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AfiG
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11 months ago
in The Argument for Preemptive Redistribution on Will Wilkinson
Maybe this is just alien to the point you are drawing out above, and would be better mentioned elsewhere and/or exclusively within my head; but . . .
isn't the real justification for pre-emptive redistribution just the dissolution (actual or pre-emptive) of capture-like power, generally? This is to say, there is a fine line between capture and democratic will in the sense that what people want, whether by a paying minority or a voting majority, isn't necessarily efficient (for the whole). Forget about pre-emptive redistribution blunting the power of the rich to capture tax policy and consider the possibility that pre-emptive redistribution can blunt the power of the not-rich to capture (electorally) tax policy.
Or, perhaps, we have perfected democracy by empowering the non-democratic minority (the rich) to balance and frustrate the democratic will. The battle of short-term foolishnesses that add up to not much of anything -- that is, a mere space in which the operate.
But, I digress.
isn't the real justification for pre-emptive redistribution just the dissolution (actual or pre-emptive) of capture-like power, generally? This is to say, there is a fine line between capture and democratic will in the sense that what people want, whether by a paying minority or a voting majority, isn't necessarily efficient (for the whole). Forget about pre-emptive redistribution blunting the power of the rich to capture tax policy and consider the possibility that pre-emptive redistribution can blunt the power of the not-rich to capture (electorally) tax policy.
Or, perhaps, we have perfected democracy by empowering the non-democratic minority (the rich) to balance and frustrate the democratic will. The battle of short-term foolishnesses that add up to not much of anything -- that is, a mere space in which the operate.
But, I digress.
1 year ago
in Justifying the Prohibition of Markets in Sexual Services on Will Wilkinson
Why isn't the test here negligence? Which is to say, the issue isn't whether or not the prostitute should be free to choose prostitution but whether the "john/joan" can responsibly choose to solicit the prostitute. Assume, for the moment, that at least some prostitutes prostituting in a "free prostitution" zone, do so out of desperation or some neurosis. This act of prostitution would then be some sort of self harm. So what? That's the prostitutes right! But, what about the soliciter? What if the soliciter suspects that the prostitute is engaging in self harm; isn't the soliciter facilitating the self harm? Shouldn't the soliciter disengage? find another prostitute? Isn't that the responsible thing? The efficient thing?
On the one hand, the question is just an empirical one. On balance, does prostitution lead to self harm or not? On the other, the real question is whether autonomy is an ontological foundation or a political condition? That is, at what distance do we stand from each other, in fact.
The lettuce picker (assuming the worst cases) sells the lettuce to the distributor, generally, and not the consumer. Prostitution lacks this distance; labor is converted to consumption, not commodity. There is no intervening state. Except, perhaps, autonomy as intervention. If merely political, however, such distance is fiction and prostitution makes immediate the lie within this fiction. If ontological, then autonomy renders our interest much less as that of another.
This is all a muddle. And I have no pretense of sense in this.
On the one hand, the question is just an empirical one. On balance, does prostitution lead to self harm or not? On the other, the real question is whether autonomy is an ontological foundation or a political condition? That is, at what distance do we stand from each other, in fact.
The lettuce picker (assuming the worst cases) sells the lettuce to the distributor, generally, and not the consumer. Prostitution lacks this distance; labor is converted to consumption, not commodity. There is no intervening state. Except, perhaps, autonomy as intervention. If merely political, however, such distance is fiction and prostitution makes immediate the lie within this fiction. If ontological, then autonomy renders our interest much less as that of another.
This is all a muddle. And I have no pretense of sense in this.
