4 ms·

> Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair. Can you explain why? And if your answer amounts to

by mrow84 6y ago

> Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair. Can you explain why? And if your answer amounts to "because people provide different amounts of [effort|value] to society" how would you reply to "so what?".

unfortun8 6y ago
“1 in 7 billion uses luxury of online anonymity to play at being a nihilist. Forgets real world self and political power is limited to whatever the masses enable. Would rather ostricize self politically than speak up.”
- mrow84 6y ago
  I presume you are aiming this at me, and if so it doesn't apply - I was simply asking for a rationale for the original claim that "Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair." I would suggest that your retort, presuming that is what it is, is mere posturing; either you have a substantive answer to the question or not - so far you have not provided one.
  - unfortun8 6y ago
    I would suggest you disabuse yourself of the notion such an answer is owed. Someone putting time into a response you’ll accept is a privilege you earn, not an obligation you demand. If your take is “so what”, fine stay home. You become politically irrelevant. “So what” that you even exist and to your political positions then. Our biology doesn’t allow for altruism. John Stuart Mill already covered this; the government should strive to be blind to bias in its institutions, but there’s no stopping a community from literally ejecting the dead weight. Don’t get involved in political conversation that doesn’t draw you in. Whatever. Nobody has to take your indifference to any topic as anything more than the emotional fart of a nobody who is indifferent to supporting people that to them end up being total nobodies. Exist in your circularness of nobody caring. It’s easier when nobody matters.
  - ghostwriter 6y ago
    Because no one owes you nothing by their unalienable right to be in charge of their own life, and you only get what you deserve by your actions. That's the fundamental moral principle of fairness. If your actions oriented towards creation then you get to hold your earnings by the right of your productive work. If your actions oriented towards extorting the value from those who create it, you deserve to be ostracized.
    - mrow84 6y ago
      > Because no one owes you nothing by their unalienable right to be in charge of their own life The question isn't whether people are obliged to provide for others, but whether or not it is necessarily unfair for them to do so. Your statement only addresses the former case, not the latter (irrespective of whether it is labelled "the fundamental moral principle of fairness").
      - ghostwriter 6y ago
        > The question isn't whether people are obliged to provide for others, but whether or not it is necessarily unfair for them to do so. sure, let's take a practical exercise and see how you feel about spending your days at cotton fields working for free. Doesn't have to be forever, just a few years, to get a meaningful conclusion about the level of that "necessarily" that you doubt about.
        mrow84 6y ago
        As a reminder, this is the original claim: > Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair. I had asked for an explanation of why this should be so. Your example, "being forced to work in the cotton fields for free", is only rhetoric - it does not actually address the question. There are an infinity of circumstances that would involve "everyone getting the same amount just for existing" that do not involve "being forced to work in the cotton fields", "being forced to work", or indeed "being forced (to do anything)". I find it interesting that in all the replies to my query, none have really been able to provide anything approaching an answer. The closest (in my opinion) is [0] by aeternum, but that boils down to saying that it is unfair if things don't progress as quickly as they could, but doesn't explain why - this in itself seems pretty radical, when made explicit (hopefully I haven't done too much of an injustice in my paraphrasing). These claims are made boldly, but the rationale seems more difficult to tease out. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215835
aeternum 6y ago
As a society we should increase the standard of living for everyone. In order to do that, people need to be motivated to contribute.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Which is why Communism doesn't work. If what you get has no relationship to the work you do, there is no reason to do the work. But that's the problem a UBI solves -- you still get it when you take a job but you also get what you earn from the job. As compared with the status quo, which is already worse than this, because we have existing assistance programs that you lose by taking a job or earning more money.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    > Which is why Communism doesn't work. If what you get has no relationship to the work you do, there is no reason to do the work. It may surprise people to learn that even the Soviets effectively acknowledged the validity of that second statement. According to the 1936 Constitution of the USSR: "ARTICLE 118. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance With its quantity and quality." https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04.html https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04....
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      The problem, of course, being that they weren't using anything like market pricing to allocate the rewards, so in practice they went to people based on corruption and politics.
- mrow84 6y ago
  I might agree with what you are saying, but it doesn't address the question, which is to provide a rationale for the claim "Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair." Your statement is about motivations, not fairness.
baconandeggs 6y ago
If your answer is "so what?" then I assume you are not interested in my answer.
- mrow84 6y ago
  "So what?" is not an answer, it is another question, and I asked it preemptively to try and avoid a simplistic answer to my original question. Do you have a more constructive answer?
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
because the stuff they get for existing has to come from someone else.
- mrow84 6y ago
  > Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair. > because the stuff they get for existing has to come from someone else. Your statement doesn't hold unless we assume "it is unfair for one person to provide for the needs of another (unless it is reciprocated)", and it isn't at all clear that we can take that axiomatically. Even setting to one side the more obvious cases of parents providing for children etc., if we were to assume that one person could, through their labour, provide for the needs of everyone else, why does it obviously follow that it is "unfair" for everyone to survive solely that person's labour? More generally, it really isn't clear to me that these questions have such simplistic answers.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > Your statement doesn't hold unless we assume "it is unfair for one person to provide for the needs of another (unless it is reciprocated)", and it isn't at all clear that we can take that axiomatically. the axiom is more like "it is unfair to force one person to provide for the needs of another." obviously some people would disagree, which is their right. however by making this axiom and their disagreements with it explicit, we can discuss the reality of the situation more clearly. > if we were to assume that one person could, through their labour, provide for the needs of everyone else, why does it obviously follow that it is "unfair" for everyone to survive solely that person's labour? well would it be fair to force that person to provide for the needs of everyone, if they could do so but chose not to? > More generally, it really isn't clear to me that these questions have such simplistic answers. agreed. but discussion can help us to understand the question better, and perhaps if we realize that there is no "right" answer then that conclusion could still help us to create a society where everyone is better off.
    - mrow84 6y ago

by mrow84 6y ago

unfortun8 6y ago

“1 in 7 billion uses luxury of online anonymity to play at being a nihilist. Forgets real world self and political power is limited to whatever the masses enable. Would rather ostricize self politically than speak up.”

mrow84 6y ago
I presume you are aiming this at me, and if so it doesn't apply - I was simply asking for a rationale for the original claim that "Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair." I would suggest that your retort, presuming that is what it is, is mere posturing; either you have a substantive answer to the question or not - so far you have not provided one.
- unfortun8 6y ago
  I would suggest you disabuse yourself of the notion such an answer is owed. Someone putting time into a response you’ll accept is a privilege you earn, not an obligation you demand. If your take is “so what”, fine stay home. You become politically irrelevant. “So what” that you even exist and to your political positions then. Our biology doesn’t allow for altruism. John Stuart Mill already covered this; the government should strive to be blind to bias in its institutions, but there’s no stopping a community from literally ejecting the dead weight. Don’t get involved in political conversation that doesn’t draw you in. Whatever. Nobody has to take your indifference to any topic as anything more than the emotional fart of a nobody who is indifferent to supporting people that to them end up being total nobodies. Exist in your circularness of nobody caring. It’s easier when nobody matters.
- ghostwriter 6y ago
  Because no one owes you nothing by their unalienable right to be in charge of their own life, and you only get what you deserve by your actions. That's the fundamental moral principle of fairness. If your actions oriented towards creation then you get to hold your earnings by the right of your productive work. If your actions oriented towards extorting the value from those who create it, you deserve to be ostracized.
  - mrow84 6y ago
    > Because no one owes you nothing by their unalienable right to be in charge of their own life The question isn't whether people are obliged to provide for others, but whether or not it is necessarily unfair for them to do so. Your statement only addresses the former case, not the latter (irrespective of whether it is labelled "the fundamental moral principle of fairness").
    - ghostwriter 6y ago
      > The question isn't whether people are obliged to provide for others, but whether or not it is necessarily unfair for them to do so. sure, let's take a practical exercise and see how you feel about spending your days at cotton fields working for free. Doesn't have to be forever, just a few years, to get a meaningful conclusion about the level of that "necessarily" that you doubt about.
      - mrow84 6y ago
        As a reminder, this is the original claim: > Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair. I had asked for an explanation of why this should be so. Your example, "being forced to work in the cotton fields for free", is only rhetoric - it does not actually address the question. There are an infinity of circumstances that would involve "everyone getting the same amount just for existing" that do not involve "being forced to work in the cotton fields", "being forced to work", or indeed "being forced (to do anything)". I find it interesting that in all the replies to my query, none have really been able to provide anything approaching an answer. The closest (in my opinion) is [0] by aeternum, but that boils down to saying that it is unfair if things don't progress as quickly as they could, but doesn't explain why - this in itself seems pretty radical, when made explicit (hopefully I haven't done too much of an injustice in my paraphrasing). These claims are made boldly, but the rationale seems more difficult to tease out. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215835

aeternum 6y ago

As a society we should increase the standard of living for everyone. In order to do that, people need to be motivated to contribute.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Which is why Communism doesn't work. If what you get has no relationship to the work you do, there is no reason to do the work. But that's the problem a UBI solves -- you still get it when you take a job but you also get what you earn from the job. As compared with the status quo, which is already worse than this, because we have existing assistance programs that you lose by taking a job or earning more money.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > Which is why Communism doesn't work. If what you get has no relationship to the work you do, there is no reason to do the work. It may surprise people to learn that even the Soviets effectively acknowledged the validity of that second statement. According to the 1936 Constitution of the USSR: "ARTICLE 118. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance With its quantity and quality." https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04.html https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04....
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    The problem, of course, being that they weren't using anything like market pricing to allocate the rewards, so in practice they went to people based on corruption and politics.
mrow84 6y ago
I might agree with what you are saying, but it doesn't address the question, which is to provide a rationale for the claim "Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair." Your statement is about motivations, not fairness.

baconandeggs 6y ago

If your answer is "so what?" then I assume you are not interested in my answer.

mrow84 6y ago
"So what?" is not an answer, it is another question, and I asked it preemptively to try and avoid a simplistic answer to my original question. Do you have a more constructive answer?

chordalkeyboard 6y ago

because the stuff they get for existing has to come from someone else.

mrow84 6y ago
> Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair. > because the stuff they get for existing has to come from someone else. Your statement doesn't hold unless we assume "it is unfair for one person to provide for the needs of another (unless it is reciprocated)", and it isn't at all clear that we can take that axiomatically. Even setting to one side the more obvious cases of parents providing for children etc., if we were to assume that one person could, through their labour, provide for the needs of everyone else, why does it obviously follow that it is "unfair" for everyone to survive solely that person's labour? More generally, it really isn't clear to me that these questions have such simplistic answers.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Your statement doesn't hold unless we assume "it is unfair for one person to provide for the needs of another (unless it is reciprocated)", and it isn't at all clear that we can take that axiomatically. the axiom is more like "it is unfair to force one person to provide for the needs of another." obviously some people would disagree, which is their right. however by making this axiom and their disagreements with it explicit, we can discuss the reality of the situation more clearly. > if we were to assume that one person could, through their labour, provide for the needs of everyone else, why does it obviously follow that it is "unfair" for everyone to survive solely that person's labour? well would it be fair to force that person to provide for the needs of everyone, if they could do so but chose not to? > More generally, it really isn't clear to me that these questions have such simplistic answers. agreed. but discussion can help us to understand the question better, and perhaps if we realize that there is no "right" answer then that conclusion could still help us to create a society where everyone is better off.
  - mrow84 6y ago