Some 25 years ago, one such shithead, G.A Cohen, wrote a paper titled 'If you are an egalitarian, how come you are so rich?'
The answer may be that egalitarians have a trait which correlates with earning or inheriting or otherwise receiving more money. Ensuring egalitarians are rich may cause more and more people to seek to become egalitarian. Philippe Égalité was one of the richest men in France. Sadly, this didn't save him from the guillotine but his son did get to be King for about 18 years. Clearly, being an egalitarian is no bar, it might be an advantage, to being or becoming as rich as fuck or even becoming the ruler of a country.
Egalitarianism can be an optimal ideology for wealth creation and those willing to migrate so as get richer faster. Assuming non-convexities and external economies, this ethic generates push and pull factors and supports 'Tiebout models' (i.e. different mixes of local taxes and local club good provision in different 'Marshallian industrial districts) which are 'separating equilibria'. In other words, people want to go to where their target peer group lives and to do what they do and achieve the same productivity and adopt the same preferences as they have. This is the morally positive aspect of egalitarianism. The negative aspect is that people of lower productivity may be pushed out even if they are the indigenous 'owners' of the land. Where there is deep inequality- even slavery- we need to ask if the worst off aren't alive only because of that inequality. Alternatively, Kings and Dukes- or even Dictators- may only be kept around by a class of 'new men' that seeks to mask its rise until it is powerful enough to show its hand.
By contrast, hierarchical ideologies of various types may take as their premise the notion that certain groups can never have high productivity. They need a Gandhian type of leadership which involves those who used to earn good money as lawyers or businessmen, turning themselves into facsimiles of emaciated beggars or starving spinners of cotton yarn or some such shite.
Marxism was once an egalitarian theory predicated on the rise of the proletariat into a self-managing, highly productive, class who would be strong enough to disavow the control rights of owners of land, and financial capital. This may have involved fighting and defeating an aristocratic military caste which would rally behind 'Church & Crown' to defend the 'rents' that they extract.
In America, where there was neither an Established Church nor a hereditary ruling class, Egalitarianism could stride forward more rapidly thanks to Henry George's notion of 'value capture'. Vickrey was a Georgist and the Vickrey/Harsanyi 'original position' yields a perfectly sensible egalitarian utilitarianism once expected utility maximization is dropped in favour of something like regret minimization (because of Knightian Uncertainty). However, the steam was running out of egalitarianism because the world had changed. Some want to be more productive through STEM subject research. Others want to be stupid and prevent productivity increases by talking non-STEM bollocks. Also, drugs are nice. Seriously, have you tried drugs?
I don't suppose G.A Cohen took a lot of drugs. But he did talk non-STEM bollocks. Thus, he did well enough out of an academic Ponzi scheme which he entered in the early Sixties. Thus, he was entitled to ask how he himself was quite rich even though his stock in trade was some sort of moral egalitarianism or normative Marxism or other such shite.
I suppose, if you suddenly inherit vast wealth, people would think you a hypocrite if you hang on to it while also claiming to be morally committed to economic egalitarianism. Even if it is important you retain 'control rights' over it because you alone know how best to invest that money, still, you could set up a trust and distribute beneficial rights in an egalitarian manner
On the other hand, if your income is high, and you use that income to achieve a high material standard of living, there is no great scandal. We would say the outcome you support has to do with disutility- i.e. opportunity cost which has a signalling function for resource allocation. Yours is high. That of a poor, unproductive, person is low. If you live large, this advertises your higher productivity and there is a mimetic effect such that the currently poor raise their productivity so as to enjoy what you have. The categorical imperative at work here has to do with the meta-ethics of egalitarianism being utilitarian. Being more productive entails living larger so there is mimetic effect such that total utility rises
Many people, including many egalitarian political philosophers, profess a belief in equality while enjoying high incomes
as high as those of Tele-evangelists?
of which they devote very little to egalitarian purposes. The article critically examines ways of resolving the putative inconsistency in the stance of these people, in particular, that favouring an egalitarian society has no implications for behaviour in an unequal one;
Which is true. However, you may have a theory of morality which says you must 'walk the talk' and yourself do what you want to see done by Society at large. But ascribing to a particular moral belief does not entail having that particular theory of morality. Cohen is committing a 'fallacy of composition'. It is not the case that what you want for the whole is also what you want for any particular part of the whole- including yourself. I am not a Mormon, but I may want to live in a Mormon society because I believe there will be little substance abuse and thus much less crime. People will be polite and cheerful. Marriages will be stable. Kids will play actual, not video, games.
Cohen now raises up a series of strawmen-
that what's bad about inequality is a social division that philanthropy cannot reduce;
some type of philanthropy can reduce any type of inequality
that private action cannot ensure that others have good lives;
some coalition of private actors can ensure anything that can be ensured by Society as a whole
that private action can only achieve a "drop in the ocean";
lots of drops create an ocean
that private effort is not called for, since justice is a matter for the state to enforce;
a big enough private coalition is the State.
that private effort cannot remove the fundamental injustice, which is inequality of power;
see above
and that private effort involves an unreasonably large psychological burden.
which seeing a shrink can reduce.
The steelman argument Cohen steers clear from is the original Utilitarian one which has to do with disutility as opportunity cost and the mimetic effects of showcasing what is achievable through higher productivity- viz. a higher material standard of living.
Cohen believes
justice in personal choice, within a just ethos, is necessary for a society to qualify as just.
Presumably the meaning is 'most people must make the type of choice which is in accordance with the ethos of their society in order for that society to qualify as having that ethos.'
This is obviously false. Suppose our Society is an absolutist monarchy. Its ethos has to do with the Divine Right of Kings. It does not follow that most people in our Society must be Kings and act in a regal manner. Indeed, there may be no King- just a Regency Council.
But the question: "What does justice demand of individuals in a just society?" is not the same as the question: "What does justice demand of individuals in an unjust society?"
True. But the answer to both may be the same. Justice demands the same thing under all circumstances because there is a Science of Law which is like the Science of Physics which does not demand something different in China from what it demands in Chad.
And, in the present article, I raise a question related to that second one: I ask whether egalitarians who live in an unequal society
why be an egalitarian in an equal society? That would be like being in favour of saying woof woof if you are a dog. My adherence to 'woof woofism' is only remarkable because I am not a dog. I am actually a cat and should be addressed as Chairman Miaow.
(one, that is, whose government, for whatever reason, fails to establish the equality that these egalitarians favour)
If there is a government, there is inequality. Indeed, following Dahrendorf, one might say a sufficient condition for social stratification is the existence of the law.
are committed to implementing, so far as they can, in their own lives, the norm of equality that they prescribe for government.
This does not follow. You can be personally committed to egalitarianism while holding that there should be no government or that it should be a 'night-watchman' concerned only with External Defence.
There is one thing egalitarians within an unequal society cannot say, in the light of what was shown in "Where the Action Is."
That wasn't light. It was stupid shit. There can be no equality if some shithead gets to tell us what we can or can't say.
They cannot say that equality is not a goal for individuals to pursue in their own lives in any society (be it just or unjust) and, therefore, more particularly, not something for individuals to pursue in their own lives in an unequal society.
A poor, unproductive, person is welcome to pursue the goal of becoming equal in productivity, and thus income, to anybody she likes. Equally, a person who is highly productive is welcome to start slacking off till her productivity declines to that of whatever peer group she wishes to gain acceptance in.
But they might, and do, advance other reasons for not pursuing it in an unequal society, reasons which I propose to examine here.
No they don't. Only stupid shitheads teaching worthless shite 'advance reasons' in this connection. But, as I have said, there has always been- at least since the second half of the nineteenth century- one reason viz. using mimetic effects to advertise and broadcast the habitus of higher productivity.
In asking what conduct egalitarians are committed to in an unequal society, I am interested, more particularly, in the conduct of rich egalitarians in an unequal society: it's not so hard for a poor egalitarian to be true to her egalitarianism in an unequal society.
But Society benefits if poor people decide they are just as good as those with high productivity and decide to imitate them till they become their equal. Thus, in rural India or Africa, when the child of a peasant sees the superior material standard of living of educated lawyers, doctors, engineers etc., they are motivated to themselves gain education and much higher productivity than involuted agriculture can afford. The result of this 'Tardean mimetics' is that the whole society is pulled up the value chain. The opposite situation- wealthy Gandhian barristers and industrialists parading around as soi disant peasants of a particularly emaciated type- is bad for Society.
Or, if you prefer, I am interested in the conduct of rich professed egalitarians, since many people would say that they can't be egalitarians, that they can't really believe in equality, if they're rich, if, that is, they keep their money.
Just as no man can be a feminist till he cuts off his dick and thus has to pee sitting down. But why stop there? No human being can claim to believe in Justice unless they give up territory stolen from Neanderthals or Denisovans or primates more ancient yet.
Cohen was a British Marxist with an on again-off again relationship with the Labour Party. He appears to have had no understanding of British economic history or its complicated class politics. The fact is, Labour knew that coal mining was becoming unproductive (output peaked in 1913 but employment peaked in the Twenties) but the miner's union was the biggest weapon in its arsenal as Ted Heath learned to his cost. Thus it had to tell stupid lies. Once the voters showed they cared more about cheap holidays in Franco's Spain that punishing the rich with super-taxes, Labour had no ideology, no program, nothing that wasn't bluff and the hope of muddling through. It literally had nothing to put in 'place of strife' while strife was all its financiers could offer. This was a slow motion suicide which only ended when Blair removed Clause 4. Sadly, Blair hadn't the nous to rid himself of Brown and Brown, who has a PhD, worked diligently to make Labour unelectable as did the stupider of Ralph Miliband's sons and then the appalling Jeremy Corbyn whose brother is a climate denier because he thinks the thing is a plot to wean Britain off coal- and thus the miner's unions. In other words, these guys live in a pre 1913 past. Sir Keir, sadly, has turned out to be an utter imbecile. Still, he has lasted longer than Liz Truss.
We are navigating close to those familiar philosophical rocks that surround the question whether people may truly believe in principles on which they do not act.
The answer is, sure. I believe that super-models want to rape me. However I do not go out of my way to avoid them. This is because I have great faith in the ability of the British Police to defend me from their insensate lust.
This is the ancient problem of akrasia,
lack of will power
on which Socrates and Aristotle had opposed views. Socrates thought that it was not possible to do intentionally what you think it morally wrong to do,
or did he merely pretend this was the case for the sake of making conversation?
and Aristotle held a view that is harder to summarize but which was certainly not that Socratic one. The akrasia problem, or one part of it, is whether this dyad is inconsistent:
1. A believes that he morally ought (all things considered) to do X.
Since all things can't be considered, there is no moral 'ought'
2. A does not intend to do X.
There is no inconsistency in having intentions contrary to your morality. If morality prevents you carrying out your intention, your good angel has won. If not, the reverse is the case. The good news is your good angel always wins if you stick with the intention to beat up Mike Tyson or other large muscular men. Here, your moral abhorrence of violence saves you from certain death.
The other point is you can believe something is morally wrong but that purging yourself of that moral wrong is inexpensive. Thus, though homosexual acts are immoral in Hinduism, the expiation for them consists of little more than having a bath and changing your clothes- which you would do anyway because India is very hot.
1. A believes that he morally ought (all things considered) to do X.
2. A does not intend to do X.
3. (A believes that) A's behaviour is not out of line with his own moral principles.
Now that triad undoubtedly represents an inconsistency.
No. It may be that it is only moral to do x if you don't intend to do x. Some extra ingredient, e.g. the intervention of an angel, is required for you to do accomplish what you morally ought to do.
Thus suppose I feel I have a moral obligation to write a poem about Sir Keir Starmer's victory. Yet I also believe it is immoral to write a poem save when moved by something far beyond my will, or my intentions, or my political loyalties. It so happens that I am also an alcoholic. I wake up with a hangover and find I have written 'The Moon in June is like a lovely prune whom I hope to encounter soon but not in June or on the Moon.' Since Sir Keir became PM in July, which is the month which follows June, it is obvious that this sublime poem is indeed that which I morally ought to have written without intending to do so. Clearly mention of the Moon is a rebuke to the Sun newspaper which only endorsed Sir Keir in July. The meaning is, unlike Blair, Starmer is not obligated to Murdoch. I honestly don't think I could have written a better poem commemorating Labour's victory if I had intended to do so.
If you leave out what's in the parentheses in 3, the inconsistency is a logical one: it's logically impossible for all that to be true of A.
Nope. Firstly 'all things considered' may mean 'at the end of mathematical time'. Secondly, what is morally right may require the intervention of some power greater than one's own will and intention. Thirdly X may be 'epistemic' and thus not subject to Leibniz's law of identity. Indeed, it may be impredicative- e.g. halachah vein morin kein- i.e. the law which if known forbids its own application.
The sad thing about logic is that whatever you think it rules out, it actually rules in.
And if you include what's in the parentheses, then all of 1 through 3 might be all too true, but there's then an inconsistency in A herself, between her beliefs and her behaviour.
Not if the belief is impredicative or otherwise epistemic or involves the intervention of something higher than intention.
Or, if there is a subtle consistency in the triad that I'm failing to see, then I'm sure it could be eliminated through a (non-tendentious) tightening of one or more of the triad's constituent formulations.
Nope. So long as X is epistemic, there is an intensional fallacy which takes the thing out of the realm of set theory or a logical calculus.
If Cohen was crap at logic- i.e. had shit for brains- was his heart, perhaps, in the right place?
I think the rich/poor division is hateful in part because the poor have intelligible sentiments of injustice when they contemplate that division.
According to this logic, if there are people who find the existence of Jews living amongst them to be a terrible atrocity and miscarriage of justice, then their intelligible sentiments- as expressed by Hitler or Hamas- when they contemplate the division between Jews who are still alive and those who have met with the final solution, renders the former group- viz. Jews who are flagrantly alive- truly hateful.
Thankfully, poor people don't think it is unjust that more productive people have more than they do. What is unjust is to attribute to them the evil opinions of ranting, economically illiterate, nutters or academics. Similarly, it really isn't true that 'Aryans' or Muslims or any other group harbours a wholly psychotic and murderous hatred of any devout or decent set of people- more particularly a talented, humane, community whose Holy Scripture all can profit by.
Why does Cohen attribute such horrible sentiments to England's poor? He says his parent's were working class Communists. Sadly, they were also Canadian. As has been mathematically proved by Lawvere, Canadians have no souls. The fact that Cohen emigrated to England can't change this brute fact.
But the anti-division egalitarian who eschews the discourse of justice says that such sentiments are, or (supposing that the poor have no such sentiments) would be, misplaced. He rejects the thought that (at least part of) his reason for hating inequality is its injustice.
It is unjust that women have to sit down to pee. If you have injustice, you should hate your penis and chop it off immediately. As a Feminist, I chop off my penis up to five times a day. That is why, at any given moment, it is likely to be way smaller than average. I've tried to explain this to various women. If they just stay with me long enough, it will attain a length they find satisfactory. Sadly, females are too stupid to understand this. That is why, as I have often said, Feminism can't be left to women. Men must take charge of it.
Within Dworkin's theory of equality,
is a non sequitur. People are themselves a resource. Nothing can grant people equal access to people because every person is more accessible to himself than to anybody else.
the locus of the norm of equality proper (as opposed to, for example, norms governing duties of compassion to the unfortunate, be they at home or abroad) is in the relationship between the state and those over whom it claims the right to govern.
But those it claims the right to govern, claim the right to make it their bitch. Dworkin- like other such Professors- was as stupid as shit.
Because it claims that right, the state must treat its citizens with equal respect and concern, on pain of being a tyranny,
but citizens can make the State their bitch and refuse it even the courtesy of a reach-around. Instead they can keep reaming it while screaming 'you like it rough, don't you you little retard?'
On the other hand it is true that the state must treat its citizens with equal respect, concern, and an appreciative and undiscriminating appetite for any such turds as they might let fall from their anuses. How can anyone claim to have shown you genuine respect if they balk at devouring your faeces? A Head of State whose mouth is not the proper depository for every single turd the citizenry produces is nothing but a tyrant! Even Hitler and Stalin eagerly devoured the turds of the proletariat. It is only in soi disant Capitalist 'Democracies' that Presidents and Prime Ministers turn up their nose at such humble fare as emerges from the anuses of the working class.
and it must therefore distribute resources equally to its members.
Especially reproductive resources- e.g. super models.
But, if the state fails to do so, then no analogous duty falls on individuals: it is not the individual's duty to treat everyone (relatives, friends, and strangers alike) with equal respect and concern.
Also, they don't have to eat their shit- unless they teach Political Philosophy.
It does not follow that no related duty falls on the individual when the state fails to be just. For Dworkin, it is then her duty to promote equality by trying to change the state's policy.
By getting the Head of Government to eat everybody's shit.
For, insofar as government is unjust, then the citizenry whom it represents are, Dworkin thinks, collectively guilty: each therefore has a duty to seek to rectify the state's injustice.
by shitting copiously and forcing the Cabinet to eat that shit.
So there is indeed a tension between professing egalitarianism and not doing anything to promote equality, by, for example,
force feeding your turds to senior officials.
contributing money and/or time to an egalitarian political party.
Fuck that. Contribute your turds and force the head of that egalitarian political party to, very respectfully, eat your shit.
But there is no obligation so to contribute that one ends up as one would in an egalitarian society.
i.e. dead. Death is the great leveller.
Nozick said, in Anarchy, State and Utopia, that, if it was of compelling moral concern that the badly off be assisted, then private charity could achieve that.
Or if it couldn't, famine and epidemics would serve as Malthusian checks.
He claimed that the only reason for preferring to assist them through state-imposed redistribution was that under such a policy people who do not want to give would be forced to give.
Till they figured a way to avoid taxes or emigrate. Only economic rent can be confiscated. As demand and supply become more elastic, less and less is available for redistribution. All that can be achieved is a degree of risk pooling- i.e. transfers within a particular economic class. Sadly, the bureaucrats will take an increasing bite out of it.
In reply to Nozick, Nagel claimed that there are good grounds for state redistribution of the holdings of those who indeed want to contribute, because a person who is willing and, indeed, eager to contribute through taxation might reasonably be unwilling to give off her own bat.
Actually, people who'd never dream of under-tipping a waiter, gain much satisfaction from bilking the tax-man. After all, the State is rich. What's more it gets to literally print money.
And Nagel's justification of that unwillingness would, if sound, apply to our case, the case of the rich egalitarian who is asked why he does not contribute massively in a society whose state will not force him to do so. I quote Nagel: Most people are not generous when asked to give voluntarily, and it is unreasonable to ask that they should be. Admittedly there are cases in which a person should do something although it would not be right to force him to do it [for example, to keep an ordinary promise, or to refrain from ordinary lying - GAC]. But here I believe the reverse is true. Sometimes it is proper to force people to do something even though it is not true that they should do it without being forced.
The problem here is that such people may create a countervailing force. If we bang on about how the rich should hand over their cash, they might pay people to bang on about all sorts of wedge issues or create 'scapegoats'- immigrants, drug-addicted criminals, Hollywood paedophiles who have taken over the Post Office- so that our type of crazy gets swamped by all sorts of other types of crazy.
It is acceptable to compel people to contribute to the support of the indigent by automatic taxation, but unreasonable to insist that in the absence of such a system they ought to contribute voluntarily. The latter is an excessively demanding moral position because it requires voluntary decisions that are quite difficult to make. Most people will tolerate a universal system of compulsory taxation without feeling entitled to complain, whereas they would feel justified in refusing an appeal that they contribute the same amount voluntarily.
Economists know different. In the short run, under exigent circumstances- e.g. a vital war of defence- tax avoidance may not rise. Medium to long term, everybody does it. This is because the tax-man isn't a starving beggar. He's a fucker who got a scholarship to Winchester and joined the Treasury because his tutor at Baliol told him there aren't any gentlemen left in Merchant Banking.
Yet another putative rationale for not expecting people to pursue privately the norms that would prevail in what they regard as a just society is that each person has the right to a private space into which social duty does not intrude.
We don't expect people to respect irrelevant norms, e.g. those which apply to safely driving a motor vehicle while taking a shit. On the other hand, certain actions taken in one's private life may be considered inconsistent with the discharge of a particular public office. More generally, advocacy for a particular cause would be negated by inconsistent private behaviour- e.g. demanding the abolition of private schools while sending your own kid to one such.
But the prosecutor hounding the rich egalitarian
is in the same boat as the self-appointed prosecutor hounding the 'Feminist' who hasn't chopped off his own dick. The problem with being prosecutors of this type is that people run away when they see you approaching.
need not deny that private spaces are legitimate.
Private enterprise occurs in private spaces. If liberty is protected there, then liberty obtains. The public distribution system has competition from private traders.
Why might we want the State do do certain things which we would not want to do ourselves? One answer is the free rider problem, Another is one's superior ability to escape both paying for and being subject to the action of the State- which is itself a free rider problem. Cohen takes a different view.
Suppose we are on the battlefield, and that a comrade will die unless my leg is cut off (never mind how that's supposed to help him: this is a philosophy paper, not a treatise on interpersonal surgery).
You could volunteer to have the leg cut off. But the army can't have a rule of this type. Desertions would be too great.
Nagel is saying the analogue of this: I might recognize that it would be right for someone forcibly to cut my leg off, but I can nevertheless protest that it is asking too much to expect me to cut it off myself.
Nonsense! It isn't right for someone else to cut off my leg. You should trust me to do it myself. Also, let me hold your gun while I do it. I promise not to shoot you.
Let me elaborate my doubt about Nagel's case through closer focus on this analogy. Suppose that the leg is to be removed by a knife, and that there is no anaesthetic available. We need to compare, on the one hand, someone else cutting my leg off, who, like the taxing state, operates independently of my will, and, on the other hand, me having to cut it off myself. The cost that results from the cutting is the same in both cases: pain, and loss of the leg. But, because much pain comes immediately with the cutting, it is fiendishly difficult, will-wise, for me to do the cutting myself, for me to keep myself applied to that ghastly task, so difficult that substantial extra costs of struggle and strain supervene if I do.
Rubbish! Just give me a knife, a bottle of whiskey and trust me to chop off my own leg. I won't get drunk and stab you. Take my word for it.
Contrast, now, a case where my leg will be severed by an electrically powered knife five minutes after a button is pressed, and I do agree that the button should be pressed: I recognize the validity of my comrade's claim to my leg. Perhaps there is, in addition to the other costs, an extra burden, on the will, if I have to press the button myself, but that extra burden is surely inconsiderable: it will not be a great relief to discover that you are determined to push the button, so that I need not do so. And, so I submit, that second case, not the manual cutting one, is the right analogy here. The rich egalitarian wants the state to press the tax button.
No. A stupid egalitarian may do so. But wealth does not entail stupidity- though it may be associated with hypocrisy. 'I'd be happy to give up my billions if the postman is content to pay more in taxes so as to help the starving drug-addict. On the other hand,
It may be a bit easier for him if the state does that than if he has to press the standing order button when e-mailing his bank,
Cohen was a technophobe. He knew about standing orders and he knew about email. He didn't know that you can't combine the two things.
An egalitarian may believe that all people can be equally productive. Anything which prevents them becoming so- even if it is excessive wealth which allows them to be looked after as if they were babies- is bad. For this reason a 'Nanny State' is inegalitarian. It discourages the proper self-development of productive powers and abilities.
Cohen's paper had no conclusion. My blog does. It is that Cohen was stupid. An 'ism' is about productivity. Nationalism is the notion that people who speak the same religion or who belong to the same creed can be more productive if they rule themselves. Feminism is the notion that women know how to raise their own productivity and everybody benefits if this is done. Capitalism is the notion that financial markets are better at allocating investible funds so that productivity rises faster. Communism is the opposite. It is alleged that irrational speculation and 'wasteful competition' and the inevitability of an 'under-consumption crisis' will cause an economic disaster. Fascism or Corporatism promised to combine the best features of other 'isms' thanks to the genius of the Il Duce or Fuhrer.
Sadly, these 'isms', even if egalitarian, were liable to point at certain groups as essentially 'parasitic' and not productive. Cohen and his ilk made a different assumption- viz. that 'the poor we will always have with us' because some people are shit. If you aren't shit, and thus not as poor as shit, the least you can do is feel bad about yourself for this reason. Egalitarianism means everybody should be fucking miserable. Either you are shit and thus poor or you are morally shit and therefore you ought to feel really shitty about yourself. Alternatively, you could just tell Rawls, Cohen, Nozick etc. to go fuck themselves. The political tide had turned against them at the end of the Sixties. They would end up teaching imbeciles doomed to themselves teach woke nutters who would publicly shit themselves anytime they were triggered by anything which looked like it might be a dick or might have a dick attached to it. How can there be any type of equality so long as women have to sit down to pee? Also, what if they sit down on a dick? If even one dick is prowling around, there can be no Democracy, no Fraternity and no Equality whatsoever.
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