4 ms·

My brain's not yet running this morning and I can't think of the term for this point, but as it's now in my brain I'll come back and link to more details as soo

by corin_ 16y ago

My brain's not yet running this morning and I can't think of the term for this point, but as it's now in my brain I'll come back and link to more details as soon as I think of it. The rough concept is that, when it comes to society/politics/law, you should think as if you are yet to be born and don't know where in society you will end up. So, you might become the richest man in the world, or you might live a life in poverty and unemployment. As to why it matters, should people dying of hunger in the third world be ignored? Should we not care about homeless people who are sleeping in the cold and wet and will have crazily low life expectancy and a terrible standard of living? I'm not sure where the 20% comes from or how accurate an estimate that is, but the more fortunate should always do their part, whether through legislation (such as taxation) or charity, to help the less fortunate. While different people will have different views on many areas of this, such as to what extent they should be helped, how badly off you have to be to deserve it, and so on and so on, I think very few would say that the bottom end of society deserves no help at all.

palish 16y ago
What I'm saying is, if people decide to donate their own money to charity, then that's fine. But I don't understand the attitude of "It's noble to steal money from some, and redistribute it to others". It seems immoral.
- corin_ 16y ago
  If you couldn't afford to pay your bills, couldn't afford a place to live, couldn't afford health insurance, couldn't afford to buy clothes for your children, would you still have that view? Or would you be rather glad that there's a system (even if not a great one) that helps balance society out a little bit? And frankly you shouldn't need to have to imagine being in that position, how can you not feel that we should all care about those worse off than ourselves? Oh, and there are plenty of selfish reasons as well. Society would fall apart if only the rich were able to live and we left the poor to, eventually, either become rich or die out. Who would make your cars, clothes, food, serve you a coffee, sell you your ticket to a sports game, etc etc.
  - fleitz 16y ago
    Honestly, in 90% of cases it's purely a choice. Most people in North America can't pay rent because they need to live downtown and work a min wage job. Let me tell you that there are plenty of starbucks in places with lower rent. If you can't pay rent in North America have 2 arms 2 legs and an IQ of 100 it's because you're spending your money stupidly and/or lazy. My ex wife (IQ of 140-150) phoned me the other day complaining about how she can't pay rent. Note that she lives in social housing despite making in excess of 68K per year. She works for the gov't and could go to any number of places with cheap rent, yet she insists on living in some of the most expensive areas of Canada. Two weeks ago she was raving about how much fun the new Green Day edition of Rock Band was and next week she is going on vacation. Think there might be a connection as to why she can't pay subsidized rent let alone market rent? When I was with her, I bought my own place at 22 while working a crap tech support job.
    - corin_ 16y ago
      There's plenty of problems with the system, including people who are able to get far more than they should out of it, and people who don't get enough from it. That doesn't mean we should scrap it entirely. A counterpoint example (although this is from the UK, but similar thing). When my sister was unemployed a couple of years ago, she signed up for unemployment benefits ("job seekers allowance"). That was something pretty low like maybe USD$100/week, but it was OK as she was living with parents and not paying rent. The purpose of job seekers allowance is, as the name suggests, to support people looking for work, and you stay on it you are meant to regularly prove that you are doing your best to find a job. What she found was that, while she genuinely wanted a job, and wasn't picky (she wasn't thinking "I need to get a job suited to my skill set in a really specific industry", she would have been happy in a supermarket), the government staff that she had to see twice a month clearly didn't care about helping her find a job, and didn't even care about checking whether she was trying to find a job herself. To them it was all about ticking her off on a list and paying her the money. That's really terrible, because it means that if you want to get benefits instead of working it's incredibly easy, and because, if they had bothered to help her find work sooner, she would have spent less time getting benefits, therefore taking less money out of the system. So, was the system good in this example? No, it was terrible. But, at the same time, because she couldn't find a job, she did need the system, and she would have been much worse off if it didn't exist.
- ugh 16y ago
  This is one argument: Every human deserves to live in dignity. If someone is unable to earn enough money to live a dignified live, society has to provide the means, wealth has to be redistributed. What exactly living in dignity means and how exactly wealth should be redistributed is certainly always up for debate but this is the basic outline of a pretty standard argument. I would, for example, be very surprised if less than a large majority of people in my native Germany agreed with the basic argument. Those who agree with the argument have compared the immorality of taking away someone’s money with the immorality of not enabling someone to live a dignified life and concluded that the second violation of rights weighs heavier.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    >Those who agree with the argument have compared the immorality of taking away someone’s money with the immorality of not enabling someone to live a dignified life and concluded that the second violation of rights weighs heavier." This is the crux of the issue right here. Another key point is that the usefulness (to the holder) of a given unit of wealth is inversely proportional to how much total wealth they have. $100 is worth a lot more to someone who has $3 than it is to someone who has $3,000,000. Therefore there is a certain utilitarian argument in favor of putting the wealth where it will have the most benefit. And yes, I know utilitarianism is horribly flawed when you force it to its logical conclusion, that isn't the point here. Think of it a bit like spreading fertilizer on a field. If you want a good harvest, it doesn't really make any sense to distribute it in any way except according to its need. As the parent said: this is just one argument. I'm not saying that it is conclusive, nor do I expect you to agree with it.
  - mseebach 16y ago
    Problem is, that argument doesn't apply to inequality. You can be perfecty dignified on the bottom of a highly inequal society (and most poor americans are), and those that aren't very often have a non-financial reason (such as drugs).
gjm11 16y ago
The term you're looking for is "veil of ignorance" (that's the thing you imagine being behind when formulating policy), and the biggest proponent of that way of thinking about policy is John Rawls. He wrote a book called "A theory of justice" that talks about this, and a later one called "Justice as fairness: a restatement". Advance warning: I find his writing pretty heavy going; I don't know whether that's a quirk of my brain or just means that he doesn't write as clearly as he might.
- corin_ 16y ago
  Many thanks, the inability to place it was really bugging me. Now I just need to work out what the Bach that keeps going round my head is.
  - gjm11 16y ago
    Give me the notes, or the best approximation you can manage, and I can probably help with that one too. If someone else doesn't get there first. :-)
    - corin_ 16y ago
      F Ab G F C Ab G F C(0) Db C Bb Ab G First eight and last four notes are quavers, C(0) and Db are crotchets. Plus I used (0) to notate down an octave. It could be from one of the cello suites... but looking through them I can't for the life of me find it. Definitely it's played by a cello, pretty sure at the start of the piece, might be for solo cello or might be something close to the brandenburgs.. Would be immensely grateful if you could place it, I've been feeling so dumb for not knowing it for about a week now, I know I really ought to. edit: I think there's a good chance it is in F minor as with my above notation, but it's quite possible I'm wrong about that. edit: because I hate music written with letters.. http://misc.corincole.com/bach.png http://misc.corincole.com/bach.png
      - gjm11 16y ago
        I can't find quite that anywhere either, and in particular no movement from the cello suites starts with it or anything that sounds close to me. The beginning of the first movement of BWV1023 (it's a violin sonata) isn't a million miles off, but it certainly isn't quite it and it's a violin rather than a cello. (Are you absolutely sure it's Bach? Not that I have anyone else in mind.)

by corin_ 16y ago

palish 16y ago

What I'm saying is, if people decide to donate their own money to charity, then that's fine. But I don't understand the attitude of "It's noble to steal money from some, and redistribute it to others". It seems immoral.

corin_ 16y ago
If you couldn't afford to pay your bills, couldn't afford a place to live, couldn't afford health insurance, couldn't afford to buy clothes for your children, would you still have that view? Or would you be rather glad that there's a system (even if not a great one) that helps balance society out a little bit? And frankly you shouldn't need to have to imagine being in that position, how can you not feel that we should all care about those worse off than ourselves? Oh, and there are plenty of selfish reasons as well. Society would fall apart if only the rich were able to live and we left the poor to, eventually, either become rich or die out. Who would make your cars, clothes, food, serve you a coffee, sell you your ticket to a sports game, etc etc.
- fleitz 16y ago
  Honestly, in 90% of cases it's purely a choice. Most people in North America can't pay rent because they need to live downtown and work a min wage job. Let me tell you that there are plenty of starbucks in places with lower rent. If you can't pay rent in North America have 2 arms 2 legs and an IQ of 100 it's because you're spending your money stupidly and/or lazy. My ex wife (IQ of 140-150) phoned me the other day complaining about how she can't pay rent. Note that she lives in social housing despite making in excess of 68K per year. She works for the gov't and could go to any number of places with cheap rent, yet she insists on living in some of the most expensive areas of Canada. Two weeks ago she was raving about how much fun the new Green Day edition of Rock Band was and next week she is going on vacation. Think there might be a connection as to why she can't pay subsidized rent let alone market rent? When I was with her, I bought my own place at 22 while working a crap tech support job.
  - corin_ 16y ago
    There's plenty of problems with the system, including people who are able to get far more than they should out of it, and people who don't get enough from it. That doesn't mean we should scrap it entirely. A counterpoint example (although this is from the UK, but similar thing). When my sister was unemployed a couple of years ago, she signed up for unemployment benefits ("job seekers allowance"). That was something pretty low like maybe USD$100/week, but it was OK as she was living with parents and not paying rent. The purpose of job seekers allowance is, as the name suggests, to support people looking for work, and you stay on it you are meant to regularly prove that you are doing your best to find a job. What she found was that, while she genuinely wanted a job, and wasn't picky (she wasn't thinking "I need to get a job suited to my skill set in a really specific industry", she would have been happy in a supermarket), the government staff that she had to see twice a month clearly didn't care about helping her find a job, and didn't even care about checking whether she was trying to find a job herself. To them it was all about ticking her off on a list and paying her the money. That's really terrible, because it means that if you want to get benefits instead of working it's incredibly easy, and because, if they had bothered to help her find work sooner, she would have spent less time getting benefits, therefore taking less money out of the system. So, was the system good in this example? No, it was terrible. But, at the same time, because she couldn't find a job, she did need the system, and she would have been much worse off if it didn't exist.
ugh 16y ago
This is one argument: Every human deserves to live in dignity. If someone is unable to earn enough money to live a dignified live, society has to provide the means, wealth has to be redistributed. What exactly living in dignity means and how exactly wealth should be redistributed is certainly always up for debate but this is the basic outline of a pretty standard argument. I would, for example, be very surprised if less than a large majority of people in my native Germany agreed with the basic argument. Those who agree with the argument have compared the immorality of taking away someone’s money with the immorality of not enabling someone to live a dignified life and concluded that the second violation of rights weighs heavier.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  >Those who agree with the argument have compared the immorality of taking away someone’s money with the immorality of not enabling someone to live a dignified life and concluded that the second violation of rights weighs heavier." This is the crux of the issue right here. Another key point is that the usefulness (to the holder) of a given unit of wealth is inversely proportional to how much total wealth they have. $100 is worth a lot more to someone who has $3 than it is to someone who has $3,000,000. Therefore there is a certain utilitarian argument in favor of putting the wealth where it will have the most benefit. And yes, I know utilitarianism is horribly flawed when you force it to its logical conclusion, that isn't the point here. Think of it a bit like spreading fertilizer on a field. If you want a good harvest, it doesn't really make any sense to distribute it in any way except according to its need. As the parent said: this is just one argument. I'm not saying that it is conclusive, nor do I expect you to agree with it.
- mseebach 16y ago
  Problem is, that argument doesn't apply to inequality. You can be perfecty dignified on the bottom of a highly inequal society (and most poor americans are), and those that aren't very often have a non-financial reason (such as drugs).

gjm11 16y ago

The term you're looking for is "veil of ignorance" (that's the thing you imagine being behind when formulating policy), and the biggest proponent of that way of thinking about policy is John Rawls. He wrote a book called "A theory of justice" that talks about this, and a later one called "Justice as fairness: a restatement". Advance warning: I find his writing pretty heavy going; I don't know whether that's a quirk of my brain or just means that he doesn't write as clearly as he might.

corin_ 16y ago
Many thanks, the inability to place it was really bugging me. Now I just need to work out what the Bach that keeps going round my head is.
- gjm11 16y ago
  Give me the notes, or the best approximation you can manage, and I can probably help with that one too. If someone else doesn't get there first. :-)
  - corin_ 16y ago
    F Ab G F C Ab G F C(0) Db C Bb Ab G First eight and last four notes are quavers, C(0) and Db are crotchets. Plus I used (0) to notate down an octave. It could be from one of the cello suites... but looking through them I can't for the life of me find it. Definitely it's played by a cello, pretty sure at the start of the piece, might be for solo cello or might be something close to the brandenburgs.. Would be immensely grateful if you could place it, I've been feeling so dumb for not knowing it for about a week now, I know I really ought to. edit: I think there's a good chance it is in F minor as with my above notation, but it's quite possible I'm wrong about that. edit: because I hate music written with letters.. http://misc.corincole.com/bach.png http://misc.corincole.com/bach.png
    - gjm11 16y ago
      I can't find quite that anywhere either, and in particular no movement from the cello suites starts with it or anything that sounds close to me. The beginning of the first movement of BWV1023 (it's a violin sonata) isn't a million miles off, but it certainly isn't quite it and it's a violin rather than a cello. (Are you absolutely sure it's Bach? Not that I have anyone else in mind.)