Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 20 19:52:29 EDT 1994
Article: 6296 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.usa.republican
Subject: Re: Go Away GOP 'Moderates'!
Date: 20 Jun 1994 13:12:21 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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jks2x@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Jason K. Schechner) writes:
> Socialists want the means of production ot be owned by society
>at-large, which is not the same thing as owned by the goernment.
Please explain?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 21 11:10:42 EDT 1994
Article: 26060 of talk.politics.theory
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Property and the State
Date: 20 Jun 1994 21:43:12 -0400
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carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>| 1. People are free and responsible for their actions, which means
>| that the consequences of their actions ideally should accrue to them
>| alone.
>
>Most people would agree that, in general at least, a person should
>enjoy the benefits and suffer the disbenefits for which he is
>personally responsible; this is a commonly intuited notion of
>fairness.
>
>Libertarians hold that the free market and voluntary gift-giving
>should alone determine the distribution of income. But clearly the
>distributions resulting from the operation of the marketplace are a
>function not only of factors for which the individual is presumably
>responsible (such as the degree of his effort), but also of factors
>for which the individual is not responsible.
That does not contravene the moral principles stated in the first two
paragraphs, which require only that people bear the consequences of
their voluntary acts. It is inconceivable that any of us could bear the
consequences *only* of his voluntary acts. We are all born into a world
created by nature and by the acts of other persons, and that world
affects us in ways that we do not choose. If that's a problem there is
no remedy for it.
>People born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths, for
>example, are not responsible for the competitive advantages that they
>enjoy, such as access to better education, health care, and
>connections. People who are discriminated against because of
>prejudice, or who are involuntarily unemployed, are not responsible for
>the disadvantages they suffer as a result.
Sure. The situation each of us finds himself in is a consequence in
part of the voluntary acts of other people. What's the answer -- to
forbid people to engage in acts that affect others? I suppose in theory
one could forbid people to engage in acts that confer differing benefits
on other people, and maybe that's in effect what egalitarians want to
do, but such a procedure would be troublesome to manage (to put it
mildly) as well as a denial of the freedom to do things that benefit
some but not all. The freedom to do things for people you care about is
a far from trivial freedom, by the way. In addition, granting that
benefits conferred by the acts of other people are wholly undeserved, I
don't see why it follows that anyone deserves an equal share of such
benefits.
>Nor is anyone responsible for the talents or disabilities with which he
>or she is born -- including a talent for making the most of one's
>talents. Even the willingness to make an effort may be in part a
>product of a favorable circumstances in one's childhood. Yet all of
>these factors play a major role in determining how the market
>distributes income.
Quite true. One does not create oneself. Nor did one's contemporaries.
So this line of thought does not help us decide whether one's
involuntary talents and inclinations should be treated as his private
property or as the common property of everyone alive.
>Take the case of perhaps the most famous living professional baseball
>player, if not of all time: Michael Jordan, who has become a multi-
>millionaire through his athletic career and endorsements. Does anyone
>seriously maintain that his efforts or moral deservingness are four or
>five orders of magnitude greater than the average person's, or that
>they are vastly greater than the efforts or deserts of a mother
>struggling to raise her children in poverty as a single parent?
The effects of his efforts are quite different than in the other cases
you mention, and the moral principles we started with required only that
people get the effects of their efforts.
Does "moral deservingness" mean "general moral praiseworthiness"? If
not, I don't understand the problem. If so, it needs to be shown that
it is wrong to recognize bases for acquiring wealth other than general
moral praiseworthiness.
>Perhaps the most basic egalitarian objection to libertarianism is that
>libertarianism amounts to a deliberate decision to structure society in
>such a way that the distribution of income and wealth is co-determined
>not only by an individual's efforts and choices but also to a great
>extent by factors beyond the individual's control and which are hence
>morally arbitrary.
What's morally non-arbitrary about a rule of equality? The egalitarian
tendency is to say that what people do is attributable to heredity,
environment, and chance, and therefore people have no moral deserts.
Fine, but if there are no moral deserts I don't know what the problem is
with moral arbitrariness.
>But a social system ought to treat its members equally
An idea of justice that I can understand is that those who deserve
equally ought to be treated equally. But egalitarians like Rawls seem
to affirm that there is no such thing as desert. If there were such a
thing, then one could explain how it arises from acts and so see that
different people who act differently have different deserts. If there's
no such thing as desert, though, I don't see the point of saying that no
desert is twice as big as another.
>The only inequalities generated by the social system ought to be those
>for which the individuals are responsible, unless such inequalities
>would result in a Pareto-superior outcome (since those on the losing
>end of the inequalities cannot reasonably object to a Pareto
>improvement).
Rawls' maximin principle is different from the Pareto principle
(instead of demanding that no-one be made worse off it demands that the
worst off be made better off), and it doesn't seem to permit treating
the worst off as responsible for their situation, so you seem to differ
from Rawls here. How would you go about defining what things people
are responsible for and vindicating the rights and obligations they
consequently incur, and how would you keep the process of Pareto
optimalization from leaving some people where they started, starving to
death?
>| 6. A standard liberal (Rawlsian) justification for redistributing the
>| benefits that would arise within a lassez-faire capitalist system is
>| simply that such redistribution makes its beneficiaries better able to
>| pursue their own projects, whatever those projects happen to be.
>
>This is not the Rawlsian justification nor even an egalitarian one.
I thought the Rawlsian principles were those that would be agreed to by
a bunch of people who knew they had projects but didn't know what their
projects or their personal characteristics or social position were, and
who got together and negotiated each for the deal that best protected
and advanced his individual ability to advance his own projects. Am I
simply wrong?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 21 20:17:46 EDT 1994
Article: 1826 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Soccer and OJ (was Re: Wild.Boy)
Date: 21 Jun 1994 15:44:10 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1994Jun19.032902.6909@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <1994Jun19.185626.13853@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <94172.070736U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
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Terry Rephann writes:
>the sport [soccer] seems to appeal to liberal elites who see it as a
>way of fostering internationalist sentiments.
I think that's right, it sort of goes along with UNICEF Christmas
cards. It's odd, though, that the fans in places where people care
about the sport display so little fondness for liberal
internationalism.
>P.S., Maybe this is a good entry point for discussing the O.J. Simpson
>affair from a C-R perspective.
Possible angles:
"Eminent football player" as cultural hero. One step up from "eminent
supermodel", I suppose.
The desperation to find black heroes.
The impossibility of admitting that someone could be guilty of something
serious. He didn't really do it, or he was temporarily insane, or it's
because of some syndrome, whatever.
The foregoing are pretty hackneyed, but I'm not a sports fan or a TV
watcher and haven't been following closely. Any other ideas?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 22 07:34:41 EDT 1994
Article: 18916 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: A long right-wing [sic] discussion of discrimination
Date: 22 Jun 1994 07:34:28 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Terry.Parks@launchpad.unc.edu (Terry Parks) writes:
>> People have a natural tendency to feel kinship with fellow members
>>of groups that have characteristic perceptions, experiences, attitudes,
>>habits, affiliations, and so on.
>
>And just which mythical perceptions, experiences, attitudes,
>habits, and affiliations are related to race? (That is, other than
>the numerous racist organizations such as the Society of Black Engineers.)
There is European culture, Korean culture, and Tamil culture, and
Europeans, Koreans and Tamils also differ racially. That's not a
coincidence. A race is a group of people that has lived together and
intermarried for a very, very long time, long enough for a visible
physical type to arise. When people live together, intermarry, and
otherwise have dealings with each other they develop a common culture.
Therefore, race is related to culture. "Culture" is a bundle of the
things I mentioned shared in by a group.
Race -- visible membership in a group sharing common appearance and most
of the members of which participate in a common culture or related
cultures -- is also one of the signs people use in deciding how they
will treat others, at least initially. People just don't feel the same
way about an unfamiliar young black man in a hooded sweatshirt and an
unfamiliar young white man in a hooded sweatshirt. Differing treatment
also supports differing perceptions, attitudes and so on.
If you want more specifics and don't want to trust my say-so that
differences exist, look for polling data on (e.g.) black and white
beliefs and attitudes.
>Could you be the non-existent person who can point out the mythical
>benefits restricted to people because they are "straight white males"?
There are no absolute restrictions, but differences exist. A white man
is much more likely to have a good income, to have grown up in an intact
family, and to have a clean police record than a black man. A white man
is more likely to be treated with respect by the police, and on the
(white collar high status) job he is less likely than a black man to be
treated as a charity case who people have to work around. As to
"straight", a straight man doesn't have to live in a world in which the
common view is that his sexual habits are wrong.
>> 1. By "affirmative action" I mean the attempt to equalize benefits
>>for all groups. Such equalization is hard to achieve, however.
>
>This is more like the definition of socialism. Could you identify
>any mythical AA program which does this?
It's certainly a simplified definition. I think it's accurate as a
statement of the goal of most supporters of AA. The idea of AA seems to
be that purifying the process will get nowhere unless it's guided by
results. If results are unequal, that demonstrates (in the view of AA
supporters) that there is something biased about the process that must
be corrected with a compensating bias. So the only satisfactory process
is one that gives equal results for all groups. Saying that is the same
as saying the goal is to equalize benefits.
>> The foregoing argument loses much of its force to the extent
>>affirmative action only puts blacks in the position they would be in if
>>they were treated in accordance with their conduct and ability rather
>>than subjected to arbitrary discrimination.
>
>Since no AA program works this way, the argument loses nothing.
I agree. That should have been clear from what I wrote.
>Or could you identify the mythical AA program which gives benefits to
>people one the basis of having suffered discrimination?
They all give benefits to groups on the basis of having suffered
discrimination.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 22 13:00:13 EDT 1994
Article: 1831 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Soccer and OJ (was Re: Wild.Boy)
Date: 22 Jun 1994 12:54:01 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1994Jun19.032902.6909@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <1994Jun19.185626.13853@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <94172.070736U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> <2u7fua$sme@panix.com> <94173.080538U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
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In <94173.080538U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> Terry Rephann writes:
>Salt and pepper couplings. Can we expect a public information campaign
>by liberals about the disproportionate amount of violence committed by
>black males against white females in interracial relationships?
Are there statistics on this sort of thing? I live in an area that has
a lot of mixed couplings. Most appear as normal as other
relationships, some are troubling. If a black man defines his position
in the world through aggression and domination, he may view possession
and abuse of a white woman as one mode of self-aggrandizement. I know
of a couple of situations where that seems to be going on, but hadn't
seen any indications that the situation was common enough to affect the
statistics.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 22 18:33:10 EDT 1994
Article: 26167 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Can love be redistributed?
Date: 22 Jun 1994 13:56:09 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Q.L.Hong@kub.nl (HONG Q.L.) writes:
>As it is the case with wealth, love is a good that is not equally
>distributed among members of a society. In his famous A THEORY OF
>JUSTICE John Rawls has tried to defend a society in which it is morally
>right to redistribute wealth more equally. The question is: can love be
>also redistributed in a more equal way? How can that redistribution be
>achieved???
Some thoughts:
Egalitarians argue that one reason wealth, authority and other things
should be more equally distributed is that they are the social bases of
self-respect. If that's right, and the redistribution were done, then
maybe love would also be distributed more equally. Both love and self-
respect begin by viewing someone (oneself or another person) as worthy
of serious consideration, so the two seem to be related.
A problem with that view is that both self-respect and love depend on
particular qualities that make a person worthy of esteem and that the
person might easily have lacked. So a serious attempt to give everyone
self-respect and love, as egalitarianism seems to require, would make
both concepts vacuous.
Theories aiming to eliminate the family and therefore partial affections
might be viewed as aiming to equalize love. Examples include monastic
orders, Plato's _Republic_, and a number of movements that have
established communes from time to time here in the United States. You
might find the history of American communal movements worth looking
into. The short answer that comes out of that history, I think, is that
love is very difficult to redistribute. Even if you can take it away
from A, which is often possible, it is hard for society cause it to be
given to B. As a great philosopher once said, "you can't hurry love".
Some universities in America have adopted speech codes that prohibit
things like "inappropriately directed laughter" or excluding people from
conversations. These might also be viewed as attempts to equalize love,
or at least respect.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 22 20:09:35 EDT 1994
Article: 1836 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: March
Date: 22 Jun 1994 20:07:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes:
>>The second purpose is to encourage the self-government of the people.
>That is to say: filling our "benevolent leaders" full of lead when they
>get too upitty. As Thomas Jefferson once said, a little revolution now
>and then is a good thing.
The statement is a little more bloodthirsty than I prefer -- society is
organic, government is part of society, etc. It's true, though, that a
reasoned discussion between the people and their rulers will probably
stay more reasonable if the _ultima ratio_ is not all on one side.
>The increase in crime is due solely to the ruination of our legal
>system at the hands of so-called civil libertarians and their judicial
>allies.
I don't think so. There are far more arrests and far more punishments
(men in jail) than in the past. Look at _Statistical Abstract of the
United States_ and _Historical Statistics of the United States_. (I'd
cite figures if I had them handy.) The problem much goes deeper than
difficulties in administering the criminal justice system.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 22 20:09:37 EDT 1994
Article: 1837 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: How will antiegalitarian views resurface?
Date: 22 Jun 1994 20:09:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes:
>>>>Radical universalist/egalitarian regimes have been
>>>>responsible for more butchery in this century than all of the radical
>>>>anti-egalitarian regimes put together.
>>>
>>> Truth is, I am also unaware of this fact, and am dying to see you
>>>produce figures and stuff ( which, no doubt you probably can ).
>
>How could Mr. Schulz be unaware?
It's not the sort of thing that's been played up much. No enemies to
the left, and so on. In the mid-80's, not long before they started
(literally) digging up all the skeletons in the X-SU, there were
respected scholars in the U.S. claiming that the number of those killed
was in the thousands rather than millions. Why should Mr. Schulz, as a
layman, be in advance of 10-year-old scholarship?
>There's something about trying to _make_ people equal that causes the
>bodies to pile up.
Why not? Death is the great equalizer. To exist is to have specific
characteristics that differentiate one from others. Nonexistence is the
remedy. Say what you want about the commies, they were profound
philosophers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 23 03:01:00 EDT 1994
Article: 26187 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.radical-left,sci.econ
Subject: Re: Marginal product (was: Re: Property and the State)
Date: 23 Jun 1994 03:00:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:26187 alt.politics.radical-left:16854 sci.econ:23375
Robert.Vienneau@launchpad.unc.edu (Robert Vienneau) writes:
>Many non-overlapping intervals could contain the wage for a given
>technique. Completely different techniques would be selected by profit-
>maximizers in regions between these intervals. This phenomenon is known
>as "reswitching" or "double-switching." It seems to me this possibility
>destroys any claim that the value of factor services are determined by
>their marginal products.
It still seems unlikely to me that radically different pricing schemes
would be a common and important possibility in a complex economy with a
lot of innovation in which inputs can be used for a large variety of
purposes. The idea seems to be that on pricing scheme A profit
maximizers in each industry will use techniques X and on radically
different pricing scheme B profit maximizers in each industry will all
reswitch to techniques X and consumers will still buy the same amount of
each product. Maybe, but it seems as if it would take a lot of
coincidences. I don't have a good enough grasp of the arguments to say
more than that. Maybe an example would help, if it wouldn't be too
complicated to construct one.
It would also help if in the generator example you pointed out who it is
who is getting less than his marginal product.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 23 14:39:15 EDT 1994
Article: 1842 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: melancholy
Date: 23 Jun 1994 08:31:11 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1994Jun23.051814.13044@news.cs.brandeis.edu>
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deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes:
>So, is there an American media created form of melancholy? Yes, in a
>sense: there is maudlin sentimentality [ ...] True melancholy does not
>come across well on TV, and the shallowness of the media abhors genuine
>emotion, even as it greedily devours it. What it wants is manipulation;
>there must be a "story" behind every tragedy. There must be a "lesson"
>that we must learn from it. Our media masters are here to teach us, to
>guide us.
Melancholy arises from a sense that the world has serious flaws that
aren't going to be fixed or explained away, so it's never been part of
the American mainstream. The denial that such flaws exist has taken
various forms. In soft-left TV culture it takes the form of a belief in
therapy. If we only express our pain and hear each other and bring in
the experts it will all somehow work out.
I wonder about the media culture in other countries. Is there now a
French Donohue? An Italian Oprah? [Sorry.] An EEC style of
melancholy? Is German radio just like NPR?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 27 10:11:53 EDT 1994
Article: 1854 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Irony
Date: 27 Jun 1994 10:10:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1994Jun24.055525.14626@news.cs.brandeis.edu>
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deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes:
>Americans have been known for their irony
Is this so? I thought our tendency was to be serious and literal-
minded. There is or was American humor, but it tended, I thought,
toward exaggeration and broadness.
>We have already stated that the contemporary Germans are an inferior
>sort of Slovenes, so it doesn't surprise us it they took us for their
>own." (Neue Slowenische Kunst, pg. 54)
Why the new Slovenian Germanophilia? Why "Neue Slovenische Kunst"
instead of something in a Slavic language? Why "Laibach"? (That is,
why name a band after a town near Trieste with a name that sounds
German?)
Just curious.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 27 10:20:53 EDT 1994
Article: 1855 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: March
Date: 27 Jun 1994 10:11:40 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <2ummms$ief@panix.com>
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deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes:
>It is hard to imagine this criminal class would have come into being on
>its own, without more lenient laws and procedures to open the way.
Less repression makes a difference, but changes in the amount of
repression aren't the only things that determine the size of the
criminal class. One change that is very noticeable in the statistics
over the past 30 or 40 years is the evident loosening of the ties that
hold people together, as measured by average household size, average age
at marriage, proportion of couples living together without marriage,
divorce rates, illegitimacy rates, and so on. That change can't be
blamed on liberal trends in the administration of criminal justice, but
I think it contributes to the crime rate.
TV is another fairly recent innovation that tends to dissociate people
from each other and from reality. For an interesting discussion of its
apparent effect on violent crime (violent crime doubles about 15 years
after TV becomes widespread) see "Television and Violent Crime" by
Brandon Centerwall in the Spring 1993 _The Public Interest_. The
increasing emphasis on formal education has no doubt also contributed to
disrupting the bonds that tie people together.
I should add that the increase in crime is not purely American. The
British rate of property crime is now higher than our own. For that
matter, they've also had sharp increases in crime in Sweden, although
the rise has been from a much lower base. I believe the same is true in
other European countries, although I haven't seen statistics.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 27 13:08:02 EDT 1994
Article: 26467 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Property and the State
Date: 27 Jun 1994 10:20:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 104
Message-ID: <2umn7e$job@panix.com>
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carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>So a person is only partly responsible for the consequences of his or
>her actions, and I see no reason to say that the direct consequences of
>a person's actions should accrue to that person alone.
Do you see a reason why the consequences of a person's actions should
accrue to him at all? Those consequences arise from the actions of a
particular person in a particular environment, and neither of those
factors can be shown to be the creation of the actor.
>The problem is that libertarianism distributes a large proportion of
>income and wealth by what is in effect a one-shot, compulsory lottery.
>The question is whether this is justifiable, or whether justice
>requires adjustment of the "lottery" outcome.
To the extent you are a determinist, you can speak of the birth lottery.
A non-determinist might be inclined to say that people make their lives
out of what they're born with, and in most circumstances their well-
being has more to do with what they do with what they're given than with
their gifts.
It seems to me we should try to make our moral understanding of things
coherent and capable of stable propagation. Moral understanding relates
primarily to how we understand our life as we live it, and I don't see
how one's understanding of his own life as he lives it can be the
determinist view that it is something set by innate endowment and
environment. While acting we can't coherently think of all our
abilities, propensities and upbringing as something alien imposed on our
self, as the lottery view seems to demand. Also, moral understanding
may end with general theories about the world at large, but it's
something we develop through our relations with particular other
persons. It seems to me that acceptance and teaching of an overall
moral view that regards it as presumptively unjust to benefit particular
persons rather than everyone equally would make it difficult for people
to grow up with an outlook that is anything but utterly self-centered.
Even if one does find the "birth lottery" metaphor thoroughly
illuminating, it's not clear to me why a compulsory lottery is less just
than compulsory equal division or a compulsory difference principle.
Rawls believes that behind the veil of ignorance people would be
absolutely risk adverse, but I don't see why that would be so.
> "Thus the principles of justice, in particular the difference
> principle, apply to the main public principles and policies that
> regulate social and economic inequalities. They are used to adjust
> the system of entitlements and earnings and to balance the familiar
> everyday standards and precepts which this system employs. The
> difference principle holds, for example, for income and property
> taxation, for fiscal and economic policy. It applies to the announced
> system of public law and statutes and not to particular transactions or
> distributions, nor to the decisions of individuals and associations,
> but rather to the institutional background against which these
> transactions and decisions take place. There are no unannounced and
> unpredictable interferences with citizens' expectations and
> acquisitions. Entitlements are earned and honored as the public
> system of rules declares. Taxes and restrictions are all in principle
> foreseeable, and holdings are acquired on the known conditions that
> certain transfers and redistributions will be made.
Here Rawls seems to view the difference principle and the rest of his
system as things that could be institutionalized once and for all
rather than as the guiding ideals of a continuing process of creative
social reform. In the former case one might possibly be able to think
of them, as he seems to suggest here, as rules of property that provide
what I think libertarians want most, a fixed setting within which the
acts for which individuals are responsible are the significant
variables. I don't think the former case is possible, though. For one
thing, wherever there is a system there will be loopholes or things
that people come to view as loopholes that will have to be plugged.
For another thing, what the difference principle demands in practice is
a matter that is essentially debatable because of differing views of
fact and value, and it will change as society changes. So we will have
continuing creative social reform, which means unannounced and
unpredictable interferences with citizens' expectations and
acquisitions. We will also have social justice as a continuing active
ideal, which means that entitlements under the existing public system
of rules will not be honored or viewed as earned.
I should add that the difference principle itself makes it hard to think
of earned entitlements as honorable. Earnings create inequalities in
favor of the earner, and such things are tolerated by the difference
principle only to the extent they can be made to benefit the worst off
to the greatest degree possible. It is hard to view as honorable things
that are put up with only to the extent they serve some other end.
>I'm not talking about whether a person's talents are his private
>property (whatever you mean by that), but about how income and wealth,
>which are produced in part through such talents, should be distributed.
>I agree that Michael Jordan's talents are his private property in the
>sense that he should have the right to employ them as he pleases, in
>basketball, baseball, or whatever pursuits he chooses.
The idea seems to be that if MJ wants to become a great basketball
player because his skill gives him enormous pleasure, causes him to be
admired, and makes lots of girls want to go to bed with him, that's
something he has a categorical right to do, but if he wants to become a
great basketball player because then people will give him money and
he'll be able to buy a big yacht, which will give him pleasure, make him
admired, and get him lots of girls, that's not OK except to the extent
letting him do it serves some other purpose. I don't understand the
rationality of the distinction.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 27 15:41:58 EDT 1994
Article: 26486 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: The heartbreak of redistribution
Date: 27 Jun 1994 15:41:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <2una1c$1tq@panix.com>
References: <2ua4kl$mjh@panix.com> <2udbb4$n6r@saltillo.cs.utexas.edu> <2umnep$7hp@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
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carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>In a legal sense, then, taxation is not redistribution, theft or
>extortion. It does not consist of taking someone's legal property by
>force and giving it to others; rather it is part of the system of rules
>for assigning property titles, a system that differs from that
>preferred by libertarians (to the extent that they are opposed to
>taxation).
The distinction you have in mind may be be an important one, but what
you say here is not legally accurate. All the taxes I know of are
treated legally as amounts due from the taxpayer to the government
rather than as an ownership interest on the part of the government in
any income or asset of the taxpayer. Otherwise (for example) a change
in the basis for computing tax that is retroactive to income earned or
property acquired before the date of enactment would be an
unconstitutional taking of property.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 27 17:33:43 EDT 1994
Article: 26500 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.radical-left,sci.econ
Subject: Re: Marginal product (was: Re: Property and the State)
Date: 27 Jun 1994 17:32:11 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <2unggr$p9i@panix.com>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:26500 alt.politics.radical-left:17549 sci.econ:23472
Robert.Vienneau@launchpad.unc.edu (Robert Vienneau) writes:
>Jim Kalb has asked for an example. After this post, he'll probably
>prefer that I revert to authoritarian dicta on the implications of
>economic theory.
Actually, what I most wanted was comment on the likelihood that, in an
economy with a huge variety of inputs and outputs and processes linking
the two in a great variety of ways, two very different pricing schemes
would result in physically the same production processes in all
industries. I didn't question that an example could be constructed in a
simplified setting in which input, output and process would revert to an
original state when prices were modified sufficiently and appropriately.
I had trouble following the example. The problem may simply be
notation, but the example is complicated enough that I suspect it would
be more trouble than it's worth for you to clarify things for me.
Providing the example was certainly more than forthcoming, and I hope
someone else can discuss it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 27 17:36:30 EDT 1994
Article: 26501 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Can love be redistributed?
Date: 27 Jun 1994 17:35:57 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 47
Message-ID: <2ungnt$q4m@panix.com>
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carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>The fact that justice as fairness gives more support to self-esteem
>than other principles is a strong reason for them to support it."
>_Theory_, p 440.
I have no idea why justice as fairness should be thought to support
self-esteem.
>"We may define self-respect (or self-esteem) as having two aspects.
>First of all, as we noted earlier, it includes a person's sense of his
>own value, his secure conviction that his conception of the good, his
>plan of life, is worth carrying out.
In a Rawlsian world I am allowed to work unobstructed toward my
conception of the good as long as the realization of my conception of
the good does not include as a step the creation of something ("wealth")
that the government could take from me and give to someone else. In
that case I am allowed to carry out that part of my pursuit of my
conception of the good only to the extent allowing me to do so maximizes
the yield of wealth to the worst off. So people whose conception of the
good doesn't include that kind of step (quite possibly John Rawls'
conception of his own personal good would be an example) are favored.
There's also a requirement that my conception of the good not include
anything inconsistent with the social thought of John Rawls. Since
human relations constitute a major part of almost anyone's conception of
the good, this latter requirement is not a small one.
I can understand why all this would be extremely favorable to the self-
esteem of John Rawls and his sympathizers, but I'm not at all sure that
its unique virtue with respect to self-respect constitutes a "fact" that
others should recognize.
>And second, self-respect implies a confidence in one's ability, so far
>as it is within one's power, to fulfill one's intentions.
It's not clear what this sentence means. What is it to have confidence
in one's ability to the extent of one's power?
>Nor plagued by failure and self-doubt can we continue in our endeavors.
Rawls wants to ensure the highest possible minimum provision of
transferable goods for everyone regardless of their personal qualities,
intentions or conduct. The relevance to failure and self-doubt is not
clear to me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 29 07:03:41 EDT 1994
Article: 19028 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: A long right-wing [sic] discussion of discrimination
Date: 29 Jun 1994 06:58:07 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 55
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <2urk3v$or4@panix.com>
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In <2uqleh$j6o@samba.oit.unc.edu> Terry.Parks@launchpad.unc.edu (Terry Parks) writes:
>>>And just which mythical perceptions, experiences, attitudes,
>>>habits, and affiliations are related to race? (That is, other than
>>>the numerous racist organizations such as the Society of Black Engineers.)
>>There is European culture, Korean culture, and Tamil culture, and
>>Europeans, Koreans and Tamils also differ racially.
>People with Chinese-speaking parents often speak Chinese--so is
>speaking Chinese genetic? There are Europeans of every race, if you
>want to become European, move to Europe. If you want to practice
>European culture, you can do so without even moving to Europe.
You said "related to", not "identical with". If you chose at random 5
persons of Swedish culture and 5 persons of Zulu culture I claim I
could tell which was which visually.
>>A race is a group of people that has lived together and
>>intermarried for a very, very long time, long enough for a visible
>>physical type to arise.
>You sound akin to the people claiming that there are 400-year-old
>Blaks running around (well, maybe walking around). How long does one
>have to live with others for this magical change to take place?
Don't know. Ask a physical anthropologist, I suppose. You seem to
think there is something wrong with my account. What's your
explanation for racial differences?
>>There are no absolute restrictions, but differences exist. A white man
>>is much more likely to have a good income, to have grown up in an intact
>>family, and to have a clean police record than a black man.
>So some "white men" have more money and some "white men" have less
>money. Just where is the benefit here?
If the members of some group on average are better off in many respects
than the members of another group, I say that group is "benefitted".
For example, I say "Americans have benefitted from their system of
government, from the abundant natural resources of North America, and
from their geographical separation from the wars of the Old World." Do
you think that is an improper use of the word "benefit"?
>The truth is, that of
>all benefits given on the basis of race and gender, none are
>given to "white men".
If by "benefit" you mean "benefit conferred by formal program
explicitly set up for purposes of conferring that benefit", you're
right. I refer as well to things like my far smaller chance of being
murdered and the greater likelihood that I will be treated respectfully
by the police as "benefits".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 30 18:09:00 EDT 1994
Article: 26655 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Property and the State
Date: 29 Jun 1994 15:52:21 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 56
Message-ID: <2usjdl$imv@panix.com>
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carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>: The idea seems to be that if MJ wants to become a great basketball
>: player because his skill gives him enormous pleasure, causes him to be
>: admired, and makes lots of girls want to go to bed with him, that's
>: something he has a categorical right to do, but if he wants to become
>: a great basketball player because then people will give him money and
>: he'll be able to buy a big yacht, which will give him pleasure, make
>: him admired, and get him lots of girls, that's not OK except to the
>: extent letting him do it serves some other purpose.
>
>Nowhere does Rawls suggest, so far as I know, that Jordan should be
>prohibited from trying to make millions of dollars so that he can
>challenge Chamberlain's record for bedroom slam-dunks or whatever.
>Where do you get this idea?
I neither got nor presented such an idea. I said Rawls apparently would
let Jordan pursue his ultimate dream through the medium of cash only to
the extent letting people in his position pile up the cash served some
other purpose. That's obviously not the same, at least formally, as
forbidding Jordan to pursue his dream through making money. The point
was that pursuing ultimate goals through the medium of creating
transferable goods and services seems to be treated less favorably than
pursuing goals in some other manner. If that's a correct interpretation
of Rawls' system, the system seems irrational to me. If Jordan tries to
get girls by making lots of money he has to contribute to the least
well-off; if he tries to do the same by spending all his time sculpting
the perfect body and polishing his charm and seduction technique it
appears he doesn't. Indeed, in the latter case he might well become the
recipient of welfare payments himself.
>The difference principle states that social and economic inequalities
>are to be arranged so that they are to the maximum benefit of the least
>advantaged, subject to the priority of liberty and of fair equality of
>opportunity.
It seems to follow, at least speaking roughly, that under the difference
principle people who make more money than the median should be taxed up
to the point at which returns diminish in accordance with the Laffer
curve, and the proceeds distributed to the least advantaged.
>The difference principle doesn't say that Jordan may not make 1,000
>times the average income, or try to.
I never said it did. Of course, the difference principle will make it
more difficult to make 1,000 times the average income, how much more
difficult depends on the beliefs of those devising the tax system as to
the shape of the Laffer curve. So Jordan might be well advised to
choose a way of pursuing his goals that doesn't involve producing
anything the government can give to someone else, or to change his goals
to things (like sitting around watching TV) that he also likes and that
he can pursue without being obliged to devote effort to helping the
least advantaged. Maybe that's only fair, but if so the fairness is not
obvious to me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 2 07:02:32 EDT 1994
Article: 1861 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: SER and the mass communications media
Date: 1 Jul 1994 07:37:01 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <2v0v4t$2sr@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Looking through the magazines in a doctor's office yesterday, I was
struck by how completely statist egalitarian radicalism dominates the
viewpoint of the mass press. The view resolutely presented as plain
American common sense is that a society in which sexual and ethnic
categories are irrelevant to people's lives, attained through a
comprehensive system of government coercion, is an unquestionably worthy
goal.
I don't think the situation will change, since calling SER into question
would call affirmative action into question, which can't be done. Quite
apart from the large number of people in every large organization whose
careers depend on AA and whose self-respect depends on its general
acceptance as something justified, it's hard to see how a large
organization could avoid trouble under the civil rights laws without
taking a strong position that AA is a good thing. To avoid trouble you
have to make good-faith efforts to find and promote minorities and women
and maintain an environment that they find hospitable, and it would be
hard to do all that with the attitude that you were only doing it only
because it was legally required.
All this is totally anti-CR, of course, so part of the strategic
question for CRs is how much the mass media matter. One gets the
impression from the popularity of _People_ magazine and other
indications (like the grotesque amount of time people spend watching TV
and the apparent public interest in people like Roseanne Arnold) that
many people live much of their lives in the world of pop media fantasy.
Can anyone suggest a good way to get a handle on how important the mass
media are in people's lives? How much of their beliefs and attitudes do
people pick up from the media? Messy questions, I know, but that's why
I'm asking them.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 2 07:02:33 EDT 1994
Article: 1863 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Irony
Date: 1 Jul 1994 22:43:56 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <2v2k9c$mua@panix.com>
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In <2v2j7a$gb8@news.ecn.bgu.edu> urrostro@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Richard Rostrom) writes:
>Slovenia was part of Austria from the Middle Ages, and had many
>volksdeutsch residents. Laibach is the German name for Ljubljana, the
>capital of Slovenia. During World War II Germany annexed first part,
>then the whole of Slovenia, whose entire population was declared
>volksdeutsch and subject to German conscription.
So are "Laibach" and "Neue Slowenische Kunst" activities of the
remaining Volksdeutsch in Slovenia who want to declare their ancestral
loyalties? What do the Slavs think of all this?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 2 07:02:36 EDT 1994
Article: 26745 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.radical-left,sci.econ
Subject: Re: Marginal product (was: Re: Property and the State)
Date: 30 Jun 1994 21:06:10 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <2uvq62$b8u@panix.com>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:26745 alt.politics.radical-left:17947 sci.econ:23543
Robert.Vienneau@launchpad.unc.edu (Robert Vienneau) writes:
>> Actually, what I most wanted was comment on the likelihood that, in an
>> economy with a huge variety of inputs and outputs and processes linking
>> the two in a great variety of ways, two very different pricing schemes
>> would result in physically the same production processes in all
>> industries.
>
>May I suggest that the degree of complexity of the most simplified case
>I could construct ought to suggest that more goods ought to only add to
>likelihood of models like mine leading to reswitching?
I think the original assertion was that the inputs, processes and
outputs of the economy as a whole do not determine a pricing structure,
and therefore it is mistaken to think that what someone gets paid tends
to approximate the value of his contribution to production. He and
everyone else could have been paid something quite different, and
production would have gone on just the same.
The idea seemed to be that you could radically change the pricing
structure of the mid-1994 American economy in such a way that inputs,
processes and outputs in all industries would all remain the same even
though they would typically be different for intermediate pricing
structures. It seems to me that increasing complexity, together with
the flexibility of modern economies regarding the use of inputs, the
choice of process, and the preferred outputs, make such a result,
applicable to the economy as a whole, far less likely. If your example
or analysis suggests the contrary I missed the implication.
>For the purposes of my argument - demonstrating the implications for
>marginal productivity of Neoclassical theory - I do not need to believe
>in the ability of these models to describe reality any more than, say,
>John Hall.
Does your argument have anything to say to someone who knows nothing
about neoclassical theory but just wants to say that in a free market
what people get paid tends to equal the value of their contribution to
production?
>A whole volume of _The_New_Palgrave_ is devoted to these controversies
>in capital theory. As of a few weeks ago Jim Kalb could pick up a trade
>paperback version of this book in the Strand, if he's interested.
I will look for it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 2 07:02:38 EDT 1994
Article: 26822 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: The Social Contract (yet again)
Date: 1 Jul 1994 22:37:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <2v2jt3$m14@panix.com>
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Xref: panix alt.philosophy.objectivism:14853 talk.politics.misc:181570 talk.politics.theory:26822 alt.politics.libertarian:33361
In Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>Mark Sulkowski is right; libertarians *are* concerned with the social
>consequences of capitalism for the weak, powerless and ignorant. It's
>just that if people don't have any money, and there isn't any charity
>around that they can appeal to, then their predicament must be their
>own fault, a result of their own conscious choice, so they deserve
>whatever fate happens to them.
I think this is unjust. By and large, libertarians believe that in a
society of the sort they favor people are less likely to become weak,
powerless and ignorant than in a welfare state. So it's just not true
that they characteristically don't care about the problems that arise
when people are w., p. & i. Also, saying "libertarians believe that if
there's no charity around then people who are unable to look after
themselves can just starve" strikes me as being on a par with saying
"people who favor democracy believe that if a democratic government
does nothing about the problems of the poor then that's just tough".
To say that you favor a particular distribution of power is not
necessarily to specify how you think the power should be exercised.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 2 11:17:59 EDT 1994
Article: 1866 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: SER and the mass communications media
Date: 2 Jul 1994 11:17:46 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 397
Message-ID: <2v40eq$lgt@panix.com>
References: <2v0v4t$2sr@panix.com> <2v2mhf$gb8@news.ecn.bgu.edu>
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urrostro@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Richard Rostrom) writes:
>: a society in which sexual and ethnic
>: categories are irrelevant to people's lives
>
>I'm not sure the goal, as opposed to the means, is entirely unworthy.
>The history is that sexual and ethnic categorization has led to
>arbitrary impositions, often tied in with state power. Note the
>coalescence of state power with racialist tyranny in S Africa and the
>Deep South.
You speak as if the alternative to a society in which sex and ethnicity
have no significance is a society with a special tendency toward
exploitation and tyranny. That seems wrong to me.
Sex roles are important in all known societies. All societies I can
think of have been ethnically based in the sense that their laws,
customs and other institutions reflect the outlook of particular ethnic
groups, and so are not equally hospitable to all regardless of ethnic
background. Since sex roles and ethnicity play an important role in all
societies, the societies in which such things matter can't have tyranny
and exploitation or anything else as distinguishing features. Also,
experience suggests that trying to make such things irrelevant won't
work, and the serious attempt to do so will only bring on its own form
of tyranny.
Rather than writing more just now, I'll append a couple of pieces I've
written as a result of earlier discussions of similar issues. That
will make this post enormously long one, but not everyone need read
everything.
>Also, of course, the people who set the details of the goals are
>extremists, because they have the most concern, and end up becoming the
>administrators and definition-makers. Thus the debasement of standards,
>the insistence on women in the military, etc.
If you think that insistence on women in the military is bad, then you
think it's OK for categorization by sex to be relevant to important
parts of people's lives. If you think that debasement of standards is
bad, then you must think it OK for particular standards to be treated as
authoritative. Particular standards arise within particular cultures,
though, and the connection between ethnicity and well-developed cultural
particularity is one that is hard to break.
>Consider the proportion of what the average person actually sees and
>hears which is synthetic. Consider what proportion of the speech and
>action which is observed which is not real people, but fiction,
>invented by writers and performed by actors. Then consider the
>additional fraction which is talk-show-gabble, real in the sense of not
>scripted, but still mechanically amplified to millions of times the
>effective volume of an ordinary person's speech, and of course selected
>for various purposes.
What sinks in and determines what people's lives are like, though?
Maybe people try to bridge the gap by distinguishing private life, where
they try to live by the things their upbringing and experience convince
them are right, and public matters, where they feel compelled to go
along with what they are told is right. I saw a poll recently which
showed a remarkably high and stable percentage (about 70%) holding the
view that homosexual relations are always or almost always wrong but
rising percentages holding that homosexuals should be legally protected
against discrimination in employment.
>Look the Hill/Thomas controversy. Immediately after the Senate hearings,
>when almost any interested person could hear and see both parties
>testify, polls revealed that a clear majority of Americans of both
>sexes and all races considered Judge Thomas credible and Professor Hill
>not credible. More recent polls have shown a reversal of this judgement,
>even though there is no new evidence whatsoever.
I agree that this is a strong case of attitudes of people in the media
influencing public views.
>GLAMOUR, a "non-political" fashion magazine, chose her as one of their
>"women of the year", for example.
Another question -- why are fashion and the arts so strongly left-wing
in sensibility today? Is it the fondness for novelty and transgression
of established categories? The absence of any serious standard of value
other than hedonism?
>One last point: the media class is not only a segment of society, it is
>the organ by which society perceives the world. If it is distorted or
>bigoted, how can we or society deal with that? How can we even tell?
It's a problem, certainly. Who was it who said that the problem with
the modern world was that stupidity had learned to think? All one can
do who doesn't like the established outlook on things is to develop his
own outlook and present it to others. It's an uphill task, but life
isn't easy.
Appendix I
People have a natural tendency to feel kinship with fellow members
of groups that have characteristic perceptions, experiences, attitudes,
habits, affiliations, and so on. When membership in such a group
carries benefits with it, and the group is one ("straight white males")
that is difficult or impossible for outsiders to enter, nonmembers often
object to being treated as such. The view that is publicly accepted
today is that such objections are well-founded and failure adequately to
address them is morally inexcusable, at least if the benefits are
anything but idiosyncratic, intangible and personal in nature.
Several methods have been proposed for eliminating or neutralizing
the effects of discrimination of the sort objected to. Of these, I will
discuss affirmative action, pure equal opportunity, and libertarianism.
For the reasons given below, I believe that none of these can come close
to satisfying the objections to exclusiveness without a great deal of
social damage. Of the three, I favor the libertarian approach because
it is least destructive, and because I am less convinced than most that
the objections are well-founded.
1. By "affirmative action" I mean the attempt to equalize benefits
for all groups. Such equalization is hard to achieve, however.
Benefits arise from what members of a group do as well as what is done
to them, so attempts to equalize benefits create resentments and, by
further effects on perceptions and behavior, create new distinctions
that also have to be equalized. For example, if blacks are guaranteed
an equal share of jobs and honors then non-blacks competing for the
remaining jobs and honors will be resentful, talented blacks will feel
less need to compete and their performance will suffer, and honorable
distinctions will confer less honor on blacks than on others because the
common view will be that they stand for less. Affirmative action thus
deals with material issues at the cost of making other aspects of
intergroup relations worse. The deterioration of relations feeds on
itself, since black beneficiaries of affirmative action can justify
their own position only by finding that they are surrounded by powerful
antiblack bias, and they can do so by treating non-black resentment of
affirmative action programs as proof of such bias. Thus, the more
unjust non-blacks consider affirmative action to be the more convinced
blacks become that it is necessary and that an equal share of benefits
is simply their right.
The foregoing argument loses much of its force to the extent
affirmative action only puts blacks in the position they would be in if
they were treated in accordance with their conduct and ability rather
than subjected to arbitrary discrimination. In that case one could
hope that non-blacks would eventually come to understand the
justification for the programs and stop discriminating, so that the
programs would no longer have a function and could be done away with.
Such a defence of affirmative action policies seems implausible,
however. Such policies have required major changes in all institutions
to which they have been applied, including those one would have least
expected to be discriminating. Accordingly, their primary effect can
be to redress arbitrary discrimination only if biases against blacks
are very strong and pervasive. If antiblack bias is so universal and
strong, though, it is hard to understand how the programs could ever
have been adopted.
In addition, there seem to be no grounds other than faith for
believing that lesser black occupational success is mostly due to
current discrimination rather than other factors such as black culture
or lesser average aptitude. Differences between black and non-black
success rates are very large in many of the fields, such as athletics
and the quantitative sciences, where aptitude and performance are most
easily judged and arbitrary discrimination should therefore play the
smallest role. On the other hand, such things as the very high rates
of illegitimacy and crime among blacks, and their low average scores on
intelligence tests, suggest important reasons other than discrimination
for lesser average occupational success.
2. The strict antidiscrimination/equal opportunity approach is to
forbid people to act on feelings of kinship based on common group
membership, at least if the group is thought to be a privileged one. A
problem with this method is that people feel that their membership in
groups of the kind in question is part of what makes them what they are.
That is why discrimination on grounds like race or religion can be
painful, but it is also why it is an extreme measure to tell people that
they can't discriminate -- that is, that in the common affairs of life
they can't associate by preference with those they view as their
fellows. As extreme measures, antidiscrimination laws have been very
difficult to enforce, and in practice the government has fallen back on
affirmative action.
Feelings of kinship based on ethnicity and the like are often
called irrational or worse, but calling them that doesn't make it
reasonable to ignore or try to abolish them. Man is a social animal,
and his good is typically realized through participation in communities
tied together by common history, beliefs, habits, attitudes, and the
like. It is just such ties that give rise to loyalties of the kind that
antidiscrimination laws require people to ignore. Thus, such laws by
their nature require people to ignore and deny affiliations of the kind
that for most people are basic to a good life.
People normally lead a good life through participation in a
particular culture. Cultures differ, and such differences are not
private matters. They are essentially public, because they relate to a
shared way of life that includes a common understanding of what things
are important and a common style of living together. Since ethnic and
religious groups are the primary bearers of culture, to demand that
ethnic and religious affiliation be made irrelevant to publicly
important matters such as government, economic activity, education and
housing is to is to demand that culture be deprived of its essential
functions. The consequences of full compliance with such a demand would
not be liberation from narrowness but rather the destruction of culture
and therefore a descent into public brutality and squalor. The more
diverse society becomes the worse such consequences will be, because
less will remain as a publicly acceptable common culture after
particularisms are excluded.
To be slightly more specific, different groups have different
standards regarding the intangible things that determine how
organizations function. Examples of such things are codes of manners
and standards for the appropriate relationship between individual
initiative and authority. No group's standards can be taken as a
universal ideal, but if there are no particular accepted standards
within an organization it is likely to be more a place for
misunderstanding, conflict, and self-seeking than for effective
cooperation carried on in a manner and spirit that fits it to be part
of a good life for those involved. Accordingly, every successful
organization must be particularistic in the sense that it must have its
own accepted ways. Since the ways of any organization will be far more
compatible with those of some groups than others, and since it will
normally be easier for an organization to deal with people who grow up
with a compatible outlook and habits than people who have to learn them
as adults, it is hard to see how an organization could avoid being more
hospitable to people from some groups than others without destroying
the basis of its own success. To be particularly hospitable to one
group, though, is to discriminate against all others.
Another problem with the strict antidiscrimination/equal
opportunity approach is that some distinctions between groups are
necessary to a successful society. The distinction between the sexes is
the most obvious example. Every known human society has recognized a
difference in function between men and women, with men dominating the
public sphere and positions of formal authority and women dominating
childcare and the domestic sphere. The difference in function, which
corresponds to differences between the sexes in average inclinations and
aptitudes, has made possible stable unions between men and women that
give women the protection and support they need to care for their
children while socializing men's aggressive and domineering impulses.
No substitute for that difference in function has yet become visible,
and it is not clear what such a substitute would look like. The radical
attack that has been mounted in recent years on sex role differentiation
has therefore been an attack on a fundamental principle of social order,
and the consequences we see around us, which are those that should have
been expected, will continue until the attack is abandoned.
3. The libertarian approach in dealing with intergroup relations
is to reduce government regulation. This approach would reduce the
amount or effect of discrimination if the government itself
discriminates, requires discrimination, or forbids people (for example
by imposing licensing requirements or supporting trade unions) to enter
into relationships that undercut advantages conferred on particular
groups. Although this approach would reduce the potential harm, it
would not eliminate discrimination, if only because discrimination is
often functional. Also, since this approach tends to require government
to treat discrimination as legitimate when enforcing contracts and
property rights, to accept it is to abandon the view that discrimination
is by nature a gross evil that should be eradicated.
It is not clear, however, why that view should be retained. The
doctrine that discrimination on racial and similar grounds is a moral
outrage is novel, and its basis has never been made clear. It is said
to deny the human dignity of those discriminated against, but that
seems clearly wrong. We all pick and choose our associates, for good
reasons and bad, without necessarily denying the human dignity of those
we reject. It is also said to inflict material and emotional damage on
those discriminated against. However, so does discrimination on grounds
like incompetence; the issue is therefore in each case whether it is
permitting discrimination or attempting to uproot it that causes more
damage. Modern trends have reduced the potential damage from private
discrimination, since they have made markets more efficient and
therefore made it harder to keep a worker from realizing the full
potential value of his labor. If one employer is biased and unwilling
to employ a worker to his full capacity, another will, and if none will
then a market irrationality has been created that an entrepreneur
(possibly a foreigner or a member of the group subject to
discrimination) can take advantage of. In addition, as discussed above,
(1) a prohibition of discrimination is ineffective without affirmative
action programs, which cause their own problems; (2) prohibiting
discrimination causes damage by forbidding people to carry on the way of
life they prefer among the people to whom they are attached, and such
damage becomes greater as society becomes more diverse; (3) some
discrimination, like that relating to sex roles, seems to serve
important social functions, and (4) it is hard to understand how
antidiscrimination programs could ever get adopted if public attitudes
were such as to justify them.
A final point is that if discrimination means only a lessened
ability to have dealings with members of other communities, as it would
in a libertarian society, then to be subjected to discrimination is
simply to be thrown on one's own resources and challenged to develop
one's own community and way of life. In contrast, to be a member of a
group protected from discrimination can be to see one's own group and
its way of life disintegrate as its most active and capable members
leave it. Contemplation of the history of the Jews since emancipation
or of American blacks since 1964 need not lead to the conclusion that
the legal abolition of discrimination tends to be favorable in all
respects, or even on balance, to the groups that had been subject to it.
Those who believe there is something valuable and irreplaceable in the
separate culture and way of life of such groups will not necessarily
favor measures that if successful will result in their absorption by an
increasingly featureless larger society.
Appendix II
"Ethnic loyalty" is a feeling of kinship with people whose ethnic
heritage is similar to one's own, combined with at least occasional
action on that feeling. It appears that there is nothing essentially
wrong with it. We all feel kinship with people who are like us in some
way and frequently act on such feelings. Family ties are similarities
of blood and upbringing, and if such similarities admittedly have
practical importance when they are close it's not clear why it is wrong
to feel they still matter when the ties are more attenuated, as in the
case of common culture and ethnicity.
The usual objections to ethnic loyalty don't distinguish it from other
feelings that tie people together and sometimes divide them. Many
people speak as if it necessarily involved a kind of hatred that denies
the humanity of those who are different, but it's not clear why that
sort of reproach applies to ethnic loyalty more than loyalty to country
or to a social movement, or any other loyalty that is less broad than
loyalty to all humanity. People also sometimes claim that ethnic
loyalties are bad because they lead to conflict and ethnic conflicts are
more bitter than other conflicts. However, conflicts over economic
advantage, political and religious principle and state power appear to
be no less frequent and bitter than ethnic conflicts. Also, if ethnic
conflicts really are particularly bitter it seems to follow that ethnic
loyalties are stronger and go deeper than other loyalties, a state of
affairs that would make it pointless to assert that they are in
principle a bad thing.
Putting the usual objections aside, the fundamental argument against
ethnic loyalty seems to be that it has no substantial function and
therefore acting on it in serious matters is irrational and bad. (This
argument is usually not made explicitly, but there is a tendency to
avoid explicit discussion of matters relating to ethnicity and one must
piece together the relevant considerations as best he can.) The idea,
which is also the fundamental idea of liberal individualism, seems to be
that the goals we have as individuals can best be served by establishing
a political system that protects and advances them and supporting that
system through an ideology that validates it. Accordingly, our rational
loyalties are our loyalties to political ideology and the state, because
those are the loyalties that are rationally related to our individual
goals, and other loyalties are morally unjustifiable.
As so stated, the argument seems to be based on a view of man as an
animal that is originally non-social but establishes goals for himself
and consequently enters society in order to advance them. Such a view
seems wholly unrealistic to me. Man is an essentially social animal,
and the family and community he is born into, his upbringing and culture
of origin, and his involuntary ties to other people appear to be part of
what make him what he is, and are certainly more important than most of
the particular goals he consciously chooses. So it appears natural and
right for a man to feel ethnic loyalty and sometimes to act to preserve
or advance his group's identity and way of life, simply because that
identity and way of life are an important part of what he is.
Having said that, the question remains what kind of ethnic loyalties are
appropriate and how those loyalties should be manifested in the United
States in 1993. Any answer to such a question must be fragmentary, but
some points seem reasonably clear. It seems plainly legitimate for
members of an ethnic group to try to live together in accordance with
their own way of life if they don't place additional burdens on others.
It follows that private racial discrimination in housing, education and
employment generally is legitimate since to engage in such
discrimination is simply to deal preferentially with people of similar
ethnicity. It also seems legitimate to take ethnicity into
consideration in voting. The conduct in office of a government official
is heavily influenced by what he considers important or trivial, by his
perceptions and assumptions about politics, human nature and the world,
and by his manners and style, all of which are heavily influenced by
ethnic background. For a man to prefer to vote for someone of his own
ethnic group is therefore to prefer to vote for someone he understands
and who will understand him, which is surely justifiable.
Other matters relating to the role of ethnic loyalties in politics are
murkier. Since a government based solely on pure reason is impossible,
every government must reflect evaluations and understandings that vary
from culture to culture. When there are several cultures in a territory
ruled by a single government, some attempt at accommodating minority
viewpoints is likely but what the government does will mostly reflect
the outlook of the dominant culture. How to keep the peace among
competing cultures and what sorts of accommodations make sense are
complicated matters for which there is no general solution. In the
United States today I would propose reducing the occasions for conflict
by (i) limiting immigration, possibly by reestablishing quotas based on
national origin, to avoid multiplying conflicts and allow the groups
already here to learn how to live with each other, (ii) taking advantage
of our federal tradition to allow local variations to be reflected
politically, and (iii) emphasizing our tradition of limited government
and informal or private ordering of affairs to minimize the importance
of the political aspects of cultural differences. When such methods of
avoiding conflict don't work, all I can suggest is to let the dominant
culture have its way with whatever accommodations to minorities it feels
it can make without the sacrifice of integrity. Any other solution
would require giving the final say to some group with a viewpoint
superior to every culture, which is impossible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 2 12:32:59 EDT 1994
Article: 1867 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: A visit to MoMA
Date: 2 Jul 1994 11:22:02 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York yesterday. A week before
I had visited the National Gallery and the Freer in Washington, D.C.
Quite a contrast.
It's hard to believe that at one time twentieth-century developments in
art seemed so exciting. Look at the stuff now and the natural reaction
is "why bother?" Talent and innovation aren't enough for something
people will find sustaining, like any number of the pieces I saw in D.C.
The party's over, it's the morning after, and the leavings from last
night are anything but appetizing.
Particular peeves: the enormous canvases used by postwar American
painters. If it's big it must be important, apparently. Picasso's
monstrously distorted human forms. Absolutely nightmarish, I can't
understand how people can bear to look at them.
Qualifications: I still like Matisse, and also the Russian
constructivists. Also, I especially liked one piece which was a line
1000 meters long on a piece of paper. They had rolled the paper up and
put it in a large can so you didn't have to look at it, and put up a
label so you could tell what it was. Very thoughtful, and I wish they'd
do the same with some of the other stuff.
Any other comments on modern art? Any favorites? Pet peeves?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 2 20:09:10 EDT 1994
Article: 1873 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: N.S.K.
Date: 2 Jul 1994 19:05:39 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes:
>their use of German names is a gesture of respect towards that unity.
>That, plus it tended to tick off the old Yugoslavian authorities, who
>were hostile to all outside influences, especially German influences.
A lot of European rock is in English, isn't it? The choice of German
would then have interesting political and cultural implications as a
rejection of both parochialism and universalism. I'm sure it must have
driven the old Yugos right up the wall.
>Laibach was very good at baiting the old communist party establishment
>(witness the infamous incident with the Yugoslavian "Youth Day"
>poster).
Can you tell us about it?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jul 4 07:32:38 EDT 1994
Article: 26900 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: The Social Contract (yet again)
Date: 3 Jul 1994 22:50:01 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix alt.philosophy.objectivism:14921 talk.politics.misc:181823 talk.politics.theory:26900 alt.politics.libertarian:33525
In Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>I know they believe that. However, they know that "less likely"
>doesn't translate into the empty set, and the question is what
>happens to those left over.
You seem to believe that a legal regime is possible that doesn't result
in instances of suffering that would not have been there if the legal
regime had been different. I see no reason to think that's so. It
seems quite clear to me, for example, that the existence of the welfare
system that we have here in the United States results in a great deal
of suffering that would not have been there if that system had never
been established. The question is what system leads in the long term
to the best life for people generally, not whether instances can be
identified in which a law could have helped someone.
To put it in another way: suppose the government were composed of
Chris Holts who whenever someone was badly off passed a law or
established a program intended to solve whatever problems he had. I
maintain that after 50 years of rule by such a government the set of
people who are very badly off would still be non-empty and would show
no tendency to become so. Does it follow from the fact that the "pass
a law" approach wouldn't solve everyone's problems that those who
support that approach are callously indifferent to the problems that
would be left unsolved?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jul 4 19:39:07 EDT 1994
Article: 1885 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Are you a U.S. citizen or a Sovereign Citizen?
Date: 4 Jul 1994 07:58:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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dickeney@access.digex.net (Dick Eney) writes:
>If you are a Sovereign, you are not a Citizen. Except perhaps of
>Oxymoronia.
>
>Well known illustration of a grammatical rule:
>
>The United States IS one nation; the individual states ARE not
>sovereign. Not since 1865, at the very least.
A federal political order is one in which sovereignty is distributed
among the levels of government and can be found in its completeness only
in the whole. In such an order one of the federated states would be
sovereign in certain respects but would also be a participant in a
larger order, and could thus be viewed as a "citizen". A federal
political order that accepts certain individual rights as prior to all
government is one that distributes part of the sovereignty to
individuals.
I take it you think such a conception doesn't make much sense. If
that's right, do you also consider the "separation of powers" among the
legislative, executive and judicial branches of government to be an
oxymoron? If not, why does "separation of powers" make more sense than
"federalism"? If so, is it the President, the Supreme Court or the
Congress that is the true sovereign in the United States?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jul 4 19:39:08 EDT 1994
Article: 1886 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Announcing BeastNet
Date: 4 Jul 1994 11:55:18 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In ruffin@cerf.net (Ruffin Prevost) writes:
>BeastNet is predicated on the unifying theory that "The Beast" is the
>name we have given to that which is despised as contrary to the
>peaceful, prosperous and common interests of the nations and
>individuals of the world [ ... ]
>The Beast, as you may have guessed by now, is everywhere. It lurks in
>the jingles churned out by Madison Avenue ad agencies, hides in the
>bumbling ineptitude and petty greed of Washington congressmen, grows
>in the fear and ignorance of bigots everywhere, and lingers in the
>rank ambition, laziness and incompetence of the hack reporter striving
>for the cheap headline.
A clearer definition of The Beast would help. Does it include Rush
Limbaugh? The ACLU? The Council on Foreign Relations? The Pope? The
Religious Right? The Sexual Left? Also, who are the anti-Beast
forces? Any or all of the preceding?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jul 6 22:02:20 EDT 1994
Article: 1898 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: SER and the mass communications media
Date: 6 Jul 1994 22:02:11 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 58
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
pas@phantom.com (Wild.Boy) writes:
>In an earlier post (never delivered, it seems, by the Vox), I
>questioned what theoretical basis there can be for a CR newsgroup. In
>the a.r.c FAQ, all kinds of Right groups are mentioned, with wildly
>conflicting ideologies; since the one thing that the groups would seem
>to have in common is an opposition to classical liberal tenets of
>'endless conversation,' I was wondering how the group could even exist.
One may find conversation useful without making endless conversation his
primary goal. Neither Plato nor Thomas Aquinas were classical liberals
but they were willing to discuss every view imaginable and considered
such discussions essential to defining their own positions. A theory,
like every other particular thing, is defined in part by what it is not,
so we can be clear as to our own views only by seriously considering
contrary views.
Putting such general considerations aside, a.r.c. is devoted to
discussing perspectives that reject liberalism. Many people have been
surrounded by liberalism from the cradle onward and find it entirely
unsatisfactory, but don't see any well-developed alternative that seems
altogether satisfactory. Such people may benefit from a wide-open
discussion of what is wrong with liberalism and what the alternatives
are. I think of a.r.c. as a place where such a discussion can be
carried on. I would imagine that most people involved in such
discussions hope that it will not be an endless one for them.
>In this particular case, the pop media are the direct historical
>creature of the liberal 'free enterprise' system. How can one accept
>the idea of laissez-faire in economics and elsewhere and then be upset
>about the degenerate culture that system promotes?
It depends on the alternative. Presumably the objection to laissez-
faire is that it destroys the organic aspects of society. The problem
is that the modern state carries that process to completion where
laissez-faire left things undone.
I understand "libertarianism" to be a preference of laissez-faire over
the modern welfare/civil rights state. I think that preference is the
correct one. It is imaginable that successionist communities could
exist and thrive in a laissez-faire state, or that moral standards
could grow up in such a state to counter novel temptations such as TV.
It is far harder to imagine that such things could occur in a modern
welfare/civil rights state that specializes in making people
independent of the families and communities of which they are members.
I agree that there are major problems with the commercial media. I am
not sure the problems with the government-funded media are smaller.
>On the other hand, it would seem that a Right that is true to its
>origins would not be unconcerned with issues of culture, social
>cohesion, and the State.
I certainly agree as to culture and social cohesion. It is less clear
to me that the Right should treat the State as a primary social and
moral reality.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jul 6 22:04:24 EDT 1994
Article: 1899 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: SER and the mass communications media
Date: 6 Jul 1994 22:04:04 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
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Terry Rephann writes:
>We might find the Gramscian socialists and green ecologists more
>natural and beneficial allies than the libertarians and
>neoconservatives.
Do tell.
I agree that if you're into ecology you rationally ought to reject the
things CRs reject. Things don't seem to work that way, though. My own
impression is that ecology is the opiate of the New Class. Man projects
onto the natural world his uneasiness about what he is doing to the
human world and finds he can exorcize that uneasiness by rituals such as
sorting bottles from newsprint. Green ecologists may be altogether
different, but the vibes I get from what I take to be that portion of
the spectrum suggest undisciplined New Age fantasy more than anything
else. I may be misconstruing the vibes or overlooking key points, of
course. Also, I know nothing of Gramscian socialists. Hence the "do
tell".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jul 7 10:43:46 EDT 1994
Article: 27050 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Optimization of complex systems
Date: 7 Jul 1994 10:43:27 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 46
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Xref: panix talk.politics.misc:182300 talk.politics.theory:27050 alt.politics.libertarian:33980
griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>The mistake I've seen made repeatedly is the idea that it is possible
>to optimize complex, interactive systems. Of any complex system, be it
>the market, the state, a family, health care, what have you, we here
>the cry, "It's good, but there's a lot of waste, and some reasonable
>goals aren't being accomplished. Here's a simple plan to cut the waste
>and use the savings to achieve the goals."
>
>Simple. Clean. Elegant. Utterly wrong.
People tend to take what already exists for granted, and to think of the
world as inert matter that can be molded at will. As a result they lose
sight of how whatever we have has come about and what it depends on, and
the extent to which what we have depends on things that can be destroyed
and can't be recreated at will. As they say in Eastern Europe, it's a
lot easier to make an aquarium into fish soup than to make fish soup
into an aquarium.
>The time has come to realize that complex systems like these simply are
>not understandable, let alone controllable or optimizable.
Some people realized that a long time ago. Classic writers on the
subject include Chuangtse and Edmund Burke.
>We can attempt to make the systems better _at being themselves_, and
>hope the ends implicit in their natures will imply ours,
>serendipitously [ ... ] In a polity, it means the maximization of both
>personal liberty and person responsibility.
You seem to suggest that man is by nature a free and responsible
individual. No doubt that's true to some extent, but it's also true
that man is by nature a social animal. The maximization of personal
liberty and responsibility at the expense of ties to family and the
other communities that are part of what defines what we are is, I think,
a fundamental mistake of liberalism.
>Not a pleasant set of options, but they seem to be to only ones we are
>capable of creating.
They are unpleasant in the sense that fantasy is pleasant. But the
alternative to a world that limits our options is a world that is no
bigger than our own power of invention. I can't imagine wanting to live
in such a world.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jul 7 10:46:58 EDT 1994
Article: 27051 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Property and the State
Date: 7 Jul 1994 10:46:33 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 65
Message-ID: <2vh4g9$g7m@panix.com>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:27051 alt.politics.libertarian:33982 alt.politics.radical-left:18367 alt.society.anarchy:9206
carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>To say that the well-off person has to make a "contribution" implies
>that some determinate amount of income, from which he is required make
>his contribution to the less fortunate, has accrued or flowed to him
>from his efforts, work, and natural endowments.
It implies that people can form intentions, can act to carry them out,
and are morally responsible for the consequences, and that the things
they intend can include the production of transferable goods. It also
implies that the consequences of an act (building a house) can be
separated from the social scheme for distributing the benefits or
burdens of those consequences.
>But there are (so far at least) no grounds for making this assumption:
>the point at issue is just what set of rules, what type of processes,
>should determine how much income flows to him and everyone else.
The assumption is that people, at least in general and roughly speaking,
can determine the factual consequences of their acts and therefore can
know what they are doing. I don't see how it is possible to talk about
"freedom" without making some such assumption.
You might respond that "consequences of an act" really means
"consequences of an act given the social rules" and that the point at
issue is what the social rules should be. If so, it seems that you and
Rawls would say that good social rules would permit me to act to create
nontransferable goods (I sculpt the perfect body so as to get more
girls) in a way that benefits only me but not to create transferable
goods (I sculpt the perfect sculpture, which I sell to buy a Jaguar so
as to get more girls) without benefiting others. I don't see the
justice of the distinction.
>income and wealth are distributed by people, not by God or Nature, and
>we are in the process of deciding how we should do it.
They are not only distributed but also created, and they are not
created by the world in general but by the actions of particular
people. The actions are part of a system, but the contributions of
particular persons to the productivity of the system can in general be
determined without essential arbitrariness. Some have argued to the
contrary and it appears that you are sympathetic to their arguments.
We may not make much progress on this issue since the arguments
presented involve technical considerations that I think neither of us
is prepared to deal with.
: The intuitive idea is
: that since everyone's well-being depends on a scheme of cooperation
: without which no one could have a satisfactory life, the division of
: advantages should be such as to draw forth the willing cooperation of
: everyone taking part in it, including those less well situated. Yet
: this can be expected only if reasonable terms are proposed. The two
: principles mentioned seem to be a fair agreement on the basis of which
: those better endowed, or more fortunate in their social position,
: neither of which we can be said to deserve, could expect the willing
: cooperation of others when some workable scheme is a necessary
: condition of the welfare of all."
I don't see why it's more reasonable in Rawls' world (which doesn't
assume things like altruism) for the worst-off to expect others to
cooperate in a scheme that maximizes the well-being of the worst-off
than it would be for the best-off to expect others to cooperate in a
scheme that maximizes the well-being of the best-off.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Jul 8 16:54:50 EDT 1994
Article: 27052 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Can love be redistributed?
Date: 7 Jul 1994 10:47:51 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <2vh4in$gj3@panix.com>
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nvanrijn@aol.com (N Van Rijn) writes:
>It seems to me that you should be able to provide enough of a
>paraphrase or summary to make your point, rather than a "naked"
>citation to a source. That way, you would provide the previous
>writer with a readily accessible response.
I'm the previous writer. To the extent my view matters, nothing about
Mr. Carnes' post bothered me. As it happens, I don't have a copy of _T
of J_, there is none on the shelves of either of the two large lending
libraries I use, and I don't feel like buying a copy, so I won't be able
to continue the conversation in the manner suggested. If he only wants
to discuss the point in question with specific reference to the text,
that is plainly his right. People who don't want to comply or can't
easily do so are not required to carry on the discussion with him.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Jul 8 16:54:53 EDT 1994
Article: 27053 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Property and the State
Date: 7 Jul 1994 10:52:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 72
Message-ID: <2vh4re$hig@panix.com>
References: <2us3sb$t06@zip.eecs.umich.edu> <2usjdl$imv@panix.com> <2vcalu$sn@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:27053 alt.politics.libertarian:33983 alt.politics.radical-left:18369 alt.society.anarchy:9207
carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>There are two possible distinctions you might have in mind here: (1)
>between monetary and non-monetary income and wealth (e.g., salary vs.
>growing your own food, making things instead of buying them), and (2)
>between goals that require a lot of income or wealth (driving a Jaguar
>to impress women, expensive ski vacations) and those that don't
>(watching sunsets, watching TV while drinking Bud, etc.). I'll assume
>you're referring to the second distinction unless you correct me.
Your assumption is correct. I don't think Rawls would make the first
distinction. I think he would treat all transferable goods as wealth
subject to his maximin principle. I suppose he would except things like
one's own kidneys, but his reasons for doing so might strike me as _ad
hoc_.
>People should not receive a higher income, other things equal, just
>because they have more expensive tastes, i.e., goals that require a
>higher income to fulfill.
You speak as if the production of transferable goods had no connection
with the life plan and efforts of particular people. That seems simply
wrong to me. If John Rawls wants to devote all his efforts to
constructing the perfect system of liberal philosophy so he can sit in
the lotus position and contemplate it, he can. He's not required to
divert effort to helping the least well-off; he can keep his system a
secret if he wants. If Pablo Picasso wants to devote all his efforts
to surrounding himself with his own paintings of monstrous screaming
women so he can sit around admiring how horrible they are he's not
allowed to. He's producing transferable goods, which constitute wealth
subject to the maximin principle, and so some of his paintings have to
be auctioned off and the proceeds used to fund Medicare, or given to
the Harlan County Community Art Center and used to bring the light of
culture to the masses.
The distinction between goods that are transferable and those that are
not transferable does not make good sense to me at the degree of
abstraction we find in Rawls. In order to have a notion of freedom at
all you have to believe that people can form an intention, act on it,
and bring the intended result about, and that the intended result is
morally attributable to the agent. Rawls claims to value freedom, but
doesn't seem to deal adequately with the possibility that the intended
result might include the creation of a good that could be transferred
to someone else. When such a good is in question, it appears that for
you and Rawls it's society as a whole that really made it, since
production is a collective process, or that even granted that some
particular person made it he has no moral responsibility or entitlement
to it because he didn't make himself or his circumstances and so was
really a vehicle for impersonal forces and conditions rather than a
responsible agent. In other words, you and Rawls seem unwilling to
give effect to moral agency when the production of transferable goods
is in question.
>A valid question can be raised here as to whether some index of primary
>goods is the appropriate thing to equalize, in this benchmark position,
>or whether something else is the appropriate equalisandum.
Presumably, the appropriate equalisandum would be "capacity to effect
goals". That capacity would include things like intellectual ability,
physical and emotional health, optimism, street smarts, and so on, as
well as the primary social goods Rawls already recognizes. So what
Rawls should demand is that people like himself, who have remarkable
ability to effect their goals without much money, be required to devote
a large portion of their capacity to do so toward ends that the
government determines will benefit the least well-off. For example, if
someone with a lot of business capacity wants to live in a cabin in the
woods writing unsaleable poetry, too bad for him. He would have to do
it on weekends because he would have to devote most of his capacity for
achieving goals to administering the social security system or something
of the sort.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Jul 8 22:37:58 EDT 1994
Article: 1905 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Are you a U.S. citizen or a Sovereign Citizen?
Date: 8 Jul 1994 22:37:42 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 93
Message-ID: <2vl2hm$6le@panix.com>
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pas@phantom.com (Wild.Boy) writes:
>One is not _both_ sovereign and citizin.
"Sovereign citizenship" is certainly a paradoxical way of speaking.
One point of using such language, I think, is to dramatize the claim
that legitimate power and final decisionmaking need not in principle be
concentrated at a single point, at the top of a comprehensive
hierarchy.
>A Federal political order may attempt to distribute sovereignty among
>various entities, but only one entity will be sovereign.
"Will be" might mean either that the attempt necessarily fails, or that
true federations (that is, federations with distributed sovereignty) can
exist for a time but eventually either consolidate or break up into
their constituents. On the latter interpretation what you say doesn't
bother me. Nothing lasts forever. On the former, what you say seems
wrong. There have been many political orders in which no single actor
has been categorically dominant.
>This was clearly shown, in our history, both by the Civil War and
>various and sundry court decisions in this century forcing the states
>to submit to the central government, enforced by troops.
It sounds like you are saying that the post-Civil War Constitution only
made obvious what was implicit in the 1787 Constitution. It seems to
me, though, that the Civil War need not have turned out as it did. The
North might not have fought, or there might have been a negotiated
peace. The war really did change things.
>Although there may be consitutional and other considerations that lead
>one to state that sovereignty is somehow distributed, that can only be
>under _normal_ circumstances. In an exceptional circumstance, the
>entity that is able to enforce its will be shown to be the sovereign
>entity. Since this has already occurred, it is no surprise that the
>central state acts as if it were sovereign: it is!
Why not say that in exceptional circumstances the system changes to
something else? Things do change, even though a determinist would say
that all changes only reveal what had already been present.
One might say that in 1939 FDR was really the sovereign of the world,
because exceptional circumstances were coming which would divide world
dominance between two superpowers, and then there would more exceptional
circumstances that would cause one of the superpowers to disappear, so
really the New World Order was already implicitly present. That seems
wrong to me. For starters, things might have turned out differently.
Hitler might have gotten the bomb first, or invaded Russia 6 weeks
earlier or not at all, or treated the subject populations in the East
differently, or the Japanese might not have attacked Pearl Harbor, etc.,
etc., etc.
>I agree that there can be an organization of society without political
>sovereignty, and that that indeed appears to be the goal of many on the
>Republican party right. That, however, does not mean that no entity is
>sovereign: sovereignty will merely move out of the state realm, to be
>transferred to economic forces. This is precisely what has caused so
>many of the problems that that right bemoans, yet it seems strangely
>unaware of that fact.
Here your first point seems to be that any state of affairs can always
be viewed as the outcome of a single dominant factor, whether personal
or abstract, and that factor can be called "the sovereign". That seems
no more than a matter of definition, at least if it's granted that the
sovereign can be composite, so I won't argue with it. (In other words,
I won't argue with it if I am allowed to say that in a federal system
sovereignty is a property of the political order as a whole.)
Your second and more substantive point seems to be that unless the
sovereign consists of a single person or maybe a small number of persons
it will consist of impersonal forces that degrade the social order. As
to that point, I'm not sure why a compact sovereign consisting of
identifiable persons will reliably lead to better results than
impersonal forces. Also, the impersonal forces in question seem to be
some sort of aggregation of what people generally feel, believe and
want. Need that be so bad? After all, "culture" appears to be some
sort of aggregation of people's perceptions, values and beliefs. An
identifiable personal sovereign can encourage or inhibit culture, but he
can't create it and if a culture has gone bad he's not likely to be able
to bring it back. If he tries he's more likely to set up something like
the National Endowment for the Arts.
I suppose my view is that sometimes politicians or economic forces do
good things, and sometimes they do bad things. Right now the
politicians seem more destructive than economic forces, although
economic forces have certainly been destructive enough. So favoring in
principle a transfer of power from economic forces to politicians looks
like a mistake to me, at least unless there's some reason to think
politicians are going to take a turn for the better but economic forces
aren't.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 9 10:12:10 EDT 1994
Article: 37046 of soc.history
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Historical Data on Standards Decline?
Date: 9 Jul 1994 10:09:07 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <2vmb23$oob@panix.com>
References: <1994Jul6.200756.1@uwovax.uwo.ca> <2vhl8c$cp6@crl2.crl.com> <1994Jul8.043948.28713@Princeton.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <1994Jul8.043948.28713@Princeton.EDU> roger@faust.Princeton.EDU
(Roger Lustig) writes:
>SAT scores are scaled to reflect position relative to a mean.
>The mean used until this year was the mean for 1950, a time
>when very few people who weren't applying to Ivy League type
>schools took the test.
It's worth noting that the great decline in SAT scores started about
1964, after the great surge in the proportion of 18-year-olds who took
the SAT had already taken place. There had been no decline in average
scores during that surge. The ratio of total SATs to the 18-year-old
population actually declined between 1964 and the mid-70's, while
average scores were declining, and when average scores bottomed out
about 1981 that ratio was a bit lower than it was in 1964. For a
discussion see Murray & Herrnstein, "What's Really Behind the SAT-Score
Decline?" in the Winter 1992 _The Public Interest_. (Their answer to
the question, by the way, is that curricula have been dumbed down so
that the best students are worse than they used to be.)
>ETS has taken the very reasonable step of rescaling in order
>to provide more information on students at the low end of
>the scale; scaled scores are truncated at 200 and 800.
What's odd is that there's less info on students at the top end of the
scale, since (according to the _New York Times_) scores of 730 or
thereabouts and over all become 800s. I would have thought that
students with scores of 200-300 would not be college candidates anyway,
while distinctions among the students in the top couple of percent
would be very important. I would also have thought it would be
possible to rescale without losing the info by compressing the top end
of the scale.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 9 10:12:14 EDT 1994
Article: 27163 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Self-respect
Date: 9 Jul 1994 06:58:52 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 75
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carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>" "Furthermore, the public recognition of the two principles gives
>" greater support to men's self-respect [than the principle of utility]
I don't think either is favorable to self-respect, because I don't think
self-respect is possible unless there are shared goods beyond the
satisfaction of preferences as such.
>" Unless we feel that our endeavors are honored by
>" [others], it is difficult if not impossible for us to maintain the
>" conviction that our ends are worth advancing.
I don't see how our endeavors can be honored by others unless the things
we do (building houses, say) are morally attributed to us by others and
that attribution is expressed in some practical fashion. To do so would
be inconsistent with Rawls' outlook, though.
>" Hence for this reason
>" the parties would accept the natural duty of mutual respect which asks
>" them to treat one another civilly and to be willing to explain the
>" grounds of their actions, especially when the claims of others are
>" overruled.
Where does Rawls' view require such explanations? He might mean that
social order should be based on a particular explicit and publically-
avowed philosophy, but other philosophies would serve that purpose as
well as his own.
>" For when society follows these principles, everyone's good
>" is included in a scheme of mutual benefit
Why wouldn't that also be true in a utilitarian society, in which
everyone's good counts equally?
>" For by arranging inequalities for reciprocal advantage
Rawls' scheme explicitly refuses to arrange inequalities for reciprocal
advantage. They are arranged solely for the benefit of the least
favored.
>" and
>" by abstaining from the exploitation of the contingencies of nature and
>" social circumstance within a framework of equal liberty,
"Liberty" seemingly means the right to act toward ends of one's own
choosing. One cannot act without means. If all possible means of
action, including one's own innate endowments and education, are viewed
as contingencies of nature and social circumstance that should be
treated as common property, I'm not sure how much is left of "liberty".
" By contrast, to regard persons as means is to be
" prepared to impose upon them lower prospects of life for the sake of
" the higher expectations of others.
Unless we are rescued by some invisible hand, the difference principle
would impose lower prospects of life on everone else for the sake of the
higher expectations of the least well off.
>" facts of moral psychology. Surely it is natural to experience a loss
>" of self-esteem, a weakening of our sense of the value of accomplishing
>" our aims, when we must accept a lesser prospect of life for the sake
>" of others.
As those who accept the difference principle are prepared to require for
the great majority.
The fact of moral psychology that is most relevant to the discussion, I
think, is that people may lose self-respect when they are taught to
think of their acts as not their own and and in any case as ineffectual.
Rawls' system has that effect because it refuses to treat people as
responsible and because it tries to minimize inequalities and therefore
the effects of different ways of acting.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 9 15:27:13 EDT 1994
Article: 1908 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: SER and the
Date: 9 Jul 1994 10:25:40 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
clstampe@rodan.syr.edu (Chris Stamper) writes:
>Every society proclaims that social values take precedence over
>"economic" values. The issue is _which_ social values take precedence.
It seems to me that "economic value" is the satisfaction of people's
actual preferences through the production and distribution of
transferable goods and services. I'm not sure what value our own
society places over that. It is the refusal to recognize any higher
value that is, I think, the essence of liberalism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jul 9 16:15:01 EDT 1994
Article: 1910 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: SER and t
Date: 9 Jul 1994 16:14:19 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
Message-ID: <2vn0er$7eu@panix.com>
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
clstampe@gamera.syr.edu (Chris Stamper) writes:
>Certain social values limit the satisfaction of people's actual
>preferences in, say, the US.
>
>For example, you can't legally buy angel dust or hire someone to kill
>your parents.
The satisfaction of preferences can of course be limited by other
preferences. For example, hiring someone to kill your parents when they
don't want to be killed would deny them their actual preferences, and
therefore everyone agrees it should be illegal. On the other hand, if
they want to be killed and you pay Dr. Kevorkian's bill for performing
the service, the trend is to say it's OK. If you did it maybe you'd
get on _Donohue_ and Anna Quindlen would write a column about what a
good son you are.
As to illegal drugs, people in the mainstream don't feel comfortable
saying they ought to be illegal because their use impairs the nobler
faculties of the user and so on. Instead, they appeal to the economic
costs of the personal disorganization drugs are thought to cause.
"Economic costs", of course, translate into satisfaction of actual
preferences.
The big issue in mainstream political theorizing today is not whether
anything is of value other than the satisfaction of actual preferences,
but whether emphasis should be placed on maximum total satisfaction
("efficiency") or maximally equal satisfaction ("justice"). Sometimes
"liberty" is tossed into the discussion too, but since "liberty" for
these purposes means freedom from restraint in pursuing one's actual
preferences, whatever they happen to be, it's not clear to me that it's
a separate value.
I suppose it's true that our society has not yet succeeded in uprooting
all values other than make lots of money and do your own thing, and
maybe we never will because people can't stand to live that way.
Nonetheless, that is what our most authoritative institutions think
should be done, so it's hard to point to anything else that can qualify
as a value of our society. How can something be a social value if the
social authorities say it's wrong to treat it as such?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jul 10 13:37:02 EDT 1994
Article: 27191 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Can love be redistributed?
Date: 9 Jul 1994 21:12:07 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <2vnht7$akq@panix.com>
References: <2vbuq1$pbk@zip.eecs.umich.edu> <2vd1ru$a20@search01.news.aol.com> <2vn8fj$4p1@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>Yet very few t.p.t'ers, posting to a newsgroup intended for discussion
>of political philosophy/theory, seem (from the evidence of the
>postings) to have any acquaintance with Rawls' work beyond a couple of
>catchphrases like "original position" and "difference principle".
>That suggests to me that many if not most of the posters are just not
>that interested in political philosophy. Which is fine, but then I'm
>not sure why they are posting here instead of, e.g., t.p.misc.
Would you object to someone posting to t.p.t. who didn't have much
familiarity with the political thought of Plato? Of Aristotle? Of
Hobbes? Are those men less significant as political thinkers than
Rawls?
This is a newsgroup for the discussion of political theory, so it seems
appropriate for someone to post here who wants to talk about any sort of
political theory. It's not necessary to be knowledgable about any
particular thinker or tradition of thought, not even the traditions and
thinkers most admired today among professionals.
As in any theoretical discussion it would be good if people tried to
extend their understanding by considering how the world looks from
perspectives other than their own. It would also be good if people
considered what the most serious thinkers have said about things. That
doesn't mean anyone is obliged to know everything or to find any
particular thinker or perspective, even the currently most influential
ones, at all worthy or illuminating.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jul 11 06:52:36 EDT 1994
Article: 37054 of soc.history
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Historical Data on Standards Decline?
Date: 10 Jul 1994 14:31:22 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 104
Message-ID: <2vpepq$48m@panix.com>
References: <1994Jul8.043948.28713@Princeton.EDU> <2vmb23$oob@panix.com> <1994Jul9.203815.10974@Princeton.EDU>
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roger@faust.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>>>SAT scores are scaled to reflect position relative to a mean.
>>>The mean used until this year was the mean for 1950, a time
>>>when very few people who weren't applying to Ivy League type
>>>schools took the test.
>
>>It's worth noting that the great decline in SAT scores started about
>>1964, after the great surge in the proportion of 18-year-olds who took
>>the SAT had already taken place. There had been no decline in average
>>scores during that surge. The ratio of total SATs to the 18-year-old
>>population actually declined between 1964 and the mid-70's, while
>>average scores were declining, and when average scores bottomed out
>>about 1981 that ratio was a bit lower than it was in 1964. For a
>>discussion see Murray & Herrnstein, "What's Really Behind the SAT-Score
>>Decline?" in the Winter 1992 _The Public Interest_. (Their answer to
>>the question, by the way, is that curricula have been dumbed down so
>>that the best students are worse than they used to be.)
>
>Somehow the admissions officers I've talked to don't see it that way.
How old are the admissions officers you've talked to? I doubt that many
of them had been in the business since the early sixties, and so very
likely they were not speaking out of personal knowledge. It's easy to
understand, of course, why people in the education industry would prefer
a comforting explanation ("it's all a statistical artifact") for what
looks like evidence of serious failure.
>Besides, the best students aren't what have caused the SAT decline.
The proportion of students scoring over 600 in the vebal test dropped 40
percent between 1972 and 1983. (Singal, "The Other Crisis in American
Education", _Atlantic Monthly_, November 1991.) The students who take
the SATs tend to be the best students, and their scores are still
substantially lower now than they were in 1964, while the scores of a
nationally representative sample of high school students are as high as
they ever were.
>Anyway, the dumbing-down has continued in the 1980's and 90's, so I'm
>not sure how this jibes with the bottoming out.
It's worth noting that the partial recovery has been confined to math
skills. It's easier to de-dumb honors math programs than the softer
subjects since intellectual elitism bothers people less in the
quantitative sciences than elsewhere.
>Finally, an ad-hominem: Nader and friends don't exactly have a
>sterlingrecord in matters concerning ETS. The 1980 Nader-Nairn
>report was a travesty.
That might be true, but Charles Murray, R.J. Herrnstein, and _The Public
Interest_ have no connection to Nader.
>I asked the director of admissions at Princeton point-blank which of
>the criteria (scores, grades, extracurriculars, etc.) were most an
>least important in admissions decisions; his answer was that without a
>doubt, SAT scores mattered the least. Top schools generally only use
>them for validation; someone with a 4.0 and 450 SATs warrants a second
>look, as does someone with indifferent grades and fine scores.
It's easy to understand why a director of admissions would want to
present what he does as an art in which decisions are based on things
that are hard for other people to check and second-guess. Nonetheless,
I would think SAT scores would rationally be very useful in the case of
a student from a high school the admissions people know nothing about
and in choosing among the many applicants who seem otherwise equivalent
but not all of whom can be admitted.
>But it is barbaric to use the distinction, say, between a 730 and am
>800 for an admissions decision, and no responsible admissions officer
>does so. The differences are not significant, nor does any school even
>have a student body with average scores that high.
Would it really be barbaric for MIT or Cal Tech to consider it relevant
whether a student from Podunk HS has a math SAT of 730 or of 800?
>As for 200-300 ranges, well, ETS was responding to the many
>institutions that *would* like a little more information down there.
>Between athletic scholarships, vocational colleges, and institutions
>that administer the test to other than college applicants, there does
>seem to be a good deal of interest.
My post was confused. The new test, of course, would give additional
info only on students that would have gotten 200 SATs. I can't believe
it makes sense for the institutions appropriate for such students to use
the same test Princeton does.
>Now, tell me honestly: just what college requires aptitude at a level
>beyondthe old 730? Where is that level not "good enough"? And where
>are the truly excellent students above that level whose applications
>don't reflect it elsewhere?
It is not a question of what is required. It is a question of having as
much info as possible on a pool of very good students not all of whom
can be admitted. No college requires aptitude at a level beyond the old
730, but then no college requires students to be violin virtuosi or
world-class sprinters. Nonetheless, selective colleges would be very
much interested in knowing which applicants have such qualifications.
The advantage of SATs as opposed to other standard indications, of
course, is that it's an indication that's hard to fake and that means
much the same whether the student comes from Manhattan or from rural
Alabama.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jul 12 06:22:27 EDT 1994
Article: 37080 of soc.history
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Historical Data on Standards Decline?
Date: 11 Jul 1994 07:47:45 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 64
Message-ID: <2vrbh1$ota@panix.com>
References: <1994Jul9.203815.10974@Princeton.EDU> <2vpepq$48m@panix.com> <1994Jul11.092523.15379@Princeton.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
roger@faust.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>>>>It's worth noting that the great decline in SAT scores started about
>>>>1964, after the great surge in the proportion of 18-year-olds who took
>>>>the SAT had already taken place. There had been no decline in average
>>>>scores during that surge. The ratio of total SATs to the 18-year-old
>>>>population actually declined between 1964 and the mid-70's, while
>>>>average scores were declining, and when average scores bottomed out
>>>>about 1981 that ratio was a bit lower than it was in 1964. For a
>>>>discussion see Murray & Herrnstein, "What's Really Behind the SAT-Score
>>>>Decline?" in the Winter 1992 _The Public Interest_. (Their answer to
>>>>the question, by the way, is that curricula have been dumbed down so
>>>>that the best students are worse than they used to be.)
>
>>>Somehow the admissions officers I've talked to don't see it that way.
>
>Well, one of them is an ex-president of the College Board.
Interesting. The stuff up to "For a discussion" consists entirely of
publically-available statistics. It would be interesting to know what
his comments would be. I can't think of other information that would be
sufficient to make it plausible that the decline occurred because
society is more democratic now and lets more people into the pool, but
our best are as good as ever.
>Nor would I expect a friend of long standing to be less than candid
>with me.
No less than he is with himself. The stories most people tell
themselves make their positions easier in a variety of ways. Outside
observers, even if very well informed and not malicious, sometimes see
things otherwise. Of course, since I don't know your friend I can't
tell whether those general principles have any application to anything
he might do or say.
>Besides, admissions decisions *do* get checked and second-guessed--in
>college!
It would be hard for admissions officials at Princeton to bobble their
job badly enough to admit a body of students that did poorly, simply
because of the nature of the applicant pool. If I were one of those
officials I would prefer to be able to answer complaints from alumni or
questions from people with axes to grind (critics of affirmative action
and so on) by presenting the process as an art that couldn't be
comprehended by outsiders. I certainly wouldn't want to give the
impression objective numerical scores had much to do with it. That
would offend those who thought the student they interviewed who had 800
SATs should have gotten in, as well as the many people who object to
objective aptitude and achievement tests because they are (according to
taste) inegalitarian or barbaric.
I seem to recall, by the way, that SAT scores have been shown to be the
best single predictor of college grades. I don't have a source for
that, though.
>The answer is that most places *don't use it for admissions anymore,
>but use it more as a statistical and placement tool. (The
>questionnaire that comes with it is highly prized by many schools.)
Institutions set up to handle students who would have gotten 200s on the
old test do that? That seems very odd. If those are people they're
interested in, how many of them take the SAT in the first place?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jul 12 08:44:00 EDT 1994
Article: 1913 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Libertarian alliance: boon or bane? (was: Gramscian ...)
Date: 12 Jul 1994 08:43:52 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 70
Message-ID: <2vu368$s0g@panix.com>
References: <2vc2lm$drt@dockmaster.phantom.com> <2vh99d$2vh@newstand.syr.edu> <94192.180651U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Terry Rephann writes:
>>> The fusion of laissez-faire economics with conservative and C-R thought
>>> was a temporary expedient.
>
>Well, I'm at a loss as to why this comment was deemed controversial
>enough to highlight. It seems to be historically correct. What do
>de Maistre and Burke have to say about collusion and base-point pricing?
Cons and CRs have often emphasized the advantages of having diverse and
independent groupings within society, and such things can't exist unless
the government leaves a lot of things alone. They've also denounced
rational administrative centralism, and praised the way values and
institutions grow up without a prior plan out of the dealings people
have with each other in daily life. Such a perspective has a lot in
common with perspectives that favor the free market.
Here's something in Maurras I ran into yesterday, from his preface to
_Mes Idees Politiques_ (1937):
However [the state] can undertake the management of the public
interest only in so far as it makes use, with lucidity and with
zeal, of all the infinitely varied mechanisms of social life, as
they exist, as they interact, as they serve. The state must
resolutely refrain from any claim to attempt the impossible task of
revising or changing them: 'social justice' is a bad pretext: it
is merely the pet name for equality. The political state must avoid
any attack upon the infrastructure of the social state which it
cannot and will never penetrate but in its foolish attempts against
it it may cause grave wounds to its citizens and to itself. The
imaginary changes made, in the name of equality, against a wholly
irresponsible nature of things have the consistent effect of
removing from sight the real wrongs perpetrated by criminals
responsible for their acts ...
The translation can be found in _The French Right_, edited by J.S.
McClelland. Elsewhere Maurras complains that the Left has liberated the
common man to make grand judgements about the overall shape of social
life, which he's not in a position to do, while tieing him up in knots
in matters relating to his practical concerns. You can also find plenty
of denunciations of state administrative control of social life,
including the economy, in Taine, although I don't have a reference.
Opposition to statism is one of the themes of his _Origins of
Contemporary France_. As to Burke, my recollection is that he was quite
sympathetic to Adam Smith, although again I don't have a reference.
It's worth noting that Alasdair MacIntyre abused him extensively in one
of his recent books for (as AMacI thought) recognizing no source of
value other than economic relations.
So it seems to me that the alliance with laissez-faire economics has not
been a purely temporary and opportunistic one. Also, if a legal order
that tends to be libertarian in economic matters must lead to a society
in which money, self-seeking, and ignoble comfort and pleasure are
valued above all else, then it seems to me we might as well all give up.
Cons and CRs should realize more than anyone that attempts to make
people and complex systems do things that don't come naturally don't
work. I don't think de Maistre would have disagreed with that. The
theorem "free markets => Madonna" may be correct for all I know, but if
it is then economic determinism is true.
Having said all that, I should add that cons and CRs don't view
arbitrary freedom as a final goal and so differ in very important ways
from libertarians. No doubt the differences will include differences as
to the appropriate legal regime for economic matters. I'm not sure just
what the differences should be, though, and with respect to economic
matters at issue in actual American politics in 1994 I favor the
libertarians except with regard to the issues on which they come out the
same as the Clintonoids (immigration and NAFTA).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jul 12 08:45:31 EDT 1994
Article: 1914 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: THE BUCK ACT
Date: 12 Jul 1994 08:45:08 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <2vu38k$s89@panix.com>
References: <2vt0pu$cdk@search01.news.aol.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
jules214@aol.com (Jules214) writes:
> When passing new statutes, the Federal government always
>does everything according to the principles of law. In order for
>the Federal Government to tax a Citizen of one of the several
>states, they had to create some sort of contractual nexus. This
>contractual nexus is the "Social Security Number".
This seems wrong. The Social Security Act was passed in the mid-
thirties, while Federal income tax had been imposed on individuals since
before the First World War.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jul 13 12:12:36 EDT 1994
Article: 1917 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Gramscian Marxists and Ecologists As Far Right Allies?
Date: 12 Jul 1994 18:40:14 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <2vv64e$c32@panix.com>
References: <2vc2lm$drt@dockmaster.phantom.com> <2vh99d$2vh@newstand.syr.edu> <1994Jul12.203125.25927@news.cs.brandeis.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes:
>Libertarians and neo-cons, with a few exceptions, are very shallow in
>their intellectual approach, and seldom rise above the level of
>economic or classical liberal dogma.
Depth is rarely a characteristic of the majority in any school of social
thought. A couple of books I'd recommend by people with strong
affiliations to libertarianism, neoclassical economics, and academic
social science are Charles Murray's _In Pursuit of Happiness_ and
Richard Epstein's _Forbidden Grounds_. In IPoH Murray considers (among
other things) how a libertarian legal order would give rise to social
arrangements not based on contracts among self-interested individuals.
The idea in part is that the purely self-regarding individual needs the
welfare state in order to exist as such. In a libertarian legal order
people would be unable to satisfy all their needs by paying for them,
and so would develop social and moral institutions that recognize non-
economic values. In _Forbidden Grounds_ Epstein applies economic
analysis in an uncommonly subtle and persuasive way to discrimination
law, which he thinks ought to be repealed.
>Some of the paleolibertarians do tend to avoid this, although they must
>sugarcoat their CR tendencies with libertarian rationalizations (that
>is, rationalizing backwards to arrive at where they want to be, whilst
>ensuring that they are still on sound classical liberal grounds - a
>worthy excercise, no doubt, but rather tiresome to the outside observer
>who is not interested in classical liberal justifications).
I think "sugarcoat" and "rationalizations" are unfair expressions here.
Presumably almost any mode of analysis will yield sensible results if
applied with sufficient intelligence. If one can honestly extract CR
conclusions from the lines of thought characteristic of Frankfort
Marxists, why not from neoclassical economics? Even pagan ENR types
should be willing to follow St. Paul to the extent of seeing the
advantages of being all things to all men. The advantage of relying on
classical liberal justifications is that they're clear and widely
accepted. Every connection that can be made between CR views and clear
and widely accepted bodies of thought is, I think, advantageous.
Again, some explanation, comment and recommendations relating to Greens
and Gramscians from those who know would be welcome.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jul 13 12:47:22 EDT 1994
Article: 1922 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: OJ and the world
Date: 13 Jul 1994 12:47:13 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
Message-ID: <3015qh$ga3@panix.com>
References: <2vvu9c$1gg@mustang.alleg.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Keywords: stupidity
morrowj@reis55.alleg.edu (Psycho) writes:
>LIBERALS RISE UP!!! STOP OPERATION RESCUE!!! KILL CLINTON!!! JOHN
>LEWIS 96!!
Net folklore has it that people who post appeals to assassinate the
President get visits from the Secret Service. Would you let us know if
it actually happens?
Thanks.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jul 13 12:52:27 EDT 1994
Article: 1923 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: A comment upon recent art and literature
Date: 13 Jul 1994 12:52:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <30163s$hev@panix.com>
References: <1994Jul13.045306.16165@news.vanderbilt.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes:
> Since about the turn of the century, a very curious tendency has
>arisen in art and literature: There is too much emphasis on the title.
>Formerly, titles were rather drab but accurate -- at least, they were
>not so utterly and maliciously enigmatic. Now, however, one looks at a
>few scrawls of crayola on a blank sheet and is informed that this "art"
>is Calcutta at Dusk, or something of that sort.
The title becomes important to the extent a work does not speak for
itself. Today it seems that it's relevant to our understanding of a
piece to know the title, even if it's "Composition #6" or "Untitled".
It would be unthinkable, I believe, for someone other than the artist to
make up a title. That situation can't say good things about art today.
It would be interesting to know when the title a visual artist gave to
his work began to be thought important. My guess is that it was no
earlier than the mid-eighteenth century. Before then, names were
either descriptive ("Still Life") or identifying ("The Cowper Madonna")
and it wasn't of particular importance what the artist himself had
called the thing. By the time we get to Watteau's "Voyage to Cytheria"
things had changed.
Does anyone have any knowledge to fill out these speculations?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jul 14 06:24:02 EDT 1994
Article: 18889 of alt.politics.radical-left
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.revolution,alt.politics.radical-left,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: [PWW] Teachers fight privatization
Date: 14 Jul 1994 06:17:17 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 10
Message-ID: <3033bd$phu@panix.com>
References: <302psc$56c@eland.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix alt.society.revolution:2780 alt.politics.radical-left:18889 talk.politics.misc:183282
In <302psc$56c@eland.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au> PNEWS writes:
>"What the Maryland Board of Education did was absolutely
>outrageous," Hanson said. "They decided they had the unilateral
>right to give away to private corporations public schools that
>were not meeting their standards."
What's supposed to be outrageous about that?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Jul 15 04:27:45 EDT 1994
Article: 64693 of alt.activism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.activism.d,alt.politics.datahighway,alt.society.resistance,comp.org.eff.talk,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Artistic merit?? (was: senate vote on NEA)
Date: 14 Jul 1994 18:50:33 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 43
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <304ffp$n8l@panix.com>
References: <2vspeo$p72@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>
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Xref: panix alt.activism:64693 alt.activism.d:14906 alt.politics.datahighway:4156 alt.society.resistance:1782 comp.org.eff.talk:35376 talk.politics.misc:183379
gsa1001@hermes.cam.ac.uk (Geoffrey Scott) writes:
>There's no question that the NEA is important and will never be quashed
>as long as any semblance of democracy exists. Really all it is is an
>affirmation that the US is a society that values art and is willing to
>invest in art.
I don't understand this. One might as well say that the constitutional
prohibition of an establishment of religion demonstrates that the US is
and always has been a society that places no value on religion. The
Federal government is not the sole agency through which American society
acts. There were artists and people who supported them in America long
before the NEA was established.
>It is, rather, a question of whether _this_ society is willing to
>invest in _it's_ culture.
Strikes me as more of a question of the extent to which we're going to
have an official culture determined by the Feds and if so (that is, if
the NEA plays an important role in our cultural life) what that
official culture will be like and who will decide. My own view is that
in America in 1994 official culture isn't going to be very good, so it
would be a service to our culture as a whole not to have it -- that is,
to abolish the NEA altogther. People complain about academic art of
the 19th century. Why should academic art -- art certified as
excellent by functionaries for articulated reasons based on current
aesthetic theories, rather than because anyone really likes it -- be
any better today? Also (to add a random reflection) the notion of
government bureaucrats fostering cutting edge and confrontive art is
ridiculous on the face of it. It should be obvious that whatever the
bureaucrats do they're not going to betray bureaucratic interests.
>My question, then, is, how can we raise the level of expection in this
>society so that the art funded by the NEA is no longer dross. I think
>the Internet itself, with it's tendency to encourage self-reflection,
>can provide a model for how to resurrect meaningful dialogue and
>encourage the appreciation of culture.
The Internet provides a model for how dialogue and self-reflection can
develop without a government agency choosing some of the reflectors and
interlocutors and giving them grants.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Quem Jupiter vult perdere prius dementat.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
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