While it is the norm (certainly taught as the norm) to profit by coming together in a transaction where both parties leave with more value it is also possible to profit by taking value. This can be done through outright robbery but it can also be done in more subtle (and legal) ways by making a transaction look more voluntary than it is. When one party is negotiating from a position of strength (employers) and the other party is negotiating with their life and physical well being on the line (employees, especially those on the lower end of the pay scale) then the first party can take more value and profit from the transaction than if they were both negotiating for a net gain in value.
So, somewhere along the way, largely by historical accident and inertia, we've decided as a society that it is ok to keep a huge portion of the population on the edge of desperation and that if they fall it is their own concern. Any moves to change this is seen as an attack on business owners and their profits. This is short-sighted since if people are motivated rather than forced to produce value there will be more people contributing to the improvement of the castle and fewer looking at the walls with jealousy and chip away at it whenever they get the opportunity.
If there are people that would behead other people out of resentment for their success, the last thing I want to do is appease them with basic income paid out of my taxes.
The kind of attitude that rationalizes violence with generalizations based on a single variable like wealth should be penalized, not rewarded with money.
Besides the principle of the matter, which is very important to me, I think acquiescing to predatory and bigoted attitudes, like those held by advocates of class warfare, will result in a more dangerous society in the future.
It is actually less risky in the long run to confront and push back against those types of attitudes wherever they arise, than to give into its demands, in my opinion.
Well, I disagree, and I don't think it is about demands, but basic needs. In particular, I find the notion that the core problem is "resentment of success" to be very naive, especially when projected at such a large segment of society.
It's perfectly predictable what courses of action a desperate person will start to contemplate. It's equally predictable what is bound to happen when desperation becomes systemic.
I find the philosophical discussion about what is owed, deserved, right, wrong, moral and immoral disinteresting in this context. "What works", is more interesting.
History suggests that violence and suppression ("pushing back"), works temporarily, with the predictable result that the targets now have even less to lose, and become even more desperate. Which of course, if you're naive, suggests that even more suppression is needed. And so on. At some point, it explodes in the end, one way or another.
Personally, I suspect that guillotine insurance is cheaper for everyone.
When given resources, people who have nothing go and spend those on necessities–basic consumption, precisely the stuff that stimulates the economy. They're not going to send the resources to an off-shore account. This benefits society at large. Markets live and die by their ability to sustain healthy, large scale exchange of goods and services. I.e., don't you worry that you might be doing someone a service, that money will make it back to your pocket, and—most likely—then some.
So maybe there's a way to make more money for everyone, alleviate suffering, and decrease the need for suppressive force all at once.
The downside being, maybe, that we have to give up some ideology to pursue what's effective.
Which is not to say that basic income is guaranteed to work. We don't know yet, because it hasn't been tried at scale.
>>It's perfectly predictable what courses of action a desperate person will start to contemplate. It's equally predictable what is bound to happen when desperation becomes systemic.
Absolute poverty levels are at their lowest level in history. Any revolution based on class will be fuelled by resentment, not real need.
Mass guillotining would also not be a phenomenon ever borne out of necessity, given it would only be possible after the revolutionaries have obtained power and total control over the population targeted for mass executions. It is borne out of spite, and if it's targeted at the rich categorically, from envy.
>>History suggests that violence and suppression ("pushing back"), works temporarily, with the predictable result that the targets now have even less to lose, and become even more desperate.
It's not about suppressing some irrepressible force. It's about shaping human behaviour away from the arrogance of assuming one has a right to take by force another party's assets.
I believe people can react differently to relative poverty depending on which behavior is tolerated in society. If you continually tell them they're victims of those who are succeeding, and validate the message by instating forcible income programs that institutionalize receipt of unearned income, they will see demands for politically coordinated violence and forcible wealth transferral as both a viable and a morally justified position.
>>When given resources, people who have nothing go and spend those on necessities–basic consumption, precisely the stuff that stimulates the economy
Spending at Walmart is not good for the economy in any general sense. Between investing $1 billion in R&D for a tech company, and being forced to hand over a billion to give to people who could be earning that money doing one of the many jobs for which companies are unable to find willing workers, it's clear which one would actually enhance future productivity more.
>>They're not going to send the resources to an off-shore account.
Money held in an offshore account isn't locked up in a vault. It is invested in real economies, to enhance productivity and abundance.
Investment by people who are proven to be good investors, is excellent for the economy.
>>Which is not to say that basic income is guaranteed to work. We don't know yet, because it hasn't been tried at scale.
We have tried forcible income redistribution, at ever greater intensities, over the last half century, and there is every indication that it's not working.
Economic growth has slowed, wage growth has slowed, the labor participation rate has decreased, and the rate of incarceration, drug abuse, and single parenthood has increased.
Depends on your perspective. There are worse things than death. And equalizing misery is almost romantic.
And compared to other revolutions, the French Revolution was not that bloody. It was just the localized executions that made for all the blood running in the streets for weeks.
No, while it was a revolts against the revolutionaey regime, it was not one to restore the pre-revolutionary regime or the classes who lost power in the revolution, it was a popular peasant uprising sgainst conscription by the revolutionary regime.
OTOH, even if it were a counter-revolution, why would it be excluded: would you really make the argument that a revolution isn't particularly bloody, if you have ignore the cost in lives of putting down attempts to restore the old order? That's part of the cost of achieved a revolution.
The counter-revolution was more to restore church power than the monarchy (that's how the peasants were enlisted, anyway), but that's not a relevant detail. Re why exclude: You were trying to prove that initial revolutions, contra the present upper classes kill mostly poor people. Might be true but can't be shown by citing counter-revolutions. Sure, similarly, White Russian soldiers killed a lot of poor peasants - but then, why wouldn't they?
> You were trying to prove that initial revolutions, contra the present upper classes kill mostly poor people.
Well, it wasn't me, and the claim didn't mention “initial”, it was: “most people who get hurt in a blood-thirsty revolution are generally not the rich and powerful.” I think it's fair to characterize people killed in resistance by the old order before the institutionalization of the revolution to be hurt in the revolution.
It's not just the executions for the French Revolution. You have to add all the wars that followed during 20 years, including the wars fought by Napoleon. So we're talking a few hundred thousand deaths still.
>>When one party is negotiating from a position of strength (employers) and the other party is negotiating with their life and physical well being on the line (employees, especially those on the lower end of the pay scale) then the first party can take more value and profit from the transaction than if they were both negotiating for a net gain in value.
I don't see how that could possibly be true. An employee has plenty of time to peruse offers in the marketplace before accepting one of them, and even more time after accepting one of them.
Job market analysis is an extremely efficient task with modern job listing sites. A person can quickly assess the lay of the land as far as prevailing wages and required qualifications, and applying for the jobs is as easy as sending off an email with minor customization of the cover letter.
The idea that a person would take a job that pays less than what they can fetch on the marketplace because they are poor by developed world standards seems like the kind of overly cynical and unsubstantiated conspiracy theory thinking that motivates so many ill-conceived mandates like minimum wage.
>An employee has plenty of time to peruse offers in the marketplace before accepting one of them, and even more time after accepting one of them.
You seem to be extrapolating middle-class experience and choices to the working poor and below.
The idea that the marketplace is immune to distortions caused by a well-founded fear of pain or existential threat seems like an pollyanna view and the type of thinking that leads to ill-conceived policy like removing worker protections because the market can do no wrong.
People can and do get stuck in a treading-water situation where they simply try to feed themselves and their family and keep them housed and clothed at a minimum standard while working so much that finding another job or spending time improving their value to the marketplace is an unreachable dream.
That's not to say I completely disagree with you. There are plenty of open questions. If basic survival and physical security was guaranteed for a population how many would take that minimum guarantee and just spend all of their free time on activities that benefit only themselves (making them the worst possible drain on society)? How many would find a suitable job or other activity that creates significant value for others but that doesn't make up for the resources spent on their minimum guarantees (making them a smaller drain on society)? How many would take the opportunity to improve their lot through more aggressive negotiations in the sale of their time and labor or through improving their value generation capacity through education or by taking bigger market risks to the point of contributing more than the societal investment? And, finally, how would each of these groups contribute to the whole in aggregate? Would it be a net gain? I think that is an open question and one that a lot of current ideology makes it very difficult to get real answers.
> So, somewhere along the way, largely by historical accident and inertia, we've decided as a society that it is ok to keep a huge portion of the population on the edge of desperation and that if they fall it is their own concern.
This has how the vast majority of humanity has always lived.
Who's "we" and what can "we" do about it? If you're suggesting taking more money from people who earned it to give it to people that didn't, I think you'll find that "we" doesn't include a lot of people.
Nah, no single decision was made about keeping a huge portion of the population on the edge of desperation. And companies are not generally to blame for people's desperation, unless they somehow cheat or commit fraud (usually in collusion with the state). Furthermore, always assuming that the employer is always in the position of strength is wrong. Even though Chinese factory workers are paid very little by Western standards, they are seeing their wages rise, which is exactly because they are increasingly able to negotiate from a position of strength.
Lastly, a transaction is either voluntary or it is not. There are no degrees of 'voluntary' if you use the word in the conventional sense.
> Lastly, a transaction is either voluntary or it is not. There are no degrees of 'voluntary' if you use the word in the conventional sense.
So if I point a gun at your head and threaten to shoot you if you don't hand over your wallet, you would say that you voluntarily handed over your wallet because that was a fair price for keeping your head intact?
Most people mean something different when they use the word "voluntary".
In the conventional sense of the word, no, that transaction is clearly not voluntary. And I don't think your example is making the point that you're trying to use it to make.
OK, so here's a second example: suppose I somehow arrange to have control over all of the available food and tell you that in order to access it you have to hand over your wallet. Is your choice to hand over your wallet so you can eat now voluntary or not?
OK, so if you give me your wallet because I threaten to kill you with a gun (quickly, painlessly) that's not voluntary, but if you give me your wallet because I threaten to kill you by starving you to death (slowly, painfully) that is voluntary? That makes no sense to me.
If I don’t give you my wallet, I face starvation. I could choose to steal from you but that would be immoral.
I personally don’t have any control over any food. If I go the supermarket, they threaten to starve me if I don’t hand over my money. I believe it is a voluntary choice for me to pay up not to starve.
But supermarkets are competitive. The scenario I'm putting forward is one where I have a monopoly and use that leverage to charge you 100% of your income for just enough food to survive.
>Lastly, a transaction is either voluntary or it is not. There are no degrees of 'voluntary' if you use the word in the conventional sense.
If I rescue you from a burning building contingent upon you signing over 90% of your wealth and future earnings first did we engage in a voluntary transaction?
I think you choose to use a redefined "voluntary" to refer to things that are clearly not (a ploy frequently used by certain corporate funded 'libertarian' think tanks). By doing this, a source of relatively unchecked power and profit is protected.
""The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever."
> I think you choose to use a redefined "voluntary" to refer to things that are clearly not (a ploy frequently used by certain corporate funded 'libertarian' think tanks). By doing this, a source of relatively unchecked power and profit is protected.
I was saying that you cannot talk about degrees of voluntary. If there are degrees of voluntary, then you end up in a situation where you can argue that any choice is both voluntary and involuntary. Stick a gun in my back and force me to choose to give up my wallet or my life. Is this a voluntary transaction, since, in the end, I make the choice? I would say it is absolutely involuntary.
Of course, stating that there are degrees of “voluntary” is a typical ploy by socialists to justify having the state loot their citizens.
I liked the part where you dodged the hypothetical question about your house being on fire and then declared the idea of there being shades of gray a socialist plot.
I see your point and agree with you to an extent but there are certainly degrees of voluntary.
A transaction at gunpoint is clearly not voluntary.
But what if I take you out partying, get you loaded up on tequila shots? Can you still make a voluntary transaction?
What if I know that you are cheating on your wife and hint that I won't say anything to her if you sold me your car for $100? In some sense of the word - this would be a voluntary transaction. At the same time, there's not much of a choice to be made.
Last theoretical scenario - I'm a steel tycoon and a multi-billionaire and I decide to buy up all the freight companies and airlines. You can ship whatever products you want on via my transport companies - except steel. You can only ship steel you've purchased from one of my companies. Is your decision to buy my steel voluntary?
A contract made under economic duress is voidable in many cases in the US, and for good reason. Voluntary isn't always as clear-cut as it seems.
There are degrees, I think. Consider the choice between:
- Working a job that requires intense physical labor for $30/hr. and benefits, cons include significant physical impairment starting in your late forties and high risk of serious injury
- Working a job that is largely sedentary for $20/hr. and benefits, cons include serious health risks
- Work a third shift part-time job for $40/hr and no benefits, cons include inconsistent weekly hours, practically no career advancement, and considerable disadvantage to your retirement (no 401k matching), huge risk if anyone in your family needs medical care (definitely put off having kids)
- Go (back, sometimes) to school, cons include significant debt and opportunity costs, coupled with the risk of no career options (went into welding, factory closed, etc.)
Many people in America have no real "good" options, so while yeah, their choices are always kind of "voluntary", there's almost always a big asterisk next to it.
>Lastly, a transaction is either voluntary or it is not. There are no degrees of 'voluntary' if you use the word in the conventional sense.
If that were true there would be no such thing as coercion. There would be 'forced to do it' or 'not forced to do it' not more subtle levels where varying levels of unpleasant pressure is brought to bear.
So, somewhere along the way, largely by historical accident and inertia, we've decided as a society that it is ok to keep a huge portion of the population on the edge of desperation and that if they fall it is their own concern. Any moves to change this is seen as an attack on business owners and their profits. This is short-sighted since if people are motivated rather than forced to produce value there will be more people contributing to the improvement of the castle and fewer looking at the walls with jealousy and chip away at it whenever they get the opportunity.