DISQUS

Kenneally is expounding on a footnote to a passage in Strauss's Natural Right and History, quoting Locke like so:

"nature and the earth furnish only the almost most worthless materials as in themselves"*

* 124. "Locke's statements about the relative importance of the gifts of nature and human labor [are illustrated--sic] with a statement from Ambrose's Hexameron, translated by George Boas, in Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948), p. 42."

In the passage cited by Strauss, Boas quotes the Church father Ambrose in this way:

"In the Hexameron he gives us a description of the world and of man as they came from the hands of their creator, before their nature had been changed by sin. This description combines themes from Genesis and pictures of the Golden Age from classical poetry. Its general tone is that of soft primitivism.

Spontaneously earth bore all fruits; though it could not be plowed in the absence of a plowman--no farmer yet existed--nevertheless it abounded in the richest harvests, and, I do not doubt, with an even larger yield, since the slothfulness of the husbandman could not rob the soil of its richness . . . Thus, O Man, while you are asleep and unconscious, the earth still produces its fruits; you sleep and then you rise and marvel to see how the grain has grown through the night."

Of the five dials, so to speak, the liberal values are digital (harm and reciprocity) and the conservative are analog (purity, authority, and in-group). You either harm or don't harm, and you either reciprocate or don't. It's hard to imagine too little harm or too much reciprocity. Not true of the conservative virtues, and we need both. Let's take the family on the street after a hurricane. Reciprocity won't work (they have no money). Harm won't work (you didn't put them there). Need overlap of harm (weak desire not to see them suffer), reciprocity (this might happen to me) and in group (hurricane victims in Bangladesh aren't at my door).

Isn't the family a little tribe that relies on subordination and moralized disgust?

Warren Buffett has interesting things to say about corporate philanthropy.

www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1987.html

A recent survey reported that about 50% of major American
companies match charitable contributions made by directors
(sometimes by a factor of three to one). In effect, these
representatives of the owners direct funds to their favorite
charities, and never consult the owners as to their charitable
preferences. (I wonder how they would feel if the process were
reversed and shareholders could invade the directors' pockets for
charities favored by the shareholders.) When A takes money from B
to give to C and A is a legislator, the process is called
taxation. But when A is an officer or director of a corporation,
it is called philanthropy. We continue to believe that
contributions, aside from those with quite clear direct benefits
to the company, should reflect the charitable preferences of
owners rather than those of officers and directors.




www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1993.html

Berkshire's practice in respect to discretionary philanthropy
- as contrasted to its policies regarding contributions that are
clearly related to the company's business activities - differs
significantly from that of other publicly-held corporations.
There, most corporate contributions are made pursuant to the wishes
of the CEO (who often will be responding to social pressures),
employees (through matching gifts), or directors (through matching
gifts or requests they make of the CEO).

At Berkshire, we believe that the company's money is the
owners' money, just as it would be in a closely-held corporation,
partnership, or sole proprietorship. Therefore, if funds are to be
given to causes unrelated to Berkshire's business activities, it is
the charities favored by our owners that should receive them.
We've yet to find a CEO who believes he should personally fund the
charities favored by his shareholders. Why, then, should they foot
the bill for his picks?

Let me add that our program is easy to administer. Last fall,
for two months, we borrowed one person from National Indemnity to
help us implement the instructions that came from our 7,500
registered shareholders. I'd guess that the average corporate
program in which employee gifts are matched incurs far greater
administrative costs. Indeed, our entire corporate overhead is
less than half the size of our charitable contributions. (Charlie,
however, insists that I tell you that $1.4 million of our $4.9 million overhead is
attributable to our corporate jet, The Indefensible.)

Below is a list showing the largest categories to which our
shareholders have steered their contributions.

(a) 347 churches and synagogues received 569 gifts
(b) 283 colleges and universities received 670 gifts
(c) 244 K-12 schools (about two-thirds secular, one-
third religious) received 525 gifts
(d) 288 institutions dedicated to art, culture or the
humanities received 447 gifts
(e) 180 religious social-service organizations (split
about equally between Christian and Jewish) received
411 gifts
(f) 445 secular social-service organizations (about 40%
youth-related) received 759 gifts
(g) 153 hospitals received 261 gifts
(h) 186 health-related organizations (American Heart
Association, American Cancer Society, etc.) received
320 gifts

Three things about this list seem particularly interesting to
me. First, to some degree it indicates what people choose to give
money to when they are acting of their own accord, free of pressure
from solicitors or emotional appeals from charities. Second, the
contributions programs of publicly-held companies almost never
allow gifts to churches and synagogues, yet clearly these
institutions are what many shareholders would like to support.
Third, the gifts made by our shareholders display conflicting
philosophies: 130 gifts were directed to organizations that
believe in making abortions readily available for women and 30
gifts were directed to organizations (other than churches) that
discourage or are opposed to abortion.

Last year I told you that I was thinking of raising the amount
that Berkshire shareholders can give under our designated-
contributions program and asked for your comments. We received a
few well-written letters opposing the entire idea, on the grounds
that it was our job to run the business and not our job to force
shareholders into making charitable gifts. Most of the
shareholders responding, however, noted the tax efficiency of the
plan and urged us to increase the designated amount. Several
shareholders who have given stock to their children or
grandchildren told me that they consider the program a particularly
good way to get youngsters thinking at an early age about the
subject of giving. These people, in other words, perceive the
program to be an educational, as well as philanthropic, tool. The
bottom line is that we did raise the amount in 1993, from $8 per
share to $10.

This is embarrassing.

http://static.flickr.com/28/47632485_b01ff05bfc...

The central chapter treats the imagination, and it's a particularly mechanical imagination, in which happiness is conceived as a life ordered like a well-functioning machine, or like a precision watch. This same preference for order is seen in trinkets of frivilous utility, like watches, but also in the universe, as it must be conceived by the great superintendant. The title Theory of Moral Sentiments is a deliberate paradox because "theory" at that time applied to things like "a theory of the heavens." Smith's book is really the Theory of (the System) of Moral Sentiments, just as The Wealth of Nations treats the system of natural liberty, or capitalism, and Newton's theories explain the "system of the world." The paradox of a "theory of moral sentiments" is central to Smith's approach because the paradoxes can only be explained at the level of the system, where greed turns into charity and the dream of mechanical ease is the motive force of lives of permanent exertion.

Why not auction off passports and then walk down the streets in Bangladesh handing out the proceeds. It would appear to have the same effect and would result in a more advantageous division of labor.

Poverty is remarkably stubborn, and one reason is that the poor are very stubborn. That's why all of the schemes have failed so far. The poor have gotten in the way. Wilkinson favors the sociological theories of poverty, but what if the biggest factor turned out to be genetic? Would genetic solutions be appropriate? Once poverty turns into a problem--and this is a relatively recent phenomena--it's arbitrary to put a limit on the solutions. I'd suggest rethinking the idea that it's a problem.

This also suggests the problem with liberaltarianism. Libertarianism is a genuine political doctrine, and freedom is a political concept. Liberaltarianism, I submit, is an engineer's conception of politics, with no guiding political concept. Is poverty a problem? The liberaltarian will engineer a solution, so much the worse for freedom or justice or whatever political concept happens to get in the way.

What's wrong with poverty again? Why do we have to work so hard to get rid of it? Not saving money is one way that people prefer to avoid thinking about the future, and death. That's real diversity. And if you really want to reduce poverty, stop importing more poor people. That's guaranteed to work, instead of jerry-rigged fantasy schemes.

The most stunning stat in that article is that the 27 professors and 60 graduate students nearly outnumbered the 100 graduating majors.

Ok, I will check out Pritchett.

So it helps "Mexicans"? Let's be clear on what the unit of analysis is. The Mexican immigrants, OK, but what about the 110 million Mexicans who aren't immigrants? You say the meat-packing plant would not survive without the immigrants, right? Where would that plant go, if not for the immigrants? Mexico?

Productivity is higher in the US because there is more capital in the US. So which is better, bringing the capital to Mexico or the Mexicans to capital? Maybe Mexico is hopelessly corrupt, and the best way to reduce poverty is one Mexican (Nigerian, Filipino, etc) at a time, so much the worse for lazy American workers.

You haven't made that case though. There is a kind of moral blackmail here ("Are you in favor of poverty and inequality?") but the premise is an unstated chauvinism (the third world is hopelessly corrupt, let's perform an boatlift and save who we can). I don't happen to be as pessimistic as you are.

Second, low skill immigration may simply subsidize uneconomic industries in high-wage nations. I wouldn't be as opposed to immigration is employers didn't offload their employment costs to the local taxpayer, like meat packing plants in Iowa overload small Iowa towns with high costs but profits are privatized. If employers had to cover every cost of their immigrant employees, then immigration would make more sense. But then immigration probably would not be the kind of low-skill immigration you're in favor of.

Is it better for Mexico and Mexicans to pick tomatoes in Pennsylvania or pick them in Mexico and ship them to Pennsylvania? What can be achieved by immigration that can't be achieved by trade? And if Bill Gates and Carlos Selim are free to collect rents that come with monopoly businesses, why can't low wage American workers collect the rents that come with American citizenship?

Extraverts are notorious liars.

No doubt when he commutes between his dual appointment in NY and Australia, he takes a row boat.

If you add the Asian to the white, you get a 56% majority. But the trends are all in the wrong direction, as the demographics would predict, and not just outmigration. For instance, California will soon spend more on its prisons than its universities, $15.4 billion vs. $15.3 billion. That's alot to spend on prisons.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/...

And that's before closing the $15 billion budget deficit.

I detect a certain cultural chauvinism in Wilkinson's argument. Nothing is preventing Nigerians from turning their impoverished and corrupt democracy into a genuine and prosperous democracy, nor are US conservatives standing in their way. Surely they are capable of it -- or does he think otherwise? Or is their situation so hopeless that the only choice left is to move en masse to the US and Europe?

We need to match the sacrifice of the greatest generation. Then we will satisfy Brooks. Only a few hundred thousand corpses to go.

But all of McCain's wars are in the name of a morally superior state of affairs. Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, his support for intervention in Darfur, Somalia, Rwanda, etc.
McCain's support for amnesty is of a piece with his enthusiasm for invading the world. Both satisfy his considerable appetite for sanctimony. By the way, post-nationalism is the future and always will be.

And the problem with most modernist buildings is that nobody could live in them.

Wouldn't the ultimate liberal aim be better served by selling US citizenship rather than through guest workers or immigration? Let's say you auctioned off say citizenship rights equal to 1% of the US each year, so 3 million passports. In turn you got $100000 per passport, which doesn't sound crazy considering all the wealthy people who want to live here. In fact, the cost would probably be much higher. If my math is right, that's $300 billion per year, which buys alot of enchiladas. If you share just 1/3 of that with the displaced immigrants who would have taken those immigration slots, the would-be guest workers or immigrants would be much better off. If libertarians see nations as clubs, why not auction off citizenship like clubs do?

I agree completely with what some may consider the bilge of MaryJ.

I just pointed out what seemed to me a causal relationship between the draft and immigration policy. When the cost of citizenship is so low for so many, there is less resistance to handing out the benefits of citizenship for free, like amnesty. And one last point, for the second time: self-congratulation is not a basis for social policy.

The sugar farmer and the migrant workers are of course, the same person, except there are alot more of the former. As to second point, I suspect immigration policy went off the rails about the same time the US instituted a volunteer army. We all, of course, live off the subsidy provided by those who serve our country at the risk of their lives. A nation is not a vast and unjust transfer-payment scheme, as some seem to imagine.

Who is most in favor of guest workers? Who has the most to gain from blather about those poor migrant workers? Employers, and more specifically, employers of dead and dying industries like US agriculture. Who has the most to lose? Some Brazilian sugar farmer who can't compete with the combination of tariffs, subsidies, and guest worker programs. It seems an awful lot like the part-time champions of the poor, full-time champions of corporate interests, the libertarians, have given up on attacking domestic subsidies and decided to go along with the flow and promote the least worst alternative, guest workers. It still sucks for some African farmer who justs wants to sell his cotton in the US.