5 ms·

People don't control the talents with which they were born or the environment in which they're socialised. They also don't control the distribution of talents,

People don't control the talents with which they were born or the environment in which they're socialised. They also don't control the distribution of talents, technologies and preferences in society that combine to determine the supply and demand curve for different careers. I would say, therefore, that an individual's earning power in the market is overwhelmingly a function of luck. It is obviously unfair to penalise people for bad luck. It is also unfair for those with good luck to use the talents which fortune has gifted them to extort society, to demand that they receive multiple times more money than the normal citizen lest they deny society their talents and leave. Obviously fairness is not the only relevant value, but it is relevant. I don't think it is healthy for a society to stream their most talented citizens into high-paying and stable jobs, and to discard the rest as losers that are best forgotten, condemned to low-pay, casualised and insecure work. It is precisely this kind of dual society in which we now live, that is tearing at the social fabric, creating the kind of anger and resentment that produced Trump - and it is profoundly wrong. I note that the NHS pays doctors markedly less than they would receive in North America, though it is still a considerable amount. Yet we have no real brain drain. The most common reason doctors give for remaining in the UK, besides friends and family, is that they believe in the NHS as a public service provided free at the point of use for the common good. The motives and self-conception of the medical profession has not always been pecuniary. In The Politics, Aristotle is emphatic that medicine is a craft whose end is the good, which is corrupted insofar as it is treated as a means to making money.

zozbot234 5y ago
> People don't control the talents with which they were born or the environment in which they're socialised. But of course they do. Talents and a good surrounding environment aren't worth anything without a lot of education and effort. Why shouldn't a successful doctor be rewarded for that effort.
- Emma_Goldman 5y ago
  Your first and second sentence read as contradictory. Your first sentence suggests that you do think people control their genes and environment, your second sentence admits they don't, but claims this doesn't matter because those things are necessary but not sufficient to earn a lot of money - you say it also requires education and effort. I will assume your second sentence expresses your true belief. It is controversial (though a widespread belief among philosophers), but I believe that human talent is entirely a function of the interaction of genes and environment. We don't control the neighborhood in which we are born, the school in which we're enrolled, the values instilled in us, or our temperamental inclination to learning. I believe, for similar reasons, that we don't control our own effort. Humans don't stand apart from the naturalistic universe, but are a part of it. Others claim that while genes and environment play the largest role in determining our talents, we also have a degree of volition in those constraints with which to make better or worse use of those conditions, and for which we should be awarded responsibly. Either way, on the strong or weak version, our talents are largely our of our control, and it is therefore unfair to heavily reward or punish people for them. I'm also extremely sceptical of the idea that high-earning jobs demand more effort. I have a PhD and it required a fair amount of work. My immediate family were all in unskilled, low-paying jobs which they found boring, and derived little satisfaction from. Who put more effort in? We both had to work, but I found it interesting and fulfilling, whereas they did not. For them, there was a far greater gap between what they were doing and what they wanted to be doing. I think it's obvious that their jobs required more effort in any morally relevant sense. The relationship between effort and pay seems fairly incidental, but a general trend is that the more you are paid, the more likely the job is to exercise and develop your faculties. In this respect, the trendline goes from harder to easier with pay.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > ... My immediate family were all in unskilled, low-paying jobs which they found boring, and derived little satisfaction from. ... For that matter, I agree that many unskilled jobs are quite undervalued, and should be paid more. But the way to achieve that is surely not to dismiss the genuine, sometimes strenuous effort involved in developing valuable skills and talents as the mere outcome of unearned factors out of our control.
    - Emma_Goldman 5y ago
      Your phrasing begs the question, for something to be discounted it has to exist. That's the debate, I and most contemporary philosophers to consider the subject think most of our talents are unearned. That might conflict with the psychological and ideological stories we tell to comfort ourselves and justify the domination of the poor, but I think it's very likely that the strong or weak version of the thesis is true. As I said in my original post, talents also only confer earning power relative to the particular configuration of supply and demand during our working life - over which, clearly, we have no control.
kortilla 5y ago
> I would say, therefore, that an individual's earning power in the market is overwhelmingly a function of luck. Complete and utter bullshit. There are vast amounts of information available on what incomes are for jobs. Unless people have a mental or physical disability, they can put in the effort to train for something more than a trivial minimum wage job. The average amount of hours spent on watching tv shows, movies, playing video games, etc means that time to improve is not in short supply. As a society we shouldn’t encourage people who want to just coast and contribute very little of what society wants (labor demand). > to demand that they receive multiple times more money than the normal citizen lest they deny society their talents and leave The entitlement is palpable here. Nobody is a heart surgeon by by birth. It takes decades of sacrifice and hard work. Very few people are willing to do that and talent only plays a small part. That’s why doctors still make a multiple in the UK of “the normal citizen”: https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/cardiac-surgeon/united-kingdom https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/cardiac-surgeon/united-kin... > and to discard the rest as losers that are best forgotten, condemned to low-pay, casualised and insecure work. False dichotomy. The rest should be spending time training for skilled jobs. We should absolutely discourage people from getting a BA in Political Science and then spending their life making coffee and shitposting on Twitter. It’s an incredible waste of personal and societal potential. > I note that the NHS pays doctors markedly less than they would receive in North America, though it is still a considerable amount. Yet we have no real brain drain. See above. Your doctors make way more than even US software engineers (the thing I’m saying Canadian SWEs should aspire to). You don’t have brain drain because you pay them many multiples of “normal people”.

zozbot234 5y ago

> People don't control the talents with which they were born or the environment in which they're socialised. But of course they do. Talents and a good surrounding environment aren't worth anything without a lot of education and effort. Why shouldn't a successful doctor be rewarded for that effort.

Emma_Goldman 5y ago
Your first and second sentence read as contradictory. Your first sentence suggests that you do think people control their genes and environment, your second sentence admits they don't, but claims this doesn't matter because those things are necessary but not sufficient to earn a lot of money - you say it also requires education and effort. I will assume your second sentence expresses your true belief. It is controversial (though a widespread belief among philosophers), but I believe that human talent is entirely a function of the interaction of genes and environment. We don't control the neighborhood in which we are born, the school in which we're enrolled, the values instilled in us, or our temperamental inclination to learning. I believe, for similar reasons, that we don't control our own effort. Humans don't stand apart from the naturalistic universe, but are a part of it. Others claim that while genes and environment play the largest role in determining our talents, we also have a degree of volition in those constraints with which to make better or worse use of those conditions, and for which we should be awarded responsibly. Either way, on the strong or weak version, our talents are largely our of our control, and it is therefore unfair to heavily reward or punish people for them. I'm also extremely sceptical of the idea that high-earning jobs demand more effort. I have a PhD and it required a fair amount of work. My immediate family were all in unskilled, low-paying jobs which they found boring, and derived little satisfaction from. Who put more effort in? We both had to work, but I found it interesting and fulfilling, whereas they did not. For them, there was a far greater gap between what they were doing and what they wanted to be doing. I think it's obvious that their jobs required more effort in any morally relevant sense. The relationship between effort and pay seems fairly incidental, but a general trend is that the more you are paid, the more likely the job is to exercise and develop your faculties. In this respect, the trendline goes from harder to easier with pay.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > ... My immediate family were all in unskilled, low-paying jobs which they found boring, and derived little satisfaction from. ... For that matter, I agree that many unskilled jobs are quite undervalued, and should be paid more. But the way to achieve that is surely not to dismiss the genuine, sometimes strenuous effort involved in developing valuable skills and talents as the mere outcome of unearned factors out of our control.
  - Emma_Goldman 5y ago
    Your phrasing begs the question, for something to be discounted it has to exist. That's the debate, I and most contemporary philosophers to consider the subject think most of our talents are unearned. That might conflict with the psychological and ideological stories we tell to comfort ourselves and justify the domination of the poor, but I think it's very likely that the strong or weak version of the thesis is true. As I said in my original post, talents also only confer earning power relative to the particular configuration of supply and demand during our working life - over which, clearly, we have no control.

kortilla 5y ago

> I would say, therefore, that an individual's earning power in the market is overwhelmingly a function of luck. Complete and utter bullshit. There are vast amounts of information available on what incomes are for jobs. Unless people have a mental or physical disability, they can put in the effort to train for something more than a trivial minimum wage job. The average amount of hours spent on watching tv shows, movies, playing video games, etc means that time to improve is not in short supply. As a society we shouldn’t encourage people who want to just coast and contribute very little of what society wants (labor demand). > to demand that they receive multiple times more money than the normal citizen lest they deny society their talents and leave The entitlement is palpable here. Nobody is a heart surgeon by by birth. It takes decades of sacrifice and hard work. Very few people are willing to do that and talent only plays a small part. That’s why doctors still make a multiple in the UK of “the normal citizen”: https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/cardiac-surgeon/united-kingdom https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/cardiac-surgeon/united-kin... > and to discard the rest as losers that are best forgotten, condemned to low-pay, casualised and insecure work. False dichotomy. The rest should be spending time training for skilled jobs. We should absolutely discourage people from getting a BA in Political Science and then spending their life making coffee and shitposting on Twitter. It’s an incredible waste of personal and societal potential. > I note that the NHS pays doctors markedly less than they would receive in North America, though it is still a considerable amount. Yet we have no real brain drain. See above. Your doctors make way more than even US software engineers (the thing I’m saying Canadian SWEs should aspire to). You don’t have brain drain because you pay them many multiples of “normal people”.