Comments on: Leif Wenar and the resource curse: a Frankenstein proposal?

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:21:04 +0000

The police in any community are members of that community. Outsiders are not permitted that role.

“Laws do not make communities, communities make laws.”

I thought I was saying something obvious when I wrote that (comment #29), but now its a googlewhack. I forget sometimes how eccentric I am.
It’s depressing.

By: Tracy W

Tracy W — Fri, 16 May 2008 08:16:27 +0000

we should distinguish between inherited wealth and produced resources, where inherited wealth are those resources we (unjustly) inherit by some means from prior generations of fellow citizens, while produced resources are those resources that are produced through one’s own work or initiative.

They are different sorts of resources. For example, we have all inherited Newtonian physics, an incredibly valuable resource (or at least I’ve inherited it and everyone I know inherited it, perhaps you produced it through your own work or initiative). But that sort of inheritance is completely different to a natural resource, as no government can take Newtonian physics in the same literal way they can take oil out of the ground.

Also, generations overlap a great deal. If I work with a guy thirty years older than me, and together we produce a considerably valuable resource, was that resource inherited or produced by my own work and initiative?

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:13:18 +0000

Yeah, come to think of it, using this Freedom House scale seems a bit problematic. What about authoritarian (or even totalitarian) governments that distribute the wealth equally? Punishing them for stealing from their populations seems problematic.

We need some other scale. Ah! Eureka! What about the Gini index?! Let’s make 40 the threshold: any government ruling over a society with Gini coefficient above 40 is stealing from its citizens and needs to be penalized until it changes its ways and incentivized to do so.

Yeah, that’s it. I’m sure CATO and the US government will throw their considerable weight behind this proposal.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 16 May 2008 06:57:28 +0000

#40 Right, I see the point, which is a good one, about why this counts as theft but not that. But I guess what’s going on here (since Leif isn’t a libertarian) is a bit of coalition-building. Though we disagree about that being theft, we all agree about this (libertarians, Rawlsians, social democrats, etc.).

[You get the same dialectical move in Pogge’s work on the the harms inflicted by the global order and negative duties.]

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 16 May 2008 06:20:34 +0000

I’m not sure that Oliveiro’s point is all that orthogonal. Consider the case of somewhere like Brazil, or pre-Chavez Venezuela, where there was a distribution of land which was wholly inequitable, had been made in the past by a despotic and/or colonial government and which there was no effective way for campesinos to challenge. Should we be suing anyone who deals in Brazilian agricultural products, placing tariffs on Brazilian sugar and placing the proceeds in trust for some point in the future when land reform is carried out? I suppose Wenar’s response would be that if the country gets 7/10 on the Freedom House scale or better, the peasants can throw out a neoliberal government and elect a Chavez figure. But as far as I can see, this really does rather show that Martin Wisse has a point and this is to some extent an example of the good old libertarian deck-stacking move, whereby once you give them their initial assumptions about property rights and liberty, everything else follows through.

By: soru

soru — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:47:56 +0000

‘collective ownership of resources’

This deserves the name ‘socoilism’. Surprisingly, for an principle that defines the political economics of both Venezuela and Norway (and, to an extent, even the UK), not only is it a googlewhack, the only reference is a misspelling of old-fashioned socialism.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:45:13 +0000

#36 – I think the point you’re making has merit (I’ve made it myself in the past). But I think it is somewhat orthogonal to the concerns about kleptocracy that Leif raises.

By: Oliviero

Oliviero — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:36:41 +0000

I still don’t get what is so special about “natural” resources. But, I mean what is relevant, when we think of involuntary material disadvantages, is the whole set of external means that affect people’s capacity to pursue their ends, irrespective of whether they are natural or produced. In this sense, rather than drawing the distinction between natural and produced resources (as Wenar, Pogge and others do) we should distinguish between inherited wealth and produced resources, where inherited wealth are those resources we (unjustly) inherit by some means from prior generations of fellow citizens, while produced resources are those resources that are produced through one’s own work or initiative.

By: a. y. mous

a. y. mous — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:30:31 +0000

Re: #32

Chris, No accusation.

“..since I struggle with the notion of a “people” anyway, and I can’t see why the notion of their collective ownership of resources is more persuasive..”

You can’t, because of your conditioning. Well, I can. So can we. ‘cause of our conditioning.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:11:58 +0000

Test:
I have one in “moderation.” Let’s see if this one goes through

By: Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:05:01 +0000

To #20: I certainly see your concern, Chris. If we were to accept Leif’s arguments, then it strikes me that action of some kind is needed: we cannot let the current situation continue. If the alternatives are do nothing and continue to knowingly contribute to an injustice versus do something and act which may contribute to worries in the very short term but is what justice appears to demand and will benefit all in the mid-term, then I am all for acting. So I’m worried about the same potential problems, but perhaps more willing to accept them.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:50:04 +0000

#31. “Chris Bertram very cleverly hid that bit in long OP and shrugs away the issue.”

I’m totally in the dark about what you’re accusing me of here. Any chance of an explanation?

By: A. Y. Mous

A. Y. Mous — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:36:06 +0000

I am surprised that there is a consensus view here that the U. S. partakes in and of kleptocracy and that consensus extends to shutting up about the rest.

It is not the U. S. It is the whole lot of “enlightened democracies” that sprang out of the European cluster-fuck that happened a couple of centuries ago. The cause of it is the very thought of enabling resource availability, equally to one and all (including defining the right to demand state sanctioned violence) but at the same time fixing the “state” as the pivot, when it should be “people”. Chris Bertram very cleverly hid that bit in long OP and shrugs away the issue.

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:23:05 +0000

No, I think if the piece is to be judged as a purely theoretical, academic exercise, then it’s a very good piece, hard to disagree with anything, really.

Yes, the US government should crack down on Exxon. Definitely. Not just for Exxon’s profiting from stolen oil, but also, perhaps, for Exxon hiring thugs to murder people in Indonesia. Also Coca-Cola – for paying death squads in Colombia to murder labor organizers there (IIRC). Yes, it should, it must.

By: Tracy W

Tracy W — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:56:42 +0000

And the other one about a “minimally-decent government” – as far as I can tell fair distribution of large amounts of money requires more than a minimally-decent government. Perhaps this may be a matter a definition, but getting large amounts of money to ordinary people is quite a difficult task for a government, there’s a big incentive for individual people in the government to either steal the resources outright, to spend them on pet projects, or to distribute them to marginal voters and other powerful interest groups, rather than to the general mass of people. For example, the US and the EC all operate schemes by which farmers, a small minority of the population, get a significant amount of subsidies, and as far as I can tell this is due to a small interest group being able to outlobby the great mass of taxpayers.

That’s the US and the EC, which have had centuries of government which, whatever its faults, do have societies so good that people are willing to risk their lives to get in, how long would it take a country currently ruled by a kleptomaniac government to develop a set of institutions strong enough to actually distribute a large amount of money to its citizens fairly?