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Comment by jpttsn | Hacker News Reader

So that article is just phrasing the normative in positive terms? Besides rigour, what's the point?

This confuses more than it clarifies. Economic injustice is a question of moral values; phrasing it as a scientific truth lends it a false air of credibility.

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Putnam has argued against a strict fact-value dichotomy in "The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy" and in a recently published book of essays edited by Putnam entitled, "The End of Value-Free Economics (Routledge INEM Advances in Economic Methodology)." Economic justice, theft and fraud are not strictly questions of moral values--this presupposes a spurious fact-value dichotomy. These notions have both normative and positive aspects; the positive aspects of these notions (and others, related to class dominance) can be captured in game theoretic terms--and should be.

In the Preface to Game Theory Evolving, economist Herbert Gintis suggested that the mathematical methods of non-cooperative (and cooperative) game theory developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern, Nash and their successors–Gintis among them–have the potential to elevate social and political discourse above ideological debate.

Gintis does not take the step of applying game theory to the topics under discussion--but neither have most of the comments here, with the expected result.

Capturing the positive aspects in game theoretic terms might have advantages; I recognised rigour as one.

However, I don't think these advantages warrant capturing all the positive aspects in game theoretic terms. It makes the reading opaque, hiding the normative value judgments behind scientific-seeming jargon.

Instead of formalising the positive aspects, clarify the underlying normative choices. Then we will come closer to finding where it is we actually disagree.

I have revised the article at http://publicsphere.org. The normative value judgments are not hidden behind scientific seeming jargon. The normative value judgements retain the significance they have--however, they are inextricably entangled with certain positive phenomena, which should be explicated. Instead of denying the relevance of positive aspects outright behind philosophical seeming jargon based on a discredited fact-value dichotomy imported from British Logical Positivism into economics, find some positive reason they are wrong. I see no reason to privilege the normative aspects at the expense of the positive aspects--unless the intention is to prevent the discussion from rising above ideological debate.

> inextricably entangled with certain positive phenomena, which should be explicated

Let me attempt to disentangle them: You assume collectives (not only individuals) have rights.

> approximately 0.1% of the US population has been systematically winning asymmetric zero-sum games against the lower 99%.

You treat clusters of individuals as players in a game, and infer injustice from systematic winning of these games; as though justice would necessitate "fair gameplay" between collectives, not just between individuals.

There's nothing to disagree with in your formalisation, but your formalisation is meaningless to anyone who disagrees with the underlying philosophy of rights and justice.

Let me attempt to disentangle them: You assume collectives (not only individuals) have rights.

No, I make no such assumption. The assertion that I do is not warranted. Since philosophers like to find inferences their interlocutors believe they have not made: locate this assumption. Rousseau's vocabulary of "rights" has not been particularly helpful.

I do not "infer" injustice. The attempt is to characterize positive aspects of it. It seems to be characterized by the systematic winning of certain games by one group against another, especially when the utility obtained by winning is population dependent for one group (the "winners") and not for the other group (the "losers").

A general prohibition against allowing one group to systematically win asymmetric zero-sum games against another group would be a normative principle. So would some elaboration of special exceptions.

incidentally, you use the term 'meaningless' too loosely. Under what philosophical theory does a formalization becomes meaningful depending on who agrees with its "underlying philosophy"?

To a large extent, yes. Economic injustice, however, increases the probability and severity of civil unrest. It is in the best interest of those with economic power that those without don't bang down their doors and line them up against a wall.

>Economic injustice is a question of moral values; phrasing it as a scientific truth lends it a false air of credibility.

So you think morality has no credibility?

I thought the scientific phrasing made parent's post seem like it was true regardless of one's moral values.

I don't know if morality has credibility or not. What would that mean?

Reference to 'economic injustice' is weak without identification of the morally relevant facts. For me the question is whether economic injustice (positively construed) is characterized by one group systematically winning asymmetric zero-sum games (or strategically equivalent games, meaning those whose payoffs differ by a positive affine transformation). This provides strictly more information than vague reference to "economic injustice", which can be dismissed as a normative judgment.

Whether the characterization holds is an empirical question. Whether one ought to condone the systematic winning of asymmetric zero-sum games is a further question. It is in my view rhetorically important not to cede the "value neutral" conceit of (many practitioners of) economics to conservatives. Unfortunately many non-conservatives seem to lack the economic and mathematical background (not to mention imagination--pardon the paralipsis) to turn the "value neutral" conceit on its head. The term "economic injustice" could stand further refinement by explicit mention of its positive, game-theoretic aspects. That involves characterizing, in game-theoretic terms, economic phenomena that game theorists and economists have chosen, for various reasons, not to study.

A philosophical attitude isn't particularly helpful here, if this means the unfortunate Anglophone tendency to limit philosophy to "patrolling the border between sense and nonsense." But the historical fact that game theorists have tended to study empirical questions on terms that can be addressed in game theoretic terms is not a reason to dismiss what might appear to a philosopher concerned with "conceptual analysis" as some kind of private, special language.

correction: "have tended to avoid empirical questions in terms..."

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