[ExI] Social right to have a living

[Damien Sullivan]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 02:19:34PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> > The counter-question is "what justification is there to have rich people
> > and starving people in the same society?
> 
> The justification in most cases is that the poor (and people from
> other economic strata) have of their own free will purchased something
> they deem of value from the rich. It is a voluntary exchange of money

What.

You've completely missed the point.  "the poor purchased something"?
What does that have to do with why the poor *are poor*?

> trade amongst free people. No society in the history of earth that has
> provided economic freedom and opportunity produced starving people in
> any significant numbers. Starving people are ONLY found in despotic
> countries like North Korea, Sub Saharan Africa, etc. If you want to
> change your statement from starving to hungry, then perhaps we can
> have a conversation.

Like distinctions between starving and hungry are particularly
important.  And "free societies" certainly produced lots of hungry.
When they don't, it's largely because of gov't programs to give food to
the poor.

> And again, I reject your premise that a libertarian country would be
> full of starving people. Hungry perhaps, but hunger is a powerful
> motivator to get off your ass.

And be a servant or exploited wage laborer for someone else.

> The good thing about today is that you don't need land to make money.

I know.  It's called a thought experiment, to simplify and get at key
issues.

> sufficiently libertarian society). Unfortunately, in America, you have
> to have a willingness to work hard enough to feed two; yourself, and a
> moocher. 

More like half a "moocher", with the proviso that you yourself have been
a "moocher" when young and will be again when old, and some of that
"mooching" is going to services to help you be as productive as you are.

Also the idea that anyone with gumption can get ahead is pretty
ludicrous when unemployment is persistent and widespread.

> > 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.
> 
> And so, some become rich and some poor

Point is, there'd be a floor on the poverty.  No able bodied citizen
would have a reason to beg for help, because every able-bodied citizen
would have land to work.  (Being simplistic, this ignores crop
failures.)  If you don't like the jobs, you can support yourself.

>No matter how often you level
> the playing field, this approach does not work. Millions starve
> because nobody knows how to fix the tractors except the poor slobs in
> Siberia.

A claim for which you have no evidence, because what I describe has
AFAIK only been done by one Chinese dynasty.  It's certainly nothing
like Communist collectized farming, which was, after all,
*collectivized*.

> > 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.
> 
> Do you actually believe this? Seriously?

What's wrong?  You believe in land ownership, right?  And libertarianism
doesn't have much to say about how property is initially distributed.
If everyone owned an equal plot of land, why wouldn't it play out as I
describe?

> > If you reject that, then we don't have much to talk about.
> 
> So you're saying that if I don't see an agrarian version of communism
> being the fairest way to run the world, we can't talk about it? That's
> a bit rigid.

Well, now it seems that you can't understand what I thought was a rather
simple model, which makes communication difficult.

> Of course any answer that works will be messy. Let's start with your
> agrarian utopia. Then say that A SELLS his land to B. (Unless he
> doesn't have the freedom to do so). And then A spends all the money on
> farmer C's daughter. How does your society then feed A?

Pace not being able to sell yourself into slavery, sales of
citizen's-right land probably would be prohibited.  Or at least,
outright sale; you might be able to swap with someone's plot, or
exchange with a national bank, so you could move around.  But you
couldn't divest yourself of the means to live, that'd be silly.  Unless
you were emigrating and leaving the society for good.

Alternately, you might be able to, but then society would be more
justified in letting you starve, since you would have clearly made a
stupid decision, unlike merely being born poor.  I'd probably just
prohibit it, though.

Not all land would have to actually be divided into grants, in fact if
you want population growth some should be held in reserve for future
allocation...

> Most of that money would be wasted. Without morals and education, you
> might as well just give the $100,000 directly to the Columbian drug
> lords.

Wow, lot of contempt for your fellow people, there.

> The "efficient" part may have some merit... but efficient government
> is an oxymoron. Who has the "right" to create the social insurance
> system in the first place? From where was that right derived? In a
> God-less world, where do rights come from in any case? From our

We create them.

> evolved sense of justice? What if I evolved a different sense of
> justice than you?

Then we conflict.

Not like libertarianism rises above this somehow; to reflect your
questions, where do property rights come from, in this God-less world?

> In the end, starvation MUST be an option for a sustainable society. In

Well, in my thought experiment, starvation would be an option, if
someone sat on their butt and refused to work.  And you could feel
justified in letting them starve, because you would know that they had
the means to work.

Vs. the real world, where one may grow up without good nutrition,
education, or working capital of any kind.

> Now let's fast forward to a society in the not so distant possible
> future... Suppose that there are AGIs and robots of sufficient skill
> that unenhanced human beings are no longer capable of making
> meaningful contributions to society. Are the robots required by your
> rules to sustain us?

Remember that the Luddites, contrary to reputation, weren't irrationally
anti-tech.  They were skilled workers who were losing their livelihoods,
without compensation, due to automation.  Lacking capital or any defined
right to livehood, they existed only by their utility to capitalists.
Had society had some way by which those losing their jobs could partake
meaningfully of the benefits, there'd have been less violence.

-xx- Damien X-)