Sunday 14 July 2024

Tim Sommers stupid range egalitarianism

Death is a major cause of suffering in the world. Many would agree that it should be abolished- at least for nice people like us. Why is it that Western Philosophers don't ask how we should go about abolishing death- or at least get it to fuck off in our own case? Southern Philosophers like me have suggested different principles which any ethically acceptable method of abolishing death must comply with. The two most important are- 

1) Death should only be abolished by methods which also make my dick bigger

2) Don't expect me to pay a penny towards achieving this. 

If Western philosophers have neglected the issue of Death Abolition, they have shown great interest in a subject- re. Income or Wealth distribution- which is wholly ideographic and economic and which has no ethical or philosophical dimension.

As a case in point, Tim Sommers asks on 3Quarks

Who Gets What?

Suppose a small group of people are stranded together on a desert island.

If one of them can get them back to civilization, what is best is that he gain authority over the others. Thus, the Muth Rational Solution is for sensible people to ensure the allocation of resources is done in a manner which reinforces authority of a type which best solves the collective action problem.  

They have no fresh water or food – until they come across a stash of coconuts. They can drink the milk and eat the coconut meat to survive. But how do they divide up the coconuts fairly between them?

Who gives a fuck? They want to get home not set up a coconut based Utopia on a desert island. 

The coconuts are not the product of anyone’s hard work or ingenuity.

Yet, if they are allocated on the basis of hard work and ingenuity, everybody is better off.  

They are manna-from-heaven. In such circumstances, in a sense, no one deserves anything.

Whereas, in another sense, everybody deserves everything more particularly if it is shoved up his or her respective ass.  

So, the question is how to distribute something valuable, even essential, but which no one has any prior claim upon, in an ethical way.

It is unethical to take on a function- e.g. that of deciding how scarce resources are to be allocated- for which one has no training or expertise. In this particular case, the guy who has most knowledge or experience of surviving on a desert island should make such decisions or else, the person with the highest innate authority or coercive power, should consult with her. 

In other words, what is the appropriate principle of distributive fairness in such a case?

An economist might mention a solution concept involving calculating Shapley values or following a previous convention till the utility of moving away from it becomes common knowledge. 

The most obvious suggestion is that the coconuts should be distributed equally.

After this is done, a coalition which pools coconuts could gain authority over the others. In any case, Coase's theorem applies. The initial distribution does not matter. If people are rational and there is an urgent collective action problem then they will pool the coconuts and allocate them in a manner which best solves that problem. 

And that may well be the right answer. Many people consider equality the presumptive fair distribution, especially in manna-from-heaven situations like this.

If that is the convention obtaining, one may certainly start by equal division before voting to pool the resource so as to tackle pressing collective action problems.  

Distributions that depart from strict equality, many believe, must be justified, but equality requires no justification.

If that is the convention prevailing, start from there by all means. It represents an uncorrelated asymmetry and thus picks out a 'bourgeois strategy' which reduces wasteful conflict. 

For example, suppose we also find buried treasure on the island. Various arguments could be made that one person made a decisive contribution to the discovery that others didn’t, but isn’t the starting place an equal distribution?

No. Treasure is worthless on a desert island. True, it may produce irrational conflict. But so might sexual competition. There are a lot of ways these stranded people could fall out with each other and thus hasten their own collective demise. There is only one way they can survive- viz. pooling resources and executing a viable plan for getting off the island or developing its resources.  


But suppose after most of the coconuts are distributed equally there is one coconut left.

Draw lots for it. 

For the sake of argument, imagine single coconuts are not divisible or fungible for some reason and so one coconut cannot be shared. What do we do with the extra coconut?

Follow the usual convention. This may be to draw lots for it or use it as a reward- e.g. the first to locate a fresh water source gets it.  


Strict equality seems to imply that you should just throw it away to avoid making the distribution unequal.

Fuck off! Strict equality is satisfied by equal expected value.  

This is called the leveling-down problem.

By cretins whose idiocy has bottomed out.  

You can almost always increase the amount of equality in an unequal distribution by taking stuff from the better-off and simply throwing it away.

No. You can almost always get your head kicked in if you try to fuck up society.  

If equality is valuable in and of itself,

it isn't. We want to live rather die in an equal state of impoverishment.  

then any situation can be made fairer (at least in one way) by

ensuring everybody is the same height by chopping off their head and legs and portions of their torso.  

leveling down how much the better-off have so that there is less inequality – even if this makes no one better-off in absolute terms.

Maybe, for this reason, we shouldn’t care about equality in and of itself, after all.

We don't. Only stupid cunts teaching useless shite pretend to do so.  

Why do we? Here’s one theory. What we really care about is not equality, but poverty and the suffering of the least well-off.

The least well-off may be a 120 year old billionaire who has difficulty breathing and can't wipe his own ass. If he can pay for care, well and good. Otherwise, he is welcome to just fucking die already.  

There is another problem here. 'Least well off' is an 'intension' without a unique 'extension'. Everybody is the worst off from some point of view. In any case, suppose you help the least well off so that somebody else becomes the least well off. You might then have to confiscate what you gave to the first bloke to help the second fellow. But you will then immediately have to reverse this outcome and so on ad infinitum. 

This is why 'uncorrelated asymmetries' which pick out 'unique extensions' dictate eusocial 'bourgeois strategies'. These cunts should have read John Maynard Smith. They have been wasting each others time for the last fifty years. 

“Prioritarianism” is a distributive view endorsed by John Rawls and Derek Parfit (with some qualifications) that gives priority to the worst-off in a distribution.

But nobody knows who is worst-off. Bernie Madoff's investors thought they were sitting pretty. Then, quite suddenly, they discovered they were ruined. One wealthy aristocrat committed suicide.  

Perhaps, one or more of our islanders is injured or ill. They might need more coconuts than the rest of us.

The fat guy- speaking as one myself- needs more coconuts. The bulimic should get less in any case. 

As prioritarians, we might think giving the suffering more has greater moral weight than whatever happens, distributively, among the comparatively well-off.

You have shit for brains. What would have 'moral weight' is your admitting this and quitting the Academy to go clean toilets.  

Prioritarianism doesn’t have a leveling down problem because it only tracks the absolute level of welfare of the worst-off.

It can't track shit. Nobody knows who is truly worst off or truly suffering or whatever.  

The problem with prioritarianism is that it only gives advice about helping the worst-off.

The problem with it is that it is stupid and useless.  

And about the worst-off it only says they should get some kind of priority, but not exactly what kind.

Here’s a different view that also starts from the thought that maybe the point of caring about equality is caring about the worst-off. It’s called sufficientarianism. It says everyone should have the minimum number of coconuts to achieve, at least, some minimum level of welfare. Sufficientarians think we can define an objective, noncomparative level of sufficiency.

Some Doctors may think they can do so. But other Doctors may disagree. Still, some minimum ration may be adopted simply as a matter of convenience. However, if Supply falls short, this minimum may be revised or there can be an entitlement collapse for a section of society. Germany had rationing during the Great War. There were probably at least half a million starvation deaths. By 1918, about one third of food was sold through the black market. 

My point is that 'sufficientarianism' failed some fifty or sixty years before Psilosophers started gassing on about it.  

Let’s come back to that. Here’s a different problem.

Sufficientarians say that the only thing that matters is that everyone has a sufficient amount. Imagine I distribute the coconuts such that everyone has a sufficient amount to survive for now, but that this is only half the number of coconuts on hand. I keep the other half. Maybe, that’s unfair for some other reason. For example, maybe equality jumps back in here and says ‘How do we justify any deviation from an equal distribution after we have met sufficiency?’ But on the sufficientarian view it doesn’t seem to be unfair for anyone to have so much as long as everyone has enough.

Nobody knows what is or isn't 'enough'. Fairness does not mean stupidity. It involves admitting that a particular moral shibboleth or convention has only limited applicability. To be fair, only kids worry greatly about fairness. But they soon grow out of it. Rose Macaulay has described the hawk like eye each child keeps upon the Governess cutting up cake for the Nursery tea-table. Great howls of protests and gales of bitter tears erupt if there is any suspicion that Cousin Algie is getting more than his fair share of plum pud. Yet, a decade or two later, those same cousins are terribly solicitous of each other at the dinner table 


However, if one person has half the coconuts, they may have the means to rule over all of the others. Similarly, in a society where the top 10% controls almost 70% of the total resources, that 10% might rule over the other 90%.

We want smart people to rule over us. But, the wealthy don't actually do so because they too prefer that people with greater political and administrative skills do so. The question arises, who should allocate capital to different techniques of production in various industries? The answer is- not me, mate. Let the people who have greatly increased their own wealth by such investments continue to do so. Wealth inequality should increase very greatly as new technologies- which ordinary people don't understand- are invented or otherwise become available. It is likely that as we get richer- because our productivity has increased- others will get much much wealthier because their productivity has sky-rocketed. So what? What should really worry us is inequality in dick size. Did you know that many women have smaller dicks than most men? How is that fair?  

So, limitarianism says that there ought to be an upper-limit on the number of coconuts any one of us can have.

And we say there should be an age limit on this stupid shite.  If you are over the age of ten, don't fucking do it, mate. 

No one should have more coconuts than they need to flourish. Like the view that everyone should have a sufficient amount, the view that there is an upper limit on what anyone should have is incomplete. It only addresses the very top of the distribution. But what if we combine limitarianism with sufficientarians? Sufficilimitarianism is the view that everyone should have a sufficient amount of coconuts and no one should have more than the number of coconuts they need to flourish.

Shoveyourheadupyourrectumism is the view that these cunts should shove their heads up their rectums or further up their rectums if they have already done so.  


There’s a problem that sufficientarians, limitarians, and (to a lesser extent) prioritarians share that is relevant here. In order to get around equality and the leveling down objection, all these views abandon comparing people to each other in favor of an objective, noncomparative standards. So, there’s a certain amount that sufficientarians say is needed by anyone to achieve a certain minimal level of well-being. But how much, exactly, is that?

This is an ideographic matter. Suitably qualified experts may be able to give a good enough specification. The problem is that it will be scaled back or ignored if Supply fails or the relevant agency is disintermediated.  

Limitarianism says there is a certain amount that is too much. How much is that?

If your dick is bigger than mine by an inch, that is an inch too much. Whittle it down to regulation size immediately.  

Here are two reasons to doubt the possibility of noncomparative definitions of sufficiency – or too much.

It is possible for anyone to make any crazy definition. The problem is to find definitions which are non-arbitrary, canonical, and which uniquely identify the same 'extension' no matter what methodology is used.  

(1) Variation. Would an ideal of sufficiency that I formulate now, for the United States in the 21st century, be the same as the ideal I would advocate for contemporary hunter/gather bands or for Medieval Europeans?

No. Don't be silly.  

More to the point, would sufficiency on this desert island be the same as sufficiency if we were on a crowded beach in Hawaii?

No. There is a wide menu of choice on tourist beaches in Hawaii.  


(2) Irrelevance. Even if there was such a thing as “objective noncomparative” sufficiency,

there can be. All human beings may need some minimal level of phosphorus or some other such element in their diet. This is a matter for Scientists.  

it is not clear that that would not be the relevant social or political ideal...ncy thresh......old. Everyone is still owed a distributive share of at least some socially feasible size.

In the sense that Bernie Madoff's investors are owed a lot of money.  

So, even if the size of that socially feasible share is insufficient according to some purportedly objective ideal, that ideal is simply not what is socially relevant.

Nor are unfunded entitlements. The law may say everybody is entitled to enough food but if there isn't enough food some may starve. The State has sovereign immunity in this respect.  

More to the point, what if there are not enough coconuts for anyone to have enough? I don’t know about you, but I still want my share!

I want Bill Gates's share. Fuck all, I can do about it.  

If instead we take a comparative view and think of sufficiency as not too far from the average member of society, and “too much” as not so much compared to what others have as to disempower most people in society you arrive at a view I call range egalitarianism.

Why not take a sensible view instead? The plain fact is, there is an economic reason to provide a welfare 'safety net' more particularly because no economic damage is done when it is abruptly withdrawn. This is the true lesson of the Cities of the Plain.  

The best principle of distributive fairness says that no one should have too much or too little relative to the average amount that most people have.

But no one knows what is too much or too little. In any case, if one country confiscates wealth and income the wealthy or highly productive will exit its jurisdiction. Ultimately, there is entitlement collapse. 

Or simply we should not pursue strict equality, but too much inequality is bad and/or unfair. This avoids the leveling down objection since it does not commit us to thinking that any reduction of inequality is always valuable in and of itself. To see that, think of it like this.


If you think that too much distributive inequality is bad, but that it is not always preferable to make things increasingly equal, that there is a point, for example, well short of strict equality, at which one should become indifferent to further decreases in inequality, then you are already a range egalitarian.

As far as I can tell, surprisingly, I am the first philosopher to explicitly take this view. Why? I don’t know. But many people are already range egalitarians. They just don’t use that label.

If the 'range' is unknown why be a range egalitarian? It would be like claiming to be a hqwxy elephant where no one knows what a hqwxy is.  


In surveys of Americans about

surveys, most Americans say they are hqwxy elephants if that is what the guys doing the survey want to get them to say 

wealth inequality most people say that what they care about, and what one should care about, is simply inequality not being too great.

Why not say 'we don't greatly care about abolishing Death for everybody. What would be great is that it just spares us and our domestic pets." 

While people are willing to describe extreme inequality as morally wrong,

it is morally wrong that some people have only a few moths to live while others will continue to live for eighty or ninety years.  


What I am arguing is that if range egalitarianism is a coherent position,

it isn't. It is meaningless like saying, 'it would be nice if everybody was nice and had the same dick size.'  

and one that people already take, then it belongs on the menu of options as a normative distributive principle.

Economics, not philosophy, provides 'menu of options' to policy makers. Philosophy is useless.  

Who cares?

Only people teaching stupid shit. Or corrupt cunts seeking to gain political power.

The most important reason to care about range egalitarianism is this.

This fucker hopes to make a bit of money by gassing on about it.  

Range egalitarianism may well be the morally correct, fair principle of distribution for certain things in certain contexts.

A guy actually distributing stuff acts in a morally correct and fair manner if he does not give everything to his pals or those who suck him off.  

But there’s also this. Parfit said that distributive fairness has a subject matter as long as there are any cases where “No one deserves to be better off than anyone else;

in the opinion of some cretin 

nor does anyone have entitlements, or special claims.”

If certain entitlements or claims are denied, the Polity turns to shit. Equally, if certain other supposedly 'moral' entitlements or claims are admitted, the country goes off a fiscal cliff.  

But admitted that his real view, “like Rawls and others,” is that at the fundamental level “most cases are of this kind.”

But Parfitt and Rawls had shit for brains. That is the reality. Philosophy of this sort is puerile. It's one thing for kids to scream and shit themselves about how its totes unfair that Daddy gets to stay up to watch TV while they have to go to bed.  

So, if range egalitarianism is the correct principle of distributive fairness,

It isn't a principle because it neither explains nor controls anything nor could ever be 'operationalized' to do so.  

and most cases are fundamentally distributive cases without prior entitlements, range egalitarianism is a widely-applicable, fundamental moral principle

It is nonsense. Take the case where one guy gets half the coconuts and the others get one each. We say 'look, 10 coconuts is moral. 50 is immoral. We can't let you have more than10.' Sadly, the guy gets into his boat and fucks off leaving the original group stranded. You see, the bloke is a coconut trader. With 50 coconuts, he covers his fuel cost. If you don't give him 50 coconuts, he won't believe you will give him a proper reward for arranging your rescue. You may suddenly say 'it is morally wrong for us to reward you in any way for what is after all your duty as a human being.' 

– if not simply the most basic principle of justice.

The most basic principle of justice is that it must only concern itself with what is justiciable. But that is merely a matter of utility. Justice is a Service industry- like Hairdressing. It will be disintermediated if it listens to Philosophers and does stupid shit.  

 

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