No, that misses the core argument. “Letting people keep their stuff if it was earned honorably” is a vital component of the engine. You can’t remove it and keep the engine working.
Consider two codes:
“Letting people keep their stuff if it was earned honorably”
“Letting people keep their stuff if it was earned honorably, unless they are obsenely rich while a lot of people are still in poverty”
Whether it’s possible to remodel the code from 1. to 2. without “engine stopping running” is an empirical question about the slipperiness of this particular slope works. Your proclamation that it can’t be done isn’t actually an argument.
In fact, maybe even this framing is already giving too much ground. Are we even sure that the the initial code was closer to 1 than 2 in the first place? You never know for sure with such implicit societal contracts. It seems that at least a sizeble portion of people generalized it the second way. I don’t think we should be this quick to proclaim their perspective invalid.
You hit actual counter argument here
The term “honorably” is really vague and up to interpretation even more so than whether we have codes 1. or 2.. There is a plausible interpretation of it where UHC CEO did not earn his wealth honorably and so his assassination was not against the code 1. In fact, it may have even improved the insentives for billionaires to be more honarable so the assassin should be celebrated for their public service.
Likewise there is not an entierly outlandish interpretation where absolute majority or maybe even all of billionaires did not earn their wealth honorably.
I agree that is the case for some billionaires, and where that is the case they should be punished and their wealth confiscated. But that must be demonstrated, it cannot simply be assumed to be true because they are billionaires.
I agree that that would be the best course of action.
But good luck doing that in a world where a minority of people have spare billions of dollars to steer the world to their end. In practice decisions of CEOs of large corporations routinely lead to harming a great lot of people and they get very minor reprecussions for it if any.
I agree that just assuming that because someone is a billionare it means that they haven’t earned their money honorably isn’t right in principle. I don’t exactly endorse it. But I’m very understanding why people may think that in our world and I suspect that predictive power of this heuristic is impressive.
“Letting people keep their stuff if it was earned honorably, unless they are obsenely rich while a lot of people are still in poverty”
Downvoted for obviously begging the question about what the standard here is.
If ‘obscenely’ is defined as ‘whatever the largest mass can get angry about’ then you’re proposing mob justice, not rule of law, which is broadly anti-civilization and bad.
If you have an actual definition of ‘obscene’, then we can discuss what the consequences will be—are you proposing that nobody can have over $100,000 while there are people starving in Africa? A million? A hundred million? We can talk about how each of these would have historically been devastating to the growth of the world’s leading economies, that have done the most to bring people out of poverty.
Downvoted for obviously begging the question about what the standard here is.
I don’t think this is a fair description of what I’m doing. Which of my conclusions am I assuming?
I’m not rigorously specifying what exactly is meant by “obsenely rich” and “poverty” here, because the whole point is that people can have different generalizations of the principle and different definitions. It’s indeed the case that same of these definitions will lead to civilizational collapse. However some will not. Can we agree this much?
I’d also like to mention that while actual mob justice is bad and anti-civilization, counterfactual mob justice has a lot of civilization-building advantages. And then there are instances of what can be described as mob justice which establishes the civilization in the first place, i.e. French Revolution.
I don’t think this is a fair description of what I’m doing. Which of my conclusions am I assuming
You’re slipping in the assumption that there’s a level of wealth present today that is ‘obscene’, without making any argument for that conclusion, and resting on that as a key reason why it is okay for the government to take people’s stuff. I take the common stance that inequality is not obscene (though poverty is).
That was really not what I’ve been trying to communicate here.
My point was that people can have some notion of “obscene wealth” and you would not even know about it before this mark is reached. Therefore saying that we definetely have a social contract 1. is unjustified.
I’d also like to know what do you consider weak or poorly reasoned in my point about counterfactual mobbing and French revolution. Or at the least what you disagree with.
Whether it’s possible to remodel the code from 1. to 2. without “engine stopping running” is an empirical question about the slipperiness of this particular slope works. Your proclamation that it can’t be done isn’t actually an argument.
Following through to the logical conclusion of the general sentiment would stop the “engine”. Although one could probably come up with some economic/econometric model with an optimal way of taxation for effectively redistributing higher wealth concentration while still keeping wealth generation mostly intact, that is not what people usually ask for. “Billionaire” is not a specific value, it is just the current stand-in word for the outgroup. The actual pointer is to “people who have so much money I consider them to be different from my kind”. If we would just go back 50 years, when household median income was below 10 000 USD a year and property values even more depreciated, redistributing the fortune of millionaires’ fortune would seem as reasonable as billionaires’ is today.
This is how people in poor countries view people in rich countries as well. And how people in grievance cultures view the outgroup they hold a grudge against when that outgroup is doing better than them. It’s just incredulity combined with prejudice.
This is how people in poor countries view people in rich countries as well. And how people in grievance cultures view the outgroup they hold a grudge against when that outgroup is doing better than them.
No disagreement here. But this doesn’t make the object level claims I’m making less true. Grievances can be justified.
Consider two codes:
“Letting people keep their stuff if it was earned honorably”
“Letting people keep their stuff if it was earned honorably, unless they are obsenely rich while a lot of people are still in poverty”
Whether it’s possible to remodel the code from 1. to 2. without “engine stopping running” is an empirical question about the slipperiness of this particular slope works. Your proclamation that it can’t be done isn’t actually an argument.
In fact, maybe even this framing is already giving too much ground. Are we even sure that the the initial code was closer to 1 than 2 in the first place? You never know for sure with such implicit societal contracts. It seems that at least a sizeble portion of people generalized it the second way. I don’t think we should be this quick to proclaim their perspective invalid.
The term “honorably” is really vague and up to interpretation even more so than whether we have codes 1. or 2.. There is a plausible interpretation of it where UHC CEO did not earn his wealth honorably and so his assassination was not against the code 1. In fact, it may have even improved the insentives for billionaires to be more honarable so the assassin should be celebrated for their public service.
Likewise there is not an entierly outlandish interpretation where absolute majority or maybe even all of billionaires did not earn their wealth honorably.
I agree that that would be the best course of action.
But good luck doing that in a world where a minority of people have spare billions of dollars to steer the world to their end. In practice decisions of CEOs of large corporations routinely lead to harming a great lot of people and they get very minor reprecussions for it if any.
I agree that just assuming that because someone is a billionare it means that they haven’t earned their money honorably isn’t right in principle. I don’t exactly endorse it. But I’m very understanding why people may think that in our world and I suspect that predictive power of this heuristic is impressive.
Downvoted for obviously begging the question about what the standard here is.
If ‘obscenely’ is defined as ‘whatever the largest mass can get angry about’ then you’re proposing mob justice, not rule of law, which is broadly anti-civilization and bad.
If you have an actual definition of ‘obscene’, then we can discuss what the consequences will be—are you proposing that nobody can have over $100,000 while there are people starving in Africa? A million? A hundred million? We can talk about how each of these would have historically been devastating to the growth of the world’s leading economies, that have done the most to bring people out of poverty.
I don’t think this is a fair description of what I’m doing. Which of my conclusions am I assuming?
I’m not rigorously specifying what exactly is meant by “obsenely rich” and “poverty” here, because the whole point is that people can have different generalizations of the principle and different definitions. It’s indeed the case that same of these definitions will lead to civilizational collapse. However some will not. Can we agree this much?
I’d also like to mention that while actual mob justice is bad and anti-civilization, counterfactual mob justice has a lot of civilization-building advantages. And then there are instances of what can be described as mob justice which establishes the civilization in the first place, i.e. French Revolution.
You’re slipping in the assumption that there’s a level of wealth present today that is ‘obscene’, without making any argument for that conclusion, and resting on that as a key reason why it is okay for the government to take people’s stuff. I take the common stance that inequality is not obscene (though poverty is).
That was really not what I’ve been trying to communicate here.
My point was that people can have some notion of “obscene wealth” and you would not even know about it before this mark is reached. Therefore saying that we definetely have a social contract 1. is unjustified.
I’d also like to know what do you consider weak or poorly reasoned in my point about counterfactual mobbing and French revolution. Or at the least what you disagree with.
Following through to the logical conclusion of the general sentiment would stop the “engine”. Although one could probably come up with some economic/econometric model with an optimal way of taxation for effectively redistributing higher wealth concentration while still keeping wealth generation mostly intact, that is not what people usually ask for. “Billionaire” is not a specific value, it is just the current stand-in word for the outgroup. The actual pointer is to “people who have so much money I consider them to be different from my kind”. If we would just go back 50 years, when household median income was below 10 000 USD a year and property values even more depreciated, redistributing the fortune of millionaires’ fortune would seem as reasonable as billionaires’ is today.
This. “loot the outgroup” is evil behavior.
This is how people in poor countries view people in rich countries as well. And how people in grievance cultures view the outgroup they hold a grudge against when that outgroup is doing better than them. It’s just incredulity combined with prejudice.
No disagreement here. But this doesn’t make the object level claims I’m making less true. Grievances can be justified.