Rawls, Cohen and the Laffer hypothesis

It is not my intention to provoke argument or even further discussion about this, which you’ve already tossed aside as not the subject of this post. Merely to register a complaint.
On PubMed, from the BMJ, with a publish date of 22.12.01, there is an article by Leonard Leibovici with the title

Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial

From the abstract:
“Main outcome measures
Mortality in hospital, length of stay in hospital, and duration of fever.
Results
Mortality was 28.1% (475/1691) in the intervention group and 30.2% (514/1702) in the control group (P for difference=0.4). Length of stay in hospital and duration of fever were significantly shorter in the intervention group than in the control group (P=0.01 and P=0.04, respectively).”

It’s not my area of expertise, neither is it an area of great interest to me, but the arrogance of logical positivism and its orphans in the contemporary world of letters is not amusing to me anymore, given the state of the world and given that the damage to the world which has created that state is a direct outcome of that arrogance and its consequenct myopia, which sees what it sees and sees naught else, nor will admit even the possibility of truths which threaten its dominance, until forced into acceptance by irrefutable proof. Which Professor Liebovici may or may not be offering.
For all I know he’s a religious lunatic with tenure. Though he has been published at the Lancet as well.
Still even the presence of religious lunatics doesn’t justify arrogance and dismissal of things that assault the contemporary paradigm anymore than the presence of bloodthirsty savages among them justified the extinction of whole tribes of indigenous men women and children.
I draw this parallel because the attitude is the same, merely continued, with the focus of its disdain recast onto currently permissible targets .
Disdain is no longer a justifiable human response to anything.

JoB, I fear that what you describe is a ratchet mechanism: when the system fails, you have to wait to change it, but in the good times again, you won’t find support for change because everything goes well.

Was there any discussion at the conference of the results of academics like Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett who are claiming that inequality is one cause of most form of social problem? If that empirical evidence holds up (and I don’t know how robust it is) that is a strong argument against Pareto improvements in itself.

Zamfir, I’m personally convinced that the economy post-70s is a huge pyramid game and that the basic truth we see revealed today is the bleeding obvious: losses of ‘the’ economy are, and by necessity, always nationalized. But I don’t believe that once a quick fix is in place, it will be business as usual again. Public speech internationally has turned Scandinavian, and there’s no reversibility in that ;-)

John Q, thanks – I sympathize: as long as anybody that has spoken uncritically at the neoliberal Davos World Summit has anything whatsoever to say in public affairs we’re in a bad shape. But I’d rather tax the hell out of them once things are tranquil than do it now when Bermuda & likes still exist. So, let’s agree on this slogan: “Down with the Wizards of Davoz!”

Seriously though, to keep the war/revolution analogy, I don’t see an exit strategy. Yes, there is need of international fiscal oversight. Yes, the snowball of richness needs to be melted before it consumes all of us. But, no, that’s not all of the issue. Companies need to be restricted in size: as long as we can have private administrations that dwarf the public administration of any medium sized European economy; we will get into this shit – because that is where the rich get their own excessive power from. Yep, that’s a bit of Marx, and I’m not going to apologize ;-).

The reason tax rates aren’t higher and bankers are getting bailed out on hugely generous terms isn’t because Rawlsians have outvoted Cohenites behind the veil of ignorance, or even because lots of economists believe the Laffer hypothesis. It’s because the rich and powerful are, well, rich and powerful.

No. Tax rates aren’t higher because of the widespread belief among U.S. voters that high tax rates are harmful to economic growth. In places and eras where those beliefs were less prevalent, tax rates are higher (despite the fact that those eras and places also have their own rich and powerful). That charges of ‘class warfare’ and ‘the politics of envy’ are effective is a result of those general beliefs. In other places and eras, class struggle was seen as a positive by enough voters, for it to be a vote-getter rather than the reverse.

As for the bailouts — does Brad Delong’s clear support for the latest Geitner bailout plan indicate he’s one of the self-serving rich and powerful (or is being paid to serve their interests, or suffers from false consciousness)? Or is it possible that the main motivation for the bailouts comes from the fact that those in charge are scared shitless (justifiably or not) about the potential for general collapse if the banks are not bailed out?

Lastly, what all y’all Rawls fans will never seem to grasp is the declining returns of high income in an increasingly wealthy society. Because of that, the lives of the rich and poor have been converging (pretty dramatically) in material ways — gini indexes notwithstanding. In the 19th century, the lower classes were physically smaller because they were malnourished. 40 years ago when I was a kid, the middle classes had clotheslines instead of dryers, black and white TVs, window fans instead of air-conditioning, rarely ate in restaurants, and most had never traveled on an airplane. Living in bog standard suburbia not rural Appalachia, I knew kids whose families who always drank powdered milk rather than fresh to economize.

But what kinds of material possessions do the wealthy in the U.S. now have that the lower classes do not? It’s hard to come up with much–yes, the rich have fancier versions and more prestigious brands, but that’s mostly it. Despite the name, Sub Zero refrigerators don’t keep your beer any colder. Material differences in living conditions have been reduced pretty dramatically even as nominal dollar inequality has grown, and they’ve been reduced by increasing societal wealth overall, not redistribution.

On the other hand, I have some relatives about my who live on wages that are, say, 1 1/2 to 2x minimum wage. You could double their wages, and they couldn’t live my lifestyle, whereas you could cut my wages to their level and I could (and did so for many years as grad student). In my late 40s, I enjoy the same vigorous activities I did in my 20s, and those cost very little (hiking, backpacking, biking, canoeing). Pandora, Project Gutenberg, and my $8.99 NetFlix subscription keep me well supplied with entertainment. They, on the other hand, are overweight smokers, don’t eat well, get little exercise, and so are developing the typical chronic health problems — the years have taken much more of a toll. They’re also not good at deferred gratification, tend to be impulsive shoppers, and so always have credit card debt problems. You get the picture. In other words, those differences that remain — and they’re not trivial — are not ones that could be readily ameliorated by transfer payments. Most of the difference that matter would persist. As societies get wealthier, it is increasingly the case that the quality of your life depends on who you are rather than how much money you have — what would Rawls say about that?

Now, you might say — well, if you don’t really need as much money as you make, then we should raise taxes on higher earners and redistribute the proceeds. But the problem is that because higher incomes bring diminishing returns, higher tax rates will have more of a discouragement effect than they would otherwise. Even at my existing marginal rates of ~50% (when you figure fed, FICA, state and local), more leisure looks pretty attractive. So I’d argue that the poor are better off if you keep marginal rates low enough that the wealthy keep working hard rather than kicking back and relaxing more. But if increasing tax rates make it more normal for people like me to demand additional leisure rather than additional income, that would be OK, too. Societally, I think it would be a mistake, but for me personally it’d really be OK — I can adapt.

In my late 40s, I enjoy the same vigorous activities I did in my 20s, and those cost very little (hiking, backpacking, biking, canoeing). Pandora, Project Gutenberg, and my $8.99 NetFlix subscription keep me well supplied with entertainment. They, on the other hand, are overweight smokers, don’t eat well, get little exercise, and so are developing the typical chronic health problems —the years have taken much more of a toll. They’re also not good at deferred gratification, tend to be impulsive shoppers, and so always have credit card debt problems. You get the picture

Indeed.

As to whether Logical Positivism is good or bad, I’m sure it has done just as much harm to the world, and as much good, as alternate worldviews, including deity-centered ones.

It’s hard to see how this could be the case, just on the grounds that (1) Logical Positivism is a fairly recent development and so hasn’t had the time to do much good or harm, and (2) the quantity of adherents isn’t large proportionally, so it doesn’t have the numbers to do much good or harm with, even potentially. But a neutrally dismissive response is probably, overall, the right approach…

JoB, one of my responses would be, there’s a span between the first rung of Maslow’s hierarchy (starvation vs. physical needs met) and the pinnacle of self-actualization. I agree with what you’ve said, but I don’t see it as arguing against what I intended to say.

Suppose in my example that $20 buys one sufficient goods to satisfactorily meet one’s physical needs and physical needs for nonworking children, assuming prudent spending and avoidance of all luxury goods. Whereas $100 allows for $80 of money to spend on leisure, etc.

That avoids the extreme example of starvation, but forces us to consider whether we want to call unequal Situation A or egalitarian Situation B more just. We can assume half the population in Situation A is in “moderately but tolerably stressful” straits (hardly any resources to spend on fun) whereas everyone in Situation B is in “low-stress” straits (at five times sustenance levels, they have plenty of resources to have fun with).

Which situation would rational persons behind a veil of ignorance naturally tend to support? Would they choose to maximize the well-being of the least advantaged (essentially pessimistic, assuming they’ll end up in the worst rung)? Or would they choose to ensure the least advantaged are in tolerable straits, and then maximize other groups (essentially optimistic from self-interest POV, hoping they’ll end up in the best rung).

I think these are questions about human nature, and about what rationality is, that Rawls assumes away. That’s no slight against Rawls, I hope: just an indication that there is further thinking to be accomplished here. I also believe that this thinking to be accomplished has direct applications to how we respond to the current crisis.

salient,

Yes and no. The expectorant study seems to be based on some kind of urban legend. The “intercessory prayer” fraud was part of a deliberate effort to wedge religious doctrines and dogma into science. The former is a bizarre aberration, the latter part of a well-organized political/cultural initiative. See Barbara Forrest’s and Paul Gross’s Creationism’s Trojan Horse for an idea of what is going on. http://www.amazon.com/Creationisms-Trojan-Horse-Intelligent-Design/dp/0195319737/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238424889&sr=8-1

They’re also not good at deferred gratification, tend to be impulsive shoppers, and so always have credit card debt problems. You get the picture.

They could learn a thing or two from the wealthy. Maybe Paris Hilton can start offering life-coaching classes.

I’m sorry, I see them now. I was looking for similar notation when I scanned down….

The former is a bizarre aberration, the latter part of a well-organized political/cultural initiative.

No disagreement with your characterization of the latter, but I’d completely disagree with your characterization of the former. This probably isn’t the thread to go into detail about it, but I’ve found several entire branches of alternative medicine to be very problematic, and part of what I’d call a loosely-organized profit initiative that relies upon convincing large numbers of people that absurd things are true. Taking on my characterization of the former, surely the parallels I see become more clear.

I should not have said “a larger ability to spend” but “a higher average buying power & with less normalized distribution” or something in that vein.

Assuming, as appears to be the case, that the study was totally legit (no data mining etc), the obvious question for me was why anyone would think it worthwhile (ex ante) to test this out.

The study author’s answer essentially repudiates the possibility of the study making sense, stating that its purpose was To deny from the beginning that empirical methods can be applied to questions that are completely outside the scientific model of the physical world. Or in a more formal way, if the pre-trial probability is infinitesimally low, the results of the trial will not really change it, and the trial should not be performed. This, to my mind, turns the article into a non-study, although the details provided in the publication (randomisation done only once, statement of a wish, analysis, etc) are correct.

It may, as tristero says, be a silly, fraudulent study. Certainly it was intended to be silly: Leibovici had published an article two years earlier than the study cited (1629 BMJ V 319 18-25 Dec 1999) in which he compares alternative medicine to a cuckoo, stealing nourishment from legitimate scientific medicine.

Re. RRIP, if the study was more legitimate than dsquared implies, it generates food for thought. I regularly attend a United Methodist Church, but have a wife who is blatantly nonreligious — gleefully professing, with many of our closest friends and relatives, a belief in a deity known as the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” But when a friend or relative is facing surgery or a cancer diagnosis, she never fails to have me request intercessory prayer for that person — which in our church is commonly done out loud during the service, in addition to putting names on an e-mail “prayer chain.” Hedging bets, I suppose.

Despite my religious faith I find the summarized results of the study to be counterintuitive.

It would seem to me the point of empirical research on the power of intercessory prayer would be of a greater benefit to the logical positivist than to the Religious believer.

Indeed, by the strict empiricists own methodology he would (in his mind) be able to disprove religious belief in the power of such prayer and therefore gain the upper hand. As for it “place in as serious seminar” – the freedom of scientific inquiry or general curiosity would suffice as rationales. One could even go beyond that and insist on the debunking or validation of age old “superstitions”.

Now (as you would suspect) the religious believer is quite unaffected either way by the outcome of such studies. Having subscribed to a omnipotent and omnipresent God, both affirming and disaffirming evidence can be seen as “putting the Lord thy God to the test”.

Indeed, the Lord could reveal himself to each and everyone of us in such a tangible and irrefutable way as to remove all doubt of his existence even to the most staunch materialist. This type of God would certainly not allow himself to be subject to “proof” by such human ingenuity as simple random and double blind testing. God is not random or blind you see. He anticipates mortal escapades and has the power to reveal or not reveal his existence in any manner he see’s fit.

All quite frustrating to the materialist, but rather mundane to your average believer.

this question is politically relevant only if you accept something very close the Laffer Hypothesis[2], that a reduction in tax rates will, under current circumstances, produce an increase in revenue

I do not follow this logical step. This seems to be equivalent to asserting that a Rawlsian would always put tax rates at the peak of the Laffer curve (at least for the highest earners, or maybe for all but the lowest earners).

Couldn’t be in a regime where increasing taxes decreases wealth creation by the highest earners, but does not decrease revenue. Then the gain to the worst off from positive externalities of wealth creation could be greater than their loss in direct redistribution from government revenues.

I dont know how plausible that last condition is to you. I doubt you think we are in that regime now. There are a list of factors that make it more plausible to me: the massive returns to innovation, the small fraction of redistribution that goes to worst off, etc… But I think that this is the Rawlsian argument against increasing taxes, rather than just the Laffer Curve.

(I apologize in advance, if I have misconstrued your post)

JoB: That quality of life might trump having loads of money is something only the educated & reasonably well off get to realize – which is why it’s only fair to ensure everybody gets a minimum education and the minimum income allowing them not to worry about others having more.

Well, yes, but the problem is that many people are limited in their education not because it was unavailable or unaffordable, but because they didn’t like school, weren’t good at it, and generally couldn’t wait to get out. And the incomes they have already would support a richer life if…if they were savers and avoided consumer debt and silly impulse purchases (new Margaritaville now with salsa dispenser!) The problem is that many of the characteristics that tend make people end up poorer are the same ones that make it difficult for them to live without worry on the income they do have. Check out the the Marshmallow Test.

By the way, slocum, why is additional income societally better than additional leisure. I think a point like this (and it’s surface acceptability) is precisely what is wrong here & now.

Because it’s much better for the lower classes–even though some rich people might have preferred the good old days 50 years ago, when the distinctions of rank and wealth were much clearer. When, for example, you could fly off for a week in the Caribbean in the winter and just know you wouldn’t meet any of those people there. Hell, you could just board a plane and know that none of them would be there.

Not paywalled – free registration or institutional subscription .
required .

The BMJ has a tradition of putting tongue-in-cheek articles in their Christmas week issue. Which is where this one appeared. Immediately following it was a photo of a pap smear that looked remarkably like a flying reindeer. If I recall correctly, they published a data table, and their correlation was driven by one large outlier and one small. So I assumed the motivation was the fun of publishing it just in case, and that the amount of work involved would be basically nil (for the researchers) if there were no correlation. Especially if they were already searching that population for some more legitimate reason.

The comments/letters following it are the best part, especially the one noting that when a treatment is shown to be effective, it is offered to the control group; if this experiment were true, it would show that this hadn’t happened and never will.

As others have pointed out the prayer studies didn’t pan out.

Larger f/u studies had negative results; or unexpected positive results (people prayed for did worse).

In retrospect (always easier) the initial positive results were consistent with publication bias. Lots of people did these experiments, but only the positive results were published, and since studies were small you can get misleading published papers.

Too bad. If it had shown a real effect there would have a rich area of experimental theology to explore.

John Q-42, I think 41 nevertheless is right. We focus too much on progressive tax rates whilst we should focus on taxing wealth rather than income. The approach to tax havens is OK but it’s far from significant. I’ll be impressed if the Fortune top 100 (& specifically liberal-as-a-hobby people on there) will be wealth-taxed at 10 or 15%.

Which brings me back to the end game, or lack of it. Nothing in my view in all of the above will materially change as long as we have the current concentrations of capital – even a free market freak would agree with that. Why nobody talks about that? Why is the solution for Chrysler to go together with Fiat whilst I’m sure that if you cut off the small-car unit they’d be giving Fiat a run for the money in no time (hopefully giving it back to Chrysler)? If you split companies, the management will pay the downsizing. & if you consolidate, the average employee always will be the one getting the short end of the shtick (if only to make up in productivity what is lost by the additional layer of management required to synchronize these super-teams).

salient, I’d love to see your response to mine in 26-27 ;-)

salient, I’d love to see your response to mine in 26-27 ;-)

Sure. Essentially, I agree with your example with regard to free speech (that is, we both agree over which situation is better in that context). Let me argue my perspective in a narrow context: an estate tax.

Now, perhaps you and I happen to be in agreement about estate tax policy, so I should try this in two parts. First I intend to show that a reasonably compelling Rawlsian argument could be made for the justness of a specific social arrangement in which there is zero estate tax: one has the liberty to control who receives one’s property upon one’s death. Second, I’ll say why I think we ought to consider such an arrangement unjust.

First, the Rawlsian case to be made: It is reasonable for us to assume that many high-flying executive power-broker types pursue greater and greater wealth because they wish to accumulate wealth and pass it on to their heirs. Let’s say these people’s work does add value to the economy, e.g. because it generates business, so everyone is better off economically when the executives work more. Let’s further assume this value does trickle down and somehow positively affects the economic wealth of every sub-population. Let’s also assume that this heir-minded executive has real, hard-to-replace skills applicable to entrepreneurship, so their exit from the market would lower productivity / lower economic wealth. I think all of this is reasonable. Let’s further assume that Rawlsian criteria on education and entry into high-paying jobs are basically well-met in this society.

It seems reasonable, from a Rawlsian perspective, to tolerate the inequality that is generated by a zero estate tax in this scenario (because everyone is better off, economically, as a result of heir-minded executives having strong motivation to accumulate wealth). It seems reasonable to call this a Rawlsian-just society, perhaps not perfectly just, but reasonably satisfactory. The inequality shouldn’t have a significant effect on who has access to a high-paying executive career, because we’re assuming equal education, equal right of entry into the executive jobs, et cetera to meet Rawlsian criteria.

However, I’d say this is unjust. The heirs will enter into society with the advantages which accumulated wealth confers, and they will want to defend and protect those advantages. Furthermore, it seems reasonable that the heir-minded executives will themselves want to defend and protect those advantages, because otherwise there’s not much point in accumulating wealth for one’s heirs. To make a long statement shorter, let me summarize and say I believe this leads to an unstable system in which the Rawlsian criteria will be challenged, weakened, and compromised over time.

Now, if we get people to adopt a Cohen-like view, I think they’ll demand a high estate tax and wealth-gift tax in the name of egalitarianism. A justice-minded person should agree, the accumulation of wealth, in excess of stability and security, should be conferred to social good in the event of one’s death. Equal rights, in pure egalitarianism, demands some reasonable degree of equal access to the net wealth available to society, which is compromised by the lack of estate tax. “You received your wealth from society while you lived; you should return it to society’s benefit when you die” is the kind of principle we should be advocating as commonsensical.

And that brings me back around to arguing with John’s point again: as we fix the real damage, I think it’s important to also fix the damaging principles that conservatives have caused to become conventional wisdom (at least in the US). What alternative principles we advocate, and from what basis or what grounding, is therefore very important, and so this is an especially apt time to be discussing these matters.

On your more general claims, I’d be hesitant about claiming modernity for them. George Orwell was knocking down very similar arguments back in the 1930s

I assume you mean the bit about the orange juice and the Ryvita biscuits? But the typical poor American is now far richer in material goods than not just the poor in 1930s Britain, but most of British society then. Richer in the size and comfort of their dwellings, in the amount of work hours needed to buy food, in auto ownership, in leisure travel, and certainly in entertainment. We’re much farther along than we were 70 years ago. Which is a very good thing.

As that process continues, the level of material wealth needed to lead rich, interesting, healthy lives becomes universal. But stubborn gaps remain between the life experiences of the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ that cannot be closed by either wealth redistribution or government services.

Suppose ‘Mary’ and “Dave’ work the same hours and earn the same income (and have the same services available), but Mary’s work is intellectually interesting and Dave’s is monotonous. Suppose that Mary is a triathlete and Dave is a couch potato, that Mary is a gourmet cook and Dave usually grabs something through the drive-through window. Suppose that on vacation, that Mary prefers cities and museums or wilderness trips and Dave likes to feed the nickel slots. Does Rawlsian look at this and think that since incomes and services are equal, my work is done here?

Now of course, someone like ‘Mary’ also tends to make more money than someone like ‘Dave’ (though certainly not always — there are many exceptions). But less money (or services) won’t turn a Mary in to a Dave and more money won’t turn a Dave into a Mary. As societies grow richer, important gaps remain between those getting more out of their lives and those getting less — and those gaps are not addressable via redistribution. That’s what I’m arguing.

Though I have no idea what you mean by “those getting more out of their lives” when we’re talking economy: it should be “those getting more than an equal share of the resources.”

Surely ‘the veil of ignorance’ should not ultimately be about economics, it should be about the quality of life. But as societies become more affluent, a couple of things happen. First, the overall quality of life improves dramatically, which is great. But second, relationship between money and material goods gets weird. Because of mass production, the most useful technologies are inherently high volume products and, therefore, cannot and do not remain the exclusive province of the rich. Instead, the rich subsidize everyone else by buying ‘gold plated’ versions that cost far more but provide little additional functional utility (think of a $70,000 Lexus as a form of progressive taxation).

So the relationship between money and material goods becomes less direct (unlike the 19th century where food was scarce and expensive, and a low income meant chronic hunger and stunted growth). So greater differences in cash translate into smaller differences in the utility of material goods. So differences in quality of life are less and less a function of getting an equal share of the cash, and more and more a function of one’s personal and social resources.

As a thought experiment, imagine we were living in the world that 1950s futurists used to like to worry about — where machines did all the work and produced all the goods and the problem was leisure. Surely in such a world, there would still be widely diverging results in terms of quality of life. Some people would live wonderful rich, productive, creative lives and others would go off the rails and drink themselves into an early grave (and, of course, everything in between). All based on the same material resources.

Maybe Rawls theory of justice has nothing to say about differences in quality of life in such a counterfactual world — but if so, it has less and less to say about differences in the world we actually live in (in wealthy societies, that is).

Instead, the rich subsidize everyone else by buying ‘gold plated’ versions that cost far more but provide little additional functional utility (think of a $70,000 Lexus as a form of progressive taxation).

But an expensive car does really consume more resources and especially more labor (per vehicle, especially in development) than other cars. Buying a Lexus is not a progressive tax, it is a very complicated way of having other people work for your pleasure. And its utility is exactly that: a car whose point is that it cost a lot of labor to make.

You could as well claim that having a pyramid build for you is a form of progressive tax.

Slocum, this time I share your sentiment on the outcome not possibly being equal (& I for one still hope of a world where machines do all the work), simply because people are not equal. As to Rawls: the VoI is neither economical nor about quality of life, it is political. It acknowledges that individual liberty will create differences and it acknowledges that these differences are to be kept ‘reasonable’ for all citizens to accept them – the current crisis clearly is one where the citizens are shouting ‘unfair’, that’s a political fact. Both taken together create some constraints which a fair polticial system needs to respect; other than that, yes, for Rawls it’s happy-go-lucky and if the couch potato wants to be a couch potato knowing he can be something else, he can be a couch potato (and you can despise him for it, and make fun of him but you can’t demand that he be something else or restrict his political rights or be Bill Gates and say the couch potato will not have any of your hard-earned money because he’s a couch potato).

By the way although most couch potatoes are poor, I am regularly a couch potato watching the latest reality-TV (yesterday the local version of Beauty & The Nerd with my kids) and I’m rich. And I tell you: I won’t have no Cohen come in and tell me that I should work for the good of the community – I vote for the good of the community and I don’t tell others what they should do – other than get a basic education and vote – & that’s the extent of what I HAVE to do for the good of the community

What you seem to assume is that this condition would be economically good over-all &, at the same time, constitutive of a systematic unequality of opportunity.

I am saying: the heirs will gunk up the system. Rawls does not provide a mechanism for assessing this, and in fact (I believe) his mechanism selects for conditions in which heirs have the greatest potential to gunk up the system.

I think, in order to be both reasonable and complete, a system of justice shouldn’t have to pull from the future. It should be able to assess, given a set of initial conditions and rules, whether those conditions and rules will result in a stably just society. So I maintain, at least tentatively,

(1) The Rawlsian two-principle serial framework is insufficient to apply to initial-value conditions and determine whether a society is just. In particular, I feel the difference principle will favor systems that will prove to be unstable over time due to the effects of wealth accumulation, and I believe this favoring is insufficiently tempered by the liberty principle.

(2) The Rawlsian assessment of just society is market-oriented (someone suggested I should say state-oriented instead on a previous thread, still considering this; I think the greater specificity of “market” is justifiable). This has interesting implications when we attempt to broaden our definition of justice sufficiently far to recover just behavior between individuals. In particular, I think (very tentatively) that justice generally is ensuring that no person is subjected to more suffering than is his/her due, and that a better model will more directly address the concept of human suffering and address market politics as a corollary.

(3) The idea of the veil of ignorance assumes a pure rationality, and I still haven’t found evidence that the interaction of pure rationality with pure chance (inequality & veil of ignorance) won’t tend to favor merely making the least-well-off position tolerable, in order to maximize the most-well-off — do rational people gamble their own self-interest? Does “rationality” mean that one mentally consigns oneself to the worst of all possible chances when debating behind a veil of ignorance — or does one deliberately take some from the worst well-off to improve the most well-off, up to some tolerance limit, in the hopes of happening to fall in a favored category? (This was my Situation A/B.)

(4) While I’d rather live in a more Rawlsian-just society, it’s important to discuss the principles that we want to persuade other people to accept, and this requires a system of justice. Thus (I agree with JoB) we do need to discuss “end-game” : what is the ideal society we are working toward? What principles ought to be commonsensical?

salient,

I guess we’re alone by now ;-)

1. agreed, but the egalitarian alternative is worse (see above)

2. agreed, but any idea of personal justice is part of a comprehensive doctrine leading to the issues of political liberties that are the starting point of Rawls thinking (in fact – yes, Rawls’ system is open for better models whilst a comprehensive doctrine adopted as the final one is per definition not open for essential improvement) – I admit to being a fan of the free market to regulate the interaction between individuals, evolutionarily it is the only context that allows progressive evolution (obviously the current markets are unchecked in important ways and even worse: not free because the big players are dominating)

3. I disagree, the idea of VoI – artificial and unconvincing as it is – will ensure that there is a 0% chance that the lowest incomes will be such that life is merely tolerable; but it’s really the most minor element of our discussion (I don’t like the VoI for reasons you’re making above)

4. I disagree, my end game is not an ideal society; the end game I’m looking for merely is (to come back to John): accepting we need to reluctantly make short term calls – e.g. the Geithner plan – (because we’re de facto hostage of the rich & powerful), what do we need to do – e.g. when the normality is restored in credit – to avoid being hostage again of the rich & powerful

5. to 4, my proposal: break-up large companies into smaller units (on top of tax haven intn’l regulation and widespread increases in taxing wealth)

3.

salient,

Well, I hope not! But for the moment it may be best to quit while we’re ahead.

I’m a bit disappointed that you can’t conceed the egalitarian alternative is worse from a dynamic point of view. This seems so obvious and so supported by the facts.

You misquote me by cutting the quote after ‘short term calls’, there was no full stop for a while in that sentence (but I know my sentences are twisty to say the least). It doesn’t matter because none of my ‘end games’ would be long term seen from your angle. I – on the other hand – would have a principled issue with your type of end game. I believe it’s one of the worst things to target a closed system of rules, I think it’s inhumane.

Sweeping change, yes, but as to the hostage situation I do recommend you read, or you re-read, Rawls: some of the most concrete suggestions he has are on this side. As to the B: if everyone is worse off, even an egalitarian should have issues. That being said, I do not see why Rawlsians would object to (B) in principle (& I think your proposal is quite in the direction of what I at least would find reasonable in current circumstances) but I do see why they would object to (B) being a principled attribute of a liberal democracy.

Rawls understood that braves needed 40 acres, and a mule, and some supplies, agua, etc. ( and that it’s injust when they lack those necessaries). He didn’t understand they need an obedient and not overly ripe squaw or three as well.