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I think the disagreement is even more fundamental than that. Even if you consider luck to be a major factor in determining success, there's still the question o

I think the disagreement is even more fundamental than that. Even if you consider luck to be a major factor in determining success, there's still the question of what the government should reward. I'm socially and fiscally liberal, but I don't think it's absurd to think that the government should reward hard work even though luck is more important. It just so happens that you can motivate people to work harder, and can't motive people to be luckier.

AstralStorm 10y ago
But should you reward a hard working mediocre achiever the same as a not as hard working but gifted high achiever? Then rewarding achievement is sort of pointless, giving help to those who need the least of it. Maybe instead progress should be rewarded?
hx87 10y ago
Government can certainly mitigate the effects of luck while simultaneously rewarding effort.
- crusso 10y ago
  Examples?
  - kelnos 10y ago
    A single-payer healthcare system is your government mitigating the effects of your bad luck. Giving you a tax break for gains on certain kinds of investments is your government rewarding your work. (That's not traditional "hard work" in the sense of expending physical energy, but deciding what investments to make is certainly work.)
    - crusso 10y ago
      Well, I guess if "simultaneous" means that different parts of the government with different programs can have opposite effects, okay. But I'm talking about a program that mitigates the effects of luck while (in the same program, with the same methods) rewarding effort. They're mostly opposite effects and there's no way to reliably distinguish hard work from luck. That's why there's so much debate on the subject.
      - hx87 10y ago
        When I said "simultaneous" I mean to apply it to a government, not a particular program. In any case though, any government program that gives equal resources to everyone and isn't means-tested to hell can do both. For example, an UBI both mitigates luck (by giving everyone a set amount of resources) and rewards hard work (because better workers will get far better returns with the income they've been given).
        crusso 10y ago
        Sure, UBI doesn't completely negate the value of work, but UBI decreases the value of hard work because everyone gets something without having to do any work.
Frondo 10y ago
Agreed that the government should reward hard work, but I'm always uncomfortable with the discussion around what is hard work. Some poor people I know, they work harder than most of us desk monkeys, because they're doing back-breaking labor day after day. Holding down two, three jobs, shuffling around town on the bus to work 60, 80 hours a week for very little money. This is not even an uncommon story. People working damn hard for not a lot of money. Is that the hard work we want the government to reward? If not that, then what? It's just too open-ended, and too easy to overlook a lot of people who work really hard, without really talking about it more.
- hnal943 10y ago
  Value creation is what we want to reward, I think.
  - marklgr 10y ago
    This often is a euphemism for "making money is good". Except for the worst cases of rents (or scams), if you're making money, this means someone found what you do valuable, so hey, you're creating value. The tacit corollary is, if you're not making money, you're not creating much value (not logically correct obviously, but here it goes). So one should define how you measure value, and what cost (social, externalities etc.) we should be ready to accept for each type of value.
  - voxic11 10y ago
    This can be very hard to nail down though at the large scale. For instance Trump managed to secure the largest tax break in New York history in the 80s by convincing the government that his buildings for the Uber rich would be very valuable to the city.
    - crusso 10y ago
      That's a direct example where government power rewarded a crony. Reward for value creation is something that the free market does every day in trillions of transactions.

AstralStorm 10y ago

But should you reward a hard working mediocre achiever the same as a not as hard working but gifted high achiever? Then rewarding achievement is sort of pointless, giving help to those who need the least of it. Maybe instead progress should be rewarded?

hx87 10y ago

Government can certainly mitigate the effects of luck while simultaneously rewarding effort.

crusso 10y ago
Examples?
- kelnos 10y ago
  A single-payer healthcare system is your government mitigating the effects of your bad luck. Giving you a tax break for gains on certain kinds of investments is your government rewarding your work. (That's not traditional "hard work" in the sense of expending physical energy, but deciding what investments to make is certainly work.)
  - crusso 10y ago
    Well, I guess if "simultaneous" means that different parts of the government with different programs can have opposite effects, okay. But I'm talking about a program that mitigates the effects of luck while (in the same program, with the same methods) rewarding effort. They're mostly opposite effects and there's no way to reliably distinguish hard work from luck. That's why there's so much debate on the subject.
    - hx87 10y ago
      When I said "simultaneous" I mean to apply it to a government, not a particular program. In any case though, any government program that gives equal resources to everyone and isn't means-tested to hell can do both. For example, an UBI both mitigates luck (by giving everyone a set amount of resources) and rewards hard work (because better workers will get far better returns with the income they've been given).
      - crusso 10y ago
        Sure, UBI doesn't completely negate the value of work, but UBI decreases the value of hard work because everyone gets something without having to do any work.

Frondo 10y ago

Agreed that the government should reward hard work, but I'm always uncomfortable with the discussion around what is hard work. Some poor people I know, they work harder than most of us desk monkeys, because they're doing back-breaking labor day after day. Holding down two, three jobs, shuffling around town on the bus to work 60, 80 hours a week for very little money. This is not even an uncommon story. People working damn hard for not a lot of money. Is that the hard work we want the government to reward? If not that, then what? It's just too open-ended, and too easy to overlook a lot of people who work really hard, without really talking about it more.

hnal943 10y ago
Value creation is what we want to reward, I think.
- marklgr 10y ago
  This often is a euphemism for "making money is good". Except for the worst cases of rents (or scams), if you're making money, this means someone found what you do valuable, so hey, you're creating value. The tacit corollary is, if you're not making money, you're not creating much value (not logically correct obviously, but here it goes). So one should define how you measure value, and what cost (social, externalities etc.) we should be ready to accept for each type of value.
- voxic11 10y ago
  This can be very hard to nail down though at the large scale. For instance Trump managed to secure the largest tax break in New York history in the 80s by convincing the government that his buildings for the Uber rich would be very valuable to the city.
  - crusso 10y ago
    That's a direct example where government power rewarded a crony. Reward for value creation is something that the free market does every day in trillions of transactions.