5 ms·

Milton Friedman's three categories for human equality: equality before God, equality of opportunity and equality of outcome - the second is compatible with libe

Milton Friedman's three categories for human equality: equality before God, equality of opportunity and equality of outcome - the second is compatible with liberty, and the third is socialism.

rayiner 9y ago
I’m not sure the second is compatible with liberty either, unless you water it down to mean nothing. Do you stop parents from passing on good genes, education, values, and money? If not you’ve got a very impoverished version of equality of opportunity. If so you’re impinging on some very fundamental freedoms.
- ssambros 9y ago
  It's equality of opportunity, not equality of ability.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  Equality of opportunity is one of the hardest things to define. Milton talks about the opportunity to pursue your talents. But your talent could be really expensive, so what does that actually mean? The son of a wealthy man might have the funds to become a rocket engineer, wasn't that an unequal opportunity to develop talents? And is there a point to prevent that rocket engineer from existing?
dalbasal 9y ago
If we want to get into zinger rhetoric I might reply that the 1st is theocracy and the 2nd is a lie, or also socialism. If not, we might say consider all 3 (excluding the one that doesn't exist) relative. We never have absolute equality of opportunity or outcome, but we can have more or less equality.
- jpwagner 9y ago
  zinger point taken, but consider: 1 - compared to a rock, all humans are equal (note: this is not a political statement and has no relationship to theocracy) 2 - if a unit of food sits on the ground between two people, they are free to behave however they want, either can choose to pick up the food or not - this is liberty 3 - given that a unit of food when found will be split evenly (by some process out of an individual's control) their behavior no longer matters - this is not liberty
  - wfo 9y ago
    2 -- since when is "might makes right" == liberty? I find this position odd especially considering the build and gym habits of most tech Libertarians I have met. Shouldn't, for it to be true liberty, one of those people own that food by virtue of a piece of paper stating a government granted monopoly over it because his ancestors enslaved the ancestors of the other, and be allowed to call an army of police with guns to take it no matter how small and weak he is? And perhaps, if he sees fit and deems the other person worthy, the owner will rent a fraction of it to the other to plant as a seed and keep the yield for himself, divvying out exactly enough food for the other to barely survive and continue working? This is exactly liberty, no?
  - dalbasal 9y ago
    :) I have a lot of time for liberal philosophy including even those like Milton Friedman and others from his (and our) era, where I tend to disagree with many of their conclusions. But, most liberal thought tends towards very hard definitions, of things that are (IMO) not that hard (objectively true in all cases) in reality. It's an obvious problem in moral philosophy. You start from benign definitions of good and bad, like "greatest good for the greatest number." Then liberal philosophers push that to the extreme, usually weird moral dilemma scenarios. Killing fat men with mining carts to save skinny people. Infanticide. Involuntary euthanasia. Instead of admitting that your "moral maxim" or whatnot is really more of an approximation or a guideline really, they conclude that all this stuff which seems really bad and immoral is actually good. The american liberalism (or conservatism, libertarianism and other bad, illogical names for it) is rife with this sort of thing, IMO. The concept of liberty is defined using simple, made up examples. Platonic ideals. Then it's applied to the real world. At some point, using the term "liberty" to describe it becomes defensible only by very academic, long winded philosophical argument. To the person who's liberty is supposedly at stake, it seems odd that these philosophers are calling it liberty. I suspect this is why only very academic, extremist or philosophical types (or australians) call it liberalism or libertarianism (this one carries its own ironies). Everyone else just calls it conservatism.
danharaj 9y ago
You shouldn't get your philosophy from economists.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  nonsense. I don't agree with Milton's political positions, but he's entitled to them and they are valuable. He was a sharp thinker. As were Adam Smith, John Locke, Robert Malthus, Karl Marx.... Philosopher-economists isn't a new phenomenon. In fact, a lot of the best economists were both.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    Ok, that's fair :) My pre-coffee take was a bit too spicy.
    - dalbasal 9y ago
      If we're being fair, nonsense is not a nice way of starting any kind of conversation.
      - danharaj 9y ago
        I'm definitely going to have to disagree with that.
JohnStrange 9y ago
Everybody wants to live in a country with a reasonably low Gini index. The disagreement is only about what "reasonably low" means and how to achieve it.

Milton Friedman's three categories for human equality: equality before God, equality of opportunity and equality of outcome - the second is compatible with liberty, and the third is socialism.

rayiner 9y ago

I’m not sure the second is compatible with liberty either, unless you water it down to mean nothing. Do you stop parents from passing on good genes, education, values, and money? If not you’ve got a very impoverished version of equality of opportunity. If so you’re impinging on some very fundamental freedoms.

ssambros 9y ago
It's equality of opportunity, not equality of ability.
conanbatt 9y ago
Equality of opportunity is one of the hardest things to define. Milton talks about the opportunity to pursue your talents. But your talent could be really expensive, so what does that actually mean? The son of a wealthy man might have the funds to become a rocket engineer, wasn't that an unequal opportunity to develop talents? And is there a point to prevent that rocket engineer from existing?

dalbasal 9y ago

If we want to get into zinger rhetoric I might reply that the 1st is theocracy and the 2nd is a lie, or also socialism. If not, we might say consider all 3 (excluding the one that doesn't exist) relative. We never have absolute equality of opportunity or outcome, but we can have more or less equality.

jpwagner 9y ago
zinger point taken, but consider: 1 - compared to a rock, all humans are equal (note: this is not a political statement and has no relationship to theocracy) 2 - if a unit of food sits on the ground between two people, they are free to behave however they want, either can choose to pick up the food or not - this is liberty 3 - given that a unit of food when found will be split evenly (by some process out of an individual's control) their behavior no longer matters - this is not liberty
- wfo 9y ago
  2 -- since when is "might makes right" == liberty? I find this position odd especially considering the build and gym habits of most tech Libertarians I have met. Shouldn't, for it to be true liberty, one of those people own that food by virtue of a piece of paper stating a government granted monopoly over it because his ancestors enslaved the ancestors of the other, and be allowed to call an army of police with guns to take it no matter how small and weak he is? And perhaps, if he sees fit and deems the other person worthy, the owner will rent a fraction of it to the other to plant as a seed and keep the yield for himself, divvying out exactly enough food for the other to barely survive and continue working? This is exactly liberty, no?
- dalbasal 9y ago
  :) I have a lot of time for liberal philosophy including even those like Milton Friedman and others from his (and our) era, where I tend to disagree with many of their conclusions. But, most liberal thought tends towards very hard definitions, of things that are (IMO) not that hard (objectively true in all cases) in reality. It's an obvious problem in moral philosophy. You start from benign definitions of good and bad, like "greatest good for the greatest number." Then liberal philosophers push that to the extreme, usually weird moral dilemma scenarios. Killing fat men with mining carts to save skinny people. Infanticide. Involuntary euthanasia. Instead of admitting that your "moral maxim" or whatnot is really more of an approximation or a guideline really, they conclude that all this stuff which seems really bad and immoral is actually good. The american liberalism (or conservatism, libertarianism and other bad, illogical names for it) is rife with this sort of thing, IMO. The concept of liberty is defined using simple, made up examples. Platonic ideals. Then it's applied to the real world. At some point, using the term "liberty" to describe it becomes defensible only by very academic, long winded philosophical argument. To the person who's liberty is supposedly at stake, it seems odd that these philosophers are calling it liberty. I suspect this is why only very academic, extremist or philosophical types (or australians) call it liberalism or libertarianism (this one carries its own ironies). Everyone else just calls it conservatism.

danharaj 9y ago

You shouldn't get your philosophy from economists.

dalbasal 9y ago
nonsense. I don't agree with Milton's political positions, but he's entitled to them and they are valuable. He was a sharp thinker. As were Adam Smith, John Locke, Robert Malthus, Karl Marx.... Philosopher-economists isn't a new phenomenon. In fact, a lot of the best economists were both.
- danharaj 9y ago
  Ok, that's fair :) My pre-coffee take was a bit too spicy.
  - dalbasal 9y ago
    If we're being fair, nonsense is not a nice way of starting any kind of conversation.
    - danharaj 9y ago
      I'm definitely going to have to disagree with that.

JohnStrange 9y ago

Everybody wants to live in a country with a reasonably low Gini index. The disagreement is only about what "reasonably low" means and how to achieve it.