[ExI] Social right to have a living

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:30 PM, Damien Sullivan
<phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> 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*?

The poor are poor because they have not been able to effectively apply
the resources they have to obtain more resources. The poor are poor
because they spend what little money they have on the daily
necessities of life, rather than on things like education that will
raise them out of poverty. Coincidentally, the poor typically buy the
things they need for their daily necessities from the rich. That is
why the poor often stay poor, and the rich get more rich. Giving the
poor more money does not improve things because they just go out and
buy more of the things from the rich again, and they are poor again
and the rich are rich again. The poor don't have the capacity to
create things that the rich want to buy from them. If they do, then
they don't stay poor. It's all about trade.

Being poor means not having money. So purchasing something means they
don't have money, thus they are poor. How does that not make sense?

>> 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.

It is critically important. Particularly if you are the one doing the
starving. Starving meaning you are hungry enough that you are going to
die. Hunger is a big inconvenience, starvation is a threat to
existence.

> 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.

You have a mighty poor opinion of the poor if that's what you think. I
have a lot more respect for poor people than that.

>> 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.

And subsequently NOT be poor. It's a good trade.

>> 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.

Sure, but it's completely wrong too.

>> 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.

The government isn't that efficient at providing me services that I'm
interested in having. When I am young, my parents take care of me.
When I am old, I hope my children will help me out, as I have been
able to help my parents. At least that's how I look at it, and that's
not mooching from society, that's being part of a family. Entirely
different.

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

Unemployment in the USA is 9%. Food stamps are used by 30%. There is a
disconnect there. Anyone with gumption CAN get a job, maybe not their
dream job. And the government (as currently constituted) needs to get
better at shifting the unemployed welfare recipient transformed into a
working poor person. The difference between the two states is so
insignificant now a days that it gives little incentive to work.

>> > 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.

Yes, it's simplistic. How would you implement this to KEEP things
fair. The fairness isn't sustainable even in your play world.

>>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*.

Which dynasty was that?

>> > 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?

Because some people would choose not to plant seeds. Others would eat
their seeds. What would your utopia do with them? You can't prevent
people from being stupid. All you can do is feed stupid and lazy
people. All I'm saying is that there is a limit to how many stupid and
lazy people a society can carry along. I don't mind caring for the
poor, but I don't want the government doing it, because from systems
theory, the government develops a vested interest in there being poor
people, and you never get rid of poverty.

>> > 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.

Not only simple, but simplistic. Your model doesn't account for
economic action over time, at all.

>> 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.

But people ARE silly. An extraordinary number of people are silly. You
have to account for human stupidity to have a workable sustainable
political system.

> 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.

Prohibit starvation? Prohibit stupidity? Or prohibit freedom by
dictating what people can and can't do with their own property? Cause
it's got to be one of those three, doesn't it?

> 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...

Are you going to dictate to people how many children they can have
too? Inheritance of land is also non sustainable if people have too
many or zero kids.

>> 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.

Ok, fair enough. I have a lot of faith in the poor, GIVEN the right
incentives. You seem to be taking the incentives away from them, which
will lead lots of people to escapism and drugs. It's not that people
are naturally drug addicts. It's that given no escape, they'll escape
how they can.

>> 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.

Who's we? People don't agree about such things. Case in point.

>> evolved sense of justice? What if I evolved a different sense of
>> justice than you?
>
> Then we conflict.

So we solve our problems with war? I'd rather solve our problems with
trade. No two countries both containing a McDonalds have ever gone to
war with each other.

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

I was not claiming that libertarianism solved this problem. I was
asking an unrelated question.

>> 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.

It would never happen. Some liberal minded people would just feed
them, and start the cycle all over again.

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

I grant you that it is very much harder to become wealthy in Haiti
than in Miami. The world isn't fair. But you can't make the world fair
either. All you can do is provide them with the environment in which
to grow themselves. Haiti has never done this. The US has been pretty
good at doing this, but is getting worse.

>> 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.

So you would have preserved the looms on their behalf? I never said
the Luddites were irrational. They were acting in their own perceived
self interest. But they could not stop the steam engines forever.
Going back to a farmer's paradise would just mean that we would ALL be
equally poor. I'd rather have some rich and some poor if it means the
average person is much more rich than we were if we were all equally
miserable together.

-Kelly