[ExI] Social right to have a living

[Damien Sullivan]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 01:42:35PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> What justification is there that society owes a living to anyone? Is
> that belief based in the same flawed religious roots as the belief
> that it was OK to steal the land from the American Indians, or that
> slavery was just fine? This is a really important question to answer
> if you want to support your position that society should help the
> poor.

The counter-question is "what justification is there to have rich people
and starving people in the same society?  Why should the alleged
property rights of one who has a lot be respected by someone who doesn't
have enough?"

I actually wouldn't start with any abstract blanket right to "a living";
society's clearly not rich enough yet for that.  We can start with the
right to *make* a living, including fair access to the tools needed for
that.  This gets simpler to think about if we go back to mostly agrarian
societies: a right to an equal share of land to work.  No one starts out
with a right to be fed by other people, but they start with a right to
land with which to feed themselves.  If someone has more land, while
someone else has none and must work as a servant for the landlord, what
justifies that?  And while one can talk about "I cleared this land",
most commonly the answer is "my ancestor stole it from yours and I have
force to back up my claim".

(Even if one did clear or improve land, it's far from obvious that that should
grant an indefinite right of ownership.  In the first year, much of the
food value will have come from the initial land improver, not just the
farmer, but over time likely the land has to be maintained.  If the
first improver does it, they're being paid for service rendered; if the
tenant farmer does it, then in justice ownership by usufruct and effort
invest passes to them, as eventually they've provided most of the value.)

So a fair society would give an equal bloc of land to everyone.  Of
course, some people are better farmers than others, A better than B,
say.  In which case B might let A farm B's land, in return for a share
of the crop, while B goes off and does something else.  If B can't get
other jobs, and if A doesn't pay enough, B always has the option of
coming home and working their own land again.

OTOH, if A is a highly productive farmer, they might be able to pay B
enough so that B never has to work, while A still does quite well
themselves.  This looks at the surface like B profiting idly from A's
labor, but it's actually rooted in B's fair share of the land as a
whole.

If you reject that, then we don't have much to talk about.  If you can
accept that, as a simple and idealized version of a fair society, then
the question becomes how to relate it to our complex non-agrarian
market society.  And any answer will likely be messy.  But instead of
individually owned parcels of land rented out to farmers and other
users, we might have a land value tax whose receipts are redistributed
as a modest basic income.

Alternately, in lieu of an individual grant of land, there might be an
individual grant of modern capital, as Thomas Paine proposed.  $100,000
given at adulthood, say.  Of course, with human capital being perhaps
the most valuable kind, public schooling and children's health care and
cheap or free college might be seen as non-cash delivery of said
capital.  OTOH, that still relies on the market to match jobs to people,
and a right to direct money or even food might be seen as safer.

That's for general welfare programs.  Aid for the disabled, or universal
health systems, aren't so much a fundamental egalitarian right as a
choice we make for a nicer (and possibly more efficient) society.  The
cripple or retiree has a right to a living because of a social insurance
system creating such a right.


A tidbit to think about: it's illegal today to sell oneself into
slavery.  (Some libertarians think it should be legal.)  Ditto for
debt-slavery, which has been common at times.  But apparently in ancient
Egypt, not only was debt-slavery illegal, so was seizing a workman's
tools to pay off a debt.  The ability to make a good living, granted by
the tools, was inalienable (though perhaps sellable) -- one's tools were
part of oneself, in a sense.

-xx- Damien X-)