The poverty of psychology

The authors of the Nature study write, “when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies,” and the footnote sends us to Norton & Ariely (2011). But Norton & Ariely do not appear to make that claim:

http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely.pdf

Sorry—obviously some people, eg Piketty, are talking about wealth inequality. But it’s not clear to me that most people in the media or public have anything deeper or more abstract in mind.

The (“ev”) psychology of poverty, the poverty of psychology.

The Nature paper isn’t credible on its own terms. First the authors argue away the clear preference of children for absolute equality in distribution of desirable things. Then they assume that the willingness of adults to accept slight inequality in wealth between rich and poor is a sign that adults don’t value equality, rather than simply that adults acknowledge that a much higher degree of inequality is the reality we live with. Those same adults aren’t all that keen on embracing the reality, as shown by their ridiculous underestimation of the actual degree of inequality in the US. You’d have thought that even a pair of cossetted Yalies couldn’t get around the fact that people think the poorest 40% of the public should have about 25 times as much wealth as that group actually possesses.

Going to look up similar articles in 1800’s era “Nature” to learn about what kinds of equalities people tolerated then. Love too solve moral problems by mass intuition.

I haven’t read the Nature paper in question, but Mr. Bertram’s summary suggests that the psychologists/pontificators who wrote it base their thinking on some sort of survey data. It doesn’t surprise me that lots of people accept inequality. If I had to guess, people make a rough calculation about their abilities, aptitudes etc and act accordingly. People don’t in general like unfairness, but overall they accept that the world sort of works that way.
One commentator above noted that children are big believers in equality and fairness. So am I. If I have a cake and you don’t, I am going to offer you half, but that doesn’t mean that society should be organized on the basis of equality.
Why is academic argument privileged in this regard?

contemporary political discourse often blurs together various concerns that should be thought of as distinct. Worries about inequality are conflated with worries about poverty, an erosion of basic rights, and—as we have focused on here—unfairness. If it’s true that inequality in itself isn’t really what is bothering people, then we might be better off by more carefully pulling apart these concerns, and shifting the focus to the problems that matter to us more.

The authors should get out more. Intersectionality is very specifically a response to that desire to “focus [on] the problems that matter to us more” by pointing out that “us” has a wide range of concerns and that focussing on the concerns of the important people first has not worked for the rest of us.

Also is there some reason every single post of mine gets flagged for moderation? I am complying with the “real email” requirement but ever since I started doing that I get dumped into moderation and my post appear days after the conversation has moved on. How can I fix that?

Matthew 20:1-13, the parable of the workers who all got paid the same. The complaint is specifically that although some worked all day (“hard”), they were not paid more than those that came late (“slackers”), but the Master of the Vineyard denies the claim.

The exact argument is prominent on facebook, against medicare for all, universal basic income, etc. I always thought, compared with having a useful and secure job, standing on the curb at Home Depot is much the “harder” work.

Chris Bertram @ 2
“Yes, something can matter “a lot” without mattering fundamentally.”

Think that poses a bit of a dilemma. In public health, though there is some argument, it is widely accepted that inequalities of both income and wealth matter “fundamentally” – that there is a direct causative relationship between financial inequality and state of health (at individual and societal level).

I don’t understand how a philosopher could say that that is not a “fundamental” matter.

Harry b

If they have not defined what they mean by equality that is obviously bad. But my reading of the OP is that Chris is peeved that a pair of psychologists have wandered into the turf that is owned by political philosophers without getting permission from political philosophers.

The problem is, the turf doesn’t belong to political philosophers. Extending the metaphor, the turf is a commons and a lot of different animals graze there usually without bothering each other.

If these psychologists had attempted some amateurish political philosophising that would have also been problematic. But they have not (as far I can tell from comments).

Tabasco — that’s not my read of CB’s post at all. He’s irritated that people haven’t done some basic thinking, and haven’t even bothered to ask some advice from colleagues whom they probably see from time to time at committee meetings or the like. Particularly irritating maybe to philosophers like him and me who work on issues where the evidence matters and expect (and hope) to be held to high standards when it comes to reading the economic, sociological, historical, psychological, etc, evidence.

Val — its because ‘fundamental’ here is being used in different ways. When you say inequalities of income and wealth are fundamental you mean they play a vital role in the actual causal analysis. CB agrees (as does Jerry Cohen). When they say that inequalities of income and wealth are not, morally, fundamental they mean that we have no particular reason to care about them morally, independently of their (very important) causal role in producing other inequalities that, really, morally, do matter (very roughly, and to misrepresent Cohen very slightly, inequalities in the quality of people’s lives). I hazard that you agree with that; whereas I hazard that you believe that inequalities of health and health states (and longevity) do matter morally fundamentally — they, in themselves, constitute inequalities in the quality of people’s lives (which, I hazard, CB agrees with and Jerry agreed with).

So no disagreement, just different usage which comes from different foci of research.

‘A puzzle arises, however, when we consider a largely separate body of research in political psychology and behavioural economics: it turns out that when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies.’

Is there really a body of research devoted to this question in which nobody has suggested considering the possibility that the question is gibberish? If a researcher asked me what I thought would be an ideal distribution of wealth in my country, my response would be ‘What makes you think that question makes sense?’ A body of research devoted to a damnfool question can only produce a body of damnfool answers.

I think that the poverty described extends well beyond psychology.

I’ve recently read tens if not hundreds of articles from criminology, political science and economics on the relationship between inequality and violence. I don’t recall any that seriously engaged with political philosophy (save a cursory reference to Rawls or suchlike in the introduction). Instead authors often just do things like load GINI coefficient into STATA with a few other variables and write up the conclusions. (I actually included a page long discussion on the nature of the state in a criminology article and got told by an editor to remove it as it was irrelevant).

I expect that the lack of interest in political philosophy is partly due to time. No one has the space to be able to spend a few weeks reading up on work in a separate field; and even after that it would be difficult for an outsider to tell the difference between brilliance and eloquent bullshit.

More importantly, fields have developed their own common understandings of concepts, independently of philosophers. They don’t perceive a need to interrogate concepts like ‘inequality’ because the people working in the field already agree upon what it means. The existence of a wider literature in philosophy or elsewhere isn’t relevant to the much more pressing task of impressing a journal editor and reviewers (who are usually mostly concerned with data sources, methods and what has already been published within the field).

Though I’ll add in my experience a lack of interest in other fields also extends to philosophy. There are many times that I’ve read ‘real world’ examples used by philosophers that are out of date or just plain wrong, the authors having ignored large amounts of work carried out by more empirically minded researchers.

As a philosopher, I share some of the OP’s frustration here, but as someone interested in contemporary ethical and political philosophy and aware of their failings, I have some sympathy with those questioning it.

One way to put the “fundamental” distinction is this: equality isn’t the fundamental *moral* issue. Inequality isn’t *wrong* by itself, but insofar as it’s unfair–that is, if it’s undeserved or brings about undeserved benefit or harm.

But the nature article isn’t really about normativity (about claims about what’s morally or politically right). It’s descriptive: about what people mind, not what they ought to.

In almost every sense but moral, equality is of course fundamental to understanding politics–namely, it is causally fundamental to many things. But political philosophy isn’t interested in causal priority but that of moral principle: what are the core ought and ought nots of politics.

This is the gist of my earlier “love too solve moral problems joke”. The problem of contemporary ethics is that it often grounds moral claims on intuitions. It reasons, “in this situation everyone would do or say x, therefore x is a criterion of morality or for testing or refuting any theoretical moral claim.”

For many moral philosophers, the fact that people collectively and intuitively endorse certain inequalities (or, rather, that they believe there is such a thing as moral desert, that some people do deserve more, that equality is sometimes unfair) makes it so. That is both bad science and bad philosophy. (The more cynical think this is because a “fundamental” function of the discipline is to justify not reveal moral prejudices.)

That people care more about fairness than equality, that these are conceptually different, proves nothing about whether they ought to. Strangely, it doesn’t even prove anything about what they *in practice* do! People tolerate very high degrees of normal luck, inequalities that are pure chance rather than deserved, and in general “those doing unusually unpleasant jobs” do not, in fact, “get more money to compensate them for the unpleasantness.”

So, while the Nature article is misguided, in the big picture this puts them on par with political philosophy in many ways.

I’m struggling still with this “unfair” vs. “unequal” distinction. Let me propose an example.

Two guys standing under a bridge looking for work. The boss in the F-150 rolls by and says I’ll pay $5 an hour to dig holes and shovel manure on my farm. Guy A says hell no, that’s an exploitative wage. Guy B says, what the heck, jumps in the back of the truck.

This happens every day for a couple weeks and finally Guy A decides he’s sufficiently hungry, so he decides to get in the truck too. Boss says, Guys with no experience get $5, but tells Guy B he’s experienced now so he’ll give him $7.

After several more weeks Guy A also gets the raise to $7, but Guy B is made crew foreman and is given $9/hr. Said differently, Guy B makes more than 25% more than Guy A despite only a couple weeks difference in work experience.

By the end of this parable, I would say that Guy A and Guy B have both been treated equally and fairly (in the context of exploitative wages) yet there is also income inequality between the two. If I understand the paper correctly, most people would ignore this difference. The difference they would not ignore is if the boss man’s son was hired for $20/hr with no experience and was immediately made foreman. That would be deemed both unequal and unfair.

Is that the crux of the argument? Where am I off.

Trader Joe,

This brings in a new distinction among different kinds of equality (different answers to the question, “Equality of what?”): your example is of equal opportunity and/or equal application of rules, in contrast to equality of results (equal income). I think this discussion has been focused on contrasting fairness to results-equality only.

Your example is a good case of why equality might be morally less foundation. Both workers are treated equally some respects, but not because equality is always a good thing, but because certain kinds of equality can preserve fairness.

In this case, the element of fairness has to do with deservingness: each is free to choose to work or not to, each is responsible for whether they did and how long they did. The other worker could have, through free choices, earned the same wage, and so the inequality is deserved–a product of the other’s merit and good decisions.

Another way to think of it is in the old game metaphor: guaranteeing an equal level playing field is fair, but guaranteeing an equal score is not. Thus, equality is not fundamental, since something else (and more fundamental) determines the appropriateness of the two kinds of equality.

(Intuitively appealing, but my own view is that this moralistic, score-keeping, meritocratic, game-metaphor picture of justice is a deeply mistaken way of approaching politics.)

Finally! I have been waiting for academics to point out that inequality and unfairness are completely different concepts and that inequality is simply a mathematical relationship but that we are strongly wired to reject unfairness.

Let me elaborate. Inequality is simply a value neutral relationship between any two dimensions. We are unequal in height, distance to Omaha, lightness of house color, or whatever. But nobody cares in the slightest. What we care about is unfairness and privilege (see Boehm for the evolutionary origins and anthropological support), with privilege defined as different rules (private law).

When evaluating equality we always must ask equality of what? There are multiple ways to define it and here are some of the most common:

1). Equal outcomes regardless of effort or contribution (raw income inequality)
2). Outcomes equal or proportional to contributions (commission sales) or effort (hours worked)
3). Outcomes equal or proportionate to role or position served (pay grades in business, or simply the way pirates would give double shares of booty to the elected captain and quartermaster)
4). Outcomes equal or proportionate to need (Marxism or family).
5). Outcomes proportionate to the rules of the game (rule egalitarianism) such as seen in a sport where games can be both wildly lopsided in outcome yet totally fair.

The problem is that these definitions can and do often contradict. Thus it is vacuous to claim INEQUALITY as we can often just use an alternative definition and argue that no, this is actually more equal or proportionate using this alternative measure of fairness.

Thus we are arguing the merits of which standard of equality or fairness is used at that point in time. And I think we can all come up with examples of when we would prefer to use each, and where it would clearly be pragmatic to prefer one over another (sports where we get equality of outcomes regardless of contribution is usually pretty absurd for example).

So, as per Boehm, we are very, very concerned with fairness, and for good reasons. However, the definition of fairness depends upon how we decide institutionally to operate and which definitions and rules will be applied.

The focus on income inequality usually completely misses this. In the US, it is easy to verify that most bottom quintile families don’t work at all, and less than a fifth work full time. This is certainly “inequality regardless of effort or contribution,” but it may (or may not) be completely fair in terms of rule egalitarianism or rewards commensurate with effort or contribution.

Those wishing to pretend that inequality is unfairness simply have not thought about the issue hard enough.

Val,

“As I suggest, there is no logical connection between the work you do and the money you earn (an insight that Marx et al had a long time ago, I think!). You might be ‘entitled to’ or ‘deserve’ all sorts of things for doing a good job – praise, respect, esteem of your fellow workers, more authority, etc – and it might be ‘fair’ if you get them, but there’s no reason you should be able to consume more of the earth’s resources, which money signifies.”

You are adopting a zero sum framework and assuming that solutions to human problems just magically appear on our equally magical dinner table, sitting on a magical clean wooden floor in a magical house.

In reality, solving problems and creating useful products and services requires work, patience, effort, creativity, thought, sweat, risk, delayed gratification and a constant attentiveness to what others like, need and value. Absent these and other investments in creating goods and services, they are likely not produced at all and certainly not produced efficiently.

“Paying people more, whatever the reason, is like saying ‘you’re entitled to more food than other people’ (or to use more of the earth’s resources, or emit more carbon emissions, etc, in practice). It is ‘fundamentally’ unfair.”

No, it recognizes the obvious truth that solving human needs requires work, effort and constant attentiveness to what other desire and its relative value. By incentivizing production –and more importantly — valuable, efficient productivity, it rewards people proportionately to their contributions to others. In places like the US, highest income quintile families work five or six times as many hours as the lowest quintile, and are similarly much more likely to have invested in education. The majority of lowest quintile families don’t work at all. Zero hours per year serving others for an income.

Communism, such as was practiced in China, was a complete disaster at producing much of anything above marginal subsistence, with even this lacking in the lean years. And this despite the ability to draft off frontier capitalist economies which actually invented things and processes and effective institutions during this period. Absent incentives to work, incentives to take risk, to attend to the needs of strangers, to specialize, to discover efficiency, to solve new problems, equal pay regardless of effort and contribution is one of if not the “daffyist” ideas in all history.

Do you actually think millions of people would cooperate to invest, design and build 2017 Honda Accords, and IPhone 7s absent incentives to take risks, delay gratification, and coordinate activities efficiently? You think the occasional “attaboy” and an annual participation trophy is going to help coordinate this activity?

I am almost tempted to see your comment as a lampoon of Marxism, planted for effect.

For example if I say “people should be rewarded for their hard work”, probably most people agree

The statement ‘People should be rewarded for their hard work’ is practically meaningless without additional contextual information.

The reason people don’t treat it as meaningless is that they are making tacit assumptions about a default context. This is unproblematic if everybody involved is conscious of it. Usually that’s not the case.

Val’s practical example provides some of the kind of additional contextual information which could make the question meaningful.

Socrates: So you don’t always agree that people should be rewarded for their hard work?
Interlocutor: We weren’t talking about feeding your children!
Socrates: You weren’t talking about feeding children, but what if somebody was?
Interlocutor: People don’t do that! Everybody knows that when they talk about rewarding people for their hard work they’re not talking about feeding children?
Socrates: How do we know what everybody knows?
Interlocutor: Look, this is obvious! You know it too, you’re just being difficult! When we talk about rewarding people for their hard work, we’re not talking about feeding children, and everybody understands that!!
Socrates: Isn’t it possible that not everybody shares the same understanding? Shouldn’t we check before we decide that what seems obvious to us is obvious to everybody? What precisely does it mean when we talk about people being rewarded for their hard work?
Interlocutor: Look, just drink this hemlock and shut up!!

J-D @ 28: ” A body of research devoted to a damnfool question can only produce a body of damnfool answers.”

FWIW, I’ve gotta agree with you completely, there J-D.

How the cycle-riding going ?

Roger @ 46
Actually Roger I’m not a Marxist (though I believe Marx had important insights) so it would be weird to take my remarks that way. Yours however … Like some Dickensian character (who was that guy?) who equates wealth absolutely with worth. Sorry but there’s masses of evidence that disproves your theory. There are many factors that influence income and wealth, and the ‘inherent value’ of work (a very hard thing to measure because there is usually a large subjective element to it) is only one of them.

Even very, very mainstream economists don’t agree with you. For example in Australia, economists estimate that the monetary value of unpaid work equals more than half of the current GDP. What does that do to your theory?

Sorry for yet more posting, but in response to Roger’s claims about “magical” cleaning, I was quite clearly saying the opposite – cleaning is not magical, someone has to do it. So yes, weird, but certainly not the first time a man on the internet has told me I’m wrong about everything.

Val @45
A couple of points related to you comment.

First, there is a substantially different relationship of responsibility between a mother feeding her children and an employer providing wages for employees. I might wish for a world where employers were more maternal, but in fact its not so and isn’t likely to be so anytime soon.

A mom can’t/won’t sack her kids for ‘throwing things about’ instead of helping – an employer can and I’d argue has a responsibility to the other employees to do just that. It would be great to have a world where everyone perfectly fit their job and enjoyed it, that also isn’t realistic. An employers job is to find people who can do their job correctly and hopefully efficiently, not feed every hungry mouth. Again, it might be nice and as a society perhaps a government should do that, but even a socialist construct doesn’t make that an employers responsibility.

Second, I fully agree its hard to compare the value difference between quite a lot of jobs. A mechanic vs. a teacher, a baker vs. a painter these aren’t value distinctions easily made. That said, there are relative differences between some skills. A surgeon is more valuable to society than a dishwasher on the basis of substitutability alone whether the surgeon should earn 2x, 20x or 200x the dishwasher is an imminently fair question, but I think few would deny that the one skill is more valuable than the other even if both people performing their tasks are doing nothing more than giving 100% of their potential.

If I’m reading you correctly, I see your position on relative value of work as an argument for some sort of Basic Income, more than as an argument for equality/inequality. Thanks for the thoughtful perspective on equality and fairness.

@J-D 48

“The statement ‘People should be rewarded for their hard work’ is practically meaningless without additional contextual information.”

I totally agree with this (and also I don’t think that equality/fairness has anything to do with rewards to hard work, it’s more a hyerarchy thing as others have pointed out, “reward to hard work” is more or less an ideological catchphrase, I should have been clearer).

My point is that, in absence of a clear context, the use of valutative concepts like “fairness” tilts the answer in favor of “fairness” VS “equality”, because linguistically “fairness” implies a positive thing, whereas “equality” doesn’t.

If more context is given, the answer may change because the interlocutor might realize that what I call “fairness” isn’t fair from his/her point of view. In Val’s example, I (and I think most others) would qualify giving less/worse food to an unruly kid as “unfair”.

My point is that what is presented as a philosophical/psychological/ethical question is really just a form of bad use of language.

If I say, “what is the most beautiful dog, the beautiful one or the ugly one” without showing a picture of the two dogs, the answer is necessariously “the beautiful one”, but this isn’t a matter of philosophy/phsychology/esthetics, it’s just a case of bad use of language.

The contextual information (pictures of the dogs) may change things, but only because the interlocutor may realize that I’m using terms incorrectly, and answer on substance instead than on words and thus giving an answer that is apparently logically incorrect (“the ugly dog is the most beautiful one”).

A mom can’t/won’t sack her kids for ‘throwing things about’ instead of helping

Give neoliberalism a few more years…

@Trader Joe 56

“An employers job is to find people who can do their job correctly and hopefully efficiently, not feed every hungry mouth.”

Since I’m on a semantic-nazi trip:

– The employee job is X, which is what he signed for in his/her contract;
– The employer’s “obligations” are what he signed in his contract with the employee, plus other implict obligations affirmed by consuetude or by law;
– The employer’s PURPOSE is generally that of making money, and as such he or she will generally try to employ people who work well enough to pay for their own wages plus employer’s profit.

But the last one isn’t a “job”, meaning that it isn’t an obligation the employer has with someone.

The idea that the emplyer has a “job” is the same of the idea that “the job of the king is to enforce justice in the realm”: it has some basis in reality, but is also largely an ideological depiction.

Trader Joe @56: This of course presupposes that there’s anything, or natural, about an employer.

A surgeon’s rareness in the US is to do with deliberate rationing (access to medical schools is limited by the AMA) and cartels. There are some skills that are comparatively rare and compensation for them tends not have a lot to do with their usefulness to society. What people are paid tends to relate to political power and social prestige. Of course in a different society the prestige that came with being a surgeon might be enough in and of itself.

Reason,

‘I think some of the basic concepts are mixed up here (as other people have hinted at). Firstly, what do you even mean by “equality”. If people can accumulate or spend, then overtime even with 100% equal income some wealth inequality will develop. Secondly, I think there are almost no people who think that 100% marginal tax rates are a good idea (hence the point about people preferring “fairness” – if I work I get rewarded – to equality – “zero differences”).”

Your third sentence of course supports the reasoning of the paper. People are different in values, time preferences and skills, so any FAIR system is going to result in wealth inequality, thus fairness trumps an arbitrary standard of equality. Equal is a mathematical relationship with no intrinsic value whatsoever.

If we agree to a process where those catching the fish get to eat the fish, then if one person catches lots of fish and the other doesn’t fish at all and catches nothing then the system is equal according to the rules (this is called rule egalitarianism) even as it is as unequal as can be in terms of that highlighted outcome. If you are suggesting we should change the agreed rules, then you need to base your argument on utility or fairness or whatever, but again inequality by itself means nothing. Perhaps the person hates fish. Perhaps they prefer leisure. Perhaps they would rather sing sea chanteys. Perhaps they did all their fishing last year and are living off the surplus. If so, then inequality of outcome is totally irrelevant to utility or fairness.

“But this doesn’t mean that people are indifferent to any degree of inequality, nor that they are insensitive to living in an extremely unequal society. Treating things as binary choices, that are really trade-offs is an old and dastardly political trick.”

You seem to confuse reason with rhetoric. Another political trick, even more dastardly, is pretending that an abstract mathematical relationship between two elements proves something is wrong. As my original comment clarified, there are at least five common ways to measure equality, proportionate to outcomes among agents, proportionate to contribution, proportionate to the rules of the game, proportionate to need, and proportionate to position or role.

What this means is that since these five types of inequality often contradict, that just about everything is unequal, depending upon how it is measured. Societies use all five measures where appropriate. A system extremely equal on one can be extremely unequal on one or more of the others. Thus inequality tells us little. What is important is utility or value or fairness of the system.

Using inequality because of its multiple definitions is a self negating standard of value. Fairness matters a lot to people. Equality matters in how it feeds into fairness and other human values, but getting more equality on one dimension often leads to more inequality on another.

JD @49

I wrote: “The majority of lowest quintile families don’t work at all. Zero hours per year serving others for an income.”

JD: “The proposition that people who are not being paid are doing no work should be demonstrated, not just assumed. Many people who are being paid for doing work are nevertheless solving problems and creating useful products and services. For most of the existence of the human species, money did not exist, and yet people solved problems and created useful products and services without being paid.”

Agreed. See my comment to Val. The part of my sentence you are overlooking is “FOR AN INCOME”. Now why, may one ask, is this important in a discussion on income inequality? Because I am not castigating the poor (many of whom are students, retired living off assets or between jobs), I am pointing out how using a barometer of INCOME inequality is not a good measure of unfairness, and unfairness is what is important. To some extent, it is a measure of whether one is or is not at that time involved in the measured market.

No, it [paying people more] recognizes the obvious truth that solving human needs requires work, effort and constant attentiveness to what other desire and its relative value. By incentivizing production –and more importantly — valuable, efficient productivity, it rewards people proportionately to their contributions to others.

“The proposition that people who are paid more are producing more; or that people are encouraged to produce more by higher pay; or that paying people more is the only way to encourage them to produce more; or that paying people more is the best way to encourage them to produce more — whichever it is — should be demonstrated, not just assumed.”

First, I never wrote or implied it was the only way. Second, I am pretty sure it is NOT always the best way. Third, remember the faux pas above of those using income as the measure of unfairness. To the extent that value is created or enjoyed by work outside of the market, then this undermines arguments that INCOME inequality reflects unfairness.

I am sure I could easily prove that incentives work at increasing production. I could do so by linking to several hundred books in economics, several hundred books and articles of economic history, several thousand experiments in business, social sciences and economics. But a better question is does anybody believe they don’t? I am not going to waste my time to demonstrate that the world isn’t flat.

A price is a signal and an incentive. If selling mud pies results in zero “sales” even when giving them away, and selling apple pies results in making a profit of $10k, then the market is telling us something about the value of work to produce apple pies compared to doing nothing and the absurdity of putting any time, investment or energy into baking with mud. Granted economics is complicated, and income and profit are by no means a perfect measure of within market value added, but they are still extremely useful. But doing so requires we embrace the inequality –for the sake of fairness and general prosperity.

starting with the obvious point that, since most peoples’ beliefs are shared with their social groups, the question of why individuals adhere to false beliefs in the case of contrary evidence must be explained in social not psychological terms.

This, a thousand times this.

@64 Cian
I agree with respect to surgeons being rationed/function of access and privledge in the present set up. That said, even if they threw the doors open to everyone I’d suggest that not everyone could do the job of being a surgeon whether due to aptitude or fortitude, while certainly anyone can still wash a dish. The point remains the same – surgeons would command more pay, but maybe not 20x what a dishwasher makes.

@62 MisterMr….uh, thanks? It was sort of a vast simplification of what an employer might be tasked with. Thanks for fleshing it out in case anyone didn’t get that.

Roger @ 67

Unfortunately you seem to be one of those people who, when challenged on a point, say ‘I didn’t say that, I said something else’ – which makes it difficult to have a meaningful conversation.

You did in fact specifically refer to work in your comment #46:

“No, it [paying people more] recognizes the obvious truth that solving human needs requires work, effort and constant attentiveness to what other desire and its relative value. By incentivizing production –and more importantly — valuable, efficient productivity, it rewards people proportionately to their contributions to others”

Whether you call it “work” or “production” doesn’t alter the point. You also clearly suggested that if people didn’t get paid more than others, they wouldn’t produce “useful products and services”.

I’m not going to go through your comment and point out all the things you said and later denied, to me and others, but it’s disappointing that you can’t argue your case without doing that.

I would be interested to know what you meant about the magical clean house though. I suspect what you meant is that the mother in my example, doing her unpaid work of looking after her children, is so dumb she doesn’t even realise that a clever male capitalist built her house and her floor and her table, she thinks they got there by magic! And I also strongly suspect that you are never going to admit that. So probably not worth continuing the conversation.

John Quiggin @ 69

“since most peoples’ beliefs are shared with their social groups,”

You have some evidence to back this assertion up, I trust, other than just your own propensity to want to believe it.

When I was somewhat younger, the ‘social rule’ was “Never discuss religion or politics” which was the way that ‘social groups’ insulated their members from each other. So you maintain this is no longer the case but that ‘social groups’ now share their beliefs around – or is it that ‘social groups’ somehow form out of collections of people who just happen to have “shared beliefs” ?

Roger,
Your argument is full of holes. It goes bad from the start:
“If we agree to a process where those catching the fish get to eat the fish”

(WHAT????) As though equipment, access etc are all even (not to mention even capacity – somepeople allways get seasick). So people who don’t catch any fish should starve? Are you serious?

Sorry, I meant:

“Or if that’s not your proposition, how is your proposition different from that?’

Val and Nasty and Reason,

You are right of course, I was just testing you to see it you were faithful to the cause. You all passed with flying colors. Your arguments were impeccable.

JD and Pavel,

Well said. As above I was just testing you. Everybody knows that monetary incentives are virtually useless and that nobody goes to work for money, or works hard for tips, promotions or commissions, and that for-profit organizations are just pretending to seek profit, and that investors, entrepreneurs and small business owners are just doing it out “false class consciousness” and completely impartial to whether they actually make or lose money.

Cian,

Good catch on the hours worked data which I got from that dastardly Census Bureau. You are of course correct that they are just making it all up to push their neoliberal agenda. It is sad to imagine all the right wing extremists out there who actually believe the Census Bureau propaganda that the lowest quintile tend to be in the life stages of retired, students or unemployed.

Good job across the board for fighting the good fight! Keep it up team!

Roger

Well said. As above I was just testing you. Everybody knows that monetary incentives are virtually useless and that nobody goes to work for money, or works hard for tips, promotions or commissions, and that for-profit organizations are just pretending to seek profit, and that investors, entrepreneurs and small business owners are just doing it out “false class consciousness” and completely impartial to whether they actually make or lose money.

I made no such assertions.

What I did do was ask you to clarify the precise nature of the proposition you were advancing, which I see you have failed to do. Your sarcasm makes your literal meaning less clear; I do not know whether this is, as they say, a bug or a feature.

@Roger

“Everybody knows that monetary incentives are virtually useless and that nobody goes to work for money, or works hard for tips, promotions or commissions, and that for-profit organizations are just pretending to seek profit, and that investors, entrepreneurs and small business owners are just doing it out “false class consciousness” and completely impartial to whether they actually make or lose money.”

That’s exactly the argument I made! I’m glad you got it in one. People trying to survive by earning tips is exactly the same thing as entrepreneurs trying to shake up an industry is exactly the same as corporations exploiting workers with no “market value”.

Please ignore any distinctions regarding how this is an argument about the relationship between the scaling of financial reward and individual productivity, and not whether people want money in general or will do things for money. The intellectual honesty just exudes from you…

In Roger’s world the current state of things is exogenously given from on high and certainly not the product of history or policy. Yawn.

Roger,
as far as I can see you have tried to pull a Trumpian rhetorical trick by avoiding my main point:
“Treating things as binary choices, that are really trade-offs is an old and dastardly political trick.”
and trying to make the main issue that inequality is difficult to define and measure. Yes, but that doesn’t mean it DOESN’T MATTER AT ALL, which is what you seem to be arguing – whereas I think the concentration should be on how much it matters. After all, if it didn’t matter at all there would never be revolutions, and there are. Unfairness is always with us to some degree or another (and is also inevitable, just as is the case with inequality).

Jerry @89

“This maps onto the bizarre claim made by Roger above that people don’t care whether two numbers are the same or not. True, at a sufficiently high level of abstraction…”

I was indeed making it at a high level of abstraction, and so I guess this makes my claim both true and bizarre.

“..but in fact we care about inequality not because we like comparing numbers, but because we think that the fact of the inequality proxies for something important, namely, fairness.”

BINGO! Jerry almost gets it. Now add this to the undisputed truth that there are multiple ways to measure which vary based upon what we are comparing.

1). We can compare outcomes/rewards between participants (regardless of contribution)
2). We can compare outcomes/rewards to contributions (a slightly more abstract concept per Fiske*)
3). We can compare outcome/reward to need
4). We can compare outcome/reward to position
5). We can compare outcome/reward to procedural observance (playing according to the rules).

The blind spot of progressive thought (actually probably an intended deception) is to downplay the importance of these four other ways of comparison and to elevate #1 up to the level of exalted status.

In a system where we agree to divide outcomes regardless of contribution, then uneven distribution (our abstract comparison) would be unfair. If, however we agree to reward based upon position, or contribution, or need, or based upon following the prescribed rules, then we would perceive it as unfair if we over-rode the agreed upon system to force greater equality of outcome.

The take away is that there are at least five ways to establish fairness. These can and do often conflict. A football game can be both fair and wildly lopsided in outcome. And calling it a tie after the lopsided outcome game was played fairly would be unfair and unjust. Similarly, suggesting it was unfair just because the outcome was lopsided is disingenuous.

It is fairness which matters not inequality, because measures of equality depend upon which factors we are comparing.

“In fact people suspect, rightly so, that the inequality is not just some natural state of things handed down by the gods of capitalism but is actually explicitly engineered into the system by the people who stand to benefit from it. So in fact, concerns about inequality map quite well onto fairness concerns and the confusion disappears.”

Freed markets are indeed not a natural state, and they are indeed not handed down by gods of any type. They are evolved social institutions which have contributed to the increase in median living standards (10-20X), health, lifespan (2X), subjective well being, education, freedom, opportunity and so on. The gods of capitalism HATE freed markets. Creative destruction, freedom of entry and exit, and competition are their ultimate threats. They are well aware of how precarious membership is in the Fortune 500 in relatively free markets.

It is the median member of society which not only can but has experienced the largest gains in well being, health and lifespan (going from $3 a day, the historic pre market average, to $75 a day (the US median). And these numbers are not adjusted fully for quality of life.

So who is benefitting from it? The living standards and quality of life of people in advanced economies such as seen in Europe, N America, Japan and the Asian Tigers and such (all using local recipes involving the ingredient of freed markets) are historically unprecedented. Anyone dismissing the human welfare benefits of markets to the greater population is either a fool or a liar.

Putting the two halves of this argument together, freed markets clearly place a high institutional value on fairness types 2, 4 and 5. And people are served well on average, over the long haul, compared to societies which do not place values on these types of institutions. People are aware of this and react negatively to institutions which force too much equality of outcome regardless of contribution. This type of fairness has its place, but when elevated to exalted status in a world where products and services must be created via member contributions according to agreed rules, it is destructive.

* Here is the link to Fiske.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/fiske/relmodov.htm

B9,

“If, empirically, “people are currently responding to monetary incentives” = people naturally (read: unavoidably) respond to monetary incentives = $ inequality is necessary/good/just. Then also, empirically, “people are currently NOT responding to monetary incentives”* = people naturallly/unavoidably do NOT respond to monetary incentives = $ inequality is unnecessary/bad/unjust.”

Could you clarify please? Income inequality is not in any way necessarily good or just. It depends upon the rules of the game we have established. If we agree to share rewards equally, it would be totally unjust. If we agree to allocate rewards via a market defined system, then the system is just and fair to the extent we used the agreed system regardless of whether results were equal or unequal, just as a game can be fair and end in unequal results.

Certainly there are pros and cons to equality of income. I am in no way suggesting we shouldn’t use this barometer, but it does need to be put in context with other important and clearly sometimes conflicting measures of fairness, and with other goals and values.

“My view: Today, paying surgeons more than janitors is good/necessary/just. But 2 caveats: First, whether this necessity is evidence of “natural” human inclinations or socially conditioned acculturation is unresolved.”

Ok. My understanding is that it builds up from natural human inclinations, adds a strong level of social acculturation and further is based upon thousands of years of cultural/social competition. There are an infinite array of potential institutions and reward systems. The ones that flourish today are the ones which are reasonably in line with our inclinations, and which have evolved with a strong dash of historical contingency and which prove themselves over competing alternatives. This is of course WAY off topic, and not something I would waste time arguing on this site.

“Second, that surgeons should make more than janitors does not address the degree of $ inequality that is optimal (should the income ratio be 2:1, 10:1 ?). To the degree that the janitor has equal access to certain goods that are more rights than priveleges (medicine, law, political representation, education, clean air/water, etc…) , more inequality of $ should be tolerated.”

I agree in spirit, though we might argue in details of the last sentence. But let’s agree and move on. As for your first sentence, remember that we are not optimizing for one dimensional equality of outcome regardless of contribution (which includes not just janitors but retirees and the unemployed). We are optimizing for fairness along all the sometimes contradictory dimensions (one of which I specifically mentioned was results proportionate to needs.). But we are not only trying to optimize society for fairness. Only a fool would do that. We are also optimizing for utility, freedom, opportunity, and whatever else it is humans desire.

Every modern developed state has its particular recipe of institutional solutions to this question. And pretty much all the most successful ones use what some version of the classical liberal Enlightenment three legged stool of relatively freed markets, relatively open access politics, and the scientific method. Sweden differs from Singapore in details, but the similarities of their recipes dwarfs the differences compared to possible (and historic) institutions.

Roger,
so you are saying you are obfuscating in order to declare that the observed decline of median individual income (and the explosion of very elite incomes) in Western nations is a figment of our collective imaginations, and that “contributions” are at least as hard to determine as outcomes.

What gets me about Roger’s argument is that he uses incredible bad examples to say what he wants to say.

Fishing is inherently problematic as an example of merit, because it is a potentially zero sum game (in many fisheries we have reached the point of declining yields). So not only is there the issue of material and access advantages to the best fisheries, there is also the possibility that one man’s success implies another’s failure, even more so if we account for environmental damage caused by some fishing techniques. So fishing, tends to be increasingly regulated because it suffers from the “tragedy of the commons” problem, and large externalities.

Then he goes to scores in soccer (a notoriously low scoring game) where small but consistent differences in ability lead to potentially large differences in average scores (and if we equate scores to rewards or income that becomes a problem). Arguably the same average difference in ability in basketball would result in a smaller average score ratio (even if a larger absolute score difference). So we see illustrated the problem that the direction of the score is one issue, but the size of the score difference is another, and is dictated very much by the rules of the game.

In many markets there seems to been an increase in winner take all type situations, and winner-take-all environments that reflect consistant differences in merit are in general degenerate (even where luck plays a significant part). Consider what would happen to tennis is tournaments became winner take all. You would end up with fewer competitors because there would be no way reach the top without large independent resources (either from a sponsor or from inheritance). The problem with competition, is always that someone eventually wins, so you need some process generating new entrants.

B9, JD, and reason,

“If, for example, you believe that other commenters here are part of a deliberate conspiracy to deceive (among others) you, then it’s hard to see what the point of further discussion would be. If that’s not what you believe, how is what you believe different from that?”

By “probably” I am just using Occam’s Razor to suggest that it is unlikely that all progressives are unaware that there are multiple valid definitions of inequality and unaware that this makes their one dimensional view logically absurd. The likelihood that all progressives are this naive seems to me to be statistically impossible. I could be wrong though. I do not in any way suggest the people arguing the point with me are being disingenuous. Though in this context, that isn’t exactly a compliment.

“Now is it actually fair? No. Not by definitions 1-4.”

Bravo! You almost get it. The point is that it is possible to get comparatively rich fairly according to at least three of the definitions. It is also possible to get rich in ways which violate these definitions.

Let’s go back to sports as it is probably easier for you guys. It is possible to win a football game with a score of forty two to zero. It is possible that they all played by the rules, and that the score was proportionate to the crossing of the ball across the goal line. It is also possible that the winners cheated. It is also possible that the losing team cheated. Knowing the score by itself is insufficient to determine unfairness absent an agreement before hand that the game MUST end in a tie. And I assure you, there is no such agreement in either sports or economics, and making such an agreement would negate the point of the institution.

Do you guys get it yet?

“Do higher inequality wealthy states more faithfully reward $ based on contributions than lower inequality ones? No.”

You guys should probably read up on something called communism. It was a big thing among people who misunderstood human nature, fairness and institutional incentives. If memory serves it was a big thing last century. It didn’t turn out well. Do you need links?

As for developed countries, here is a link on growth, prosperity and inequality regardless of contribution.

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/barro/files/inequality_growth_1999.pdf

“It seems like Roger could now begin …demonstrate that progressives have a “blind spot” towards fairness definitions 2-5. No evidence has been forthcoming yet, so this would be the time, supposedly since the claim has been repeated.”

The evidence is apparent in these comments.

“Argue that “the 1%” is in fact, nontheoretically, fairly compensated by his definitions 2&3.”

If they earned their money honestly according to the rules of selling goods, services, ideas then they were by (that) definition doing so fairly. If they stole, cheated, or used force to violate the rules then they did so unfairly REGARDLESS of whether they are in the top or bottom percentile.

The tougher case is of course where they used influence to unfairly manipulate the rules so that they achieved income according to the rules. This would be rent or privilege seeking and is commonplace across income quintiles (cronyism, cartels, guilds, minimum wages, regulatory advantages, union closed shops, etc).

“….you are obfuscating in order to declare that the observed decline of median individual income (and the explosion of very elite incomes) in Western nations is a figment of our collective imaginations”

Again, you are factually ignorant. The median per capita income is up over 30 to 40% since 1980 when properly adjusted for inflation and benefits, and this despite the addition of about 40 million immigrants who bring the median way down. (Be careful to not embarrass yourself by using household income, as households have been getting smaller over this period).

The US has a higher median income adjusted for PPP, and a slightly higher growth rate in median income, and a substantially higher growth rate in jobs created over the last generation or so than other large developed nations. This despite the fact that the US is the “frontier” leading edge economy and it is historically empirically easier to catch up than lead.

Here is the the data, but it is really getting tiresome to educate you guys:

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/pub_display.cfm?id=4049

I will certainly agree though that growth RATES are down in developed nations (more so outside the US due to their foolish attachment to equality of outcomes regardless of contribution) in part due to the high growth rate in median income of developing nations. Again off topic.

“”contributions” are at least as hard to determine as outcomes.”

The “market” has definitions of how contributions are defined, and the operation of the market is set by rules on property and contracts set by law. But that would again require us getting even further off topic.

I see no further point in the discussion, which is really turning into a one sided education session.

Have a good life, and do some reading.

Roger

“If, for example, you believe that other commenters here are part of a deliberate conspiracy to deceive (among others) you, then it’s hard to see what the point of further discussion would be. If that’s not what you believe, how is what you believe different from that?”

By “probably” I am just using Occam’s Razor to suggest that it is unlikely that all progressives are unaware that there are multiple valid definitions of inequality and unaware that this makes their one dimensional view logically absurd. The likelihood that all progressives are this naive seems to me to be statistically impossible. I could be wrong though. I do not in any way suggest the people arguing the point with me are being disingenuous. Though in this context, that isn’t exactly a compliment.

You’ve told me what you are not suggesting, but not what you are suggesting. In the part of my earlier comment that you did not quote, I wrote:

You are alleging that somebody is (probably) deliberately trying to deceive somebody else, but you have failed to make clear (1) who it is that is the perpetrator of the alleged deception attempt, (2) whom it is that they are (probably) trying to deceive, (3) what you think the (probable) motive is, and (4) what leads you to this general conclusion.

That’s four questions, of which you have given an answer to only one, and that a partial and inadequate one. Your answer to (1) is apparently ‘some (but not all) progressives’, but I don’t know what you mean by ‘progressives’. You haven’t answered the other questions at all. Who is that you think (some) progressives are trying to deceive? why (do you think) they would be attempting to perpetrate this deception? and how did you arrive at this conclusion?

I see Roger has bowed out, and I suppose that’s just as well but I just couldn’t help but respond anyway.

1). We can compare outcomes/rewards between participants (regardless of contribution)
2). We can compare outcomes/rewards to contributions (a slightly more abstract concept per Fiske*)
3). We can compare outcome/reward to need
4). We can compare outcome/reward to position
5). We can compare outcome/reward to procedural observance (playing according to the rules).

Roger builds much of his argument around the idea that we should be doing the thing in #2. But even a little bit of thinking will reveal that it is nigh-impossible to assess contributions in this way on a societal scale. Since Roger is so fond of sports analogies, I’ll use one of my own: there are people out there who devote entire careers to analyzing who is making the biggest contribution in NBA defense. This is a very complex task, even though there are only 5 players on the court at any one time and the parameters of legal actions in basketball games are rigidly fixed. Expand that process to any organization of even moderate size and complexity, and the credit assignment problem becomes much less tractable. At the level of society, you might as well forget it; no reliable metric exists, or could exist to assess such a contribution.

Defenders of capitalism like to solve this problem by closing the vicious circle: the contribution is reflected by how much you’re paid, because that’s how much society values your work. But this is question-begging, since what is in question is exactly the grounds on which the identification between wealth and societal contribution rests. So that won’t do. And once you start looking at who is actually raking in the big bucks, it sure isn’t the people who contribute anything to the material well-being of our society: the producers of things, the doctors, the scientists, the teachers, etc. It’s the people who sit at the nexus of the financial system, your Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons. For people like Roger who are clearly invested in a kind of just world story, it is imperative to find justifications for the proposition that such people deserve what they have, because the alternative, which Roger almost gets at with his point #4 above, is that these people have merely figured out how to leverage their positions into power and wealth. It would mean that in fact the Jamie Dimons of the world have not ascended to the top by virtue of their contributions to society, but rather by virtue of manipulating the rules in such a way that it is beneficial to them.

The “market” has definitions of how contributions are defined, and the operation of the market is set by rules on property and contracts set by law. But that would again require us getting even further off topic.

It is to laugh. The rich set the definition of “contributions,” which definitions naturally state that the contribution of the rich is the greatest (rather like the USNWR picking educational quality criteria that ensure that Harvard comes out on top, because that’s the answer you’re supposed to get a priori). Then the “operations of the market” are constructed in such a way as to allow those who already sit at the nexus of power and money to accrue more of both. If these “rules” are challenged (vide some unsophisticated rube intimating that perhaps financial advisors ought not to fleece the people they are advising), see point #1 for justification. Delightfully tidy system.

In truth, of course, no individual contribution to a society of 320 million, much less a world of 7 billion, means anything at all: the cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people. As it is not possible to estimate anything like an individual contribution with any reliability, the just solution is to conclude that we are owed certain things not by virtue of what we contribute but by virtue of our common humanity.

Not content to merely mangle logic and sociology, Roger goes after history too:

Freed markets are indeed not a natural state, and they are indeed not handed down by gods of any type. They are evolved social institutions which have contributed to the increase in median living standards (10-20X), health, lifespan (2X), subjective well being, education, freedom, opportunity and so on. The gods of capitalism HATE freed markets. Creative destruction, freedom of entry and exit, and competition are their ultimate threats. They are well aware of how precarious membership is in the Fortune 500 in relatively free markets.

The word “contributed” is doing a lot of work there. When challenged on the justice of capitalism, its defenders will inevitable retreat into a retrospective defense: all the good things we have are because of markets, all the bad things are merely failure to live up to market ideals, and hence markets cannot fail but only be failed. Now, by examining which things have actually produced improvements in living standards, health, lifespan, and so on, we might naturally assume that the responsibility here lies with such material innovations as publicly available clean drinking water, sanitation, medical research (the bulk of it originating with publicly funded research) and so on. But that’s clearly the dumb materialist take; the truly wise sage knows that the answer is “markets” in each and every case, because for Roger et al the market is already the necessary logical precondition of any good thing happening whatsoever. Nevermind that innovation occurred in pre-capitalist society and that the rate of innovation is far more likely to be dependent on currently available scientific knowledge and material prerequisites, the wise capitalist knows that only the market can achieve miracles. The actual physical thing is merely the instrument, but the market, well, that is the immanent spirit which moves it all. Alas, like all spiritualisms this doctrine suffers from a lack of testability, but what’s mere science when weighed against a matter of faith?

I will note that even if we were to grant that markets made all these things possible in the past, it does not follow that markets are necessary to guarantee future progress. It’s entirely possible that market capitalism was a necessary process of bootstrapping (pun intended) society out of medieval feudalism and, like Wittgenstein’s ladder, can be abandoned once it’s no longer necessary. This isn’t my view necessarily, but it’s worth pointing out that there’s no reason to assume that market capitalism is either necessary, desirable, or just going forward.

There are an infinite array of potential institutions and reward systems. The ones that flourish today are the ones which are reasonably in line with our inclinations, and which have evolved with a strong dash of historical contingency and which prove themselves over competing alternatives.

Every hierarchy needs its foundational myth. The foundational myth of the market is that the market is always fair: if there were abuses, they were in the past, there are no alternatives, we live in the best of all possible worlds, and anyone who disagrees is a dangerous radical who wants to murder you (so you’d better murder them first: turns out “proving yourself against competing alternatives” just means being a lot better at genocide than the other fellow). Or: the injustice didn’t happen, if it happened it wasn’t injustice, and anyway even if it was they deserved it.

B9@99,

“The blind spot here is that you’re leaving out another major leg: collectivism (the group will attempt to make choices for all members), a principle function of which is to deny people opportunity to offer and benefit from economic incentives.”

I specifically included “politics” as a necessary leg for deciding upon, supplying and in some cases creating public goods. One such public good has tended to be the rules and enforcement mechanisms of markets. So no blind spot.

“To say or imply that either mode of decision making is more natural is…unresolved.”

I am pretty sure I wrote that none of these systems are “natural.” They are emergent from thousands of years of competition and emulation among thousands of societies.

“If we agree to share rewards equally, it would be totally unjust.”

No. If we agreed to distribute them equally it would be just to distribute them equally and unjust not to do so. It would also be unjust to distribute them equally if we agreed to another system (say commission based or piecemeal rewards) and then overrode it after the fact to force equality.

“Why is a market-defined system inherently just and fair?”

It isn’t, unless we agreed to it.

“Why is outcome egalitarianism inherently unfair?”

It isn’t. If we agreed to it, then it is totally fair.

“Are you saying that we should enforce a criteria that would deprive certain members of these environmental goods so as to increase fairness in society as a whole? How would that work? That would seem more sadism than utilitarianism?”

Of course not. If we had a cornucopia machine, we wouldn’t need to incentivize production at all. It would be superfluous

Absolutely 100% disagree. You are just falling for the Big Kahuna, top down model or what Zappa would probably call the “Central Scrutinizer.” Markets are decentralized, emergent phenomena. I understand that people (we) have trouble grasping complex, decentralized, emergent feedback systems. But that is a deficiency in us, not in the system.

I know a little something about emergent systems, but the problem is that just saying “markets are emergent phenomena” doesn’t get you anything. All social phenomena are emergent; there is no great wisdom in pointing this out.

The rules of markets are themselves not all that complex though, just the emergent order. The rules involve property rights, contract law, freedom of entrance and exit, and freedom of exchange based upon mutual voluntary agreement. From these things such as prices, wages, profits and losses emerge.

Actually, the rules are in fact quite complex, as anyone who has ever actually tried to understand them knows. What constitutes a “property right” or a “contract” or a “mutual voluntary agreement” in modern society depends on a great number of things, including statutes (local, state, and federal), regulations (same), and case law (ditto). Turns out that how those rules are structured makes a great deal of difference.

“Contributions” are assessed in a decentralized fashion based upon demand adjusted for supply.</blockquote

This is just Econ 101 nonsense, empty pronouncements without any insight.

Absolutely disagree again. The so called question-begging applies to any consistent rule system. In football the score is defined as crossing the goal line, so the score or “contribution” rests on how the rules were defined.

This really makes me wonder if you’ve ever watched a football game. Even in a limited game with relatively fixed rules and aims, it is often impossible to disentangle such things as quarterback and receiver performance, never mind more complex stuff like line play. You can’t determine “contribution” by looking merely at such things as yards.

In markets the rewards are DEFINED as the decentralized emergent value others are willing to pay adjusted for supply.

That’s just a thing you say; you haven’t actually given any reason that anyone should believe it’s true. In fact, markets do not encode or define any definition of “reward.” There are only prices, which reflect many things such as the particular structure of the market, the relative bargaining powers of the participants, and so on. The whole notion of “reward” is actually entirely beside the point, which it better be, since markets are not moral agents.

Once we define it — in part — as every large developed nation does (using markets) the justification is in its value compared to other (non market economic systems) systems. Socialism and central command are other ways with spectacularly, even embarrassingly, bad relative outcomes, especially considering that socialism clearly free rode and drafted off the creativity , innovation and institutional development of market based economies (even Marxists agree to this). Care to guess how many of the major tech breakthrough innovations of the 20th C came out communist states?

Considering that most countries that called themselves socialist or communist in the 20th century started the technological race far behind the economies of the industrialized West, it’s hardly surprising that they spent much of that time playing catch-up. But anyway, if you thought I was here to play apologist for the USSR or China, I’m sorry to disappoint you; I have little brief for either of those regimes.

At the root of the problem, I suggest you are assuming that there is an absolute measure of value and that our rule system needs to discover that.

It’s both a biological and physical fact that some products of our labor are more valuable than others, for the simple reason that we need to eat and have homes to live in and not die of diseases. All the repetitions of “markets are emergent” won’t fix that. Of course, once you get into the realm of consumer goods, it becomes impossible to establish such value for most of the things people buy in the stores, and in any case it wouldn’t be particularly valuable if we could.

Quit making things up. In reviews of the one percent in the US, most made their money via entrepreneurial activity or working for entrepreneurs. Most do not come from affluent families, most do not attend Ivy League schools, and only a small and decreasing minority inherited their wealth.

http://www.joshuakennon.com/the-new-elite-a-look-in-the-top-1-percent-of-wealth-in-the-united-states/

Numerically, the upper-middle class is dominated by highly paid salaried professionals and small business people. They are certainly well-to-do, but they are not in the 0.1% or the 0.01%, to whom the wealth generated since the recession has overwhelmingly accrued.

As I stated above and in prior comments, the role of markets is NECESSARY not sufficient.

You say that, but there’s no particular reason to believe this is true.

And no, prior to 1776 and the moral philosopher’s writings on the Wealth of Nations, no people had wide scale prosperity of the modern variety. Markets were necessary, not sufficient.

Ah yes, the complex emergent system is derivable in its entirety from the work of a single person. You’re like a Biblical literalist who thinks the pronouncements of yore suffice to derive the whole of modern society. That prior to Adam Smith wide-scale prosperity was not available might have a little something to do with the level of technological advancement that existed at the time.

I have been studying the rate of technological and institutional innovation for more than a decade. Would you like me to link where and when major innovations has occurred (by year and nation)? If not why don’t you google it. You are certainly correct that there are scientific and material prerequisites. I would add political and institutional prerequisites too. Again that is the feedback loop of markets/open access politics/science.

A whole decade! Goodness me, I am impressed. I’m afraid I’m a lot less impressed with your post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, nor would I be terribly impressed with the links you would no doubt share with me exalting the achievements of Western civilization.

Agreed. It is possible that markets as we know them or that science/open access politics as we know them now will not be necessary in the future. This just points to the need for institutional variety, competition and experimentation. Something I have tended to have as much trouble convincing most so called “progressives” of than even the value of markets. If we discover something better than freed markets then I am all for it. The absolutely last place I would expect to see these ideas coming from is from people who do not understand the system we currently have (as demonstrated by the comments of Val, b9, Reason, JD and you) and who innately tend to reject decentralized, experimental problem solving systems. Though feel free to correct me if you are a fan of decentralized, non coercive problem solving.

Cool, a guy who thinks that markets are non-coercive. Why, I haven’t encountered thought that original since, oh, I don’t know, the libertarians I used to live with in college.

Jerry, you are embarrassing yourself and this site with this straw manning garbage. If you ever wonder what it looks like to lose a discussion factually, rhetorically and logically, just save a copy of this exchange. And remember I did it on your turf surrounded by your fellow ideologues.

Well, I will leave it to others to determine who is embarrassing themselves. I don’t feel any particular embarrassment over anything that I wrote, personally, and I’d also suggest it’s quite bad form to unilaterally declare yourself so impressed with your own verbiage that you have clearly won the debate. Especially when factually, rhetorically, and logically, you have done your best to evade actual challenges by moving the goalposts and arguing from shibboleths.

Roger,

rules-based fairness is in fact founded upon democratic consent. Its right there in in your latest response. Essentially, ” If we agreed to it, it would be fair.” Odd focus for a libertarian I guess. But you’ve got the inevitable supremacy of MARKETS in I guess all social-production contexts so no need to fear cognitive dissonance. I reflect that the ballooning of relative wealth and income in finance especially was not the delayer of a populist ground swell.

Anyway…now there’s a chance to come full circle: the relationship of personal belief and personal consent to our social order is not at all clear.

I note people far smarter than I are arguing about markets and laws over title, so here’s an old one from Bermondsey in London and its market ouvert

briefly if an item was sold in Bermondsey Market between sunrise and sunset then its provenance could not be questioned. Hence stolen goods were (legally) sold here and title passed to the buyer. This rule was abolished in 1995.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_ouvert

Roger @105
Having definitely saying that you had given up trying to educate us you rather odd view of what we believe and don’t understand about markets (most of us are not against actually against markets in principle, but most of us want a more egalitarian society – as we indeed used to have before neo-liberalism started working its magic – for the elite), you then proceed to write a magazine length post. I thought we were finally free from your contentless paternalism.

I think it is even worse than that, because it evades the very important question “contributions to what”. (Measuring contributions by income is doubly circular because income is gained by producing things for people with money, not by making contributions of value to the population as a whole.)

For sure. The choice of metric itself is obviously value-laden; I’m just granting that even if we could agree on what we were trying to measure, actually measuring it would be effectively impossible.