Disqus - Latest Comments for Bill Korner

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:00:53 -0000

Agreed, luxury mongering is not the big problem with inequality of assets. But wealth inequality is, in large part, responsible for the power inequalities you identify.

Like a lot of libertarians, Will, you seem to see the world as divided clearly into two categories (1) state, coercion, power AND (2) market, voluntarism, and freedom.

Admittedly, the state has shown itself to be the world's most deadly and wasteful coercer, and continues to do so as we speak. But, in the broader social context, people lacking independent means are being put to unattractive choices all of the time that limit their freedom vis a vis the wealthy. It is largely irrelevant that these choices involve offers not threats.

Consider:

(A) The accountant who is offered a job so long as she is willing to indulge management's requests for "profit management".

(B) The loan officer who regretfully spends his days denying applications of those who are probably not going to be able to repay.

(C) The lawyer who represents Wal-Mart against a municipality in a land use case (because it pays and somebody else would do it if he did not) against their personal judgement that Wal-Mart is taking advantage of said municipality.

(D) The army recruitee who (pre-Iraq) saw enlisting as the most promising career path given his lack of skills or collegiate ambitions.

Now, I think you are fair in requesting assurances that different governmental policies would not make problems worse. But you are definately not fair in ignoring these very common ways in which wealth inequality results in power inequality, even if without so-called "state intervention".

Also, the rhetoric in Hirshleifer's review about yachts and super expensive watches insidiously obscures the fact that conspicuous consumption's main influence takes place at a much more mundane level.

Re: Success as Pollution: Layard Meets Coase

Bill Korner — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 15:25:41 -0000

For the non-welfarist consequentialist, the effects of wealth inequality on how individuals evaluate their well-being need not be the whole inquiry. (Not that the evidence presented was conclusive.)

Wealth inequality translates into imbalances of power (of employers vis a vis employees and in myriad other ways). At least some of these power relationships may be bad consequences in and of themselves.

You may say: "We shouldn't care about it unless it effects individual utilities? To do so would be arbitrary."

But in practice judgments like this have to be made all of the time on the basis of presumed common sentiments or on whatever bases. Certain dogmas claim that information in "the price system" tells us all we could wish to know about individual well-beings, so much in fact that we ought to dispense with any other information about social states. But even among (possible) devotees to such an approach, there seems to be skepticism about whether "the market" does take into account certain interesting things, for example the costs of preference changes. And that difficulty is still located within welfarist analysis!

Moreover, as most people (including Will) believe, welfarism is not the end all be all of policy analysis. So most will continue to find discussing the axiology of power inequality and the role wealth inequality plays in bringing that about perfectly justifiable.

Of course, it may be that any efforts to reduce power inequality by reducing wealth inequality will do more harm than good. But one should not assume this. And assuming it is no good reason to not care about wealth inequality and the consequent power imbalances. Even if you could change your preferences regarding power their may be good reasons not to want to. The existence of all these libertarian blogs protesting otherwise might seem to indicate that these reasons to have some force.

Re: A Total Failure According to Its Own Standards? Give Me a Dozen!

Bill Korner — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 18:38:54 -0000

She does not say that Layard's theory fails by its own standards. She does not even say that Layard himself subscribes to the "thermostat view". Her own view, moreover, seems to be "positivist psychology" requires using a measurable concept of happiness and that, to the extent you really buy that, there is evidence that people's happiness level does not change dramatically through their lifetimes.

If there is any fault in that paragraph you cite, it would seem to be her assumption that thermostats (pace the theory) would hold steady AT THE SAME LEVEL after what you style "frighteningly ill-liberal social engineering". From all we know about the thermostat theory based on her review, it seems a likely possibility that they would hold steady at a higher (or lower) level depending on the quality of the legislation.

And I suspect that none of us (Will, I, or Ms. Tavris) are especially partial to the philosophical (as opposed to operative scientific) view of happiness that characterizes it as a hedonic states subject to thermostatic measurment. (Also note that thermostats measure, but the function she descrbes seems to be more regulatory -- i.e. anti-manic/depressive -- in nature.)

For someone with a modernized Aristotilian view of happiness, in which H has a lot to do with one's activity in his or her polity, the analysis in her article seems appealing (not shallow) even if you disagree with the "statist" particulars.

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 13:53:20 -0000

Tracy: That was a ridiculously uncharitable reading of my post. (But since I would have liked to have been clearer, I will respond.)

(1) I was not saying that there are no differences between threats and offers per say. Who on Earth would say that?! What I was saying is that when it comes to comparing certain threats with certain offers the fact that one is a threat and the other is an offer makes little difference to how we should evaluate the plight (how sympathetic should we be) of the individual on the receiving end. For example, consider two people: (a) who is threatened with having his income taxed at a greater rate and (b) an unemployed person with no skills who is offered a boring and low status job with long hours. (b) has options, all told, that are worse than (a)’s and therefore (one might reasonably think) we should be worried more about his plight in spite of the fact that he has received an offer while (a) suffers from a threat. Libertarians, however, are often liable to worry extra much about threats of state coercion and to vastly under-appreciate how bad it is that loads of people are having power exerted over them in virtue of their having less resources. That’s what I was arguing against. (Will had the gall, in his original post, to take this skewed vision a step further, implying that the REAL PROBLEM is that people ignore the conspicuous consumption of bon vivant politicians and are over-focused on the malefactors of private wealth.)

This is a philosophical blog and I could have spelled that out in the original post, but sheesh!!

(2) There’s a big difference between my examples and the one’s you cite and that is that they are meant to illustrate how people’s “best offer” (in some senses) can easily be to do things that put them in grave danger (soldier), have bad economic consequences (accounting fraud), etc.

I do embrace the point of your examples: OF COUSE, none of us would have the power to do exactly what we please even in societies where (1) wealth inequality did not systematically place loads and loads of people in a position of relative powerlessness compared to those of independent means and, more importantly, (2) expose most everyone to political/economic domination by an ever smaller managerial elite in and out of government.

But here and now there is such a systematic subjection to power. And that’s what I was talking about in my post.

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 15:05:05 -0000

Oops. One oversight in that last post.

Person (a), in my example, should be assumed to be very wealthy, perhaps even an Hiltonesque heiress.

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 16:56:05 -0000

Tracy: We're wasting our time here. (But I like wasting time.)

I said that CERTAIN offers left their recipient in a worse position than CERTAIN threats left their recipients. And then I "offered" the comparison of persons (a) and (b). You didn't address that comparison. If you don't want to compare those people's plight then that's fine.

I never said that the offerees in my examples were worse off than they would have been with no offer. (With the possible exception of the soldier who might well have been better of taking (b)'s uninteresting, long-hour job stateside.)

My points about the accountant, loan officer, lawyer, and soldier were (1) that they are worse off (also less autonomous) than they should have to be relative to those with more wealth and (2) that the offer, to the extent it makes them better off, comes at a price often neglected by the autonomy-minded libertarian. Namely, if the accept it, they will be required to do things that are bad for them, bad for the economy, etc.

You are not really resisting THESE points at all.

Re: Layard Bait and Switch

Bill Korner — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 07:06:02 -0000

Suppose I'd like to work less to achieve work/life balance, but that I would also hate to watch my relative income decline. If taxing everyone's increased income will discourage us all from working so much, that WILL make it easier to reconcile these goals.

Of course the two goals hypothesized are distinct. Do you really think Layard cannot see this? He's making the factual claim that both of these two goals are combined and that addressing the relative income "problem" will address the other. Maybe he's right. Maybe he's wrong. But he's not stupid.

Now, I have absolutely no committment to defending Layard's views. My position is that relative income explains little in itself, but is connected to things that explain lots. (Out of wack work/life balance may or may not be one thing that it partially explains.)

Re: Meddlesome Preferences

Bill Korner — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 07:44:39 -0000

Here's a distinction for you:

On the one hand there are (1) reasons why a particular individual wishes that he did not have less income/assets/wealth than certain other individuals he knows. These may include envying their consumption patters, envying the security with which they can provide for themselves and their children, being jealous of his or her own current status and thinking it threatened by his or her lower position.

On the other hand there are (2) reasons why a person wishes that income/assets/wealth were distributed more equally in their society as a whole. These reasons depend on the theories that this individual has about what various aspects of that society/culture have to do with the inequality. The theories make reference to that particular society as it has actually developed. These are complex developments that, as Hayek would emphasize, could never have been predicted.

Contractarianism can deal much better with (1) than with (2). We can speculate in various ways about what positions individuals would be willing to accept in society. But since, by Hayekian hypothesis, we cannot predict what our society will look like as a result as our agreements contracting about what developments we would be willing to accept becomes impossible.

But (2) may be more important than (1). It could be that more people care more about it than (1). Or, it could even be that, as a matter of moral fact, (2) considerations are what matters. If this were to be the case, contractarianism (and liberalism except possibly as a means to an end) would be unsatisfying.

These are experimental thoughts only.

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:22:20 -0000

After (a) has been threatened with taxes and (b) has been offered a job, (a) is still way better off overall THAN (b) is. I'm comparing (a) and (b) to each other, not each one individually before and after the offer/threat. The point I was making has always been this:

If you want to see who's better off, who's more autonomous, and who's subject to others' power (maybe no ones in particular) then just noting that one person got threatened and the other got an offer is not going tell you the whole story. Ceteris paribus anyone would usually rather get an offer than a threat, but its easy to exagerate the relevance of this in many important cases.

-

I didn't answer your question about the soldier because that is not what this thread is about. This thread is about whether governmental extravagence is ignored while private wealth is unfairly maligned. I took issue with that whole rubric and pointed out ways in which private wealth transmutes into political power and diminished autonomy.

But okay:

If the least attractive civilian jobs were more attractive, that would reduce the chance that someone joins the military for the non-autonomous reason that all their other options suck. Not everyone joins for this reason, but many do.

(I am quite happy to refer to the United States, as a country not the government per se, as threatening people with poor job prospects into joining the military. I'm sure that notion would make your blood boil.)

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:28:07 -0000

I should not have said "quite happy". I'm obviously not happy people are being threatened. I meant that it seems to me accurate to put it that way.

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 14:02:12 -0000

On second thought, I don't want to say that we're threatening people into joining the military. I'm not confident about where to draw the moral baseline.

But I do think that some moral baseline has to come into play because the question is not just: "Was he better or worse off after the threat/offer?" but also "Better or worse off relative to what?" If the starting point is unacceptable (because non-autonomous or for some other reason) then just knowing whether it was a threat or offer won't tell us all we want to know. So, I agree with you that there are contentious value judgements involved regarding the question of what one should be able to expect. But I disagree insofar as your answer to that question is just: "to be however well-off, autonomous, etc. she happened to be before the threat/offer".

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 17:07:48 -0000

Here's a gimmicky example to illustrate the importance of moral baselines in evaluating whether something is a threat or an offer:

Suppose my son is kidnapped, I know not by whom. I get a phone call from someone offering to provide info about how to get him back if I deposit $100,000 in a certain account. Is this a threat or an offer? Does it matter if the caller is affiliated with the kidnapper? If you're tempted to say its an offer either way simply because it makes me better off than having no idea how to rescue my son, then ask yourself: How is this different from someone calling me and saying, "If you ever want to see your son again deposit..." etc. That would be a threat right?

Re: Layard Bait and Switch

Bill Korner — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:22:20 -0000

Glen and Blar: Yes, of course, Layard should be for a progressive income tax. Note, however, that you can find people arguing that intra-class income competition is a big problem too. And they argue it with some justification, since that's where the work-life balance mostly comes into play...not in the choice to develop vastly greater earning power.

The whole discussion of Layard is a red-herring though. Income-envy is so low on the list of reasons to favor "left-wing" things like CEO salary limits, decentralization of economic power, wealth transfers, minimum incomes, public spending favoring the less wealthy, etc. that its almost disingenous to discuss it exclusively. Even consumption-envy, for example, is a considerably more formidable reason. Livlihood/status security and status/power imbalances caused by wealth inequality are much bigger issues. Layard seems to have some inkling of how income inequality (he should discuss wealth inequality) threatens the status security of those with less (making them jealous, not envious). But he obviously does not get this across very well, since Will can convince people that the status-jealous impoverished should just "get over it".

Re: Layard Bait and Switch

Bill Korner — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:48:41 -0000

And why should we believe that the least [social, utility] cost avoider is the low income person with the "inferiority complex"?

(To his credit, Will just says that this is a possibility. Of course it is THAT.)

Possible reasons:

(1) Wealth inequalities are endemic in any highly productive economy. We could find no way to equalize wealth without ruining the economy, thus costing the low/middle income people so much consumption-possibility that it's better for them just to deal with their wealth-inferiority complexes.

(2) High wealth people get so much benefit from being such that redistributing their wealth to the less wealthy would have overall costs to average utility.

(3) High wealth people have so much political power, that it would cost more to organize a way of redistributing their wealth than the benefit to the redistributees.

(4) Most everybody accept for the REAL LOSERS thrives on "the rat race" and a more egalitarian arrangement would plunge everyone into existential dread... a utility crusher.

Re: Layard Bait and Switch

Bill Korner — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 09:14:56 -0000

Right. That study provides an explication of the benefit to the wealthy that I discuss in (2) in my last post. To me at least however, that study's conclusion (even if correct) seems a pretty poor argument for asking the relatively poor to just get over it, as per your Coasian hypothesis. There's a big difference between their jealously sensing that we value them less (placing such emphasis on wealth as we do culturally) and their envying the income of others.

If I were ranking those possible reasons, I would say that (1) and (3) are by far the most plausible and that its quitedifficult to decide between them. (4) also plays an important role. (2) is a piss poor justification of inequality.

Also, the study does cannot encompass all of the ways that wealth inequality negatively impacts the poor. Studies like that (few and number and incomplete as they are) make good intellectual ammunition and food for thought, but do little to justify world views.

Re: Layard Bait and Switch

Bill Korner — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 09:23:52 -0000

And of couse, the study you cite could be taken to imply that we should do the American rich a favor be levelling incomes.

Re: Layard Bait and Switch

Bill Korner — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 09:28:21 -0000

And finally, those authors are just interested in the effects of beliefs about income mobility (not whether it is a fact). Even if it is a fact (which in some sense it seems to be) that doesn't mean income mobility is making us happier. We may even really like the income mobility game itself (consider my (4) from the last post) and yet it turn out to be immiserating us. Reported happiness is important, but not the end-all-be-all.

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:13:13 -0000

Tracy, I thought you did give a definition (and a fine, well-respected one):

It's an offer if you'd rather have the choice than not and a threat if you would rather not face the choice. I personally think that other morally relevant issues often complicate the judgement and no "value-free" definition of threat/offer will do. But lots of people disagree with me including, I believe, Rhodes, Michael R. in his paper "The Nature of Coercion", Journal of Value Inquiry, 34 (2/3)(2000).

I should not have said "choices limit their freedom vis a vis the wealthy". It's not having the choice per se that limits the accountant's freedom compared to that enjoyed by the indepepdnently wealthy. (I can see how much of what you wrote was a response to that mistake of mine.) But the point I'm striving to make is that the mere having of choices is often much closer to morally irrelevant than morally decisive, especially when the choices are as unattractive as my hypothetical soldier's.

So maybe I should have said: "The availability of choices, misleads us into thinking that the poor are not less free than the wealthy because of their dependence on the wealthy."

Of course, I was also making the point that concentrated wealth generally (not wealthy individuals) translates into political power (power OVER those not party to that wealth, not power wielded BY individuals). But that's a separate point.

However averse you are to guaranteed minimum incomes (and I'm not a defender myself), if you find the point about bad options reducing autonomy convincing then you might want to consider whether guaranteed minimum incomes would increase autonomy.

Re: Layard Bait and Switch

Bill Korner — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 04:19:07 -0000

Javier: If reducing wealth inequality is itself a goal, that certainly does not mean that any and all means of achieving it would be acceptable. Your immigration example reminds us that statistics on inequality are just a means of estimating the things we really are interested in. This is a point that I have often myself made in this blog's recent discussion of happiness and inequality. I also gree with you that we must consider international inequality as well.

As you point out, I did not by any means provide an exhaustive list of "possible reasons" that the wealth-poor should "get over it" for Coasian reasons. But notice that many of your conservatives' concerns have to do with effects on the economy.

It would probably be foolish for policy makers to set out uninformed to save us from a purportedly immiserating rat race. But social scientists could do relevant studies. So far happiness studies tend to just ask people roughly "How happy are you?" We could ask more nuanced questions. Also, the study Will cites just studies beliefs about income mobility. We could study a sample of people who actually have achieved inter-quintile mobility (or suffered downward movement). Was downward movement as bad as feared? Did income-position gains correlate with expected happiness gains? One of the first happiness studies, by Easterlin, found (to the contrary) that individuals predicted accurately that they would get wealthier but inaccurately that they would get more happy throughout their lives.

Re: Status Competition & the Political Class

Bill Korner — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:38:43 -0000

Well, I do think you make an interesting point about our mutual dependence (specifically Bill Gates'). One of the nice things about the division of labor was how it tends to make this dependence more obvious... at least it should be more obvious.

Re: Happiness Quote of the Day

Bill Korner — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 11:49:58 -0000

Great quote indeed. Spoken by the World Controller (or whatever) as he explains why he envies the non-conformist intellectual sent off to an island full of similarly (too) strong-minded scholars. Mustapha gave up his passion scientifically studying what actually makes people happy choosing instead to manage the world by controlling what makes them happy.

Now, of course, he's come to consider this decision a sacrifice of his own personel happiness for the benefit of others. So he is actually (contrary to the quote) no longer unsure about what makes his subjects "happy". (No less sure than the contemporary corporate manager.) Nor does he really envy the intellectually insatiable Bernard Marx. (John Savage may be another matter.)

Re: Libertarianism as a Utility Smoothing Strategy

Bill Korner — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 17:09:31 -0000

Why only libertarianism? Any third party in the U.S. would meet your criterion. The better solution is NON-PARTISANISM!

Here's my personal preference ordering for a party system:

zero parties: awesome
many parties: okay
2 parties: yuck
1 party: absolute disaster

I'd recommend that preference ordering to anyone.

Isn't it interesting how libertarianism is a party with out a party, except of course for that stupid party. But they are a potent ideological faction, especially with blogs like this one.

Re: Happiness Quote of the Day

Bill Korner — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:48:26 -0000

Economics' ability to deal in terms other than individual happiness is way underappreciated.

Consider Sen's famous "Paretian Liberal" paper: The impossibility result is established based on a supposition that each individual has rank ordered every possible social state (social state = "a complete description of society including everyone's position in it"). Now, in any such complete description (I submit) only a relatively small number of features could have to do with the particular individual's well-being or happiness. Surely that's right unless one defines everything that one has a preference about as relevant to happiness. (And in Sen's scenario individuals don't even decide what to have preferences about. It's an existential nightmare!)

Will's post focus's very much on the experiences, knowledge, virtues, etc. of the unhappy individual. But this is not the only way to go. One can also evaluate an individual life in terms of how "preferences" are realized independently of the question: "Which preference satisfactions promote his happiness?"

Re: Libertarianism as a Utility Smoothing Strategy

Bill Korner — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 19:03:36 -0000

Boy oh boy does utilitarianism get a bashing on this blog! Surely Will knows that utilitarianism is not identical with Bentham's hedonism, but you wouldn't guess it from reading his "discussion" with De Long. Ironically, Mill is both the main defender of Julian's thesis that we benefit from being able to make mistakes and a utilitarianism. Of course, one can plunk for the view that, for example, being able to choose to smoke is good even if having such choices does not ultimately redound to the individual's or society's benefit. But I for one think that the Millian position will be more convincing to most people.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:22:27 -0000

Let's leave the Coasian social cost world and consider one variety of your preferred contractarianism:

Wouldn't the "reasonable rejecter" probably accept the principle,

(1) If it turns out that there are wealth inequalities that (somehow) cause those with less to feel that their status is threatend causing them sufficient unhappiness AND I happen to be one of the wealthy ones, then I should accept some transfer to them as long as its done in accordance with the rule of law and this policy doesn't screw up the economy too bad.

but decisively reject the principle,

(2) If it turns out that there are two races one of which has historically enslaved the other -- with current poorer members of the enslaving race compensating for their relative-poverty-caused feelings of inferiority by loathing and harming the enslaved race -- AND I am a member of the enslaved race, then I should accept a tax on me to make those poor white folks feel better.

??

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:27:06 -0000

And, for that matter, isn't the "reasonably rejecter" more likely to reject,

(3) If their are wealth inequalities that make the less well-off feel that their status is threatened AND I happen to be less well-off, then I should get over my feelings of inadequacy and lesser respect rather than making demands on the very wealthy IF the costs of taxation to their happiness even slightly exceeds the costs of my getting over it.

than (1) above??

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 11:43:57 -0000

Will: You originally said "it is cheap to equivocate between the desire for status and the desire for relative position in the income distribution." But then you turn around and re-write my principles in terms of "contingent preferences for relative income." You surely agree that that is a different question. It may be your question, but it's not mine and I can't see how yours is more useful except to make your point. To say that the preferences are "contingent" begs an important questions and to describe them as for "relative income" avoids seeing through to the real preferences at stake including (a)not to be seen as less worthy because of lesser buying power, social staus that comes from wealth, etc., (b) to be able to confer benefits on others and perform social functions that require sufficient relative income, and a host of other reasons. (Layard may be a convenient foil for you here, but as you keep noting, he's hardly making the best available argument.)

When you say that I formulated the principles in too specific terms, are you just saying that they are more specific then the kind Scanlon uses? If that's true (I'm not convinced), I disagree with Scanlon and would defend my version of his views over his.

I don't know about Scanlon's politics. Is he a libertarian or is it just that you think he should be given his views as you understand them?

Its very dubious and highly disputed that respecting autonomy requires not taxing high incomes more than low incomes (for whatever reason). The thesis that the motive of allieviating suffering from relative income deprivation makes the taxation especially anti-autonomy is way out. Also I have argued all over this blog that an individual's [relative] autonomy should be evaluated by looking at the whole range of choices he/she faces and how attractive those are compared to others' (in his/her view). I suggest that this is a much more meaningful view of autonomy than one that sees it as having ones rights as side-constraints respected.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 12:36:11 -0000

Here's an improved version of my last post. Please excuse the reposting which, I admit, can be annoying:

Will: You originally said "it is cheap to equivocate between the desire for status and the desire for relative position in the income distribution." But then you turn around and re-write my principles in terms of "contingent preferences for relative income." You surely agree that that is a different question! It may be your question, but it's not mine (or Layard’s, I think) and I can't see how yours is more useful except to make your point. To say that the preferences are "contingent" (upon the individual’s choice I think you mean) itself begs an important questions. To describe them as for "relative income" avoids taking stock of the real preferences at stake including (a) not to be see oneself as less worthy because of lesser buying power, (b) not to suffer from lesser social status that comes from being known to have less wealth, (c) to be able to confer benefits on others and perform other social functions that require sufficient relative income, (d) to have more choices about what sort of employment to accept and perhaps to be an employer instead of an employee, and a host of other reasons. No one has a preference for higher relative income PER SE! If that is really what Layard thinks, then that makes him a strawman. (So why waste all this time debunking him.) All these ills are consequences of having a lower relative income. This does raise the interesting issue of what we are trying to do when we describe agents in terms of their “preferences”, itself a word that makes them sound relatively trivial. (“I ‘prefer’ that there not be genocide in the Sudan.”)

When you say that I formulated the principles in too specific terms, are you just saying that they are more specific then the kind Scanlon uses? If that's true (I'm not convinced), I disagree with Scanlon and would defend my version of his views over his.

I don't know about Scanlon's politics. Is he a libertarian or is it just that you think he should be given his views as you understand them? I’m pretty sure he’s not a libertarian.

It’s very dubious and highly disputed that respecting autonomy requires not taxing high incomes more than low incomes (for whatever reason). The thesis that the motive of alleviating suffering from relative income deprivation makes the taxation especially anti-autonomy is way out. (You seem to think Scanlon would be onboard here. I strongly doubt it.)

Also, as I have argued all over this blog, an individual's [relative] autonomy should be evaluated by looking at the whole range of choices he/she faces and how attractive those are compared to others' choices (in his/her view). I suggest that this is a much more meaningful view of autonomy than one that sees it as having ones rights as side-constraints respected. Are you going for a side-constraints view of autonomy, or do you accept that it has to do with the quality of choice faced?

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 12:48:45 -0000

Gil: The point of Scanlon's contractarianism is to ask what principles people we would accept if we didn't know, for example, whether we were going to be rich or poor. The main difference between his view and Rawls' is that we're not just considering what society we'd be willing to take the risk of occupying an unknown position in. Rather, for Scanlon the right principles are the ones that give us a society in which we'd be willing to accept any position. (That's a rough characterization and I'm no expert.)

So, given the current distribution, it may be impossible to organize a "redistributive movement" among the wealthy (without democratic politics involving the institutions of government). But even so, what I say about which principles would more likely be rejected by Scanlon's contractors could be true and morally relevant (on his theory as I understand it).

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 17:59:45 -0000

Gil: I'm not claiming to speak for Scanlon. I don't know what he'd think about (1).

I don't know what you mean by autonomy, but you can find a sketch of my thoughts in this thread at the end of my response to Will. Also, I had this extended discussion with a libertarian reader of this blog under a thread about the "Political Class". That had lots of talk about autonomy in it.

Re: Forgetting for Fun & Profit

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 05:33:15 -0000

Andrew (and Will): You both mentioned studies tending to show that depressed people have more accurate self-assessments. Can you tell me where to find these, cause I am very curious about how such a conclusion could be established.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 06:15:49 -0000

Gil: The definitive critique of Nozick's political philosophy is G.A. Cohen "Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality" and (more tersely) in a 1997 issue of Critical Review titled "Libertarianism" (I think). These works have convinced me and many others.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 09:32:02 -0000

Palmer's article totally misses the point, because Cohen's not arguing that the world should be (have been) jointly owned. He's just saying that nothing about self-ownership tells you whether it is (was) and Nozickian argument assume that it wasn't. The main arguments Palmer makes against joint ownership are consequentialist (and, if I remember, Palmer claims to be a consequentialist which is surely incompatible with being a Nozickian). So this whole route dismisses the Nozickian side-constraints, self-ownership world and accepts consequentialist reasoning which is what I was advocating. Sure, you could say that consequentialist reasoning just establishes that the world should have not initially been jointly owned and after that its Nozick all the way. But that would be totally arbitrary.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 10:05:15 -0000

And, to be fair, Palmer's article also adduces all sorts of reasons why self-owners should/would/might agree to divide joint holdings or their product. I forgot about that part. Those are the most interesting sections of the paper, but they miss the point too because Nozickian self-owners under joint ownership would have the RIGHT to NOT reason the way Palmer argues they shoud. Also, absent ignorance, they wouldn't agree to anything that would ultimately make them worse off than continued joint-ownership. So we're back to considering the (of course terrible) consequences of joint-ownership and, ultimately, to rejecting self-ownership + side-constraints in favor of, if not some form of consequentialism, then at least a contratarianism that makes stipulations with regard to possible future outcomes.

Re: Forgetting for Fun & Profit

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 10:21:42 -0000

Cool. I'll check them out. But it would amaze me if they had a convincing method for deciding how accurate a self-assessment is! (That, of course, would seem necessary to proving the thesis.)

Re: Happiness and Constitutional Political Economy

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 10:55:39 -0000

Very good. It's an attractive line to persue.

But if we can't get agreement, understanding, and motivation, at the first-order level, then how can we assure it at the level of constitutional institution creation? (I've long agreed with those who say that Hayek couldn't provide adequate explanation of why the U.S. constitution isn't an instance of "constructivist rationalism".)

People may like (e.g. Swiss) constitutionally decentralized institutions. But this affection is an article of tradition, common sense, and accumulated experience leading people to believe that the institutions are maximizing social welfare.

American libertarian's faith, on this score, is constantly being called into question. Notice the intellectual contortions that one has to go through to defend federalism PER SE in the American context. Just think of the Raich (medical marajuana) decision for starters.

(Plus, our economic and political institutions ARE UNDENIABLY getting more centralized and its disingenuous and a little obscurantist to argue that we could just go back to greater decentralization.)

I'd rather say that, ideology aside, we have a fair bit of agreement and understanding at the first-order level. Government selfishness and bad incentives are a problem, but so are those in the "private sector". It's best not to think of a government deciding on and utilizing a social welfare function. Better to think of government as just one part (especially deadly) part of the country's attempt to vaguely agree on a social welfare function and implement it.

I don't think I disagree too much with the spirit of this post, contrary to appearnances (maybe).

Re: Happiness and Constitutional Political Economy

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 11:01:45 -0000

Clarification: Raich is a case where federalism dictates the libertarian position. (The Supreme Court decision illustrates the deterioration of federalism.) The sodomy and interstate wine sales (dormant commerce clause) cases are ones where federalism gives the anti-libertarian result... thus demonstrating the difficulties of consistent federalism.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 11:19:40 -0000

Cohen is not arguing for joint-ownership. That's precisely what Palmer (and you apparently) don't see/accept. I'm also not arguing for it.

Your statement,

"...almost anything would make them better off than continued joint-ownership."

seems to illustrate your acceptance of my point that deciding between joint-ownership and private-ownership requires considering the consequences of these regimes. It can't be done on self-ownership grounds alone. (That's Cohen's point.)

Nozick's side-constraints view of rights, on the other hand, says that these rights must be respected no matter what the consequences. But, says Cohen, doing so won't necessarily lead to inequality if the world is jointly owned.

Ergo, if you want to defend non-joint property rights as side-constraints, it will have to be on the basis of the good consequences that flow from such a regime. Once these rights are not absolute but depend on the good consequences, then respecting them absolutely (as side-constraints) can be attacked by arguing that better consequcnes (e.g. for individual autonomy) would ensue if they were respected less than absolutely.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 13:57:38 -0000

Gil: Oh, on the contrary, you MUST change them!

:)

Re: Happiness Quotes of the Day

Bill Korner — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:12:37 -0000

"Self-efficacy, and self-control, productive engagement" are one thing. Employment sadly is quite another. If you've only had jobs that truly gave you all of those things then count yourself lucky (as I believe you do).

The problem with employment is that too many people get the feeling that they are efficacious, in control, and productive from the fact that they are employed. But the way this tends to happen is that people need money, so they accept employment and adopt psychological defense mechanisms so that they can feel happy in the face of what is usually a pretty unsatisfying set of relationships. ("I do what you want. You pay me. If you don't like what I'm doing tell me and I'll do otherwise... cause you pay me. I better do my job better than him if I want a promotion. Etc.)

The things that libertarians praise about civil society (voluntary associations, cooperation, and the like), on the other hand, are hardly instanciated in most employment relations. This is one of the most irritating things about libertarian dogmatics.

As for being "tossed by...external forces we are impotent to resist", any person who is sufficiently aware of their broader environment will feel this way (justifiedly) to the extent that they cannot understand and strive to control that environment (together with and with the help of those around them). Employment-fetishism certainly does not encourage us to be aware of our wider environment or to attempt to control it. Rather it tends to inspire the posture: "I'm just doing this cause its my job. What do I care as long as they are paying me? Who are you accept for my co-worker and perhaps competitor?"

Of course, reading the Becker-Posner blog this week, one might get the impression that unemployment is a central cause of terrorism. And blowing one's self up almost certainly reduces one's happiness (not to mention others') so maybe we do need to keep everybody workin for a living.

Re: Constitutional Principles and the Cognitive Division of Labor

Bill Korner — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 11:06:53 -0000

I dunno people. If I can trust my high school teachers the principles in the Constitution were instantiated as they were (including with the electoral college and, lets not forget the 3/5 compromise) largely because of a compromise between the representatives of creditors (remember Beard) and slaveholders. The former were a small minority and the latter were morally reprehensible. Of course Lochner was about the 14th amendment, but see below...

So I wouldn't say:

"The fact that a principle appears in the constitution implies that it was the outcome of an earlier political consensus [among those in the state legislatures, upper class types elected by Christian property-owning males]. A citizen can reasonbably assume that there was some good reason [like worrying about whether the south would be able to keep slavery and on what terms revolutionary war bonds would be repaid] why consensus settled on this principle, and so the principle has some support simply in virtue of being embedded in the constitution."

Of course if you're talking about VERY abstract principles like the separation of powers or representative government that may be a different thing. But unless you look at how these principles were actually instantiated and the public's actual knowledge, then your explanations of how constitutional principles achieve cognitive or any other benefits will amount to nothing more than "the public swallowed this rhetoric about constitutional principle without having any idea what it really meant in practice and, so, they went along." Hardly a convincing justification.

And how do these principles truly play out in practice? Wouldn't Bryan's argument prove that now people are rational to reject Lochner and accept the constitutionality of labor regulations?

Re: Happiness Quotes of the Day

Bill Korner — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 05:09:12 -0000

Yes, there are different kinds of employment at least some of which do not involve being hired at all. And its possible to be hired and still exercise a satisfying amount of discretion in one's works. It's just that these are quite uncommon forms of employment.

Re: Constitutional Principles and the Cognitive Division of Labor

Bill Korner — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 05:39:54 -0000

Will: I think that all my points were going to (as you say) what a "citizen can reasonably assume". The questions are (1) how much ignorance is rational and (2) in our ignorance, should we put a lot of stock in what people say about what the constitution says.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 15:31:21 -0000

Nick: It would seem that the Georgist purist should have advocated either re-equalization of land holdings and of everything that resulted from thw prior inequality or (pseudo Rawls) a alternative superior in maximin terms.

I think consequentialism is the way to go. But, like you, I am not convinced that "egalitarian consequentialism" as you called it is the only approach that can be justified after Cohen. Still whatever you get will at least be close to that approach. The Critical Review arguments of (if I remember right) Wolff and Weinberg, did show that self-ownership (which is at least consistent with the possibility of interpersonal utility comparability) does not straghtforwardly yield the libertarian rights (and corresponding "rights definition of freedom") that they are very widely believed to yield. That's why that scholarship is important.

In short: Cohen and his expositers are just talking about what inequalities could be justified on the basis of self-ownership alone. The surprising result: not much.

And don't forget that existing distributions are not, in fact, based on a just set of acquisitions and transactions (and rectifications of injustices) on ANYBODY's view. So AT MOST the libertarian is stuck defending them on the grounds that they COULD POSSIBLY been justly arrived at. It's a fruitless enterprise.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 16:02:09 -0000

George's line was that all value, and therefore all inequality, did trace to land, right? So, "everything that resulted from the prior inequality", is strictly speaking all inequality (at least for George).

Also, initial joint-ownership is not a hypothesis about which we should ask "true or not". It's simply another possibility consistent with self-ownership. That's why all the arguments against initial joint-ownership (many of which are, ironically, consequentialist) are beside the point.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 08:03:21 -0000

Nick: Your view of justice seems to be that its a matter of having the least number of rights violations (or maybe minimizing some weighted index of rights violations). Notice that this is not a side-contstraints kind of view at all, but rather what Nozick might have called a "utilitarianism of rights".

You seem very averse to the notion that individuals' well-beings might be comparible. Admittedly assigning that task to government bureaucrats is unappealing, but the idea that individual well-beings are not even vaguely comparible is completely wack.

More to the point, in order to sustain your claim that redressing past injustices will do more harm than good, you'll have to point to something relevant about once and future rights violations. What's that going to be if it has nothing to do with how detrimental these were/will be to people's well-being.

Re: Happiness Quotes of the Day

Bill Korner — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 09:12:33 -0000

Nick: The way you support libertarianism ("the fact that self-employment and self-directed labor are uncommon...is largely due to corporatist state intervention, not to the operation of the market") is strikingly similar to a Stalinist's defense of his implelentation of Marxism.

--If there's anything bad about the society I'm defending it's because of the ideology I oppose. So just let me and my ideas rule and everything will be great. --

Yeah, right!

Re: Justice: Bigger than the State, Smaller than the World

Bill Korner — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 10:19:22 -0000

Pogge. Uh hum. Boy do I resent his lame ass having a cushy job at Columbia or wherever it is. Sheesh.

Re: Happiness Quotes of the Day

Bill Korner — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 11:01:49 -0000

Nick, I love you. I'm not committed to any employer-based insurance. If you've got a plan to create a laissez-faire utopia where everybody is happier than today, then can I please get on the list to help you implement it. And we're playing some hold'em tonight at 7 if you're gnna be around.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 18:33:59 -0000

"you're proposing to initiate lots of specific new rights-violations against specific extant people"

whether its "rights violations" that I am (supposedly) proposing is exactly the question now isn't it?

I admit that frustrating rich peoples' expectations about what they're entitiled to is a cost. The real question is, how severe are the other costs that would be associated with such actions.

Re: Preference Change and Tax Policy, Again

Bill Korner — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 06:24:01 -0000

Gil: Let me just say that I'm sure glad you're not the one in charge of making interpersonal utility comparisons!

Re: Justice: Bigger than the State, Smaller than the World

Bill Korner — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 06:49:16 -0000

Not in circumstances of justice is the WAY TO BE!

Did you get that nucleaur explosion I asked Ricky Williams to send you?

Re: What’s the Matter With Frank?

Bill Korner — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 07:29:54 -0000

testify monkyboy testify

Re: ID, Aliens, and Pointlessness

Bill Korner — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 07:32:50 -0000

I'm now convinced that ID is motivated by a desire to teach the closest to creationism that can gotten away with and, ultimately, to influence the conduct of science. This is a different goal from trying to get scientists and pedagogues discussing religion and the relation between the science and religion. While that latter goal is perfectly legitimate, ID is unflinchingly devoted to subverting science and science teaching.

Re: Storms of Stupidity

Bill Korner — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 14:08:34 -0000

Libertarians and their opponents need to enter into a non-proliferation treaty of sorts.

Lets call it the IGLT --

Ideological Generalization Limitation Treaty.

Right wingers will agree to stop talking about "free markets", "limited government", and "individual freedom" IN THE CONTEXT OF SERIOUS POLICY DISCUSSIONS. In return, liberal columnists will stop trying to score points by irrelvantly degrading these to-vague-for-use concepts.

Then in the face of the Katrina tragedy we can focus on real questions such as Hillary Clinton's:

"Would FEMA have performed better if it were an independent agency as it was before it was subsumed in the Department of Homeland Security?"

Hell, we can even consider absurd libertarian rhetorical bromides such as:

"Would there have been poor people without cars in New Orleans if it weren't for welfare?"

Let's just leave sickly vague rhetoric about the "free market" to philosophico-economic analysis.

Re: Storms of Stupidity

Bill Korner — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 08:14:24 -0000

I was less careful than I should have been in that comment:

It's not that the generalizations should not be discussed in serious policy discussions and should be in philsophico-economic analysis.

Rather, its that IF we're going to use them in policy discussions, they need to be put conspicuously in service of the actual problem at hand. Instead they are usually trumpet blasts to rally ideoligical supporters and alarm bells to warn ideological opponents. This is WAY counterproductive and trivializes the importance of the actual issues.

Also, on reflection, I think that the risk of ideological communication breakdowns in the use of these concepts is even greater in scholarly analysis than in policy debates. The law that 90% of everything is crap (whatever its called) applies with full force to these literatures. In fact its probably more like 97%.

Re: Tribal Exceptionalism

Bill Korner — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 07:13:45 -0000

There's no question that Matt is pandering to partisan Democrats. Bad Matt!

But if only he would have referred to this administration instead of Republicans in general, the sentence Will quotes would make as good an explanation as any.

Will dismisses all government bureaucracies as incompetent and inefficient. But he could not possibly deny that some are more competent and efficient than others. After all, there's really no such things as inefficient and efficient, only MORE and LESS efficient.

When, as is the case, we're stuck with goverment bureaucracies their marginal efficiency does matter. But libertarian ideology is so powerful that it makes people, even Will, ignore this. I think Matt's explanation in terms the cynicism of anti-goverment ideologues is plausible.

Re: Who Am I? Why Am I Here?: Admiral Stockdale on the Anxiety of Choice (Guest-Starring Victor Frankl)

Bill Korner — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:27:51 -0000

I think the problems with existential and stoic freedom (as you call them) are actually different.

The problem with stoic freedom is that it has no value except for coping. (Not to slight coping, but its not the kind of value upon which libertarians are seeking to build a conception of the good society.)

The problem with existential freedom is that it really isn't freedom at all. In free will 101 we are confronted with a dilemma between determined choices and arbitrary ones. Is an arbitrary choice really a free one? Existentialism alternatively celebrates and dreads the observation that individuals' actions result from arbitrary choices about what to find meaningful and how. But the more seriously we take the free will 101 question, the more we should reject the existentialists' understanding of our choices as free.

A satisfying account of freedom of choices will be one that gives conditions for choices being free ones. But the conditions will have to go deeper than individual inclinations or else we're back to existentialism. In order to have a free society we have to have individual choices determined in the right way. I think a large part of that right way will be individuals having sophisticated understandings of the structure of the society in which they live and the interrelations among our various individual plights and ambitions.

That which increases our ability to act on this understanding to our mutual and collective benefit increases our freedom. That which distracts us from the attempt, perhaps by satisfying our arbitrary desires, decreases it. Stoic freedom abandons the need for effective action. Existential freedom abandones the need for shared understandings (or says, perhaps correctly, that its impossible).