skinFlint
so look, there are some who would suggest that jobless figures are higher on council estates because many of the people who live there are low-skilled workers, who have seen their opportunities diminish to practically nothing because the corporate greedheads sent all the jobs to China. and then there's Caroline Flint, a disgusting human being, who has led a life of privilege and never had to reflect on what it is like at the bottom, who thinks that "nobody works around here" is an expression of pride, and people refuse to work because of peer pressure.no, dear. nobody works around here because they closed all the factories and even though you dumbed down the unis to the point at which degrees are worth only slightly more than bogroll, you have not created enough pathways for people at the bottom to get into decent employment because they can't see how they could ever gain sufficient qualifications to compete for the excellent jobs that people like you can get, and they don't really fancy working as what amounts to a slave or a skivvy at best, and who can blame them? it doesn't help that you saddle the poor fuckers with thousands in debt if they do try. ms Flint is probably not aware that working-class people traditionally do not like or understand debt. my granddad (my stepgranddad technically) never bought anything on credit, not even on HP. he never had a mortgage, and lived within his means completely. he would be a corporatist like ms Flint's worst nightmare. even i, an educated man, do not have much debt, and do not like to have any. i have some interest free, and occasionally a couple of hundred on my CC, but otherwise, nothing. i intend to borrow maybe 20K Aussie to get home, but that's a big step.
ms Flint also has some things to say about affordable housing. maybe if her colleague mr Brown had not pumped up the real-estate bubble, the problem would not be so bad. but anyway, we should begin with property as the first step to making this a just world. it's theft, you know.
now why do i say that? let me explain, briefly. it's just wrong that ms Flint has a comfy pad somewhere in London and some guy has to live in council housing because he wasn't born with her brains and opportunities. just. plain. wrong.
that's not negotiable. we should begin there. we can say, oh we can't fix all the wrong overnight, and that's okay. but we can't say that it's actually a feature, when it's one of the worst of the many bugs in Humanrace 1.0.
posted by Dr Zen @ 11:39 am
22 Comments:
Is there a reality-based calculation that makes differing levels of comfort just. plain. wrong. or is it not negotiable simply because it is what you believe?
It's not that I am against "differing levels of comfort", Don. It's more that for one person to achieve a particular level of comfort requires them to climb a mountain; for the other, it acquires coasting on the same level. Of course you don't think it's wrong. You never had to climb.
Are you saying that if you don't work hard, some of your comforts should be taken away from you?
Sorry, that was half-witted, I'll try again. Are you saying that every human should start with exactly the same opportunities? That the rewards of a lifetime of hard work cannot include materially assisting your children? No ladder rungs or steps at all, unless and until every human being alive has access to the same steps?
I am saying that you should not feel entitled to them just because you have them.
I take a basically Rawlsian approach to it, Don. I favour equity over equality.
Rawls' famous thought experiment is the "veil of ignorance". Imagine you were about to have your life, and were given the power to design how the world you are going to live in would be structured. Thing is, you don't know what position you will have in it.
I believe, as did Rawls, that this will naturally result in a world that is equitable, but not one that entirely discourages true merit (not "merit" that is accidental) or reward.
What do you have that you are not entitled to? If you had decent ISP service, would you accept it as a temporary gift to which you are not entitled? Do you feel unentitled to a place to house your kids? Would you feel differently once every child in the world had a home, or would it make no difference?
And you are well aware that I do not favour dynasties of privilege, so whatever system we use, by my lights it should never include transfer of privilege between generations to an extent that is inequitable.
Yes, Rawls is correct that if we couldn't know what place we would have in it, we would design a world of equity. Are you concerned, or not concerned, with how to achieve that world starting not from scratch but from the world we actually have?
I lead a life of relative wealth and privilege, Don. Unless you believe being born in one place rather than another actually does "entitle" you to more than others, well, I've just answered your question in a way you can easily understand.
The world can change, Don.
The Romanovs thought their gilded life would never end, but end it did. Yours can too, and would, if I had the choice.
The president of my college in a meeting the other day told us that there would be another budget cut this fiscal year, and that the state was cutting what we would be getting next year. She welcomed suggestions on how to trim the college's expenditures and joked that someone had sent her an email saying the administrators should receive a pay cut. "I'm sure they meant that in jest." She was serious. The room burst out not just in laughter but people looking at each other going, "She can't really think that." One can only hope she felt embarrassed, but I doubt it.
This breaks down her $365,577 salary (6th highest paid community college president in the state):
$234,281 salary; $8,500 car; $25,000 house allowance; $27,796 retirement pay; $70,000 deferred compensation; club dues.
She showed she clearly feels entitled to what she makes.
I'm all right with that. The ideal world, for me, is not about wealth and privilege. It is one in which every person's rights are recognized and preserved. The difference between my ideal and yours is that you don't recognize rights not handed down by human authority. Thus there is no foundation for your desire for an equitable world, except that it is simply what "should" be. Going back to my original question, from what do you extract your understanding of what should be?
Arleen's comment now visible, I am one of those who believes that the American university system is a massive con job.
This is exactly how people think. They say "I work hard; I deserve the rewards." They're not getting it. If you say "I work hard; I deserved a reward", then yes, that is true.
But why is your hard work worth more than someone else's? The answer, we all know, is that some work is valued more than other work. But there are other ways to value work, and other ways to decide how to apportion wealth.
Under the veil of ignorance, she would never agree that she should be paid ten times what you're paid. She'd be far too afraid that she'd have your job and you hers.
Don, if rights do not derive from "human authority", what exactly do they derive from? Actually, spare me the answer. I've heard it all before. Without God, any explanation is pretty much meaningless.
I just do believe in the value of an equitable world. I believe it would be a better one for me to live in, so my self-interest is involved. I do not require a mystical belief in rights to have my belief: I simply have to believe other people have value. Which I do. YMMV.
And LOFL at your belief that your conception of rights is "reality based". I mean, wtf. Yes, you can argue what rights people "should have", but you are also relying on something you take to be axiomatic, not actually describing something that pertains in the world.
Don, if rights do not derive from "human authority", what exactly do they derive from?
A simple recognition of the inherent worth of every human being; which no authority can take away without cause, that cause being an individual violating the rights of another.
Without God, any explanation is pretty much meaningless.
Actually, the idea that rights come from God is no different than that rights come from human authority. It is still a passdown from authority. I contend that humans have certain rights from the start and need not wait until they are granted. (Let's not sidetrack into just when that "start" is. Birth at the latest, anyway.)
You will say, but God doesn't exist, and human authority does. Yes. But whence came human authority? It has been passed down since prehistory. Are human rights to be founded on an ancient system of strength and brutality, modified only by the slow creep of enlightenment? I think not. I think they are complete, here and now and always have been, and only need recognizing.
I have to go now so there will be a delay to my next reply.
"A simple recognition of the inherent worth of every human being"
Yet you value them differently. And this is not an explanation of which rights they should have, only that you think that all should have them. Of course I agree, but I don't agree that they actually do have them without negotiating (and fighting for) them.
"Actually, the idea that rights come from God is no different than that rights come from human authority."
This is so dumb that you should be ashamed of writing it. Rights obviously derive from human authority, because if the authority denies them to you, you simply do not have them. Your argument basically devolves to "people have natural rights that just happen to match those I think they should have", whereas mine is "people do not inherently have rights but I think they should have them".
"Are human rights to be founded on an ancient system of strength and brutality, modified only by the slow creep of enlightenment? I think not. I think they are complete, here and now and always have been, and only need recognizing."
Well, yes, they are. I'm proud of the people who fought for them, Don, who wrested them from those in power, and still do.
Your argument here sucks. You basically make rights mystical, and what's worse, universalise "rights" that in many contexts are meaningless. A right to free speech has no meaning in a society that has no one in it who wishes to stop others from speaking, and little more in societies that have different rights to speech: such as those in which everyone is free to speak what they wish, but elders speak first, and you discount systems of tabu that are important to some. Is your way truly better? I'm not sure. Are the "rights" you desire obvious and natural? No, clearly not, because many people would not accept that they are even desirable.
Furthermore, there's a reason I discuss property a great deal. Here you are, telling me that rights should not be conceived as endowments from those in power, yet you believe in property rights! Absolutely fucking unreal.
Short reply, I should be working, but, you know.
We are speaking of two differing understandings of the word "rights".
Of course I agree that many rights don't exist unless allowed by authority. Some in fact derive from authority as you say. Rights of free speech differ across the globe, as different populations have different ideas as to which speech should be allowed and which should not. These differences are based entirely on perceptions of which speech is harmful and which is not.
My contention is that right to free speech is absolute, except where it does harm. Human authority then modifies it according to culture, and who's successfully fought for it, etc. Some of those restrictions are violations of a broader right, some are not. The U.S. is guilty of this too. My idea of what speech really does not do harm differs from many Americans, and from nearly all Saudis, etc.
Yes, I'm trying to make MY beliefs universal. When rights are fought for, and people die to attain them, it's rather obvious they think the rights they are dying for are absolute.
I admit to a level of mysticism, as you put it, by which we mean my position is not as absolutely based in human history as yours. I suppose that's true. Your understanding of rights is not founded on a moral philosophy, but just on what the populations can wrest from the brutes that rule them. Not saying that's wrong, but at the end of the day you will never convince me that there isn't something better than the best we happen to have.
Last comment was half-witted again. My intent is not to make MY beliefs universal. I said that only to admit to the human failing of subjectivity. I feel there are some fundamentals that always apply whether anyone recognizes them or not. Endowed by a Creator only in the sense that they are, as a matter of moral philosophy, part and parcel to the human experience. Still, I don't say this well. But it remains superior to notions of rights merely being a matter of social evolution.
A right to free speech has no meaning in a society that has no one in it who wishes to stop others from speaking
That's like saying a right to breathe has no meaning if no one is trying to suffocate you. It is fortunately moot, but said right always has meaning.
Property, by the way, is only an endowment from power when gifted / inherited. It is otherwise a matter of open trade and negotiation. Never, legitimately, a matter of coercion, force, theft.
Trade in property is restricted in many ways, not least that you need to have it, or the money to buy it, to trade in it. And title derives from power, obviously, Don. You're not renting from a Native American.
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