 'rights' of an individual in any other context: the words one would use to describe such rights would be devoid of any real life meaning.

 

Rights therefore arise out of society. The development of human civilization is one of the increasingly complex rules that various societies have developed over the millenia to govern their internal workings.

 

The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights seem to me to reflect not the intention of the destruction of the social contract but, rather, the repudiation of a simpler, more top-down social contract whereby the (white) inhabitants of North America could set up a more complex means of government. The creation of rights, viewed in that manner, is not a repudiation of government but an expansion of it, since rights have no real meaning unless society provides for the protection of those rights.

 

The more rights society grants to its members, the more frequently will there be a need for some form of enforcement or protection of those rights. And in a society in which social and economic power will inevitable become unequally divided, the less-empowered cannot by themselves enforce or protect their rights against the stronger. Hence the need for society, collectively, to act: and we call the organs of society empowered to act in this fashion: government.

 

Hence the more a society grants rights to all rather than, say, to an aristocracy, the more one needs government.

 

Of course, any organ of society is prone to abuse: that is the way the human animal seems to function. The question is whether we choose a complex government, with all the costs and abuses of power and inefficiencies that go with that, or a simple government, with few effective powers, and a largely unregulated society.

 

History suggests that on the whole, and the balance sheet is not all one way, the more complex the government, the better off are the bulk of the people. The simpler the government, the more power and wealth accrues to the few and the more miserable are the many.

 

I expect the right wingnuts to point to communist governments as examples of where this breaks down, but the fact is that communist governments, such as the USSR or N Korea are actually fairly simple forms of government, where the rights are given to the elite and the bulk of the population is denied many rights.

[PassedOut]

There is a difference between "right" and "power". We cannot "give the government rights," particularly rights we don't have ourselves.

Rights are just what we define them to be, and rights change over time. We can certainly define governmental rights differently than individual rights, and have found it advantageous to do so.

[barmar]

+1 to what mikeh said.

 

Libertarianism and communism both seem great in theory. The problem is that theory doesn't match reality. No attempt at a communist utopia has ever succeeded. They assume that all participants will behave altrustically, and that everyone agrees on the philosophy. But people are naturally selfish to some extent, and opinions about the limits of individual rights differ. So you get conflicts, and need some way to resolve them -- oops, we need a government to fill that role.

[y66]

From last night's Munk Debate about Taxing the Rich: Be it resolved tax the rich (more)

 

How should advanced countries respond to growing income inequality? For some the answer is obvious: redistribute the wealth of the top income earners who have enjoyed, for almost a generation, the lion's share of all income gains. Imposing higher taxes on the wealthy is the best way for countries such as Canada to reinvest in their social safety nets, education, and infrastructure while protecting the middle class. Others argue that anemic economic growth, not income inequality, is the real problem facing advanced countries. In a globalized economy, raising taxes on society's wealth creators leads to capital flight, falling government revenues, and less money for the poor. These same voices contend that lowering taxes on everyone stimulates innovation and investment, fueling future prosperity.

 

Spoiler: The good guys prevail.

[mike777]

The USA takes a different view from Mike H concerning rights and where they come from but we can see many many forum members agree with MIkeh. It raises the old issue of does power corrupt and more power lead to more corruption?

 

http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/

 

Thus we keep coming back to the point Mike raises in his post. Mike views government as expansive rather than limited. That we need more and more central govt power to protect us from something worse, much worse.

 

Mike argues that a more complex govt is better in general than a simpler one. He rejects the idea of via negativa that less is more.

 

I have argued in this thread there is something inherent that results in errors, hidden errors, with bigger, be it bigger corporations or bigger central govt, Size matters. That in political systems a good mechanism is one that helps remove the bad guy; its not about what to do or who to put in. A bad guy can cause more harm than the collective actions of good ones.

 

-------------

 

 

 

the other debate is a very old one, do we grow the pie or debate how we attain justice in splitting the pie.

 

Or as I mentioned many posta ago do we focus on the small tiny tail of entrepreneurs(risk takers) or do we focus on the mass middle to decrease inequality.

[Winstonm]

Data confirms that when taxes were progressive and much higher there was less inequality and greater economic activity. The determination is whether or not this is correlation or if there is a causal link. The best argument I have seen for progressive taxation is that when money is added to the income of those who spend 100% or their income demand increases, raising GDP, and thereby encouraging investment and growth, and this argument seems to be born out by the data.

[blackshoe]

What Mikeh is suggesting is not that rights are given, but that they are taken. Perhaps by a "committee of the whole", perhaps by a "power elite", perhaps by both. In either case, "rights" are not about "rights" per se, but about the distribution of power.

 

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." -- Attributed to George Washington.

 

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- unknown, attributed to various sources

[hrothgar]

What Mikeh is suggesting is not that rights are given, but that they are taken. Perhaps by a "committee of the whole", perhaps by a "power elite", perhaps by both. In either case, "rights" are not about "rights" per se, but about the distribution of power.

 

From a purely practical perspective, does this distinction matter?

(Semantic arguments are oh so tiresome)