Politician's Syllogism
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
1. We will pick a handful of people that you may choose from
2. You pick one of them (because there were no other choices)
3. Therefore you freely chose that person and are solely responsible for what that person does
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very...
The original complaint above was that some unaccountable group "will pick a handful of people that you may choose from", which shouldn't be a problem if only party primaries were run properly, but I suppose that in a two-party state there isn't much selective pressure on either party to represent even the majority of its members, let alone the majority of voters or citizens.
I think the parties will remain powerful under ranked-chioce voting. People look to them as an authority more than an organization representing their own beliefs. It seems that many people also use it as an identity, which may stymie the benefits of ranked-choice.
All this said, I think it's a step in the right direction, but wish that more could be done (voter participation and same day primaries for example).
1. All politicians are corrupt.
2. Therefore, I will not support any of them.
3. The more people are disgusted of general politics, the easier it is for a corrupt politician to gain power.
4. But that's not my fault, because I never supported the elected one. In fact I never supported any of them!
5. Wow, this country is really going to shit. Go to step 1.
You have a handful of employers to choose from.You pick one of them (because the only choice is to pick an employer, or - at best - live a life at the degrading mercy of the welfare state). Therefore you freely chose that employer and are solely responsible for your livelihood.
https://bizshifts-trends.com/mutation-medieval-feudalism-mod...
Not really. Each employer offers an additional "something" on top of all the other "somethings" offered by the other employers.
> You have a handful of employers to choose from.You pick one of them.
This is a step that does not have an analogous correspondent in the politicians' syllogism.
And each politician does the same - whether they deliver on the promise is another matter, and they can only promise a certain amount. Further, you can get trapped at a local maximum; there isn't much variation in what companies in sector X will offer you when you restrict the pool of companies to places close to you and (even more importantly, which makes this worse than the politician's case) willing to hire you.
>This is a step that does not have an analogous correspondent in the politicians' syllogism.
It has a correspondence in the syllogism I was replying to. Sure, you could become self-employed, but in the same way you could also become a politician. But neither a self-employed person nor a single politician can change the situation for everyone else (mind you, this is again worse in the employee's case than the voter's case; politicians often can make huge changes that benefit all voters, one kind employer cannot do that - in fact, cost-cutting and health risk-skirting employers drive employee rights because politicians decide to regulate them).
Employment seems to be even more of a sham than democracy.
Actually the offer is quite different and its not an individual offer as in the case of employment. Democracy is kind of like everyone voting on a menu item and then everyone gets the mode, in the employment model everyone gets their own choice.
> It has a correspondence in the syllogism I was replying to. Sure, you could become self-employed, but in the same way you could also become a politician.
Everyone gets what the apparent majority has chosen, everyone gets to choose their own employment. I'm not sure I see the parallel here.
> Employment seems to be even more of a sham than democracy.
Quite the contrary, in employment quid pro quo is the going rate, in democracy some people consider it correct and another group consider it to be corruption of the system.
Unlike choosing a politician, you need to choose an employer. This makes the stakes higher. Choosing is not enough, the employer also needs to choose you. And despite that, most people believe in a just-world fallacy in which your job record and position in life is made out of your choices, and you deserve what you get. Everyone gets what the class of capital-owners has chosen.
Quid pro quo is the going rate only in the most farcical sense for a large portion of the population where the quid is your finite time and energy, and the quo is being housed and clothed. I personally have some choice in employer, but not a wide variety of choices. I certainly can't choose no employer.
This is what I take issue with. The restriction of options in democracy is a part of the design of the system and ultimately related to democracy's purpose as a decision-forcing mechanism. The losing side of the polity is deprived by design. In a market the number of options available is (subject to physical limits) a function of the number of people who choose to provide options. There is not a corresponding artificial limit on choice, rather there are as many choices as society and the planet can support.
> Unlike choosing a politician, you need to choose an employer.
Unlike choosing an employer, if you do not choose a politician, one will be chosen for you.
> This makes the stakes higher
The stakes are higher in politics because of their sanctioned ability to use force to modify the behavior of others.
> Choosing is not enough, the employer also needs to choose you.
This is a good thing as it ensures that the relationship is mutually satisfactory rather than a unilateral relationship like slavery.
> And despite that, most people believe in a just-world fallacy in which your job record and position in life is made out of your choices, and you deserve what you get.
To the extent that there is a free market in employment, that is true. to the extent that the markets are controlled by politics, that is a fallacy.
> Everyone gets what the class of capital-owners has chosen.
Wrong. We just established that these relationships are mutual.
> Quid pro quo is the going rate only in the most farcical sense for a large portion of the population where the quid is your finite time and energy, and the quo is being housed and clothed.
Its not a farce to suggest that they are being paid what their labor is worth. Also lets please be accurate, they aren't "fed and clothed" but given exchange media which they then choose to exchange for those things if they need and want to.
> I certainly can't choose no employer.
Quite the contrary, you most certainly can. You may not like the consequences of this choice but that's a matter of preference.
The function has another variable, which is access to and knowledge of capital. I can choose to employ someone, but it won't mean I have the means to do it.
>The stakes are higher in politics because of their sanctioned ability to use force to modify the behavior of others.
Economic coercion is also inescapable, but outside of small regulatory measures, not much can be done about it. Even some libertarians are coming around to the idea that economic 'nudges' are insidious.
>ensures that the relationship is mutually satisfactory
Yet even mutually satisfactory relationships can be exploitative; it's interesting that no comparison is made to feudalism or sharecropping - I suppose they're too similar to the current primary economic activity.
>To the extent that there is a free market in employment, that is true.
How do you know that? What ties economic outcome to just desert? I know of several instances of low economic reward for brilliance, and high economic reward which isn't tied to any personal achievement. Philanthropy (and indeed the human urge to help those less fortunate) go some way to disprove this; we recognize that the market doesn't always reward correctly - and I think in many cases it doesn't, and it's unclear to me what the freedom of the market has to do with justice for the employees.
>We just established that these relationships are mutual.
Mutual, but possibly exploitative or with great power imbalance. In the thread on Google employees unionizing, there was an interesting point made by someone; you have one bargaining chip with your employer, which is your employment, but the employer holds many more chips, because of all the people she employs. She can (generally) afford to lose you only because she has more leverage and more chips.
>Its not a farce to suggest that they are being paid what their labor is worth.
I think it's up for question, at least[0]. Quid pro quo only suggests one thing for another, and it's unclear to me that these are of equal value in the current system.
>You may not like the consequences of this choice but that's a matter of preference.
It's not mere preference, it's a human need to satisfy the base instinct to live - or at least live with some dignity. It's also a near-requirement; taxes make it so. Plenty of things are choices we simply "don't like the consequences of" - someone telling me to hand over my wallet or have my legs broken (and get some food and clothing in return) is also just a "matter of preference" and I "won't like the consequences". Some would even choose the latter.
When you think of "can" outside a metaphysical free will question and investigate further into capabilities[1] and structural pressures, the picture is much less clear - and I think it's a little dishonest to interpret "can" in a way which implies it's like choosing chocolate or vanilla (and I just happen to be pushed toward chocolate).
[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/102452941880906...
its true, in a restricted or regulated market, access to capital may be limited.
> Economic coercion is also inescapable
I'm not familiar with this term and the search engine brought up definitions from international politics.
> Yet even mutually satisfactory relationships can be exploitative; it's interesting that no comparison is made to feudalism or sharecropping - I suppose they're too similar to the current primary economic activity.
I'm not sure how you're defining "exploitative" but you seem to be discounting the interests of the parties to the transaction. I consider that to be poor argumentation and it leaves me unpersuaded. The comparison to sharecropping and feudalism is apt and I think it would be instructive to see why you think they're similar.
> How do you know that? What ties economic outcome to just desert?
Because ethical considerations that treat each party as an autonomous agent are satisfied.
> I know of several instances of low economic reward for brilliance, and high economic reward which isn't tied to any personal achievement.
Thats your opinion, when you're the one writing the checks, you get to decide what size to make them.
> Philanthropy (and indeed the human urge to help those less fortunate) go some way to disprove this; we recognize that the market doesn't always reward correctly - and I think in many cases it doesn't, and it's unclear to me what the freedom of the market has to do with justice for the employees.
Of course we don't always agree with the outcome of market activity, we can imagine better possible worlds without the material constraints the market is solving for. But the market allows for the employees (and consumers, and everyone else) to select for the best possible available deal given material and social constraints. The justice comes in not forcing them to make any deals if they don't want to.
> Mutual, but possibly exploitative or with great power imbalance.
That really depends on what kind of power you're referring to. In a free market, when each party has the ability to terminate the relationship, then both parties are equally powerful in their ability to walk away. This ensures the relationship is mutually beneficial and therefore a Pareto improvement.
> you have one bargaining chip with your employer, which is your employment, but the employer holds many more chips, because of all the people she employs. She can (generally) afford to lose you only because she has more leverage and more chips.
Yes and the employee has the capacity to make much more money because of their access to capital that they aren't responsible for, they can do one thing well and rely on the capitalist to bundle all the associated parts into a deliverable product, and they get inside access to a profitable company. Some people are more skilled, some are more talented, some have more stuff. Some are good at putting it all together and driving it at a goal.
> it's unclear to me that these are of equal value in the current system.
Value is subjective. Its unclear to me why you would even be in a position to tell two parties that their mutual employment transaction was exploitation without knowing the specifics.
> It's not mere preference, it's a human need to satisfy the base instinct to live - or at least live with some dignity. It's also a near-requirement; taxes make it so. Plenty of things are choices we simply "don't like the consequences of" - someone telling me to hand over my wallet or have my legs broken (and get some food and clothing in return) is also just a "matter of preference" and I "won't like the consequences". Some would even choose the latter.
Well if you're telling me you want to live a long time, then yeah someone is going to have to grow food, purify water, and put a roof up for you. I don't know why people always pull this emotional sleight-of-hand about calling employment "slavery" and chattering on and on about being forced to toil in a factory on some fatcat's toolroom lathe; and when you point out that lathe operator is a skilled job making well over a living wage and that no one is forcing you to work in a factory in the US anyway, we get this rhetorical two-step where we get the sob story about human dignity and starvation; when what you're really talking about is eating food that other people labored to create without allowing them the basic human right of deciding how much their labor is worth.
> When you think of "can" outside a metaphysical free will question and investigate further into capabilities[1] and structural pressures, the picture is much less clear - and I think it's a little dishonest to interpret "can" in a way which implies it's like choosing chocolate or vanilla (and I just happen to be pushed toward chocolate).
It's a preference, just one that accords with long-developed evolutionary pressures. You prefer to eat because all the humans who didn't prefer to eat as much as the people today were outcompeted. So it's not like chocolate or vanilla, but it's not like having your legs broken either. Its just a biological/physical set of facts that you want to stay alive, you need to eat to stay alive, and someone has to make the food. In a market economy, anyone with means can make food. In a regulated market economy, anyone with means and regulatory permission can make food. In a planned economy, only those with the planners' permission can make food.
Autonomy isn't the only concern in moral actions (see cases of exploitation where autonomy is respected), and it's certainly not the only concern in justice - the capabilities approach recognizes autonomy, but it also recognizes it is bounded by structural factors outside the individual's control.
>Thats your opinion, when you're the one writing the checks, you get to decide what size to make them.
That's beside the point, though. The market (the actors within it) does not, in many cases, produce just outcomes. At the sight of an unjust desert, telling someone that they can decide to be just if only they were in that position is irrelevant to the issue of desert that has already occurred. Unless your position is that every result is deserved (which seems very hard to defend), there's room for more than one subjective opinion, and me writing one check won't fix it.
>In a free market, when each party has the ability to terminate the relationship, then both parties are equally powerful in their ability to walk away.
Each party has the ability; in many cases, only one has the capability. It's a structural issue with many employers and a far greater number of employees. Something being mutually beneficial or a Pereto improvement doesn't motivate me at all, because even mutually beneficial arrangements can be exploitative.
>Yes and the employee has the capacity to make much more money because of their access to capital that they aren't responsible for
This is irrelevant to bargaining power; the employee can barter with his skills, of course, but not if they're replacable (at a low cost or otherwise).
>Its unclear to me why you would even be in a position to tell two parties that their mutual employment transaction was exploitation without knowing the specifics.
I agree, but the definition of exploitation as generally agreed upon or argued for is not "subjective". I'm not sure what the two parties or their mutual employment has to do with whether or not there is exploitation.
>sleight-of-hand about calling employment "slavery" and chattering on and on about being forced to toil in a factory on some fatcat's toolroom lathe
You're right, I don't think it's slavery or comparable to slavery. I think capitalism is a massive improvement on feudalism and on sharecropping.
>and when you point out that lathe operator is a skilled job making well over a living wage
Most exploitation-theorists would say the wage is in many cases irrelevant. It being a skilled job isn't that important. The issue is employment in cases where bargaining power is low (structurally or caused by an actor). Starvation is only the worst case.
>without allowing them the basic human right of deciding how much their labor is worth.
They don't decide that, it's "decided" by the market - and by extension society in general. I'm also not sure why it would be a human right to decide that. You can make all the decisions you want - and someone with more power can override them. If I dedide my labour is worth $100k, I'm laughed out of every office I step into. What use is the right?
>Its just a biological/physical set of facts that you want to stay alive, you need to eat to stay alive, and someone has to make the food.
By this metric there is no such thing as a "need". That's ridiculous, or I'm misinterpreting you.
>In a planned economy, only those with the planners' permission can make food.
I don't argue for a planned economy (in the traditional sense; I'm still working out my thoughts), but this isn't really true in the Marxian idea of a "planned economy".
You're free to form whatever opinions you like; the autonomy of other human beings is a grundnorm that is either respected because its a human right, or violated because the violator has some value they wish to impose on other humans who don't share that value.
> That's beside the point, though. The market (the actors within it) does not, in many cases, produce just outcomes.
Perhaps I would agree. Thats still an agreement between persons about the affairs of others. It would be more unjust to interfere in the affairs of consenting, autonomous adults because we didn't like their preferences.
> Each party has the ability; in many cases, only one has the capability.
Thats why I specified free market. In a free market, by definition, parties are free to choose or decline to transact.
> It's a structural issue with many employers and a far greater number of employees.
To the extent that is true, it is because of things that limit the spread of capital and reduce marginal profitability.
> Something being mutually beneficial or a Pereto improvement doesn't motivate me at all, because even mutually beneficial arrangements can be exploitative.
You're going to have to explain why I would care that you think something is exploitation. A Pareto improvement means the parties to the transactions both improved their status, your opinion is not even relevant.
> This is irrelevant to bargaining power; the employee can barter with his skills, of course, but not if they're replacable (at a low cost or otherwise).
Of course, and with easily replaceable skills I'm at a loss as to why you think he would be entitled to a stronger bargaining position.
> I agree, but the definition of exploitation as generally agreed upon or argued for is not "subjective".
The generally agreed upon definition of exploitation certainly doesn't include employment in a first world country.
> The issue is employment in cases where bargaining power is low (structurally or caused by an actor). Starvation is only the worst case.
This is created by restricting barriers to ownership of capital so there aren't competing employers.
> They don't decide that, it's "decided" by the market
The market isn't a thing, its just what we call the emergent decisions of all the market participants. The worker decides what his wage is worth when he agrees to sell it.
> I'm also not sure why it would be a human right to decide that.
Because its a grundnorm. Slavery offends the morality of all decent people.
> You can make all the decisions you want - and someone with more power can override them. If I dedide my labour is worth $100k, I'm laughed out of every office I step into.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. I'm suggesting that social norms that respect the autonomy of people are the ethical ones. Of course someone with power can steal your tools or your warehouse of products. That would be a scenario where my autonomy wasn't respected. If your labor is worth $100k a year and no one wants it for that, then oh well. Maybe it's not really worth that much? If its worth that much to you then don't work. But if you want to live and eat and can't make the wage that you want, well maybe your desires are larger than your entitlement.
> What use is the right?
It would be a prerequisite to the demand.
> By this metric there is no such thing as a "need". That's ridiculous, or I'm misinterpreting you.
Needs are contingent on goals. Given no goals, one needs nothing.
> Marxian idea of a "planned economy".
The left is collectively engaged in a process of pushing authoritarianism while claiming anarchism and it's not really helping the working people with their struggle to survive, when all these people enable corporate dystopia by inviting known-to-be-corrupt politicians to collude with corporations in writing regulations that suppress competition, consumers' rights, and the working class. Marxians should probably read more Marx.
There are good critiques of the concept and value of autonomy, and to what degree we have autonomy (beyond the metaphysical sense) in a capitalist market. Also, I'm not saying autonomy is irrelevant, I'm saying it's not the only thing that's relevant. Morality entails more than respecting autonomy.
>It would be more unjust to interfere in the affairs of consenting, autonomous adults because we didn't like their preferences.
I mostly agree, but there is a strand of libertarianism which would argue such interference is permissible if it comes in the form of soft power (advertising, taking certain products off the market, etc.)
>You're going to have to explain why I would care that you think something is exploitation.
The point is that you don't have to care for it to be exploitation. You don't have to care that 2+2=4, but we structure our science around the mathematical principles that lead to that result anyway. You don't have to care that murder (for example) is wrong, and the murderer doesn't have to care that murder is impermissible.
>Of course, and with easily replaceable skills I'm at a loss as to why you think he would be entitled to a stronger bargaining position.
Perhaps not individually, but as a general trend in society it leads to a mass of people being in poor positions to bargain and a smaller number of people being in very good positions. I don't think that's a good thing, because it leads (very realistically) to some being at the mercy (speaking in terms of resources required to live or sustain a family) of others by virtue of factors beyond their control. That restricts autonomy beyond the economic sphere.
>This is created by restricting barriers to ownership of capital so there aren't competing employers.
I've already mentioned the concept of the local maximum in employment; even if there are multiple reasonable options for employment all options are possible, it does not follow that any will be good options.
>But if you want to live and eat and can't make the wage that you want, well maybe your desires are larger than your entitlement.
This is the just-world fallacy; the market, as already clarified, does not necessarily produce just outcomes, and it's unclear why it should be thought it does. Why does the market decide my entitlement? Should it, speaking in terms of economic systems, decide my entitlement? For slaves, their masters decided their entitlement. Now it's a market which was created by a set of laws and property rights, and maintained as such. Is it really beyond question?
>It would be a prerequisite to the demand.
The demand is useless if nobody will agree to it.
>Needs are contingent on goals. Given no goals, one needs nothing.
Sure, I have a "goal to survive", but this seems to cheapen both the concept of goals in a goods economy and the idea of survival which supercedes all other goals to the point of being a biological impulse we are prepared to kill for. It's lower than any psychology or even any other need. It's a physical process. When we say somebody has no goals, we don't assume they are just okay with dying and would be apathetic if we killed them.
>The left is collectively engaged in a process of pushing authoritarianism while claiming anarchism
Perhaps we have different ideas of authority and anarchism. Besides that, Marx was clear that socialists should not rationally support non-socialist platforms, which I agree with to a large extent. The labourer and the capitalist have opposing interests (speaking class-wise). Better wages were never on the Marxist agenda.
So that's the hurdle you need to cross in order to justify measures which violate other people's autonomy. You have to explain why it's ok to interfere in the relations between two consenting parties in order to impose your own values on people who do not share them.
> The point is that you don't have to care for it to be exploitation.
I'm asking you why it's a bad thing to have relations that you consider to be exploitation. Exploitation is a value-laden characterization, its not an objective feature of a relationship.
> Perhaps not individually, but as a general trend in society it leads to a mass of people being in poor positions to bargain and a smaller number of people being in very good positions.
"Less to offer == poorer negotiating position" is not a trend in society, but an identity that arises from the nature of negotiations.
> I don't think that's a good thing, because it leads (very realistically) to some being at the mercy (speaking in terms of resources required to live or sustain a family) of others by virtue of factors beyond their control.
The fact that someone needs resources to live is a brute fact of reality and applies to all systems. Aside from that, markets are an efficient method of allocating scarce resources and abandoning markets because of scarcity is like jumping off a bridge because you hate heights.
> I've already mentioned the concept of the local maximum in employment; even if there are multiple reasonable options for employment all options are possible, it does not follow that any will be good options.
No, just the best options available given material and social constraints.
> This is the just-world fallacy; the market, as already clarified, does not necessarily produce just outcomes, and it's unclear why it should be thought it does.
Because the market is a means for allocating scarce resources and unrestricted market transactions are Pareto improvements. Its not a fallacy to observe that a world with more justice is a more just world than a world with less justice.
> Why does the market decide my entitlement? Should it, speaking in terms of economic systems, decide my entitlement?
Because the market is not a thing-in-itself but a label we give to the collective actions of market participants, and your entitlement in the market is created by obtaining things in transactions with people who want to transact with you. If you don't care about ethics, then you don't care about entitlements. If you care about ethics, then you can see how you wouldn't be able to become entitled to something without the owner transferring the title to you, or coming into possession of unowned property.
> For slaves, their masters decided their entitlement. Now it's a market which was created by a set of laws and property rights, and maintained as such. Is it really beyond question?
Nothing is beyond question. Mutually reciprocal norms arise from a desire to avoid violence and a desire for the best deal possible. Arguments which challenge the equal rights of all human beings but do so obliquely are suspect so I'll ask you to proceed with this questioning.
> The demand is useless if nobody will agree to it.
When people don't agree to something but someone forces it on them we usually call it unethical.
> Sure, I have a "goal to survive", but this seems to cheapen both the concept of goals in a goods economy and the idea of survival which supercedes all other goals to the point of being a biological impulse we are prepared to kill for. It's lower than any psychology or even any other need. It's a physical process. When we say somebody has no goals, we don't assume they are just okay with dying and would be apathetic if we killed them.
This might be persuasive if humans were unable to choose goals that conflict with continued survival. Also characterizing the human need for food in order to survive and the economic need for a means of selling one's labor into one concept is misleading, as if one starves to death the moment one is fired or quits their job. Sure, you need a job. Just like the capitalist needs someone to work in his factory. After all, it is both of your livelihoods. Just don't presume that either of your needs is more important than another human being's freedom to decline a transaction.
> The labourer and the capitalist have opposing interests (speaking class-wise).
This is a Marxist fallacy which has caused an inestimable amount of sorrow. Individuals have interests, classes do not.
> Better wages were never on the Marxist agenda.
Yet self-proclaimed Marxists advocate for increasing the minimum wage. Hence my admonition to read more Marx.
We can think of what characterizes exploitation using what we already know and our intuitions of what is and isn't exploitative. If a relationship fulfills those characteristics, we can say it's an exploitative relationship.
>Aside from that, markets are an efficient method of allocating scarce resources
This may be true, but there's no reason to think it's the most efficient, nor is there reason to think efficiency is the only goal that an economy (built for and by humans for human ends) should have.
>Because the market is a means for allocating scarce resources and unrestricted market transactions are Pareto improvements.
I don't care about Pareto improvements, I asked about justice. No philosopher (or anyone, really) defines justice with only the idea of goods allocation or Pareto improvement in mind.
>Because the market is not a thing-in-itself but a label we give to the collective actions of market participants
This is tautological; the market is ... actions of market participants. You outlined my entitlement in the market but didn't make a case as to why the market should manage such entitlements for everyone, especially under the fact that it is nigh-impossible to abstain from the market (or taxes, take your pick).
Besides this, I don't really buy the idea that the market is simply "collective actions" - a space in which to create those actions must be made with private property laws and the protection of that property. Resources must be accumulated, sometimes by colonization. People and must be brought into the market, by force if necessary, by enclosure. The collective actions of buying, selling, and valuing are taught by other market participants to children. It's an institution, and one which (in its global form) highly historically specific - and just as goods are made by people, not handed like mana from heaven, markets were too, and our collective actions reproduce those market relations. Should those relations not be reproduced in a country for but a week, its market would collapse. I think this paper says it best:
"Hayek’s observations on the nature of social evolution and spontaneous order are insightful and profound when used as a descriptive scheme for understanding how social institutions grow and change, but they do not convert effectively into normative guides. A wise lawmaker or judge seeking to follow Hayekian prescriptions is left with a vague and contradictory set of precepts. On one hand, it is unwise to alter long-standing social institutions by implementing rational abstractions of justice, but, on the other, it is necessary to do so because not all social orders that have spontaneously evolved are just ones. If the lawmaker or judge acts to alter a social institution, that action may be condemned as rationalistic constructivism when viewed at close range, but will appear as one experiment undertaken in the whole process of spontaneous order when viewed as part of the bustling dynamism of society as a whole. Spontaneous order is therefore in the eye of the beholder." (https://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_14_01_1_sandefur.pdf)
>Mutually reciprocal norms arise from a desire to avoid violence and a desire for the best deal possible.
That may be true, but it's a historical and anthropological question as to whether this is how capitalism arose, and whether it is practiced in such a way today. Even philosophers sympathetic to libertarianism note the multiplier effect of injustices longer in the past which accrue as present injustices - and right-libertarians typically have no answer as to how to solve this.
>I'll ask you to proceed with this questioning.
I'm unconvinced that a rights-based account is the most just option for society's flourishing and indeed the flourishing of most individuals. I don't think the right to private property or the right to employ waged labourers has a sufficient case made for it, given that it results in widespread exploitation. The plight of the majority of the population needing to sell their labour-time to survive is failed by a rights-based account which can only say "you can employ people too, it's a right, you know!".
>This is a Marxist fallacy which has caused an inestimable amount of sorrow. Individuals have interests, classes do not.
Classes absolutely do have interests, and just as the market may demonstrate that product X sells at price Y through the collective actions of buyers and sellers, those same collective actions and bargaining which pulls like a tug-of-war rope between labour and capital continuously shows itself, whether at Google or in a coal mine or in a new minimum wage law. Society (and by extension classes) produce people and imbue them with position and skills. A child is born into a societal grouping before he or she is even individuated. Individuals have interests - and those are typically a superset containing class interests.
>Yet self-proclaimed Marxists advocate for increasing the minimum wage.
To be in line with Marx they'd do so in a parliamentary system only under the banner of a socialist party - and it's reasonable to think that Marxists tend to support socialist parties.
Voting for local changes or electing an official within your small village or a city precinct works well, because the voters both actually know what the matter is, and directly feel the consequences. This is how it works in the only directly democratic country I know, Switzerland.
OTOH voting for a national leader in a country with 100M population cannot enjoy the same effect. Very few people have any opinion about candidates based on more or less close interaction. Neatly all opinions are manufactured by the PR people hired by the candidates, publicity stunts, and the big media. Getting more useful information is hard. This is why elections tend to become a popularity contest and involve emotionally overloaded rooting not unlike on a stadium. This is not how you can make a balanced, rational choice which can keep a democracy running well.
Because local newspapers no longer exist, our news consumption has shifted to large, national stories. I know 1000 times more about Trump and AOC than any official in my city precinct. Even when we know a local candidate well and know they bring home the bacon to our district, we often vote based on the national implications of the partisan conflict instead.
Yglesias closes by saying, "We need to adjust to a world where information dissemination is not limited by truck routes (this is a good thing!) and we are consequently better informed about bigger units rather than “closer” ones." He suggests that means consolidating levels of government and putting more power into accountable executives.
I mean knowing an official by knowing what decisions (s)he has made in your local vicinity, which affected you personally. Or knowing by being neighbors. That is, somehow directly.
1. People voted for this party
2. This party's manifesto promised X, y, and z
3. Therefore people voted for X, y, and z
5. Therefore people voted against A, B and C
Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of problems with the system. But you have the opportunity to participate in choosing the handful of people. If your favored candidate did not get selected, either you failed (you didn't work hard enough), or your candidate failed (for an uncountable number of possible reasons).
Also, your conclusion(s) does/do not follow
Edit: Of course, if you live in a country where candidates are literally chosen by the state, this does not apply. But it applies in every actually (or reasonably) democratic country
Political candidates are (in America) in effect picked by moneyed interests, i.e. groups and people who have enough money to throw tens of thousands or millions at political campaigns etc. You can of course volunteer for political candidates, but it’s a safer bet to just have money to spend.
> Also, your conclusion(s) does/do not follow
That’s the point!
I’m tired of how folks take “I don’t think X will actually help fix Y” as “I don’t think Y needs fixing.” This is a thing, so we must do it. If you disagree, you’re immoral.
As a result we can't really try solutions to problems. We are committed to any solution we implement for decades even if it is ineffective.
1. We tried X as a solution for Y.
2. X didn't work, because we didn't implement it properly or we didn't understand how to implement it properly or some unrelated situation caused it to not work properly.
3. Therefore X and anything that even kind of resembles X is no longer an acceptable solution for Y.
Edit: Since I'm getting down voted I wanted to specify that empirical evidence is gained through experience. The scientific method of trying hypotheses is a way of gaining empirical evidence.
The way you state it, you are implying that there exists other evidence/data which is being ignored, but the scenario doesn't actually say that such evidence exists nor that it is being misstated.
> X didn't work, because we didn't implement it properly or we didn't understand how to implement it properly or some unrelated situation caused it to not work properly.
Empiricism would seek to learn about these failures before step 1 as mitigation and before step 3 to determine if there’s new/more understandable data to prepare more effective mitigation for a repeat experiment.
In the context of the discussion (politics), this occurs in debates of legislation. Whether or not it's a meritorious debate depends on the subject and partisan makeup.
"... and before step 3 to determine if there’s new/more understandable data to prepare more effective mitigation for a repeat experiment."
In politics, this starts over as a new bill for debate. It could also mean allocating money to investigate the issue at hand too.
> Therefore X and anything that even kind of resembles X is no longer an acceptable solution for Y.
Basically, you seem to be arguing that that conclusion is always wrong. I'm saying it could be right depending on the evidence supporting or opposing it. (ie there's no evidence that number 3 means what you say it means)
What I’m saying is that the premise in the syllogism you replied to is that, in the case it applies to, the conclusion is suspect due to the errors that led to it.
Empiricism doesn’t stop at falsification, it also involves reconsidering assumptions and trying to identify and eliminate complicating factors.
1. We tried X as a solution for Y.
2. X didn’t work, because the basis is fundamentally flawed.
3. We endlessly superficially tweak X to try to get it to work and it fails every time but we claim X is still good because it’s “never really been tried.”
Prevent the regulatory agencies from being captured by those corporations they were ostensibly intended to regulate.
> Capitalism [...] only requires that workers and consumers be prevented from free negotiation of the terms of production and commerce.
Isn't capitalism what arises when workers and consumers are permitted to freely negotiate terms?
Ever since then, whenever and wherever circumstances have favored the positions of workers more than capitalists can accept, the USA Army (or sometimes the Pinkertons!) have stepped in to violently modify negotiating positions. In the post-WWII period they were unable to do that for several decades, and USA enjoyed its greatest prosperity. In the late 1960s they figured out a way to make a war hurt the population more than it hurt capital (and also they killed half a dozen of the people who were warning us about it), and USA has gone downhill ever since. Year after year, they introduce discrete "shocks" that devastate the poor and middle class, while always keeping the resources of the state ready to support the interests of capital. The "mistakes" of capitalism that we observe in every decade are in fact its most vital features. When the spoils of progress accrue to capital, they don't accrue to humans. Even if we imagine they didn't "implement it properly" last time, there's no reason to expect they'll do it "properly" next time either.
lol, nothing is obvious anymore. you got me.
I knew bus drivers who'd open the door as they went over the tracks .. kinda defeats the purpose.
On December 1st of that year a gruesome accident changed that. It was a blizzard in Salt Lake City, Utah and a school bus driver stopped his bus at a railway crossing. Because of the snow, the visibility was terrible and the driver was not able to see an approaching freight train."
If there were more accidents, they weren't a catalyst for anything. It was this specific incident and politicians' syllogism that caused the silly thing to be enacted.
But I was also wrong. I was recalling accidents in the 1960s, and assuming that those were the basis for the law. But if the law was already there in 1938, clearly those (multiple) accidents were not the reason for the law. Those accidents happened in spite of the law (though perhaps reinforcing the reason for the law to be there).
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5t4kaz (19 min mark, for the politician's logic)
I'd agree the logic would be correct at the level of government, because of umvi's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25609167
At a personal level I think it's wrong. Doing something is better than not seems where the evidence is.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/quittin...
Liberal variant:
0. Nothing is being done.
... Original
Libertarian/conservative variant:
0. Too many things have been done.
... Original
Marxist variant:
1. Original.
2. Class is the only thing.
3. Class is the only thing.
Anarchist (left) variant:
1. Smash the state.
Social democrat in a social democracy variant:
1. Original.
2. Seizing the means of production is too extreme.
3. We must do nothing.
Social democrat not in a social democracy variant:
1. Original.
2. Seizing the means of production is too extreme.
... Liberal variant
1. Someone must rule.
2. The king is someone.
3. Therefore the king must rule.
In NYC and Michigan, many of the dead elderly came directly due to orders by the governess to house sick elderly in care homes with healthy people. This is a situation where if they had done literally nothing at all, thousands of people would still be alive.
Yet most of the measures are intuitively a step in the right direction when thinking about an airborne pandemic.
What I think is even more unacademic, irrational and wishful thinking than the measures against the pandemic are the exceptions made in those measures. E.g. how schools are handled in most western nations ("There are no infections in schools, the scientific papers which say otherwise have to vanish in some drawer").
A lot of pandemic response is about reducing contact. What surprised me about the people in my vicinity at the start of the pandemic was how many (otherwise intelligent) people where like: "If a measure isn't 100% scientifically sound or 100% effective than it ahouldn't be rolled out". When I asked these people what they would do instead they didn't have an answer. They all didn't understand that the measures where about reducing contacts (as opposed to 100% preventing) and tried to do so while leaving some individual freedoms. That the resulting rulesets will have a ton of counterintuitive edge cases is pretty unsurprising: teatchers that are expected to work with each other in school aren't allowed to meet outside of school etc.
I think rules are one thing, but the local mentality has a much stronger influence. If you e.g. observe how each of the nations in Europe is doing even when the rules are comparable, any person who knows the local mentalities isn't surprised by which nations fare well and which don't. Just like that it didn't surprise me that asian nations like Taiwan or South Korea dealt well with the virus while a Trump lead US didn't (and let's face it, even a US lead by pandemic experts wouldn't have fared well, due to local mentality).
Egoistic individualism is deadly in a pandemic. Doing as if everybody exists in isolation of each other (and therefore has to deal with problems themselves) is deadly in a pandemic. Not realizing we are part of society is deadly in a pandemic.