It’s a lot of resources from the perspective of a single person, but I was thinking at a slightly larger scale. By “easy”, I mean that manageable groups of people can do it repeatedly and be confident of success. Really, the fact that sentient minds can be valued in terms of resources at all is sufficient for my argument. (That value can then be ignored when assessing productivity, as it’s a sunk cost.)
You seem to be looking in the wrong place with your “that people ought to earn every resource themselves” example—my opinion is that the people who have resources should not give those resources to people who won’t make good use of them. That the people who lack resources will then have to earn them if they’re to survive is an unavoidable consequence of that (and is my real goal here), but those aren’t the people that I think ought to be changing things.
As for what strategies people actually follow, I think most people do what I’m saying they should do, on an individual level. Most people protect their resources, and share them only with those who they expect to be able to return the favor. On the group level, though, people lose track of how much things actually cost, and support things like welfare that help people regardless of whether they’re worth the cost of keeping alive.
“whether they’re worth the cost of keeping alive.”
and this highlights the differences in our views.
our point of difference is in this whole basis of using practical “worth” as The way of deciding whether or not a person should live/die.
I can get trying to minimise the birth of new people that are net-negative contributors to the world… but from my perspective, once they are born—it’s worth putting some effort into supporting them.
Why? because it’s not their fault they were born the way they are, and they should not be punished because of that. They need help to get along.
Sometimes—the situation that put them in their needy state occurred after they were born—and again is still not their fault.
Another example to point out why I feel your view is unfair to people:
Imagine somebody who has worked all their lives in an industry that has given amazing amounts of benefit to the world.. but has only just now become obsolete. That person is now unemployed and, due to being near retirement age, unemployable. It’s an industry in which they were never really paid very well, and their savings don’t add up to enough to cover their ongoing living costs for very long.
Eventually, there will come a time when the savings run out and this person dies of starvation without our help.
I consider this not to be a fair situation, and I’d rather my tax-dollars went to helping this person live a bit longer, than go to the next unnecessary-war (drummed up to keep the current pollies in power).
I consider this not to be a fair situation, and I’d rather my tax-dollars went to helping this person live a bit longer, than go to the next unnecessary-war (drummed up to keep the current pollies in power).
I think this shows the underlying problem. You would also rather have all your tax money go to give a cute little puppy more food than it will ever need, simply because war is a terrible alternative.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the best thing you can do with your money, or even anywhere near that standard. And neither is, one could argue, giving money to an obsolete person in a country where the cost of living is very high comparative to other countries in the world.
If I were magically put in charge of distributing the next year’s federal budget—I would still allocate resources to domestic welfare (supporting others that, through no fault of their own, have fallen on times of hardship), even though a larger portion went to foreign aid.
I’ve just made the unpleasant discovery that being downvoted to −4 makes it impossible to reply to those who replied to me (or to edit my comment). I’ll state for the record that I disagree with that policy… and proceed to shut up.
When someone is born who is a net-negative contributor to the world… it was their parents’ doing. They carry their parents’ genes; it’s a very appropriate punishment for their parents’ misdeed to let the child die. It comes very close to being a direct reversal of the original mistake, in fact.
It does sometimes happen that someone otherwise capable of being productive is accidentally stripped of their resources, and ideally they should get some help to get back on their feet—this seems like an ideal use case for a loan. In general, someone will have to make the call that they’re worth saving, and I do grant that some people in dire straits are worth saving.
In your example of the old man, it appears to me that he was cheated earlier in life; you postulate that he actually produced a very great benefit to others, and it seems to me that he deserves to have a very great amount of money to show for it. Without government support, he might still have friends to fall back on… if not, then this is clearly a case where welfare does some good, but it doesn’t come close to reversing the injustice here. I see the benefit of welfare in this case as mostly accidental, and would prefer that something more targeted be done to repay him, while recognizing his actual contribution.
I just took a brief look at current U.S. welfare law, and it looks like there are some provisions in there to exclude the most obvious cases of people who don’t deserve support (able-bodied people who aren’t even trying to be productive).
it’s a very appropriate punishment for their parents’ misdeed to let the child die
Doesn’t it strike you that that’s not very fair to the child?
For that matter, it’s not remotely fair to the parents either; productivity is not solely determined by parents’ genes plus upbringing, still less by what the parents can know about their genes plus upbringing. Consider, for instance, the following scenarios. In all of them, by “net positive contribution” I mean “net positive economic contribution”, which I’m pretty sure is what you have in mind by that phrase.
Two intelligent and hardworking people have a child. The child loses the genetic lottery and ends up much less intelligent than average, or suffers from some condition that greatly reduces her capacity for work. (Perhaps both parents had a very harmful recessive gene, but didn’t know it.) She is not able to make a “net positive contribution” to the world.
Two highly productive people have a child. Between the child’s conception and adulthood, society changes (e.g., because of technological innovation) in such a way that the sort of work that made the parents highly productive is no longer viable; maybe machines can do it so much better that no one will employ humans to do it. It turns out that the parents were decidedly sub-average in other ways, and the child is too. He is not able to make a “net positive contribution” to the world.
Would you say that these children deserve to die because of their parents’ misdeeds in having them? This seems to me an absolutely untenable position; it requires you to hold
that having an economically unproductive child is a crime deserving terrible punishment
that this applies even if you had no good reason to think your child would be economically unproductive
that the fact that this punishment involves the death penalty for the child is not a problem
all of which seem absurd.
A world run the way you seem to prefer would not be one I would want to live in.
my opinion is that the people who have resources should not give those resources to people who won’t make good use of them.
When widely applied, this principle tends to lead to trouble. It’s a very small intuitive step from this to “people who aren’t making good use of their own resources should have them taken away and given to someone who will make better use of them” and that is, in turn, a very small step away from “resources shouldn’t be wasted on anyone too elderly to be employed”.
Now, I’m not saying that’s where you’re going with this. It’s just that that’s close enough to what you said that it’s probably something you’d want to specifically avoid.
It’s a very small intuitive step from this to “people who aren’t making good use of their own resources should have them taken away and given to someone who will make better use of them”
That step doesn’t look small to me, specifically because it leaps over the rather large concept of property.
We pretty much do this already (outside of a few nations like New Zealand), and it doesn’t lead to trouble at all, although some people complain about it (although if they recognized exactly what was going on, the number of people complaining about it would probably rise dramatically).
Property taxes rise with land values, which are proportional to the value of resources. If you’re not making good use of your resources, you can’t cover property taxes, and you have to sell the property. The only people who will buy it are those who think they can make sufficient use of the resources to cover the sale price, in addition to property taxes going forward.
Not quite. Imposing some cost to own certain things is not the same as “should have them taken away”.
Yes, I understand that you can construct a continuous spectrum from a small fee to “it’s cheaper for you to give it away rather than pay the tax”, but I feel that in practice the distance is great.
It’s a lot of resources from the perspective of a single person, but I was thinking at a slightly larger scale. By “easy”, I mean that manageable groups of people can do it repeatedly and be confident of success. Really, the fact that sentient minds can be valued in terms of resources at all is sufficient for my argument. (That value can then be ignored when assessing productivity, as it’s a sunk cost.)
You seem to be looking in the wrong place with your “that people ought to earn every resource themselves” example—my opinion is that the people who have resources should not give those resources to people who won’t make good use of them. That the people who lack resources will then have to earn them if they’re to survive is an unavoidable consequence of that (and is my real goal here), but those aren’t the people that I think ought to be changing things.
As for what strategies people actually follow, I think most people do what I’m saying they should do, on an individual level. Most people protect their resources, and share them only with those who they expect to be able to return the favor. On the group level, though, people lose track of how much things actually cost, and support things like welfare that help people regardless of whether they’re worth the cost of keeping alive.
“whether they’re worth the cost of keeping alive.” and this highlights the differences in our views.
our point of difference is in this whole basis of using practical “worth” as The way of deciding whether or not a person should live/die.
I can get trying to minimise the birth of new people that are net-negative contributors to the world… but from my perspective, once they are born—it’s worth putting some effort into supporting them.
Why? because it’s not their fault they were born the way they are, and they should not be punished because of that. They need help to get along.
Sometimes—the situation that put them in their needy state occurred after they were born—and again is still not their fault.
Another example to point out why I feel your view is unfair to people: Imagine somebody who has worked all their lives in an industry that has given amazing amounts of benefit to the world.. but has only just now become obsolete. That person is now unemployed and, due to being near retirement age, unemployable. It’s an industry in which they were never really paid very well, and their savings don’t add up to enough to cover their ongoing living costs for very long.
Eventually, there will come a time when the savings run out and this person dies of starvation without our help.
I consider this not to be a fair situation, and I’d rather my tax-dollars went to helping this person live a bit longer, than go to the next unnecessary-war (drummed up to keep the current pollies in power).
I think this shows the underlying problem. You would also rather have all your tax money go to give a cute little puppy more food than it will ever need, simply because war is a terrible alternative.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the best thing you can do with your money, or even anywhere near that standard. And neither is, one could argue, giving money to an obsolete person in a country where the cost of living is very high comparative to other countries in the world.
If I were magically put in charge of distributing the next year’s federal budget—I would still allocate resources to domestic welfare (supporting others that, through no fault of their own, have fallen on times of hardship), even though a larger portion went to foreign aid.
I’ve just made the unpleasant discovery that being downvoted to −4 makes it impossible to reply to those who replied to me (or to edit my comment). I’ll state for the record that I disagree with that policy… and proceed to shut up.
It’s not impossible, you’d just need to pay 5 karma per reply.
...you’d need to have 5 karma to pay, first. You should be able to pick that up by making positive, helpful contributions to discussion on this site.
It’s quite possible, only requiring payment in your own karma points. If you’re karma-broke, well....
Seeing as how what I was saying was basically “let the poor starve”, this ending seems strangely appropriate.
When someone is born who is a net-negative contributor to the world… it was their parents’ doing. They carry their parents’ genes; it’s a very appropriate punishment for their parents’ misdeed to let the child die. It comes very close to being a direct reversal of the original mistake, in fact.
It does sometimes happen that someone otherwise capable of being productive is accidentally stripped of their resources, and ideally they should get some help to get back on their feet—this seems like an ideal use case for a loan. In general, someone will have to make the call that they’re worth saving, and I do grant that some people in dire straits are worth saving.
In your example of the old man, it appears to me that he was cheated earlier in life; you postulate that he actually produced a very great benefit to others, and it seems to me that he deserves to have a very great amount of money to show for it. Without government support, he might still have friends to fall back on… if not, then this is clearly a case where welfare does some good, but it doesn’t come close to reversing the injustice here. I see the benefit of welfare in this case as mostly accidental, and would prefer that something more targeted be done to repay him, while recognizing his actual contribution.
I just took a brief look at current U.S. welfare law, and it looks like there are some provisions in there to exclude the most obvious cases of people who don’t deserve support (able-bodied people who aren’t even trying to be productive).
Doesn’t it strike you that that’s not very fair to the child?
For that matter, it’s not remotely fair to the parents either; productivity is not solely determined by parents’ genes plus upbringing, still less by what the parents can know about their genes plus upbringing. Consider, for instance, the following scenarios. In all of them, by “net positive contribution” I mean “net positive economic contribution”, which I’m pretty sure is what you have in mind by that phrase.
Two intelligent and hardworking people have a child. The child loses the genetic lottery and ends up much less intelligent than average, or suffers from some condition that greatly reduces her capacity for work. (Perhaps both parents had a very harmful recessive gene, but didn’t know it.) She is not able to make a “net positive contribution” to the world.
Two highly productive people have a child. Between the child’s conception and adulthood, society changes (e.g., because of technological innovation) in such a way that the sort of work that made the parents highly productive is no longer viable; maybe machines can do it so much better that no one will employ humans to do it. It turns out that the parents were decidedly sub-average in other ways, and the child is too. He is not able to make a “net positive contribution” to the world.
Would you say that these children deserve to die because of their parents’ misdeeds in having them? This seems to me an absolutely untenable position; it requires you to hold
that having an economically unproductive child is a crime deserving terrible punishment
that this applies even if you had no good reason to think your child would be economically unproductive
that the fact that this punishment involves the death penalty for the child is not a problem
all of which seem absurd.
A world run the way you seem to prefer would not be one I would want to live in.
How do you define this? I can name a number of people throughout history who would have used heuristics here that I vehemently disagree with...
When widely applied, this principle tends to lead to trouble. It’s a very small intuitive step from this to “people who aren’t making good use of their own resources should have them taken away and given to someone who will make better use of them” and that is, in turn, a very small step away from “resources shouldn’t be wasted on anyone too elderly to be employed”.
Now, I’m not saying that’s where you’re going with this. It’s just that that’s close enough to what you said that it’s probably something you’d want to specifically avoid.
That step doesn’t look small to me, specifically because it leaps over the rather large concept of property.
We pretty much do this already (outside of a few nations like New Zealand), and it doesn’t lead to trouble at all, although some people complain about it (although if they recognized exactly what was going on, the number of people complaining about it would probably rise dramatically).
Property taxes rise with land values, which are proportional to the value of resources. If you’re not making good use of your resources, you can’t cover property taxes, and you have to sell the property. The only people who will buy it are those who think they can make sufficient use of the resources to cover the sale price, in addition to property taxes going forward.
Not quite. Imposing some cost to own certain things is not the same as “should have them taken away”.
Yes, I understand that you can construct a continuous spectrum from a small fee to “it’s cheaper for you to give it away rather than pay the tax”, but I feel that in practice the distance is great.