Thanks for replying, it's nice to see someone besides myself actually caring enough to take 10 minutes and type in www.census.gov. I agree that a bell curve isn't the right fit for the data. I was just wondering how statisticians would measure that. I suppose it would be obvious from plotting the graph?
Yes, I slept through stats class, but the first time I went to the census website, I was floored by what I saw, much as you are. It means so much more when it's not some random guy on slashdot telling you this, but it's you, looking it up for yourself.
The unwillingness to look at empirical data such as this is a major reason I get so tired of arguing with libertarians. When I first got into politics, I tried arguing with my neoconservative, pseudolibertarian brother, and one of the first ground rules he tried to lay down was that he didn't believe in using statistics, because they can lie, and that he only wanted to discuss ideology. I about fell out of my chair when he said that. But, ignoring reality and thinking in a vacumm is really a big part of the libertarian approach.
This isn't always a lot of work. And, anyone that can look at that data, and still think that we punish our rich (or regulate/tax them too much) is off their rocker in my opinion. I regularly get accused of wanting everyone to be paid the same, no matter how hard they work, or of being a communist, marxist, socialist, fascist, etc. It's insane. Do I think we can do a lot better than capitalism (or communism for that matter), sure, but for now I would just like a bit more sanity in how we pay people. I'd like to live in a society where our lowest forty percent makes more than 11% of the total income.
These statistics don't tell you the full picture. Most of the people in that bottom 40% are maxed out. They're spending a lot of their income on stuff like credit card payments and high interest auto loans, which basically a way of sending what little they have directly to the top of the economic food chain.
Just remember, that's income, if you really want to get sick, go look at asset distribution. It's obnoxious. It's something like the top 1% owning around 43% of the assets in the US. The bottom 40% owns about 1% (or maybe a little less). On top of that, many of those that belong to the bottom 40% have negative equity (i.e. a mountain of debt).
"I believe that there are many answers. It's up to us to figure out what it will be. However, I think that if we think about things clearly enough, that most people will agree about certain things."
should be
"I believe that there are many valid answers that have the potential to lead us to a better society. It's up to us to figure out what kind of society we want to live in will be. However, I think that if we think about things clearly enough, that most people will agree about certain things."
Remember, Smith lived in the 18th century, Marx, the 19th. We're in the 21st century. Neither Smith nor Marx thought about things in anything remotely approaching a scientific way. That, in my opinion is part of why their systems didn't turn out that great. But, now we're in the 21st century. We have experience, 300 years of history, and multiple real world experiments with both systems. Further, we have computers, which we can use to experiment with alternative models, before we ever attempt to try them. The idea that we must continue to use the methods of 18th century idealists and philosophers is ludicrous, in my opinion.
" The trouble with your statements is that you're lumping "empirical evidence" and "deductive reasoning" into two broad categories and generalizing about both of them."
Why is that a problem?
"The empirical evidence we have to prove the theory of gravity is different from the empirical evidence we have to describe global social and economic patterns."
This is true. There is not doubt about that. However, it really depends on how you look at it. If one is smart, he will talk about economies as groups of interacting people. I think that you aren't quite as correct as you think you are, more below.
"Why? Control variables. When scientists test certain principles in the laboratory they can make sure that in case A and case B everything is precisely the same except for Factor X which they are studying. You show me empirical evidence on a social issue that is so precise and I will probably think you are a crazed lunatic because any such study would be unethical."
Does this mean that we can't use it? What about weather prediction models, do we just throw those out and say that we might as well give up since we can't predict where everyone rain drop will fall? Are there controls that we can use? I understand your point, that we can't have as tight of controls when talking about extremely complex systems with seemingly random data, like the weather, or economics. But, that is irrelevant. The fact is, we can still come up with models, and test them against reality. We can still learn a lot by using the scientific method even when applied to social problems. No, it's not going to have the rigor of a tightly controlled lab experiment, but if we let that stop us, we would severely limit our ability to explore the world around us.
"I don't really care to argue whether empirical data or logic is better. The answer is, it depends upon the application. In this application, in the area of politics and economics, neither is adequate. We end up philosophizing because the problem is too big and it is impossible to break down into variables, let alone control for all these variables."
Neither is adequete? Wrong. We can gain much insight by looking at test cases. No, the real world does not give us perfect test cases. However, we can look at history and say to ourselves, "What did Japan and Taiwan do differently than all the other countries that allowed their economies to prosper while those in South America and the 3rd world failed?" That's one example. If, over and over, we see that the countries that succeeded did so by protecting their markets with tarrifs, and the ones that failed, did so because they did not protect their markets, then we can safely come to the conclusion that unrestricted free trade is a bad idea. No, it's not science in the sense that we're measuring things in a lab, but we can look at the world around us and reach reasonable conclusions about it.
"You see, you make it sound as it there is an ANSWER, if we were all just smart enough to look at the data right. And yet we live in an imperfect world and even the most intelligent among us disagree about how to fix it."
I believe that there are many answers. It's up to us to figure out what it will be. However, I think that if we think about things clearly enough, that most people will agree about certain things.
"So I do agree with you in part. It is easy to twist deductive reasoning and if we knew what to look for, we could untwist it. The trouble is that both empirical evidence and deductive reasoning on such a grand scale have the same problem: too many variables to wrap your head around at once."
Right and wrong. The solution is that you don't use these grand theories to answer everything. Clearly an economic theory isn't going to tell me what color socks to wear in the morning. However, if done right, it could be the answer we need for a more just world. Just like in the baseball example. If I tried to figure it all out using quantum mechanics, I'd be th
"You make some valid points. Let me elaborate on some things and clarify some others."
Thanks.
"FIrst of all, we're talking about a huge and very complex issue here. I tried to sum it all up in a surface level answer and obviously, that's not going to work."
Yes, it's complex. I disagree with your conclusions, and I think that you are thinking in the wrong direction. I think that you are blaming government for most of these problems.
"I graduated from college 4 years ago with a degree in comuter science that is wholly unmarketable today. I struggled for years to find a job, and in the end i was forced to take low paying and dreadfully mind-numbing paper shuffling jobs to make ends meet. You don't have to tell me about the unemployment rate because I can feel it -- and I'm not what you would consider in the laboring class, either. I'm an educated woman born to middle class parents."
I'm sorry to hear that. Believe me, I know how tough the programming market is. Part of what motivates me is hearing about stories such as yours. Considering that I graduated in Feb. of 2000, I am fortunate to have a job programming.
"I don't think a free market economy is what is keeping me from having a marketable degree, though."
To be precise, the free market is an economic institution. It is the institution responsible for allocating goods. Markets have the role of buyer and seller. Economic institutions don't make decisions, people do. However, markets do shape decisions. For example, in a completely unrestricted market, who are they more likely to hire, a US college grad at 50K a year, or an Indian engineer at 6K a year? Remember, markets have two roles, buyer and seller and encourage people to think in isolation. So, if the only thing that I'm thinking about is that transaction and not it's effects on society, then the choice is simple, you go for the cheapest price you can. Markets provide no incentive to make moral, ethical, or even socially responsible decisions. The roles are buyer and seller, that's it.
"It used to be that menial, low-paying jobs were leaving this country like wildfire and it scared people. These jobs did get replaced, mostly by customer service positions, and so people loook to those times to support their claims that when one type of job leaves, another replaces it."
Ok, we need to understand that this decimated our working class, absolutely destroyed them. Let's not gloss over that fact. Some towns, such as Flint, Michigan, are ghost towns due to the elimination of these jobs. Many of the "service" jobs that came in were degrading, part time jobs with no benefits. Many of "menial" jobs that were replaced, were full-time, union jobs with benefits. Having a healthy worknig class is good for our economy, since they spend the money they earn and help boost retail sales.
" I don't think this is the same type of situation. We're losing jobs held by people with degrees, and not just bachelor's degrees, as I have. The most recent jobs to ship to India and China includ those that require PhD's!"
Right, and the fact that you are up in arms when it's your turn says a lot about what the "virtue of selfishness" has done to our society. I understand your pain, I really do. I don't have a Phd, and I count myself lucky everyday that I make money as a programmer. But, to be an elitist about it isn't going to solve your problem. The fact is, we should have started worrynig about this problem long before it affected us. If we want to solve these kinds of social issues, we can't approach the issue as individual economic actors, because in that case, we are powerless. At some point, you are going to have to get concerned about the affairs of those outside your class, including those who live in other countries. The solution to free trade no longer is inside our borders.
You start off by saying that you don't think that a free market economy is keeping you from having a marketable degree, but then go on to des
Ok, just in case you are thouroughly confused. You might make the mistake of thinking that now I'm saying that both deductive logic and empirical analysis work, so why would I attack libertarians for using deductive logic? Skip back to my original post. I opened with the following statement, "Libertarian's tend to routinely reject emprical data in favor of deductive, abstract logical reasoning. This makes their philosophy prone to all sorts of miscalculation."
Note that it's not the use of deductive reasoning that I am criticizing. It's the ROUTINE use of deductive reasoning, over all other forms of inquiry, even when reality contradicts their theories, that I am criticizing. In other words, we've come full circle, as I said in the last part of the post above, it's not use of logic that I was criticizing. I was criticizing their use of deductive logic ABOVE ALL ELSE. Ok, now I'm done, hopefully that was clear.
Just one more thing. I really wasn't agreeing with you. I was hoping that you understood that I was qualifying my response. In other words, insofar as one could say that empiricial data can be twisted, one could also show cases where logical reasoning can be twisted too.
But, really, how big of a problem is this? My answer is, not much. Anyone with a decent amount of training in learning how to spot deceptive tactics will usually spot flaws right away. Yes, empirical data can be distorted, so can deductive reasoning, but, so what? It's irrelevant. The reason it's irrelevant, is because if someone tries to use empiricial data to lie to a person who understands potential flaws, then it won't work. So, your original point, that empirical reasoning can be used to lie, is irrelevant. Otherwise, we would have to throw out the entire body of scientific knowledge, since it is largely based on empirical methods of data acquisition.
It would be kind of like me trying to explain the theory of gravity, and then you jump in and say,"You know, according to quantum theory, there is a small, but real chance that this baseball could shoot up a 100 ft. into the air without any outside force being applied to it, if all of the molecules in it suddently lined up their kinetic energy into a single direction." Yes, that's fine and everything, but does that dismiss the theory of gravity? Does that mean I should throw out all of our laws of gravity because there is a small chance that the law might not fit every single case out there? Basically, you are commiting the fallacy of bringing up irrelevant data.
Yes, empirical data can be used to deceive, and the baseball I'm holding in my hand could in theory take a flying leap 100 ft. into the air. However, does it happen often enough to render the use of empirical data moot? Does the baseball shoot up in the air often enough to render theory of gravity moot? Can deductive reasoning be used in deceptive ways often enough that we can say that it's useless? The answer is, it doesn't happen that often if we understand the limitations of the tools that we are using. My original critique of most libertarians, is that they do not understand the limitations of the tools that they are using.
Actually, that was part of the problem that I described in the first couple of paragraphs. It was the first part of what I was saying, certainly not an accurate summary, nor should the problem be the part that you come away with if you want to highlight the message that I was trying to send.
I used Rand as example of how deception can also exist in purely abstract thinking, despite the fact that her reasoning is somewhat consistent. I then gave you a solution to the problem. So, you really only summed up the first part of what I was saying.
If you really want to "sum up" what I just said, then you will need to focus on the solution, not just the problem that I described. Why don't I give you an example of what you should have written.
So to sum up, "The solution to the problem of data manipulation is not to run away from empirical data and allow ourselves to potentially be deceived even further by focusing only on abstractions. Instead, we need to improve our understanding of how empiricial data can be falsely represented. This is not magic, there are only so many ways that people can mis-represent data, and once you see enough of it, it is very difficult for people to fool you. On the other hand, we could spend all day talking about abstract philosophy, and never come close to anything remotely useful for dealing with every day, real-world problems."
Just as an aside, the same goes for understanding common fallacies that are made when debating people about more abstract matters. Once you debate long enough, it becomes easy enough to figure out when you are being lied to, or when people are purposely distorting what you are saying, etc.
" The thing about empirical data vs. logical reasoning is that empirical data can say whatever you want it to say.
Lies. Damned lies. Statisticians."
Deductive reasoning can also be manipulated to say whatever you want it to say. All one needs to do is pick the concepts that he wants to use to build his framework in a way that is deceptive. For example, in laying out the framework for her objectivist philosophy, Rand purposely reverts her economic theory back to what Adam Smith said, and dismisses class theory completely, despite the insights that class analysis can give us. She insists on talking about man as a single entity, and dismisses economic theories that focus on group relationships as "collectivist". WHY does she do this? The reason she chooses to focus on individual relations(i.e. man in the singular vs men the plural) is because she doesn't want to highlight group relations. Marx made a big breakthrough when he noticed that we can classify people into groups along class lines. Marx showed, through his invention of class theory, that there is more to markets than just freely associating actors. He pointed out that opportunities are guided by which class you belong to. Power is divided along those lines, and in fact, social mobility is constrained by them too. Highlighting these class relationships helps to point out some of the inherent unfairness in the capitalist system, that it's not as free or fair as Smith thought it would be. How does Rand address this? She doesn't. She basically just tries to assert over and over that class doesn't exist, and attempts to revert back to Adam Smith's theory. Now, you can say what you want to about Communism, which was Marx's "solution" to the class problem. I think Communism is a croc, but that doesn't mean that class theory is worthless. It explains quite a bit, and predicts quite a bit. For example, we know that if your parents were born in one class, we can predict with quite a bit of certainty that you will be in that class too. That's just one example.
So, if you focus only on logical reasoning, then guess what, you might not even notice what Rand is doing to your ability to think about these things. It might not even occur to you that she is writing off class theory because she wants to steer your thinking in a certain direction. If you are not paying attention, you can be lied to just as easily in the abstract realm as you can when dealing with reality. Further, by taking your attention off the cases where reality contradicts her theory, she can make it so that you have no basis for evaluating it's worth. It ends up turning into a religion.
In fact, insofar that we can say that one can distort the presentation of data to falsely represent what is really happening, it becomes that much easier to distort reality when we are speaking in abstract terms. All one has to do is highlight the right concepts (such as man), and dismiss others (such as class, or men in a collective sense).
The solution to the problem of data manipulation is not to run away from empirical data and allow ourselves to potentially be deceived even further by focusing only on abstractions. Instead, we need to improve our understanding of how empiricial data can be falsely represented. This is not magic, there are only so many ways that people can mis-represent data, and once you see enough of it, it is very difficult for people to fool you. On the other hand, we could spend all day talking about abstract philosophy, and never come close to anything remotely useful for dealing with every day, real-world problems.
Now, there is certainly a use for philosophy and deductive thinking, I'm not writing it off, just keep in mind that it is a tool, and understand it's limitations.
I'll write a long reply later tonight when I get a chance. You've written quite a bit that needs addressing.
In the mean time, if you have any free time you might be interested in reading some of my other comments on this article, particularly the first one (which it seems that no on has bothered to reply to, probably because it would take too much time).
http://slashdot.org/~composer777
Also, here are some links to audio files about political economy, radical theory, and ParEcon (the economic system that I am most interested in at the moment). They might give you some insight into where the intellectual libertarian left is coming from. They are a series of lectures by Michael Albert, founder of Zmag, but there are many others on zmag as well, I just happen to like the logical, clear, concise approach that Albert takes. I would recommend that you listen to them in order, since the first set of lectures should be of interest to even general intellectual audiences. Even if you disagree with what he says in his Political Economy and Participatory Economics lectures, the Radical Theory lectures will probably help you in your quest for greater understanding.
Radical Theory http://www.zmag.org/audio/albrt1.ram http ://www.zmag.org/audio/albrt2.ram http://www.zmag. org/audio/albrt3.ram
Political Economy http://www.zmag.org/audio/albpe1.ram htt p://www.zmag.org/audio/albpe2.ram
I wonder how well the bell curve theory works in cases with extreme outliers? Part of the assumption with the bell curve is that extreme outliers aren't supposed to exist. In the case of the US today, we seem to be centered around a median of 40K if I remember correctly. To the left of that we go down to zero, to the right, we go all the way up to 10's of billions?!?!? I'm not a statistician, and in fact, fell asleep during quite a few parts of it, but I would be curious to look this up and see how statisticians address situations such as these. Would they throw the bell curve analysis out, since it could be misleading? Is there a way of measuring how well the curve "fits" and showing this? The problem is, we could have a society that looks "fair" (at least to those that believe things should be distributed in this manner, which I do not) in the sense that it fits a nice bellcurve, and then we could have a super-extreme outlier, that owns 99% of the wealth. This would essentially be an economic dictatorship.
It would seem to me, that any honest statistician, when measuring the US economic distribution, would only with great reservation, and quite a bit of qualification, say that the distribution is bell shaped.
First, I'm what I would consider a "have", definitely not a have-not. I am fortunate to be in my position and while I may not be rich, I'm not worrying about money all the time, either.
I want to live in a country where people not only have opportunity on paper, but are also rewarded for their hard work. I don't believe in giving people money for being lazy, so we're in agreement there.
However, it requires an extraordinary burden of proof to justify why one person gets 40 billion a year in income while another gets next to nothing, especially in cases where the person earning next to nothing is working longer hours, in less-desirable work conditions than the other person. If we agree that markets adjust to supply and demand, then we MUST realize that differences in wealth such as these produce ENORMOUS incentive for people to compete with Bill Gates, so that they can get in on the lucrative income that he is making. The question is, "Why aren't they?" The only conclusion that I can come up with is that Bill Gates arrived there at the beginning, has managed to get a lock on that market, and now people have standardized on his OS. He's getting rewarded because people can't afford to switch and no one else has the startup capital to create a competitive OS or the software infrastructure to compete, not because he's innovating.
The fact is that differences in income such as those found in the US REQUIRE lack of upward mobility. Income differences such as those seen in the US are not the result of just working harder, they are the result of market barriers which keep the enormous competitive presssures at bay, allowing the Bill Gate's and Larry Ellison's of the world to make money hand over fist, while others starve.
If you want to live in a land of opportunity then you should focus on breaking down those barriers, so that we can have real opportunity, and real competition, not the highly stratified, immobile society that we have today, where the biggest predictor of wealth is whether or not you were born into it. Remember, William Gates III dropped out of Harvard, which should tell you which income class he started out in, how many poor people do you know that dropped out of Harvard? Oh yeah, he was a real "risk taker", risking all of his monthly allowance in order to start his own company.... Not that I care too much how he got there, but if we're going to talk about what a great land of opportunity this country is, then we need to portray the "rags to riches" stories of people like Bill Gates in their true light, not the bullshit propaganda myth that we are sold on tv.
Finally, I have a question. What exactly is job training going to do for someone in a job market where there is 10% unemployment? There will still be 10% unemployment, and chances are if that person is poor to begin with, they are going to have a very difficult time getting a job. Wouldn't you rather live in a society where, if someone works their ass off, they can get paid a living wage (where they can actually afford housing, food, shelter, medical, the essentials)? If the labor market doesn't hire them, then why shouldn't the government be allowed to hire them? It certainly isn't "efficient" to let all those people sit idle. The reason why businesses and the right wingers that support them hate that idea so much, is because it would remove one of the huge, unfair advantages that they have in keeping wages low, and that is, the threat of unemployment. There is no other reason that I can come up with for allowing people that are willing to work to remain unemployed. It's also why they hate welfare so much, welfare is a drop in the bucket compared to defense. However, a functioning welfare system gives employees bargaining power.
I also agree that we should fund education for everyone that wants it, not just those who can afford it. We certainly shouldn't require people to go into debt for their education, especially in a society where corporations are changing their requirements on a whim, with IT being a hot field one year, biotech, the next, etc. In fact, I think we should pay people to get training, and treat it like a job. After all, it IS work.
I would love to believe this, after all China's human rights record is atrocious. How is our manufacturing sector supposed to "compete" with their prison labor? Anyway, I digress.
The reasons the USSR failed, to put it simply are: 1. Economic isolation. They did not receive much direct investment, and in fact often helped the nations they were trading with, provided they were socialist. 2. They overextended their economy by spending too much on military expenditures. 3. They gave too much status and priveledge to party leaders, which drew the resentment and ire of the average workers.
The first issue isn't a problem with China, as they are awash in investment capital. China hasn't, as of yet, made the second mistake. As long as they keep their party leaders in check, and distribute resources in a fair manner, they could be very successful, at least in terms of GDP. The third issue, is the likely issue that will take them down, whereas in the USSR, it was primarily issue number 2 that destroyed them. As far as being successful in a moral, democratic sense, or in promoting freedom, liberty, happiness, and all that good stuff, well, I think we know what the answer to that question will be.
I don't think that China will follow the same path as the USSR. But, they will nevertheless leave quite a bit to be desired as a society.
First, I'm not a communist. But, that won't stop me from correcting you if I think you are stating the problems of the USSR or Communism, incorrectly. It's important to understand it's failings, and the failings of capitalism, if we want to correct them.
I never said that Rand ditched empirical analysis in favor of emotions, I said that they ditched it in favor of deductive reasoning.
This is of course a problem with libertarians, they think that you can either be "rational", meaning that you derive your philosophy through deductive logic, or irrational. However, there are many forms of academic inquiry. We have: 1. Deductive logic. 2. Inductive reasoning such as that promoted by the scientific method. 3. Fact based inquiry, where one looks at all the facts, and weighs them using intuition.
I'm sure there are more methods of decision-making out there, but the point is, that abstract reasoning is not always the best way to arrive at a decision.
"For example the assumption usually put with info like you provided is that if one man is richer than another it's somehow wrong."
I don't think that's the assumption that's put forward. That's a nice straw man, but I don't think this is what most sensible leftists are saying. In fact, I don't think that differences in wealth, within reason, are that big of a deal. The assumption put forward by most leftists, is that extreme differences in wealth can completely tilt the negotiation process in favor of those with the gargantuan sums of wealth, and as a result curb the negotiation power of the worker, thus limiting his freedom of opportunity. So, if we ignore all other factors, you might, in theory, be able to claim that these are negotiations between freely interacting parties. However, the left argues that this is not capturing the reality of the situation effectively. It doesn't explain why, for example, someone would choose a subsistence wage at a factory vs going out and forming their own factory. Class theory, however, does explain this, and it provides powerful insights into why certain groups behave in a certain way. It does it in a way that the theory of "freely associating beings" cannot.
"If in country A incomes range from 10K to 11K and in country b they range from 10K to 40K, which country has the largest gap between 'rich' and 'poor'? And all other things equal which would you rather live in?"
Asking questions such as this outside of the context of reality doesn't make much sense, but I'll do my best.
Clearly the second country has the largest gap. You are assuming that prices are fixed. Even someone with the slightest amount of familiarity with classical economics 101 knows that if there is a 10K to 40K difference in income, that the people making 10K will be significantly poorer in the 2nd country than they will the first, all things being equal. The reason is that the laws of supply and demand will ensure that all of the most desired goods will go to those at the top. All other things being equal, including the goods being traded, the poor in the second society will be significantly poorer. This is likely to produce a lot of problems. But, I think we are ignoring too many other factors to intelligently think about this. For example, did the people making 40K get that money because they worked four times as many hours? Or, did they get that way by lying on their resume and getting a cushy managerial position? Or, maybe they just went to the good schools, while the poor people only graduated high school, etc.
"If you have a system that guarantees most people have about the same income no matter how hard they work or don't, generally you have a system where no one is motivated to work much."
That's one way of looking at it. And, I agree, if you have a system such as the one you describe above, it would certainly cause a lot of resentment. However, I'm not sure that was the problem with the USSR, at least not in the way that you think. From my own experienc
If empirical data shows that your theory, produced in a vacuum, only through deductive reasoning, is wrong, then it's time to reevaluate that approach. There are times when using purely deductive, abstract reasoning is an irrational approach to solving problems, in the sense that it is cleary the wrong tool for the job. This is especially the case if one chooses abstract reasoning even when reality contradicts what he is saying. That is what I meant. For example, take my case of trying to come up with a logically complete reason for majoring in music. Or, trying to come up with a logical explanation for setting the voting age. (deductive) Logic is the wrong tool, because it demands that our explanations are always entirely consistent, but in the real world, there is often too much data to explain why one choice makes more sense than another. Many times things must be handled on a case by cases basis. Also, in the real world, we can learn if our theory/philosoph takes into account of the necessary data that we thought it did. Things can get far too complex, far too quickly for us to understand, on a purely abstract level, what the choices are. But, we have other tools, such as our intution, the scientific method, etc. The standard by which we test our theories should not just be internal consistency, but also it's ability to explain, predict, and guide.
Marxist theory does a lot to explain and predict (it doesn't do much in the 3rd area, which is guiding). He came up with the concept of class, and class consisted of two distinct groups, capitalist, and workers. Making this distinction between groups helps to explain how these groups relate to each other. Rand comes along and basically says, "Class does not exist, we only have freely acting individuals exchanging goods and services." So, Rand basically does her best to throw out one's ability to even recognize that class exists. She attempts to convince the reader that thinking in terms of groups is wrong through false analogy, and other rhetorical devices which don't hold much weight. The fact is, we've had a theory of capitalism based on individualism ever since Adam Smith wrote about it. The reason the concepts of class were created is because they help explain and predict things that Smith's (and Rand's) theory do not. Thus, the concept of class is a useful addition to classical economic theory. That's why we use them, not because we're "collectivist", not because we have no ablity to think of man as a single entity as Rand asserts.
Note that I'm not a socialist, I just find it funny that the argument many people level at socialism, can also be leveled at capitalism. And they fail to notice how much worse capitalism is at address this problem.
It's really strange how people mod certain comments as being trollist. Your insight is right on. The only thing that I would argue with is the word "deserve". But anyway...
Capitalism fails spectacularly at the problem called the "prisoner's dilemma". This situation is used all the time to explain why socialism won't work. In short, the prisoner's dilemma states that all it takes is one bad apple, and the whole system breaks. For example, in the case of communism, let's say we all work in a commune, and someone decides to become dictator and starts diverting resources away from the rest of the group and into ICBM's, then eventually people will get sick of working so hard and become cynical. The more common variant of this argument directed at socialism is that one bad worker will piss everyone else off, who is getting paid the same amount, and eventually all the workers will become lazier and lazier, until the economy breaks down, that's the myth that we are told (although my first description is closer to the truth about why the USSR failed).
In truth, most people could care less if the guy next to them works 10% less hard. Most people don't even start counting until it's at least 2-10x as much of a difference. Seriously, most people just don't care that much, until the differnce in wealth start getting absurd. And, in capitalism, as well as the USSR, the differences are absurd. Workers don't get pissed off at other workers nearly as much as they do the CEO, or the government official, that commands a high salary for essentially nothing.
So, how does capitalism handle the "prisoner's dilemma"? Answer, it doesn't. It's solution is to embrace it's failure to address the problem, and it embraces failure spectacularly.
For example, if I lied about my experience in the former USSR, I might get promoted to a slightly better paying managerial position. However, in capitalism, if I lie on my resume, I could find myself making twice, three, maybe ten times the amount that I made before. All I have to do is manage to BS my way into a high paying corporate job, and I can be sipping champaigne with the best of them. So, what happens in capitalism, is we have corruption everywhere, and the rewards are stupendous. The people who get away with this fraud are a spectacle to behold.
And, that also explains why we get so upset when we find out people, such as Ken Lay, cheated. It upsets us because our whole system is based on the utopian belief that everyone, despite the enormous pressure of billion to one earnings differences, will just follow the rules and work their way up the ladder in an ethical manner. Capitalism, in this sense, is even more naive and utopian than socialism, and that's saying a lot. We have an enormous burden of proof in order to justify these difference in wealth, and people like Ken Lay screw everything up, and show us that there is no justifiable reason for paying people this much more than the average worker. The fact that most of us still are ethical human beings gives us a lot of insight into human nature, as well as capitalism. These pieces of walking satire, such as Ken Lay, George Bush, and the huge number of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals practicing without credentials or without a license, show the absurdity of our system.
There is quite a bit of empirical data that shows that at least across countries, those that are more regulated have a more even distribution of wealth. As far as US history goes, we are witnessing some of the greatest differences in wealth that we have ever seen, and this is happening as regulations and social programs are being destroyed.
The US is by far the champion of free market, unregulated capitalism among 1st world countries, and not coincidentally, it has the largest gap of rich and poor, as measured by the Gini index, of any 1st world country. Keep in mind, statistics and mountains of evidence are the place where most leftists love to argue. You're not likely to win that kind of argument with any passionate leftist. That is likely why Rand and her followers for the most part ditch empirical data and choos to argue from a purely ideological, philosophical standpoint.
Libertarian's tend to routinely reject emprical data in favor of deductive, abstract logical reasoning. This makes their philosophy prone to all sorts of miscalculation. There is no rational basis for their approach and they take this approach even when reality contradicets them. You hit the nail on the head and I'm glad someone brought it up early in the discussion, as it's not likely that anyone will even see my question.
I said roughly the same thing, in quite a few more words, in my question: http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.p l?sid=12162 3&cid=10240396
Please pick whichever questions you want from my short critique of right leaning Libertarian philosophy. I have only read a bit of Rand, and am still learning about her philsophy, but I have quite a few concerns about it.
I am what one might call a libertarian leftist, in the sense that I believe in strong liberty but also that the state should be strong enough to provide at minimum an equal opportunity for it's citizens, if not, preferrrably, equal outcomes for roughly equivalent work(i.e. if two people work really hard, they should get rewarded, if they are both lazy, they shouldn't get that much, etc.).
I have some questions regarding right leaning libertarian philosopy. I have bought a few books, such as "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal." What I have read in these books disturbs me. I read the writings of Rand, and I see someone who with almost religious zeal believes that rational thought can solve all of our problems, and that a just economy can be created only by deriving it from a philosophical foundation that includes man as a single entity as it's central focus. (I use the word "religious" on purpose, since it is impossible to deductively prove that deductive reasoning will yield the correct answers to all of life's problems, or even to the problem of creating a philosophy that will guide us towards a more just society. Believing that deductive reasoning alone will give one the anser to social problems is partially a matter of faith in that approach.) To explain why she takes the approach of having man as the center of her philosophy, rather than men (in the collective sense), she uses a loose analogy in the first chapter, saying that trying to build a society without using the concept of man at it's center is like trying to have a theory of the universe that doesn't talk about, or even attempt to identify individual stars, planets, celestial bodies, etc. Now, that makes sense, but I'm not so sure that the analogy is very useful. For example, do we need to have a theory of how neurons work, and a complete model of the brain, built from the atomic level on up, before we can attempt to comprehend things like personality, theory of the mind, etc? If not, then why would we need to have an economic theory that is built on the idea of human beings as discrete entities in order to build a just economic system? After all, we don't need to understand every detail of how neurons work to have a practical theory of the mind. If, on the other hand, you do insist that we need such a detailed model of the brain in order to understand the mind, then why shouldn't we extend Rand's analogy inward, and take it to it's rational conclusion that we shouldn't be talking about man, until we understand the brain, and shouldn't talk about the brain until we understand neurons, and therefore, shouldn't talk about neurons until we understand particle physics in it's entirely, and so on, and so forth. Why does Rand draw the line with man as the discrete element? How does she expect to gain insight into man, as a discrete entity, if she doesn't take her own advice and study all of the discrete elements of man?
The part that I find disturbing about Rand, is her lack of attention to empirical analysis. A theory can be wonderfully symetric and complete, beautiful to behold, etc., and when brought out into the real world, fail miserably to explain, predict, and guide. The reason is that theories can fail to highlight the important concepts, and as a result, distort our understanding of how the world works. I notice this quite a bit with Rand, and many libertarian forms of argument, they love to abstract problems into very contrived situations, pointing out only the things they believe are important, leaving invisible the parts that are inconvenient or that contradict their theory, and then, at least on the surface, they have an argument that is strong and logically satisfying. For example, when describing the process of negotiations between two parties, Rand says something to the effect of, 'If both partn
Yeah, but you're in the Southern US, closer to the satellite, it's more of a problem in the Northern part of the US. When I moved from Atlanta to St. Louis, there was a slight bit of signal loss. However, your point is valid, if you've got a perfectly aimed dish, it's not a huge problem, unfortunately, a lot of people have to deal with situations where maybe the dish is partially blocked, or they're very far North, etc.
I hope they've figured out how to adequately solve the problem of rain fade on the Ka Band. From what little I understand of satellite transmission, rain fade is an even bigger problem on the Ka Band than it is on the current Ku Band that Directv uses. It's not a problem at all on the C Band (big dish) satellites. Do they plan on getting around this by using more power? Or, do they think that more rain fade is an acceptable trade-off for the extra bandwidth?
I hoppe my reply isn't too disjointed, I jumped around a bit between paragraphs...
At some point, the highway system was engineered, and billions were pumped into it. Yes, the auto industry evolved, but it wouldn't have gotten very far without massive support from the government. The point I made, is even cutting the weight of automobiles by 75% would save a lot of fuel. The market just has not provided proper pricing of petroleum based products, so people treat it like a cheap commodity. So, not only has government subsidy propped up the auto industry by subsidizing roads to the tune of trillions, but also has subsidized it by keeping a strong military presence in the middle east to keep the cheap oil flowing. That's two massive subsidies. So, I suppose, within that context, the auto industry has "evolved", and been an "affordable" solution. But, the question is, why would they choose to do it that way, vs a potentially cheaper alternative? Once you take into account how much it really costs to keep cars running, stuff just doesn't add up. The only thing I can think of is that politicians were bought and sold to make it happen, the same way everything else happens in our country.
The problem is that costs aren't tabulated properly. They are just made invisible. This system is making you work a lot harder, you just don't see it. You don't make the obvious connection that the war in Iraq is costing lives, money, resources, etc. You don't make the connection that driving on that road costs 1,000's of man hours every year in labor, because the cost is swept under the rug. Even worse, we're so disconnected as a society, that, like most Americans, you fail to complete the circle, and reach the obvious conclusion that all those extra hours of work mean that you're going to have to work harder too. It doesn't happen for free. But, the roles of buyer and seller cause us not to see beyond the immediate transaction, whether that transaction is happening at the auto dealership or the gas pump. End result, we just don't think about it.
Part of the reason New York is so expesnive, is because there isn't any real room for expansion, part of it is literally on an island. However, if you put it on a chunk of land in the middle of the country, property values could have been kept reasonably sane.
Please don't think that I'm advocating ditching automobiles altogether, but we don't have to use them the way we do now, either.
Your last paragraph is somewhat funny, considering that New York is an excellent example of government successfully planning a city, and in a capitalist economy, imagine that. Just about every city is planned. I would challenge you to find a single major city that doesn't designate certain areas as manufacturing, and others as business, and others as residential. It just wasn't done right in the majority of cities. The auto was taken for granted, and intelligent planning wasn't even attempted. However, urban planning and development is a major part of any local government. It doesn't require a communist dungeon to successfully plan a city.
As far as the human nature argument goes, i.e people are greedy, selfish, etc., our system produces greedy, selfish people. Remember that. Economies don't just produce things, but they produce people too. People go in one end, and out the other, and they are transformed by the roles that they are required to fill. If the roles that people are required to fill are always adversarial (i.e. buyer and seller, manager vs worker, owner vs manager, etc.) then guess what, in order to survive, people will become greedy and selfish.
The USSR failed for many reasons, but not because people are too greedy. First, before I start, I'm glad they failed, it was a horrible system. I'm not an advocate of communism. It failed because they spent too much on nukes, and used too many resources on the production of military equipment, and not enough on taking care of the people. They didn't have enough left over to mee
The housing market comment reminds me of the idea of land trusts. They are a fairly good idea, you might want to go look it up, it was on NPR Tuesday. Anyway....
You are correct about the problems with regulation or doing anything that goes against the tide of the market. Market forces are unbelievably powerful. Whatever changes we make, we'll have to get rid of markets if we want them to stick. There are reasons for this. The main one is that markets tend to force prices down. This constant downward pressure means that if a democratically run factory, like those that were attempted in post-USSR Yugoslavia, want to compete, then each worker has to discipline himself. He has to cut his own salary. He has to force himself to work in worse and worse conditions. He has to be his own master, whipping himself into action. Eventually, the system breaks, and people are hired as managers in order to whip the workers into line, since it is impossible for people to do this to themselves on a continuing basis. This is what happened in Yugoslavia, the workers weren't able to punish themselves enough, so they brought in managers from Harvard business school to do it for them. As soon as one factory hires managers, then the rest have to follow suit. In order for the manager to effectively do his job, he has to be insulated from the effects of his decision, so naturally, he gets a good office away from the factory floor, and a higher paycheck. What do you get after doing this? class separation, right back where you started. So, no, you can't really have market democracy, or market socialism, or whatever you want to call it. You pretty much have to create a set of institutions, and keep them separate, as much as possible, from markets.
The above scenario is also why regulation has it's problems. Markets are powerful, and if there is money to be made, then politicians can often be paid off to get rid of regulations. It's a never-ending battle.
How we get to the vision I describe below, from where we are today, no one knows yet. But giving up doesn't seem like that great of an option to me.
I'm studying an economic vision developed by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, called Participatory Economics. www.parecon.org Albert is receiving quite a bit of praise outside the US for his work, but hasn't received so much as a book review in a major US publication.
There are alternatives to capitalism. And no, I'm not talking about socialism, or market socialism, or communism. Parecon rests on a different set of values. I'll keep it simple. Four main values: 1. Solidarity - People should work together rather than fight each other. 2. Equity - equitable outcomes in relation to how hard one works. 3. Participatory Self Management - when possible, people should be allowed to manage their own lives 4. Diversity - We want an economy with diverse outcomes and choices
To meet these values several social norms are established: 1. Remuneration should be for effort and sacrifice, whenever possible, not for output, not for owning property. 2. In so far as their are tasks, those tasks should be divided up so that each job is composed of tasks that are equally empowering. So, the idea of a job where all one does is manage will not exist. But their might be a job where one manages part of the day, and sweeps the floor the rest of the day. Or, where one works as a writer 3 hours a day, and a coal miner the other 2 hours. 3. Decision making should be formulated to allow people to make decisions in accord with how much they are affected by that decision. 4. Participation in the planning of the yearly budget is a right, but not a requirement. In other words, if you don't care to figure out how much toilet paper you need for that year, don't worry, it'll get figured out for you the same way it is right now. If, on the other hand, you plan on buynig the latest gadget, you have a right to participate in it's planning. In our current economy, you have very litt
Taking this statement to it's logical conclusion... 1. Outstanding engineers in America survive, maybe. 2. Average in America = pizza delivery driver. 3. Completely incompetent in India make a lot of money. 3. Average in India make a lot of money(relative to the rest of the population). 4. Outstanding in India makes a great living
So, if you're "only" 8 times as productive as the average engineer (not 10 times as productive), and you live in America, then you're in for a twenty percent reduction in salary. Sounds fair to me.
If you're only three times as productive, then you'll just have to get used to getting by on 70% less. After all, fair is fair, and being 3 times as productive just isn't cutting it anymore..
If you're twice as productive, then you'd better get used to foodstamps, and there's a homeless shelter that you can sleep at when you're not at work.
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Thanks for replying, it's nice to see someone besides myself actually caring enough to take 10 minutes and type in www.census.gov. I agree that a bell curve isn't the right fit for the data. I was just wondering how statisticians would measure that. I suppose it would be obvious from plotting the graph?
Yes, I slept through stats class, but the first time I went to the census website, I was floored by what I saw, much as you are. It means so much more when it's not some random guy on slashdot telling you this, but it's you, looking it up for yourself.
The unwillingness to look at empirical data such as this is a major reason I get so tired of arguing with libertarians. When I first got into politics, I tried arguing with my neoconservative, pseudolibertarian brother, and one of the first ground rules he tried to lay down was that he didn't believe in using statistics, because they can lie, and that he only wanted to discuss ideology. I about fell out of my chair when he said that. But, ignoring reality and thinking in a vacumm is really a big part of the libertarian approach.
This isn't always a lot of work. And, anyone that can look at that data, and still think that we punish our rich (or regulate/tax them too much) is off their rocker in my opinion. I regularly get accused of wanting everyone to be paid the same, no matter how hard they work, or of being a communist, marxist, socialist, fascist, etc. It's insane. Do I think we can do a lot better than capitalism (or communism for that matter), sure, but for now I would just like a bit more sanity in how we pay people. I'd like to live in a society where our lowest forty percent makes more than 11% of the total income.
These statistics don't tell you the full picture. Most of the people in that bottom 40% are maxed out. They're spending a lot of their income on stuff like credit card payments and high interest auto loans, which basically a way of sending what little they have directly to the top of the economic food chain.
Just remember, that's income, if you really want to get sick, go look at asset distribution. It's obnoxious. It's something like the top 1% owning around 43% of the assets in the US. The bottom 40% owns about 1% (or maybe a little less). On top of that, many of those that belong to the bottom 40% have negative equity (i.e. a mountain of debt).
And at the same time, the oversimplified grandparent, that's supposed to be "insightful". Absolutely ridiculous...
"I believe that there are many answers. It's up to us to figure out what it will be. However, I think that if we think about things clearly enough, that most people will agree about certain things."
should be
"I believe that there are many valid answers that have the potential to lead us to a better society. It's up to us to figure out what kind of society we want to live in will be. However, I think that if we think about things clearly enough, that most people will agree about certain things."
Remember, Smith lived in the 18th century, Marx, the 19th. We're in the 21st century. Neither Smith nor Marx thought about things in anything remotely approaching a scientific way. That, in my opinion is part of why their systems didn't turn out that great. But, now we're in the 21st century. We have experience, 300 years of history, and multiple real world experiments with both systems. Further, we have computers, which we can use to experiment with alternative models, before we ever attempt to try them. The idea that we must continue to use the methods of 18th century idealists and philosophers is ludicrous, in my opinion.
" The trouble with your statements is that you're lumping "empirical evidence" and "deductive reasoning" into two broad categories and generalizing about both of them."
Why is that a problem?
"The empirical evidence we have to prove the theory of gravity is different from the empirical evidence we have to describe global social and economic patterns."
This is true. There is not doubt about that. However, it really depends on how you look at it. If one is smart, he will talk about economies as groups of interacting people. I think that you aren't quite as correct as you think you are, more below.
"Why? Control variables. When scientists test certain principles in the laboratory they can make sure that in case A and case B everything is precisely the same except for Factor X which they are studying. You show me empirical evidence on a social issue that is so precise and I will probably think you are a crazed lunatic because any such study would be unethical."
Does this mean that we can't use it? What about weather prediction models, do we just throw those out and say that we might as well give up since we can't predict where everyone rain drop will fall? Are there controls that we can use? I understand your point, that we can't have as tight of controls when talking about extremely complex systems with seemingly random data, like the weather, or economics. But, that is irrelevant. The fact is, we can still come up with models, and test them against reality. We can still learn a lot by using the scientific method even when applied to social problems. No, it's not going to have the rigor of a tightly controlled lab experiment, but if we let that stop us, we would severely limit our ability to explore the world around us.
"I don't really care to argue whether empirical data or logic is better. The answer is, it depends upon the application. In this application, in the area of politics and economics, neither is adequate. We end up philosophizing because the problem is too big and it is impossible to break down into variables, let alone control for all these variables."
Neither is adequete? Wrong. We can gain much insight by looking at test cases. No, the real world does not give us perfect test cases. However, we can look at history and say to ourselves, "What did Japan and Taiwan do differently than all the other countries that allowed their economies to prosper while those in South America and the 3rd world failed?" That's one example. If, over and over, we see that the countries that succeeded did so by protecting their markets with tarrifs, and the ones that failed, did so because they did not protect their markets, then we can safely come to the conclusion that unrestricted free trade is a bad idea. No, it's not science in the sense that we're measuring things in a lab, but we can look at the world around us and reach reasonable conclusions about it.
"You see, you make it sound as it there is an ANSWER, if we were all just smart enough to look at the data right. And yet we live in an imperfect world and even the most intelligent among us disagree about how to fix it."
I believe that there are many answers. It's up to us to figure out what it will be. However, I think that if we think about things clearly enough, that most people will agree about certain things.
"So I do agree with you in part. It is easy to twist deductive reasoning and if we knew what to look for, we could untwist it. The trouble is that both empirical evidence and deductive reasoning on such a grand scale have the same problem: too many variables to wrap your head around at once."
Right and wrong. The solution is that you don't use these grand theories to answer everything. Clearly an economic theory isn't going to tell me what color socks to wear in the morning. However, if done right, it could be the answer we need for a more just world. Just like in the baseball example. If I tried to figure it all out using quantum mechanics, I'd be th
"You make some valid points. Let me elaborate on some things and clarify some others."
Thanks.
"FIrst of all, we're talking about a huge and very complex issue here. I tried to sum it all up in a surface level answer and obviously, that's not going to work."
Yes, it's complex. I disagree with your conclusions, and I think that you are thinking in the wrong direction. I think that you are blaming government for most of these problems.
"I graduated from college 4 years ago with a degree in comuter science that is wholly unmarketable today. I struggled for years to find a job, and in the end i was forced to take low paying and dreadfully mind-numbing paper shuffling jobs to make ends meet. You don't have to tell me about the unemployment rate because I can feel it -- and I'm not what you would consider in the laboring class, either. I'm an educated woman born to middle class parents."
I'm sorry to hear that. Believe me, I know how tough the programming market is. Part of what motivates me is hearing about stories such as yours. Considering that I graduated in Feb. of 2000, I am fortunate to have a job programming.
"I don't think a free market economy is what is keeping me from having a marketable degree, though."
To be precise, the free market is an economic institution. It is the institution responsible for allocating goods. Markets have the role of buyer and seller. Economic institutions don't make decisions, people do. However, markets do shape decisions. For example, in a completely unrestricted market, who are they more likely to hire, a US college grad at 50K a year, or an Indian engineer at 6K a year? Remember, markets have two roles, buyer and seller and encourage people to think in isolation. So, if the only thing that I'm thinking about is that transaction and not it's effects on society, then the choice is simple, you go for the cheapest price you can. Markets provide no incentive to make moral, ethical, or even socially responsible decisions. The roles are buyer and seller, that's it.
"It used to be that menial, low-paying jobs were leaving this country like wildfire and it scared people. These jobs did get replaced, mostly by customer service positions, and so people loook to those times to support their claims that when one type of job leaves, another replaces it."
Ok, we need to understand that this decimated our working class, absolutely destroyed them. Let's not gloss over that fact. Some towns, such as Flint, Michigan, are ghost towns due to the elimination of these jobs. Many of the "service" jobs that came in were degrading, part time jobs with no benefits. Many of "menial" jobs that were replaced, were full-time, union jobs with benefits. Having a healthy worknig class is good for our economy, since they spend the money they earn and help boost retail sales.
" I don't think this is the same type of situation. We're losing jobs held by people with degrees, and not just bachelor's degrees, as I have. The most recent jobs to ship to India and China includ those that require PhD's!"
Right, and the fact that you are up in arms when it's your turn says a lot about what the "virtue of selfishness" has done to our society. I understand your pain, I really do. I don't have a Phd, and I count myself lucky everyday that I make money as a programmer. But, to be an elitist about it isn't going to solve your problem. The fact is, we should have started worrynig about this problem long before it affected us. If we want to solve these kinds of social issues, we can't approach the issue as individual economic actors, because in that case, we are powerless. At some point, you are going to have to get concerned about the affairs of those outside your class, including those who live in other countries. The solution to free trade no longer is inside our borders.
You start off by saying that you don't think that a free market economy is keeping you from having a marketable degree, but then go on to des
Ok, just in case you are thouroughly confused. You might make the mistake of thinking that now I'm saying that both deductive logic and empirical analysis work, so why would I attack libertarians for using deductive logic? Skip back to my original post. I opened with the following statement, "Libertarian's tend to routinely reject emprical data in favor of deductive, abstract logical reasoning. This makes their philosophy prone to all sorts of miscalculation."
Note that it's not the use of deductive reasoning that I am criticizing. It's the ROUTINE use of deductive reasoning, over all other forms of inquiry, even when reality contradicts their theories, that I am criticizing. In other words, we've come full circle, as I said in the last part of the post above, it's not use of logic that I was criticizing. I was criticizing their use of deductive logic ABOVE ALL ELSE. Ok, now I'm done, hopefully that was clear.
Just one more thing. I really wasn't agreeing with you. I was hoping that you understood that I was qualifying my response. In other words, insofar as one could say that empiricial data can be twisted, one could also show cases where logical reasoning can be twisted too.
But, really, how big of a problem is this? My answer is, not much. Anyone with a decent amount of training in learning how to spot deceptive tactics will usually spot flaws right away. Yes, empirical data can be distorted, so can deductive reasoning, but, so what? It's irrelevant. The reason it's irrelevant, is because if someone tries to use empiricial data to lie to a person who understands potential flaws, then it won't work. So, your original point, that empirical reasoning can be used to lie, is irrelevant. Otherwise, we would have to throw out the entire body of scientific knowledge, since it is largely based on empirical methods of data acquisition.
It would be kind of like me trying to explain the theory of gravity, and then you jump in and say,"You know, according to quantum theory, there is a small, but real chance that this baseball could shoot up a 100 ft. into the air without any outside force being applied to it, if all of the molecules in it suddently lined up their kinetic energy into a single direction." Yes, that's fine and everything, but does that dismiss the theory of gravity? Does that mean I should throw out all of our laws of gravity because there is a small chance that the law might not fit every single case out there? Basically, you are commiting the fallacy of bringing up irrelevant data.
Yes, empirical data can be used to deceive, and the baseball I'm holding in my hand could in theory take a flying leap 100 ft. into the air. However, does it happen often enough to render the use of empirical data moot? Does the baseball shoot up in the air often enough to render theory of gravity moot? Can deductive reasoning be used in deceptive ways often enough that we can say that it's useless? The answer is, it doesn't happen that often if we understand the limitations of the tools that we are using. My original critique of most libertarians, is that they do not understand the limitations of the tools that they are using.
Actually, that was part of the problem that I described in the first couple of paragraphs. It was the first part of what I was saying, certainly not an accurate summary, nor should the problem be the part that you come away with if you want to highlight the message that I was trying to send.
I used Rand as example of how deception can also exist in purely abstract thinking, despite the fact that her reasoning is somewhat consistent. I then gave you a solution to the problem. So, you really only summed up the first part of what I was saying.
If you really want to "sum up" what I just said, then you will need to focus on the solution, not just the problem that I described. Why don't I give you an example of what you should have written.
So to sum up, "The solution to the problem of data manipulation is not to run away from empirical data and allow ourselves to potentially be deceived even further by focusing only on abstractions. Instead, we need to improve our understanding of how empiricial data can be falsely represented. This is not magic, there are only so many ways that people can mis-represent data, and once you see enough of it, it is very difficult for people to fool you. On the other hand, we could spend all day talking about abstract philosophy, and never come close to anything remotely useful for dealing with every day, real-world problems."
Just as an aside, the same goes for understanding common fallacies that are made when debating people about more abstract matters. Once you debate long enough, it becomes easy enough to figure out when you are being lied to, or when people are purposely distorting what you are saying, etc.
" The thing about empirical data vs. logical reasoning is that empirical data can say whatever you want it to say.
Lies.
Damned lies.
Statisticians."
Deductive reasoning can also be manipulated to say whatever you want it to say. All one needs to do is pick the concepts that he wants to use to build his framework in a way that is deceptive. For example, in laying out the framework for her objectivist philosophy, Rand purposely reverts her economic theory back to what Adam Smith said, and dismisses class theory completely, despite the insights that class analysis can give us. She insists on talking about man as a single entity, and dismisses economic theories that focus on group relationships as "collectivist". WHY does she do this? The reason she chooses to focus on individual relations(i.e. man in the singular vs men the plural) is because she doesn't want to highlight group relations. Marx made a big breakthrough when he noticed that we can classify people into groups along class lines. Marx showed, through his invention of class theory, that there is more to markets than just freely associating actors. He pointed out that opportunities are guided by which class you belong to. Power is divided along those lines, and in fact, social mobility is constrained by them too. Highlighting these class relationships helps to point out some of the inherent unfairness in the capitalist system, that it's not as free or fair as Smith thought it would be. How does Rand address this? She doesn't. She basically just tries to assert over and over that class doesn't exist, and attempts to revert back to Adam Smith's theory. Now, you can say what you want to about Communism, which was Marx's "solution" to the class problem. I think Communism is a croc, but that doesn't mean that class theory is worthless. It explains quite a bit, and predicts quite a bit. For example, we know that if your parents were born in one class, we can predict with quite a bit of certainty that you will be in that class too. That's just one example.
So, if you focus only on logical reasoning, then guess what, you might not even notice what Rand is doing to your ability to think about these things. It might not even occur to you that she is writing off class theory because she wants to steer your thinking in a certain direction. If you are not paying attention, you can be lied to just as easily in the abstract realm as you can when dealing with reality. Further, by taking your attention off the cases where reality contradicts her theory, she can make it so that you have no basis for evaluating it's worth. It ends up turning into a religion.
In fact, insofar that we can say that one can distort the presentation of data to falsely represent what is really happening, it becomes that much easier to distort reality when we are speaking in abstract terms. All one has to do is highlight the right concepts (such as man), and dismiss others (such as class, or men in a collective sense).
The solution to the problem of data manipulation is not to run away from empirical data and allow ourselves to potentially be deceived even further by focusing only on abstractions. Instead, we need to improve our understanding of how empiricial data can be falsely represented. This is not magic, there are only so many ways that people can mis-represent data, and once you see enough of it, it is very difficult for people to fool you. On the other hand, we could spend all day talking about abstract philosophy, and never come close to anything remotely useful for dealing with every day, real-world problems.
Now, there is certainly a use for philosophy and deductive thinking, I'm not writing it off, just keep in mind that it is a tool, and understand it's limitations.
I'll write a long reply later tonight when I get a chance. You've written quite a bit that needs addressing.
p ://www.zmag.org/audio/albrt2.ram. org/audio/albrt3.ram
t p://www.zmag.org/audio/albpe2.ram
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In the mean time, if you have any free time you might be interested in reading some of my other comments on this article, particularly the first one (which it seems that no on has bothered to reply to, probably because it would take too much time).
http://slashdot.org/~composer777
Also, here are some links to audio files about political economy, radical theory, and ParEcon (the economic system that I am most interested in at the moment). They might give you some insight into where the intellectual libertarian left is coming from. They are a series of lectures by Michael Albert, founder of Zmag, but there are many others on zmag as well, I just happen to like the logical, clear, concise approach that Albert takes. I would recommend that you listen to them in order, since the first set of lectures should be of interest to even general intellectual audiences. Even if you disagree with what he says in his Political Economy and Participatory Economics lectures, the Radical Theory lectures will probably help you in your quest for greater understanding.
Radical Theory
http://www.zmag.org/audio/albrt1.ram
htt
http://www.zmag
Political Economy
http://www.zmag.org/audio/albpe1.ram
ht
Participatory Economics
http://www.zmag.org/audio/albparec2.ra
http://www.zmag.org/audio/albparec3.ram
I wonder how well the bell curve theory works in cases with extreme outliers? Part of the assumption with the bell curve is that extreme outliers aren't supposed to exist. In the case of the US today, we seem to be centered around a median of 40K if I remember correctly. To the left of that we go down to zero, to the right, we go all the way up to 10's of billions?!?!? I'm not a statistician, and in fact, fell asleep during quite a few parts of it, but I would be curious to look this up and see how statisticians address situations such as these. Would they throw the bell curve analysis out, since it could be misleading? Is there a way of measuring how well the curve "fits" and showing this? The problem is, we could have a society that looks "fair" (at least to those that believe things should be distributed in this manner, which I do not) in the sense that it fits a nice bellcurve, and then we could have a super-extreme outlier, that owns 99% of the wealth. This would essentially be an economic dictatorship.
It would seem to me, that any honest statistician, when measuring the US economic distribution, would only with great reservation, and quite a bit of qualification, say that the distribution is bell shaped.
First, I'm what I would consider a "have", definitely not a have-not. I am fortunate to be in my position and while I may not be rich, I'm not worrying about money all the time, either.
I want to live in a country where people not only have opportunity on paper, but are also rewarded for their hard work. I don't believe in giving people money for being lazy, so we're in agreement there.
However, it requires an extraordinary burden of proof to justify why one person gets 40 billion a year in income while another gets next to nothing, especially in cases where the person earning next to nothing is working longer hours, in less-desirable work conditions than the other person. If we agree that markets adjust to supply and demand, then we MUST realize that differences in wealth such as these produce ENORMOUS incentive for people to compete with Bill Gates, so that they can get in on the lucrative income that he is making. The question is, "Why aren't they?" The only conclusion that I can come up with is that Bill Gates arrived there at the beginning, has managed to get a lock on that market, and now people have standardized on his OS. He's getting rewarded because people can't afford to switch and no one else has the startup capital to create a competitive OS or the software infrastructure to compete, not because he's innovating.
The fact is that differences in income such as those found in the US REQUIRE lack of upward mobility. Income differences such as those seen in the US are not the result of just working harder, they are the result of market barriers which keep the enormous competitive presssures at bay, allowing the Bill Gate's and Larry Ellison's of the world to make money hand over fist, while others starve.
If you want to live in a land of opportunity then you should focus on breaking down those barriers, so that we can have real opportunity, and real competition, not the highly stratified, immobile society that we have today, where the biggest predictor of wealth is whether or not you were born into it. Remember, William Gates III dropped out of Harvard, which should tell you which income class he started out in, how many poor people do you know that dropped out of Harvard? Oh yeah, he was a real "risk taker", risking all of his monthly allowance in order to start his own company.... Not that I care too much how he got there, but if we're going to talk about what a great land of opportunity this country is, then we need to portray the "rags to riches" stories of people like Bill Gates in their true light, not the bullshit propaganda myth that we are sold on tv.
Finally, I have a question. What exactly is job training going to do for someone in a job market where there is 10% unemployment? There will still be 10% unemployment, and chances are if that person is poor to begin with, they are going to have a very difficult time getting a job. Wouldn't you rather live in a society where, if someone works their ass off, they can get paid a living wage (where they can actually afford housing, food, shelter, medical, the essentials)? If the labor market doesn't hire them, then why shouldn't the government be allowed to hire them? It certainly isn't "efficient" to let all those people sit idle. The reason why businesses and the right wingers that support them hate that idea so much, is because it would remove one of the huge, unfair advantages that they have in keeping wages low, and that is, the threat of unemployment. There is no other reason that I can come up with for allowing people that are willing to work to remain unemployed. It's also why they hate welfare so much, welfare is a drop in the bucket compared to defense. However, a functioning welfare system gives employees bargaining power.
I also agree that we should fund education for everyone that wants it, not just those who can afford it. We certainly shouldn't require people to go into debt for their education, especially in a society where corporations are changing their requirements on a whim, with IT being a hot field one year, biotech, the next, etc. In fact, I think we should pay people to get training, and treat it like a job. After all, it IS work.
I would love to believe this, after all China's human rights record is atrocious. How is our manufacturing sector supposed to "compete" with their prison labor? Anyway, I digress.
The reasons the USSR failed, to put it simply are:
1. Economic isolation. They did not receive much direct investment, and in fact often helped the nations they were trading with, provided they were socialist.
2. They overextended their economy by spending too much on military expenditures.
3. They gave too much status and priveledge to party leaders, which drew the resentment and ire of the average workers.
The first issue isn't a problem with China, as they are awash in investment capital. China hasn't, as of yet, made the second mistake. As long as they keep their party leaders in check, and distribute resources in a fair manner, they could be very successful, at least in terms of GDP. The third issue, is the likely issue that will take them down, whereas in the USSR, it was primarily issue number 2 that destroyed them. As far as being successful in a moral, democratic sense, or in promoting freedom, liberty, happiness, and all that good stuff, well, I think we know what the answer to that question will be.
I don't think that China will follow the same path as the USSR. But, they will nevertheless leave quite a bit to be desired as a society.
First, I'm not a communist. But, that won't stop me from correcting you if I think you are stating the problems of the USSR or Communism, incorrectly. It's important to understand it's failings, and the failings of capitalism, if we want to correct them.
I never said that Rand ditched empirical analysis in favor of emotions, I said that they ditched it in favor of deductive reasoning.
This is of course a problem with libertarians, they think that you can either be "rational", meaning that you derive your philosophy through deductive logic, or irrational. However, there are many forms of academic inquiry. We have:
1. Deductive logic.
2. Inductive reasoning such as that promoted by the scientific method.
3. Fact based inquiry, where one looks at all the facts, and weighs them using intuition.
I'm sure there are more methods of decision-making out there, but the point is, that abstract reasoning is not always the best way to arrive at a decision.
"For example the assumption usually put with info like you provided is that if one man is richer than another it's somehow wrong."
I don't think that's the assumption that's put forward. That's a nice straw man, but I don't think this is what most sensible leftists are saying. In fact, I don't think that differences in wealth, within reason, are that big of a deal. The assumption put forward by most leftists, is that extreme differences in wealth can completely tilt the negotiation process in favor of those with the gargantuan sums of wealth, and as a result curb the negotiation power of the worker, thus limiting his freedom of opportunity. So, if we ignore all other factors, you might, in theory, be able to claim that these are negotiations between freely interacting parties. However, the left argues that this is not capturing the reality of the situation effectively. It doesn't explain why, for example, someone would choose a subsistence wage at a factory vs going out and forming their own factory. Class theory, however, does explain this, and it provides powerful insights into why certain groups behave in a certain way. It does it in a way that the theory of "freely associating beings" cannot.
"If in country A incomes range from 10K to 11K and in country b they range from 10K to 40K, which country has the largest gap between 'rich' and 'poor'? And all other things equal which would you rather live in?"
Asking questions such as this outside of the context of reality doesn't make much sense, but I'll do my best.
Clearly the second country has the largest gap. You are assuming that prices are fixed. Even someone with the slightest amount of familiarity with classical economics 101 knows that if there is a 10K to 40K difference in income, that the people making 10K will be significantly poorer in the 2nd country than they will the first, all things being equal. The reason is that the laws of supply and demand will ensure that all of the most desired goods will go to those at the top. All other things being equal, including the goods being traded, the poor in the second society will be significantly poorer. This is likely to produce a lot of problems. But, I think we are ignoring too many other factors to intelligently think about this. For example, did the people making 40K get that money because they worked four times as many hours? Or, did they get that way by lying on their resume and getting a cushy managerial position? Or, maybe they just went to the good schools, while the poor people only graduated high school, etc.
"If you have a system that guarantees most people have about the same income no matter how hard they work or don't, generally you have a system where no one is motivated to work much."
That's one way of looking at it. And, I agree, if you have a system such as the one you describe above, it would certainly cause a lot of resentment. However, I'm not sure that was the problem with the USSR, at least not in the way that you think. From my own experienc
If empirical data shows that your theory, produced in a vacuum, only through deductive reasoning, is wrong, then it's time to reevaluate that approach. There are times when using purely deductive, abstract reasoning is an irrational approach to solving problems, in the sense that it is cleary the wrong tool for the job. This is especially the case if one chooses abstract reasoning even when reality contradicts what he is saying. That is what I meant. For example, take my case of trying to come up with a logically complete reason for majoring in music. Or, trying to come up with a logical explanation for setting the voting age. (deductive) Logic is the wrong tool, because it demands that our explanations are always entirely consistent, but in the real world, there is often too much data to explain why one choice makes more sense than another. Many times things must be handled on a case by cases basis. Also, in the real world, we can learn if our theory/philosoph takes into account of the necessary data that we thought it did. Things can get far too complex, far too quickly for us to understand, on a purely abstract level, what the choices are. But, we have other tools, such as our intution, the scientific method, etc. The standard by which we test our theories should not just be internal consistency, but also it's ability to explain, predict, and guide.
Marxist theory does a lot to explain and predict (it doesn't do much in the 3rd area, which is guiding). He came up with the concept of class, and class consisted of two distinct groups, capitalist, and workers. Making this distinction between groups helps to explain how these groups relate to each other. Rand comes along and basically says, "Class does not exist, we only have freely acting individuals exchanging goods and services." So, Rand basically does her best to throw out one's ability to even recognize that class exists. She attempts to convince the reader that thinking in terms of groups is wrong through false analogy, and other rhetorical devices which don't hold much weight. The fact is, we've had a theory of capitalism based on individualism ever since Adam Smith wrote about it. The reason the concepts of class were created is because they help explain and predict things that Smith's (and Rand's) theory do not. Thus, the concept of class is a useful addition to classical economic theory. That's why we use them, not because we're "collectivist", not because we have no ablity to think of man as a single entity as Rand asserts.
Note that I'm not a socialist, I just find it funny that the argument many people level at socialism, can also be leveled at capitalism. And they fail to notice how much worse capitalism is at address this problem.
It's really strange how people mod certain comments as being trollist. Your insight is right on. The only thing that I would argue with is the word "deserve". But anyway...
Capitalism fails spectacularly at the problem called the "prisoner's dilemma". This situation is used all the time to explain why socialism won't work. In short, the prisoner's dilemma states that all it takes is one bad apple, and the whole system breaks. For example, in the case of communism, let's say we all work in a commune, and someone decides to become dictator and starts diverting resources away from the rest of the group and into ICBM's, then eventually people will get sick of working so hard and become cynical. The more common variant of this argument directed at socialism is that one bad worker will piss everyone else off, who is getting paid the same amount, and eventually all the workers will become lazier and lazier, until the economy breaks down, that's the myth that we are told (although my first description is closer to the truth about why the USSR failed).
In truth, most people could care less if the guy next to them works 10% less hard. Most people don't even start counting until it's at least 2-10x as much of a difference. Seriously, most people just don't care that much, until the differnce in wealth start getting absurd. And, in capitalism, as well as the USSR, the differences are absurd. Workers don't get pissed off at other workers nearly as much as they do the CEO, or the government official, that commands a high salary for essentially nothing.
So, how does capitalism handle the "prisoner's dilemma"? Answer, it doesn't. It's solution is to embrace it's failure to address the problem, and it embraces failure spectacularly.
For example, if I lied about my experience in the former USSR, I might get promoted to a slightly better paying managerial position. However, in capitalism, if I lie on my resume, I could find myself making twice, three, maybe ten times the amount that I made before. All I have to do is manage to BS my way into a high paying corporate job, and I can be sipping champaigne with the best of them. So, what happens in capitalism, is we have corruption everywhere, and the rewards are stupendous. The people who get away with this fraud are a spectacle to behold.
And, that also explains why we get so upset when we find out people, such as Ken Lay, cheated. It upsets us because our whole system is based on the utopian belief that everyone, despite the enormous pressure of billion to one earnings differences, will just follow the rules and work their way up the ladder in an ethical manner. Capitalism, in this sense, is even more naive and utopian than socialism, and that's saying a lot. We have an enormous burden of proof in order to justify these difference in wealth, and people like Ken Lay screw everything up, and show us that there is no justifiable reason for paying people this much more than the average worker. The fact that most of us still are ethical human beings gives us a lot of insight into human nature, as well as capitalism. These pieces of walking satire, such as Ken Lay, George Bush, and the huge number of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals practicing without credentials or without a license, show the absurdity of our system.
There is quite a bit of empirical data that shows that at least across countries, those that are more regulated have a more even distribution of wealth. As far as US history goes, we are witnessing some of the greatest differences in wealth that we have ever seen, and this is happening as regulations and social programs are being destroyed.
The US is by far the champion of free market, unregulated capitalism among 1st world countries, and not coincidentally, it has the largest gap of rich and poor, as measured by the Gini index, of any 1st world country. Keep in mind, statistics and mountains of evidence are the place where most leftists love to argue. You're not likely to win that kind of argument with any passionate leftist. That is likely why Rand and her followers for the most part ditch empirical data and choos to argue from a purely ideological, philosophical standpoint.
Libertarian's tend to routinely reject emprical data in favor of deductive, abstract logical reasoning. This makes their philosophy prone to all sorts of miscalculation. There is no rational basis for their approach and they take this approach even when reality contradicets them. You hit the nail on the head and I'm glad someone brought it up early in the discussion, as it's not likely that anyone will even see my question.
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I said roughly the same thing, in quite a few more words, in my question:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.
Please pick whichever questions you want from my short critique of right leaning Libertarian philosophy. I have only read a bit of Rand, and am still learning about her philsophy, but I have quite a few concerns about it.
I am what one might call a libertarian leftist, in the sense that I believe in strong liberty but also that the state should be strong enough to provide at minimum an equal opportunity for it's citizens, if not, preferrrably, equal outcomes for roughly equivalent work(i.e. if two people work really hard, they should get rewarded, if they are both lazy, they shouldn't get that much, etc.).
I have some questions regarding right leaning libertarian philosopy. I have bought a few books, such as "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal." What I have read in these books disturbs me. I read the writings of Rand, and I see someone who with almost religious zeal believes that rational thought can solve all of our problems, and that a just economy can be created only by deriving it from a philosophical foundation that includes man as a single entity as it's central focus. (I use the word "religious" on purpose, since it is impossible to deductively prove that deductive reasoning will yield the correct answers to all of life's problems, or even to the problem of creating a philosophy that will guide us towards a more just society. Believing that deductive reasoning alone will give one the anser to social problems is partially a matter of faith in that approach.) To explain why she takes the approach of having man as the center of her philosophy, rather than men (in the collective sense), she uses a loose analogy in the first chapter, saying that trying to build a society without using the concept of man at it's center is like trying to have a theory of the universe that doesn't talk about, or even attempt to identify individual stars, planets, celestial bodies, etc. Now, that makes sense, but I'm not so sure that the analogy is very useful. For example, do we need to have a theory of how neurons work, and a complete model of the brain, built from the atomic level on up, before we can attempt to comprehend things like personality, theory of the mind, etc? If not, then why would we need to have an economic theory that is built on the idea of human beings as discrete entities in order to build a just economic system? After all, we don't need to understand every detail of how neurons work to have a practical theory of the mind. If, on the other hand, you do insist that we need such a detailed model of the brain in order to understand the mind, then why shouldn't we extend Rand's analogy inward, and take it to it's rational conclusion that we shouldn't be talking about man, until we understand the brain, and shouldn't talk about the brain until we understand neurons, and therefore, shouldn't talk about neurons until we understand particle physics in it's entirely, and so on, and so forth. Why does Rand draw the line with man as the discrete element? How does she expect to gain insight into man, as a discrete entity, if she doesn't take her own advice and study all of the discrete elements of man?
The part that I find disturbing about Rand, is her lack of attention to empirical analysis. A theory can be wonderfully symetric and complete, beautiful to behold, etc., and when brought out into the real world, fail miserably to explain, predict, and guide. The reason is that theories can fail to highlight the important concepts, and as a result, distort our understanding of how the world works. I notice this quite a bit with Rand, and many libertarian forms of argument, they love to abstract problems into very contrived situations, pointing out only the things they believe are important, leaving invisible the parts that are inconvenient or that contradict their theory, and then, at least on the surface, they have an argument that is strong and logically satisfying. For example, when describing the process of negotiations between two parties, Rand says something to the effect of, 'If both partn
Yeah, but you're in the Southern US, closer to the satellite, it's more of a problem in the Northern part of the US. When I moved from Atlanta to St. Louis, there was a slight bit of signal loss. However, your point is valid, if you've got a perfectly aimed dish, it's not a huge problem, unfortunately, a lot of people have to deal with situations where maybe the dish is partially blocked, or they're very far North, etc.
I hope they've figured out how to adequately solve the problem of rain fade on the Ka Band. From what little I understand of satellite transmission, rain fade is an even bigger problem on the Ka Band than it is on the current Ku Band that Directv uses. It's not a problem at all on the C Band (big dish) satellites. Do they plan on getting around this by using more power? Or, do they think that more rain fade is an acceptable trade-off for the extra bandwidth?
I hoppe my reply isn't too disjointed, I jumped around a bit between paragraphs...
At some point, the highway system was engineered, and billions were pumped into it. Yes, the auto industry evolved, but it wouldn't have gotten very far without massive support from the government. The point I made, is even cutting the weight of automobiles by 75% would save a lot of fuel. The market just has not provided proper pricing of petroleum based products, so people treat it like a cheap commodity. So, not only has government subsidy propped up the auto industry by subsidizing roads to the tune of trillions, but also has subsidized it by keeping a strong military presence in the middle east to keep the cheap oil flowing. That's two massive subsidies. So, I suppose, within that context, the auto industry has "evolved", and been an "affordable" solution. But, the question is, why would they choose to do it that way, vs a potentially cheaper alternative? Once you take into account how much it really costs to keep cars running, stuff just doesn't add up. The only thing I can think of is that politicians were bought and sold to make it happen, the same way everything else happens in our country.
The problem is that costs aren't tabulated properly. They are just made invisible. This system is making you work a lot harder, you just don't see it. You don't make the obvious connection that the war in Iraq is costing lives, money, resources, etc. You don't make the connection that driving on that road costs 1,000's of man hours every year in labor, because the cost is swept under the rug. Even worse, we're so disconnected as a society, that, like most Americans, you fail to complete the circle, and reach the obvious conclusion that all those extra hours of work mean that you're going to have to work harder too. It doesn't happen for free. But, the roles of buyer and seller cause us not to see beyond the immediate transaction, whether that transaction is happening at the auto dealership or the gas pump. End result, we just don't think about it.
Part of the reason New York is so expesnive, is because there isn't any real room for expansion, part of it is literally on an island. However, if you put it on a chunk of land in the middle of the country, property values could have been kept reasonably sane.
Please don't think that I'm advocating ditching automobiles altogether, but we don't have to use them the way we do now, either.
Your last paragraph is somewhat funny, considering that New York is an excellent example of government successfully planning a city, and in a capitalist economy, imagine that. Just about every city is planned. I would challenge you to find a single major city that doesn't designate certain areas as manufacturing, and others as business, and others as residential. It just wasn't done right in the majority of cities. The auto was taken for granted, and intelligent planning wasn't even attempted. However, urban planning and development is a major part of any local government. It doesn't require a communist dungeon to successfully plan a city.
As far as the human nature argument goes, i.e people are greedy, selfish, etc., our system produces greedy, selfish people. Remember that. Economies don't just produce things, but they produce people too. People go in one end, and out the other, and they are transformed by the roles that they are required to fill. If the roles that people are required to fill are always adversarial (i.e. buyer and seller, manager vs worker, owner vs manager, etc.) then guess what, in order to survive, people will become greedy and selfish.
The USSR failed for many reasons, but not because people are too greedy. First, before I start, I'm glad they failed, it was a horrible system. I'm not an advocate of communism. It failed because they spent too much on nukes, and used too many resources on the production of military equipment, and not enough on taking care of the people. They didn't have enough left over to mee
The housing market comment reminds me of the idea of land trusts. They are a fairly good idea, you might want to go look it up, it was on NPR Tuesday. Anyway....
You are correct about the problems with regulation or doing anything that goes against the tide of the market. Market forces are unbelievably powerful. Whatever changes we make, we'll have to get rid of markets if we want them to stick. There are reasons for this. The main one is that markets tend to force prices down. This constant downward pressure means that if a democratically run factory, like those that were attempted in post-USSR Yugoslavia, want to compete, then each worker has to discipline himself. He has to cut his own salary. He has to force himself to work in worse and worse conditions. He has to be his own master, whipping himself into action. Eventually, the system breaks, and people are hired as managers in order to whip the workers into line, since it is impossible for people to do this to themselves on a continuing basis. This is what happened in Yugoslavia, the workers weren't able to punish themselves enough, so they brought in managers from Harvard business school to do it for them. As soon as one factory hires managers, then the rest have to follow suit. In order for the manager to effectively do his job, he has to be insulated from the effects of his decision, so naturally, he gets a good office away from the factory floor, and a higher paycheck. What do you get after doing this? class separation, right back where you started. So, no, you can't really have market democracy, or market socialism, or whatever you want to call it. You pretty much have to create a set of institutions, and keep them separate, as much as possible, from markets.
The above scenario is also why regulation has it's problems. Markets are powerful, and if there is money to be made, then politicians can often be paid off to get rid of regulations. It's a never-ending battle.
How we get to the vision I describe below, from where we are today, no one knows yet. But giving up doesn't seem like that great of an option to me.
I'm studying an economic vision developed by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, called Participatory Economics. www.parecon.org Albert is receiving quite a bit of praise outside the US for his work, but hasn't received so much as a book review in a major US publication.
There are alternatives to capitalism. And no, I'm not talking about socialism, or market socialism, or communism. Parecon rests on a different set of values. I'll keep it simple. Four main values:
1. Solidarity - People should work together rather than fight each other.
2. Equity - equitable outcomes in relation to how hard one works.
3. Participatory Self Management - when possible, people should be allowed to manage their own lives
4. Diversity - We want an economy with diverse outcomes and choices
To meet these values several social norms are established:
1. Remuneration should be for effort and sacrifice, whenever possible, not for output, not for owning property.
2. In so far as their are tasks, those tasks should be divided up so that each job is composed of tasks that are equally empowering. So, the idea of a job where all one does is manage will not exist. But their might be a job where one manages part of the day, and sweeps the floor the rest of the day. Or, where one works as a writer 3 hours a day, and a coal miner the other 2 hours.
3. Decision making should be formulated to allow people to make decisions in accord with how much they are affected by that decision.
4. Participation in the planning of the yearly budget is a right, but not a requirement. In other words, if you don't care to figure out how much toilet paper you need for that year, don't worry, it'll get figured out for you the same way it is right now. If, on the other hand, you plan on buynig the latest gadget, you have a right to participate in it's planning. In our current economy, you have very litt
Taking this statement to it's logical conclusion...
1. Outstanding engineers in America survive, maybe.
2. Average in America = pizza delivery driver.
3. Completely incompetent in India make a lot of money.
3. Average in India make a lot of money(relative to the rest of the population).
4. Outstanding in India makes a great living
So, if you're "only" 8 times as productive as the average engineer (not 10 times as productive), and you live in America, then you're in for a twenty percent reduction in salary. Sounds fair to me.
If you're only three times as productive, then you'll just have to get used to getting by on 70% less. After all, fair is fair, and being 3 times as productive just isn't cutting it anymore..
If you're twice as productive, then you'd better get used to foodstamps, and there's a homeless shelter that you can sleep at when you're not at work.