I like this theory. It seems to roughly map to how the distinction works in practice, too. However: Is it true that mistake theorists feel like they’ll be in a better negotiating position later, and conflict theorists don’t?
Take, for example, a rich venture capitalist and a poor cashier. If we all cooperate to boost the economy 10x, such that the existing distribution is maintained but everyone is 10x richer in real terms… yeah, I guess that would put the cashier in a worse negotiating position relative to the venture capitalist, because they’d have more stuff and hence less to complain about, and their complaining would be seen more as envy and less as righteous protest.
What about two people, one from an oppressor group and one from an oppressed group, in the social justice sense? E.g. man and woman? If everyone gets 10x richer, then arguably that would put the man in a worse negotiating position relative to the woman, because the standard rationales for e.g. gender roles, discrimination, etc. would seem less reasonable: So what if men’s sports make more money and thus pouring money into male salaries is a good investment whereas pouring it into female salaries is a money sink? We are all super rich anyway, you can afford to miss out on some profits. (Contrast this with e.g. a farmer in 1932 arguing that his female workers are less strong than the men, and thus do less work, and thus he’s gonna pay them less, so he can keep his farm solvent. When starvation or other economic hardships are close at hand, this argument is more appealing.)
More abstractly, it seems to me that the richer we all are, the more “positional” goods matter, intuitively. When we are all starving, things like discrimination and hate speech seem less pressing, compared to when we all have plenty.
Interesting. Those are the first two examples I thought of, and the first one seems to support your theory and the second one seems to contradict it. Not sure what to make of this. My intuitions might be totally wrong of course.
When resources are scarce, strongly controlling them seems justified. This includes men taking control of resources and acting unequally, as well as the poor fighting for a bigger slice of the pie.
When there’s already plenty to go around then power grabs (or unequal opportunities between men and women because men need it) are just for their own sake and less justified.
So in general power that already exists (wealth, social classes, political power) will be harder to change through negotiation and anything that needs to keep being stimulated (rich kids getting educations for example (on finances, hard sciences or whatever)) will disappear as scarcity disappears.
I like this theory. It seems to roughly map to how the distinction works in practice, too. However: Is it true that mistake theorists feel like they’ll be in a better negotiating position later, and conflict theorists don’t?
Take, for example, a rich venture capitalist and a poor cashier. If we all cooperate to boost the economy 10x, such that the existing distribution is maintained but everyone is 10x richer in real terms… yeah, I guess that would put the cashier in a worse negotiating position relative to the venture capitalist, because they’d have more stuff and hence less to complain about, and their complaining would be seen more as envy and less as righteous protest.
What about two people, one from an oppressor group and one from an oppressed group, in the social justice sense? E.g. man and woman? If everyone gets 10x richer, then arguably that would put the man in a worse negotiating position relative to the woman, because the standard rationales for e.g. gender roles, discrimination, etc. would seem less reasonable: So what if men’s sports make more money and thus pouring money into male salaries is a good investment whereas pouring it into female salaries is a money sink? We are all super rich anyway, you can afford to miss out on some profits. (Contrast this with e.g. a farmer in 1932 arguing that his female workers are less strong than the men, and thus do less work, and thus he’s gonna pay them less, so he can keep his farm solvent. When starvation or other economic hardships are close at hand, this argument is more appealing.)
More abstractly, it seems to me that the richer we all are, the more “positional” goods matter, intuitively. When we are all starving, things like discrimination and hate speech seem less pressing, compared to when we all have plenty.
Interesting. Those are the first two examples I thought of, and the first one seems to support your theory and the second one seems to contradict it. Not sure what to make of this. My intuitions might be totally wrong of course.
When resources are scarce, strongly controlling them seems justified. This includes men taking control of resources and acting unequally, as well as the poor fighting for a bigger slice of the pie.
When there’s already plenty to go around then power grabs (or unequal opportunities between men and women because men need it) are just for their own sake and less justified.
So in general power that already exists (wealth, social classes, political power) will be harder to change through negotiation and anything that needs to keep being stimulated (rich kids getting educations for example (on finances, hard sciences or whatever)) will disappear as scarcity disappears.