Global justice: taxing inherited social resources

This is certainly a much better idea than your previous one with open borders and unlimited immigration.

Mmmm… Alex Gregory makes a good point, but I don’t think it works out well in the end. Nozick is right that there’s no separating oneself from the circumstances of one’s existence. (I’d have never thought to hear it from Nozick though. Doesn’t he know that’s, like, a core Marxist principle?) But why divide the world into what is a part of me (or my nation) and what isn’t? There’s no non-arbitrary place to put that line.

There’s a consequentialist argument that runs exactly in the opposite direction: The circumstances of my existence encompass the productive power of other people – that’s the lesson of divided labour, right? – so barriers to the productivity of others, like abysmal poverty, are ultimately damaging to myself. This is plain in the case of a physically handicapped person. Whatever has caused them to have a physical handicap is very much a part of who they are. However, by constructing things like wheelchair ramps and providing for other forms of handicapped accessibility, the productive power of that person can rise to a much higher level, benefitting me. Now, let’s imagine a person who is handicapped because they were driving drunk and got into an accident. My interest in mitigating that person’s handicap is based on their future potential for higher productivity. That their situation is in some sense their own fault is irrelevant.

This consequentialist argument stands equally well for nations. Let’s assume, for a moment, that a nation is profoundly impoverished purely as a result of its past and present policies. This is unlikely in the real world, usually where folks are really hard up, there’s plenty of blame to go around. But my interest in improving the quality of their lives is not dependent on the causes – it is entirely motivated by an interest in the future.

No, I’m not really convinced by making the distinction between natural and social resources. They don’t separate easily. In the end, almost all production is production for other people’s consumption, and almost all consumption is consumption of other people’s products. It makes no difference whether it comes out of the ground or a factory, just as the products at Walmart are sold the same way whether they were made in Georgia or Guangdong.

I am trying to imagine this hypothetical world re-distribution system for social resources, and I’m having problems contemplating what it looks like.

A real world example: The United States and England are prospering democracy-like things, and the Phillipines is a newish democracy-like thing that keeps shooting itself in the foot policy-wise.

Due to better career options in the United States, many Filipino nurses choose to come to the United States or England or Germany to pursue nursing, and make 10 times as much money as back home (Filipino doctors also choose to come West as nurses, and make 5 times as much money as back home.)

A significant part of the Phillipine economy is remittances from foreign-employed labor.

Is your view of “a hypothetical world government or redistribution agency [that] could justly tax those generations for using those resource and use that taxation to redistribute to those who have been unlucky enough to inherit social resources of lower value” essentially giving the remittances from the West to the Phillipines without the interim step of having the nurses actually come West to work?

The upside of the plan, is it keeps the Filipino nurses at home, and prevents a “brain drain” type scenario. But if you do set it up, who gets the money? In the real world, it is the husbands and children of working Filipinos. In your system, is it direct checks to each man, woman, and child? (Even the rich Filipinos? The middle class?) Is it to the failed social institutions that the unlucky Filipinos are stuck with and are working abroad to try to circumvent? (That sounds like a bad idea.) And if it is to the people, what stops the flawed social institution (the government) from setting up a tax scheme that captures all or part of it?

It is also a widespread belief (I don’t know about the facts, but it is plausible) that governments change when things get really bad. Would these transfers just props for bad governments, as much as Middle East oil is props for their governments? If the scheme is as effective as possible, does ot have the result of putting off the next revolution?

A hypothetical world government…
Problems start here in my opinion. Either the people of the world feel they are part of a community, and then reditributive scheme are easily devised, or they don’t and then I cannot see how this hypothetical world government could be a just institution. Ultimately, I thus think that this is a question of mentality, and rather than the abstract question of devising just institutions (which is in my opinion a rather easy one), I am more interested in the question of devising the social conditions that allow for the required mentality to emerge.

Leaving theory for a moment, it is interesting to study ambiguous real examples, such as the EU and the many debates around its budget, the level of aid granted to new member states etc. I suppose aid to poorer EU countries could be seen as some reditributive scheme to compensate for past failing institutions.

Note that in the actual world, the inherited social resources of peoples cannot be unproblematically be taken to be their own collective creation given, among other things, the legacy of colonialism, imperialism and similar.

So, why, in the actual world, are the grandchildren of thieves (and beneficiaries of ongoing theft) discussing a lovely hypothetical world where benefits have accrued to them because of the virtues rather than the crimes of their grandparents?

I find these posts really interesting, but I don’t really understand them that well. When it comes down to it what exactly do we mean by “socially created stuff” … “that are the collective historical creation of the insiders’ political entity”? The examples we get are “stable institutions, a culture conducive to economic growth etc.”.

The distribution of these is as arbitrary as the distribution of natural resources on their territory. But isn’t the obvious difference that people can (and do) have property rights over oil and diamonds; but don’t have property rights over the culture they’re born into, or the institutions that influence their economic chances.

The justification for a global resources dividend ia basically that everyone has the same natural property rights over these resources, so people who don’t have these rights here and now should be compensated for their loss. But there’s no similar property right that people have over intangible social institutions and culture. So is there a justification for redistribution on the same basis?

Or are you talking about concrete social things like roads, the electricity grid, sewage systems, police stations, and so on? Even there, I benefit from these things, but I’m not sure I have any property rights over them.

It seems to me that the best argument against redistribution of social resources is that they are non-rivalrous goods.

In other words, if Norway has oil and Sweden doesn’t, that is just “how it is”, and may not be fair (so redistribution of the resulting wealth may, under some set of premises, be justified). If S Korea has a good government and N Korea has a bad one, that is changeable; N Korea could decide to have a better government. Yes, as a consequence of a bad government, N Korea is poor; the fundamental problem is not poverty, but poor government. And the ideas and institutions that make up “good government” are available to everyone–there’s no need to redistribute them.

The problem, of course, is making it possible for N Korea to choose to have a good government. Colonialism basically consisted of saying, “Here, have a good government.” It seems to have produced better government than any of the alternatives, but it had its own set of problems.

But you would not ‘redistribute’ wealth into the hands of an obviously bad national government – or would you?

What a about the cultural choices that directly effect wealth? Corruption, regardless of government type, increases the costs of good and services. Should nations with high corruption be rewarded for their inefficiencies? What about relative differences? Say the Japanese work and group ethic versus the European values placed on leisure and family time. Should the Japanese be taxed for a social stricture that has a high probability of producing increasing societal gains?

Short summary:
Traditionalist: what I have (earned or otherwise) is mine, and I should be able to give it to my kids.
Bertramist: what you have (earned or otherwise) is not yours, and you should give it to everyone.

I presume (for the sake of this argument) that we all agree that what we each have is some combination of what we individually earned (i.e. I chose to work hard, I sacrificed short term gain for long term investment, etc) and what we got lucky and have as a result (i.e. I happen to have been born in USA, not Somalia, with good parents, not drunks, etc etc). What we each individually have is a combination of luck and merit.

And this pragmatic fact is really the problem. Assume I accept Chris’ argument: what I got lucky with isn’t really justifiably ‘mine,’ and should be redistributed.

Under present, traditionalist philosophy, there is the assumption that what I have is mine, and if I chose to share it (via charity, for instance) I may opt to do so. The pragmatic mistakes determining what of mine is based on luck in that sharing (more than likely,I don’t give enough of my lucky stuff) is the weakness of the system-the distribution of goods is ‘unjust’ because the lucky people don’t give enough of their lucky stuff. And the decisions in terms of redistribution are up to individuals (more or less, of course. I chose what to give away-the world government doesn’t).

Under Chris’ system, though, the same distributionist mistake will be made, though probably in the opposite direction. Assume we rewrite our moral code to make the assumption that what everyone has belongs to everyone, and the system decides what is individually earned. That system may be perfect in determining this (highly unlikely-in fact, impossible), it may make the same mistakes our current system makes (it mistakenly gives stuff to people based on their luck rather than their merit-very unlikely), or, more likely, it may make mistakes in the opposite direction (it mistakenly redistributes stuff that should remain with individuals because those individuals actually earned it). And its a central authority (world government) that makes the redistributionist decisions-not individuals.

Regardless of what system is in place, then, mistakes regarding the distribution of goods will be made. On the one hand, mistakes will be made favoring the lucky, and made by individuals (freedom). On the other hand, mistakes will be made harming the hard working, and be made by a central authority (equality).

So, just like every other political/philosophical argument, it comes down to one of freedom vs equality. And there is no ‘right’ answer to that-its just another chocolate/vanilla argument (i.e. which do you happen to prefer?).

BTW: if you reject the initial assumption- (that what we have is a combination of individual merit and luck), then you are either an Ayn Randian (its all individual merit) or a communist (its all luck). In either case, you are nuts.

Steve

So, just like every other political/philosophical argument, it comes down to one of freedom vs equality. And there is no ‘right’ answer to that-its just another chocolate/vanilla argument

I agree that there is no right answer, but there are certainly some obviously wrong aswers (those in your last paragraph, for example). So then, there must be a way to optimize this.

“Bertramist: what you have (earned or otherwise) is mine, and I should be able to give it to my kids – but only to their needs, and I should redistribute for the greater good, as well.”

Er, I think that should read “…only to their needs *as determined by some world government*, and I should *be forced to* redistribute the rest.”

Chris, sorry, I read your commment about your point being micro just afterwards. That said, if you discuss from a generally macro point of view only, I can’t see how your point could be controversial: people disadvantaged by inappropriate social resources should be entitled to compensation, as they indeed are in any system approaching justice, say within a democratic nation-state.

Chris’s basic point which is that social resources are also mana from heaven and hence are distributable seems to beg the question at issue because it assumes that luck nullifies desert . But is not that that has to be shown ? Surely at this point of debate at least an argument is neede against Nozickian take on the issue : Swedes are entitled to their inherited institutions because they have been passed on to them ( they have been given to them ) and this grounds their right to these institutions ; they are gifts.
Of course maybe Nozick is wrong but an argument is needed .

How broad are the notions of resource going to be constructed, particularly if the goal is trying to consider redistribution as it pertains to the ideal of greatest societal good? Shouldn’t personal luck and ‘resources’ should also be considered (this of course, will be condition by how you construct individuality)?

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are spectular examples of a particular kind of natural resource (beauty), and perhaps posses extraordinary carnal skills (or have acquired them due to the tremendous oppotunity afforded by their natural resource).

Rather than secret away these skills, and redistribute them to a single offspring (so far), shouldn’t they be compelled to share their resources for the greatest community good? This would lead, eventually, to the elimination of monogamy in the traditional sense, since people would seek (or be awarded) varying levels of resource based on personal or extant deficiency (your husband is a bit lacking in amorous enthusiasm, but your neighbor is willing to take up the slack? perfect!).

Relative to most people, I’m tall. Should I try to redistribute my resource (wasted much of the time by sitting in front a computer) by seeking out my shorter neighbors and fetching items from heretofore unreachable shelves?

I’m not being glib about the concept as it’s presented, because I think it is crucial to a more universal sense of democracy and personal freedom; but it leaves itself open to potential absolutist ridicule (like the above — or, conversely, becomes a helluva of a marketing campaign; sleeping with Brad Pitt as a reward for becoming a collectivist might actually work).

See Peter Jones, “International Justice – Amongst Whom?” in Tony Coates, ed. International Justice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). Pages 126 and 127 at the end of the Jones essay touch on related concerns about collective past inheritance. I believe other essays in this Coates volume more explicitly addressed these concerns, but I don’t remember which ones. There’s a minor reference in the Caney essay in Coates, p. 143) Brian Barry, in the Coates volume, and in earlier essays, discusses the idea of natural resources only. Barry might have since revised his position, though I’m not sure he has in published work. See his recent Why Social Justice Matters (2005), p. 264, where he repeats his a line about natural resources. See also WSJM, p. 216 on countries (not) making choices within an equal choice set (see the last two sentences of last full paragraph).

This is an interesting discussion, but I’m not sure which liberal egalitarians hold the combination of views Chris is arguing against: 1. natural resources are subject to an egalitarian (baseline) distribution globally; and 2. there is no egalitarian requirement on the distribution of social resources globally. I don’t think that people like Richard Miller, Michael Blake, and Rawls are not global egalitarians with respect to either natural or social resources. (Pogge may be with respect to both.) Chris notes at the end that Rawls and Miller hold that natural resource endowments aren’t very important in the explanation of wealth differentials. But this isn’t why it is important for them to maintain there is an asymmetry. On the contrary, it’s why they can reject the asymmetry without much pain. They reject 1. and hold that there is no egalitarian baseline distribution of natural resources across countries – and rejecting this (fortunately) doesn’t condemn any countries to absolute (or even relative) poverty because natural resources are relatively unimportant overall. Rawls holds that well-ordered peoples are entitled to control their territory basically as trustees, but without any global egalitarian requirement. If we assume the ideal case – a world of legitimate political orders, all able to provide for their citizens above a certain threshold level – then the good luck of a country discovering oil or diamonds is simply their good luck, as is the good luck of citizens to be born into countries with institutions fostering a strong commitment to the arts or to higher education or to economic efficiency or to environmental preservation. (I think this makes it clear – if it wasn’t already – that a kind of luck egalitarianism is underlying both 1. and 2.)

The diversity of the social goods that I just listed raises the question of how to identify the egalitarian metric in the global case. Clearly, a country’s median income is an inadequate measure of “advantage” – it doesn’t register most of the social goods that a society could reasonably trade-off against maximal economic growth. But as we attempt to include more and more social goods, we are pushed strongly in the direction of some kind of utilitarian measure of subjective satisfaction – which has problems of its own, and not only the probably insurmountable practical problems of measurement. (I don’t think a “capabilities approach” will help. Such an approach is well-suited to identifying a threshold of functioning, not to identifying inequalities above that level.) One of the reasons this doesn’t happen in the same way in the domestic case is that we can aim to equalize resources with respect to the same set of opportunities. The opportunity set cannot be equalized across different countries in the same way.

There’s also a related difficulty in identifying the “generations” to whom egalitarian duties are owed. They don’t come differentiated like individuals do (at least for political purposes). While in graduate school, an individual can live like … well, a graduate student, for the immense rewards awaiting her later in life. I think we would want to say that a society can impose some sacrifice on itself for greater gains later – but what if the “later” is past the cut-off point of the next generation? To be sure, there are braoder difficulties lurking here with inter-generational justice that I don’t know how to resolve, but it seems to me that we would want to give well-ordered societies far more scope for self-determination in this regard than to require as a matter of global justice that some pre-defined “generations” be treated equally – if that is, in fact, the proposal.

BTW: After I’ve reread it, my own ‘short version’ is incorrect. I think the argument I made is correct, but the ‘short version’ isn’t.

‘Bertramist: what you have (earned or otherwise) is not yours, and you should give it to everyone.’

Should read

‘Bertramist: what you have (that is not earned) is not yours, and you should give it to everyone.’

Steve

Okay, well, I think I generally support liberal egalitarian theories of justice. And yet this idea sounds, to agree with slocum, so vaporous and inapplicable in its practical implications as to be meaningless. If my parents are sober, and your parents are alcoholics, do my parents have an obligation to adopt you? If my parents are sober but live in an arid wasteland, while your parents are drunkards who live in…an arid wasteland sitting on a vast lake of oil, who adopts whom? How can “social capital” be quantified and translated into any sort of commodity amenable to taxation? Is having wealthy parents really a boon, given that it encourages sloth and participation in reality TV shows? Is having poor, violent, alcoholic parents really a disadvantage, given that it sometimes encourages hard work, political and management skills?

Think of your parents, and their faults. Would you trade them for better ones? Do you desire financial compensation from those who had “better” parents?

Which has more “social capital”: the United States, or France? Should the French be taxed to benefit the Americans, then? Or are we referring only to the sort of social capital that generates income? And what is that sort of social capital? Is there any kind of social capital – Mediterranean culinary sense, East Asian visual aesthetics, Jewish…[fill in potentially offensive stereotype], African…[fill in potentially murderously offensive stereotype] – that does not generate income, in unpredictable ways that change from decade to decade? What is the evidence that someone possesses monetarily valuable social capital, other than the fact that they earn more money? And if this is the case, why don’t we cut out the whole phrase “social capital” and simply ask whether the wealthy have an obligation to help the poor, from the liberal egalitarian point of view, regardless of what country those poor may live in?

I do, I must say, find a piquant sort of appeal in the idea that the French, with their equitable and pleasurable low-stress society, ought to be taxed to benefit the poor Americans, who suffer from the many evil effects of an underdeveloped and inegalitarian society with less social capital. But I also think it renders the potential downsides of this way of thinking – the perverse incentives towards the American body politic, especially – crystal clear.

And if this is the case, why don’t we cut out the whole phrase “social capital” and simply ask whether the wealthy have an obligation to help the poor, from the liberal egalitarian point of view, regardless of what country those poor may live in?

This is an academic blog; play by the rules, man.

I understand how individual desert is thought to be negated by luck. Where does the idea of collective desert come from then? Why is it said that everybody is a rightful owner rather than nobody? It seems to me that negating individual desert results in a situation whereby either everybody rightly owns or nobody rightly owns, but I don’t see a clear reason to choose one or the other.

I understand this question might be too broad for the more limited topic being discussed. But I’ve never heard the explanation for this. What is it?

I haven’t read every one of the 51 prior comments, so I apologize if this is redundant, but I think part of the reason we tax inherited natural resources and not inherited social resources is that natural resources are more readily realizable (perhaps “liquid” is the word) than social resources.

On an individual basis, for example, inheriting X amount of land or money provides a concrete benefit in a way that inheriting X connection to the general in charge of the Texas National Guard does not (necessarily).

Likewise, on a collective basis, inheriting democrcacy or capitalism (assuming arguendo that capitalism is a good) or secularism does not necessary provide a concrete benefit to any given member of society in the same way that inheriting participation in a national health care system, a social insurance scheme, or a healthy local economy does.

Three thoughts:

1. You say “But given no strong entitlement of successor generations to ownership of Sweden’s social resources, a hypothetical world government or redistribution agency could justly tax those generations for using those resource and use that taxation to redistribute to those who have been unlucky enough to inherit social resources of lower value.”

But if we do not assume that the Swedes have rights to their social resources, why do we assume that a hypothetical world government has the right to tax them? Any argument that the Swedes don’t have those rights applies equally to the hypothetical world government, or any other agency. The hypothetical world government certainly didn’t create the social resources.

2. You also appear to be assuming that democracy, private property rights, stable political system, etc, requires no ongoing investment to make it happen. The next generation just receives all these matters like manna from heaven. But what if they do require continual investment? What if Robert Muldoon and the senior National cabinet ministers did actually make their own decisions when we had that constitutional crisis back in 1984 – and the senior National cabinet ministers thus contributed towards NZ’s social goods? If social goods are like manna from heaven, why all this concern on this blog about George Bush in the USA threatening them? If social goods are like manna from heaven, how do you explain Zimbabwae’s economic collapse?

You also appear to be assuming that there’s some cut-off line when one generation steps forward and suddenly inherits all these social goods. But that, while a easy mathematical model, does not match with reality. In reality, generations are coming forward all the time, and the old ones don’t instantly die away. My grandmother is still alive and contributing to, and drawing on, social goods. Robert Muldoon is dead, but some of the senior National cabinet ministers I referred to are still alive. Generations overlap. On a more minor level, there are 5 years between me and my youngest brother. By the time he turned 18, I had voted in two separate elections and contributed to any social goods (mostly by refraining from rioting in the streets when my own favoured government did not get elected). And my brother and I have first cousins ranging in age from 40 years old to 14. Where’s the generational cut-off? How much responsibility do I bear for the current state of social goods in NZ, compared to my grandmother, or my mother, or my brother, or my 40-year old cousin? At best I think you could justify a level of taxation based on social goods that falls with age.

3. As others on this threat have pointed out, social goods are non-rival. Rather than distributing the resources produced by these goods, why don’t we just say that those without the social goods have the duty to acquire them for themselves?

I hope Chris is saying something like “The part of what you have due to luck is justifiably given to other people (but not the part that you have due to effort)” This view justifies taking the lucky stuff,and not everything. (note that this may or may not be right, but its not clearly wrong like the public owning of everything). If everybody owns the fruit of my labor, I’m not going to work very hard.

Steve,
I’ve been assured that I misunderstood Chris’s point, although to be honest, having re-read everything, I’m thinking the issue is more in communicating than understanding. My current academic background (which admittedly needs expanding, hence continuing the damned education) encourages not distinguishing between “luck natural resources” and “inherited money that was used to create more money” – both would be seen as luck of the draw.

Distinguishing between effort and luck seems a very tricky thing; how do you decide that something is just luck of birth/the draw/whatever, and something is due to the effort you put in? It just seems…vague.

I wouldn’t say (wasn’t saying) that everyone owns the fruit of your labour, only that eventually a certain lucky few do reach a financial point where they and their family are set for life, and the remainder of the wealth can be used to distribute items to those born in less luck-infested areas.

However, I’m apparently off on my own page on this one, so I’ll just be quiet and learn. ;)