Yes it does but only because they are about to violate the general right of bodily autonomy and freedom of someone else. Rather, one defends these rights and freedoms by stopping people from trampling on them and denying them of others. I don't the same cannot be said of forcing someone to provide the conditions for someone else's free self-expression of actualization. — NOS4A2

So let me simulate a little conversation between our two positions:

I say: Bread is important for people, I think people should have a right to bread.
You say: Why yes I agree. People should be allowed to freely buy bread, if they so wish, and noone should be allowed to take their bread away.
I say: But if bread is important to people, then surely we ought to make sure everyone actually gets bread.
You say: But that means taking away bread from people who already have it, and this violates their right to bread, which you agree they should have.

So taking the metaphor, my question to you is: What about the people who can't get bread? Do they not get bread just because they happened to not have any when we implemented this rule?

Wouldn’t forcing someone to do something against their will contradict their general right of free self-expression of actualization? — NOS4A2

Does it work this way for other rights? Doesn't restraining or injuring or even killing someone who is about to kill someone else violate their general right of bodily autonomy and freedom of movement?

Rights are not absolute "bubbles" that extend a certain given distance at all times. They're rules that apportion a territory given by the circumstances.

The first, as I understand it, is an example of a counter-empathetic response, which makes sense in an egalitarian society based on reciprocal altruism. If an individual takes but never gives, it's a disadvantage to carry on giving to them. Intolerance toward antisocial elements is an aspect of social, rather than pre- or sub-social behaviour, since such elements hurt the group as a whole.

I think the extension of this to entire out-groups is believably a result of meeting warlike groups, or having to defend territory and stockpiles from outside tribes, but it doesn't seem to obviously lead to inequality _within_ the group. — Kenosha Kid

I'm not sure I find this really convincing. After all that mistrust of strangers would seem to work just as well without such rigid thinking. But perhaps it's one of the shortcuts to preserve processing power. It would still also be consistent with an ancestral environment that already had intra-species political struggle with significant stakes.

Regardless of origin, it's easy to manipulate by political actors, though it's not directly connected to a hierarchy.

True, but then we don't really know our leaders anymore, so what they stand for is easier to evaluate (or manufacturer) than their merits. It's probably different if you know every single member of your society very well. — Kenosha Kid

Maybe. But perhaps it's also connected to our tendency towards the metaphysical. Humans seem to like grand cosmic narratives, and essentialist strata would seem to fit right in with that.

Which is also something that might well have been very influential in the turn from egalitarian to hierarchical societies: Religion. Religion might predate anatomically modern humans, and it seems reasonable to think it had a significant impact on how the first sedentary communities organised.

One other thing I meant to throw out there is that uncertainty tends to make people rally around dominating figures. It could simply be that fear of the winter made early European tribes extremely susceptible to takeover. Politicians fallacy sort of thing. — Kenosha Kid

What's interesting though is that hierarchical systems were so stable. Of course those at the top wield coercive power, but in pre-historic times and for much of history, that power would have been fairly limited. There is no reason to suppose they could not have been toppled. So very early, a sufficiently convincing ideology to explain and justify the hierachy must have formed. Here again it seems likely that religion played a prominent role early on.

All of this is, of course, not to say that a modern egalitarian society isn't possible. Just trying to think of reasons for the how and why of hierarchy.

The most obvious method to determine borders is possession. Is that a moral standard? It certainly has moral elements. — T Clark

Possession of what though?

Therefore, the universe, along with the number of things, actions, or concepts, is not, and cannot be infinite, not even potentially. Right? — Zelebg

The universe that is the model in our minds can not be, because we cannot list an infinity of things. That does not mean that that which is ontologically real (whatever it is) cannot possibly infinite, though it is of course not possible to imagine what that would mean.

There are characteristic tendencies toward domination, and coping strategies for being dominated, which might be what you mean. However these are far from equilibrium conditions. Those alpha male structures are extremely stressful for all involved, so egalitarianism seems like the stable point. — Kenosha Kid

I was more thinking of things like black and white in-group / out-group thinking, the halo effect, and the tendency to treat admissions of mistakes as evidence of incompetence rather than transparency.

It also seems like humans can cope with hierarchies better if the hierarchies are explicitly based on essentialist categories, rather than what we might call individual merit. Societies with functional / caste social strata have developed independently all around the world and seem to have been remarkably stable.

Nothing I’ve said precludes "a general right of free self-expression of actualization”, as far as I'm aware. I just don’t think anyone should have the right or power to make others provide the conditions for it. It seems to me a contradiction to do otherwise. — NOS4A2

What's contradictory about it?

Yes, and so you should respect the autonomy and individuality of their body. It’s theirs, not yours. I fully support the use of force to defend that right. — NOS4A2

But you narrow the extend to that right to a few specific cases. You don't delineate a general right of free self-expression of actualisation. You're only concerned with some conditions of life (such as bodily integrity), but not with the others. I'd like to know why you think this is a reasonable approach. To me it seems like you're lifting your view straight from 18th century enlightenment texts without accounting for the historical contingency of those demands.

I did answer what type of force I was talking about. — NOS4A2

But in an anecdotal and ecclectic approach. What's the general rule according to which some methods are admissible and others are not?

That's in stark contrast to what I've read on the subject, so I'd be interested to hear more. My understanding is that, while we at some point in our lineage evolved social characteristics that drive or give capacity to egalitarianism and altruism that our ape ancestors do not have, there are no similarly unique characteristics for dealing with life in hierarchies. So yes we inherit the pre-social and sub-social apparatus of our parent species, but we are evolved beyond that. — Kenosha Kid

I did not want to claim that we have a similarly unique tendency towards hierarchy, only that we also have this tendency, which seems to explain a number of biases when it comes to political struggle. Of course these might also merely be side effects of other, more general cognitive biases.

Perhaps the sort of turmoil that might lead to is enough to make it advantageous to have a more stable, protected authority. — Kenosha Kid

There seems to be a significant amount of historians that consider warfare, and the ability to project force, as a major factor in the evolution of political systems. Authority and hierarchy are advantageous in a violent conflict, and so more hierarchically societies might have been more able to project organised violence.

It should be avoided because you do not own the person. He is neither your child nor your slave. He has not given you the right to force him to do anything. — NOS4A2

Has he not given me the right? Everyone has the right to force other to respect what's theirs. So since everyone can demand respect from everyone else, they all mutually have the right to enforce that respect.

Except I never stated that, so that’s not my reasoning. How can you establish “force = bad” when we were just talking about forcing people to do things against their will? In fact, in the text from which you quoted I clarified what I was talking about. — NOS4A2

You clarified that you mean freedom as "freedom from", yes, but that doesn't anwer what the force is, or why it's good to be free from it.

I'm still a bit iffy on a couple of points. It's easy to see how food storage would end or limit nomadism, lead to larger groups, require a socialisation conducive to prudence, but why was a hierarchy required as well? Was it required, or did opportunists just exploit the uncertainty and fear of surviving winters? Is IR so built in that even a child raised to be a devout DRer would still steal from the store if he thought he could get away with it? Could we not have built an egalitarian society of hunter-fisher-gatherer-storers? — Kenosha Kid

Well, AFAIK, HG societies do have hierarchies, they're just relatively flat and come with little coercive power. Humans seem to have evolved pretty clear political instincts, so there must have been some benefit to it. This seems to imply that a social hierarchy and some amount of authority were already present in our ancestors.

In an IR society, that authority will always be fairly limited, since a band can simply split and, so long as it's of a viable size, will not necessarily be strictly worse off. This changes once you have to store food and prepare shelter and clothing for the winter. Control of these supplies massively enhances the authority and coercive power of those at the top of the hierarchy, and so that might explain how such structures take precedence.

I don’t understand how any of this is flawed. — NOS4A2

It's flawed because it's vague and you're not supplying any argument for why we should accept your conception of compulsion, why it should be avoided etc.

For example:

When I speak of freedom I do so in the social and political sense (negative), as in the absence of the methods of “force” mentioned above. — NOS4A2

This is just circular reasoning. Freedom is the absence of force, and force is bad because it's the absence of freedom. Nothing about this tells me anything beyond establishing "freedom = good, force = bad".

Myself, for one, but also many individualist, anarchist, liberal, and libertarian thinkers. Anti-statism has quite a rich literature if you ever care to take a look. I could be wrong but I doubt you yourself engages in compulsion, and prefer a voluntarist approach to your relations. — NOS4A2

From your previous posts, you seem to only be concerned with certain types of compulsion, where I cannot threaten someone with a slap on the face, but can threaten them with starvation. If we take the common meaning of compulsion - being forced to do something you do not, right now, want to do, it seems very implausible to have any kind of society - even an anarchist one - that might work only based on the day to day whims of it's inhabitants.

And this is why your distinction between "voluntary" and "compulsory" is ultimately flawed. You treat these as if these were physical descriptions of some process, when in reality they are just judgements of motivations. You judge the motivation: "work to earn money, so you can buy food to avoid starvation" as a voluntary action, meanwhile you judge "work to fill your state-mandated quota so you avoid a prison sentence" to be compulsory. You may say the reason is that one motivation is caused by "force", but "force" here again is not a physical thing, just another value judgement.

What you're missing is an actual ground to stand on regarding the value of freedom. Just what constitutes that value, and how it is manifested. Freedom cannot simply be equated with wants or needs, if one wants to avoid the paradox that the drug addict, as the person most directly in tune with their needs, is the most free person. Rather, it seems like the opposite is true: They're least free, precisely because they have lost the ability to compel themselves to act according to a goal, rather than just a need.

The problem I have is I see state "communal action" as compulsory, maintained through coercion and funded by exploitation. This is why I cannot see it as something desirable, no matter the comforts it may be able to provide. — NOS4A2

But who could be convinced by such a viewpoint? I don't think you can even live according to a standard of "all compulsion is bad", unless you are a hermit subsistence farmer somewhere.

Why would you need to force someone into “communal action” because he doesn’t know enough people? You don’t; you do it because you require his labor, his wealth, and his obedience to complete your schemes, and you will take it by force. — NOS4A2

It has nothing to do with needing to do it. I want to do it. So do most other people. Most people prefer a technological civilization with all their comforts, long livespans etc. to subsitence farming somewhere.

You can only get to and maintain a technological society via communal action.

So I guess you’re right even if we remove money from the equation and used a bartering system the same phenomenon of poverty and wealth emerges. — Benj96

It should perhaps be noted that the alternative to money is not bartering - bartering presupposes a basic notion of money, though not necessarily of currency.

The alternative to money would be a form of natural socialism, as it exists in band and tribal societies, where goods are simply shared without any commercial relationship resulting. The problem is that this relies on personal relationships which are simply not plausible for modern population densities.

So my question then would be is greed or sharing the more natural state of the human psyche? Or do we have equal capacity for both? — Benj96

Greed already implies a moral judgement. We have a desire for security and status, and this desire can lead to behaviour we judge as greedy. There is not ultimately a disconnect between this and our inclination to share - they result from the same desires.

I have my suspicions that it is when one has a taste of poverty and then becomes more affluent that they remember to give back. When one has never had to come even close to begging they cannot possibly sympathise. — Benj96

Possibly, though personal charity is, in my opinion, not a convincing foundation for a society.

You simply cannot have everyone assuming the position of the average - middle class. If we always reset everyone to the same average wealth... there would be no point in exchanging resources and services because you are never going to become wealthier for it. — Benj96

Why would that be the case? You'd still have to actually exchange resources, because not everyone would have the same resources or do the same job.

This transfer of power is progressive, like a disease. — NOS4A2

But that's not true in historical terms. Power has repeatedly be decentralized as well.

Each principle recorded in these volumes are intended to restrain the individual in directions where his actions were previously unchecked and compel his actions which previously he might perform or not as he wished. — NOS4A2

The idea that individual actions are unchecked until a law concerning them is codified doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. Pre-state societies often have very elaborate rules for conduct.

What I said was I see no use with the social contract theory of state. I simply don’t believe that is how man transitioned from earlier times to what we have now. I believe states form through conquest and exploitation. I didn’t say or mean to imply I eschew the use of social contracts. — NOS4A2

No-one actually thinks states historically formed through a social contract, and if you believe that is what social contract theories of state argue, then you have not understood them very well.

To me it doesn’t follow that because people are generally altruistic or egalitarian they all must be given a comparable stake in some combination of civil order, presumably by some benevolent and incorruptible group of brokers. — NOS4A2

That's because you're not actually responding to the argument. What you're missing is that the "protean" altruism is based on direct interpersonal relationships, but humans are only capable of forming such relationships with a couple dozen to maybe a few hundred people. Beyond that, additional institutions are necessary in order to organize communal action. We ignore the constitution of these institutions at our own peril - if we don't take an active part in their design, we are allowing someone else to do it for us, and we already know the likely consequences of that.

Yes that seems logical to me. Instinctively I have some sympathy with NOS on this. I love post apocalyptic stories and dramas that involve drastic population reduction so we have a nearly empty world again with no authorities. What authorities there are might be private gangs. So I'd probably start setting up a pubic authority asap and embark on a programme of public goods, as long as the electorate let me of course. — bert1

And that's perhaps the answer to the question of why statism reigns. States may be historically contingent, but they're not an accident, and if we look at world history, do not seem to have been optional. Ultimately "state" is just a name we give a specific from of organisation a community can take. Technically a 12th century european kingdom was not a "state" in the modern form, yet no anarchist imagines their goal to look like such a kingdom, or a tribe rigidly governed by custom and strongmen. When we imagine a stateless society as a desirable goal, we probably all imagine something that has not already existed in the past.

So, statism dominates because we haven't yet found the alternative we prefer. That might be due to a lack of experimentation, as @Apollodorus said. We might simply not have hit the right combination of circumstances yet. But fundamentally, overcoming statism can only be an evolution from where we are, not a mere rejection of the status quo.

Again, this goes both ways.. The victors can make whatever positive narrative they want for themselves. Who is going to say otherwise? — schopenhauer1

Us, hopefully.

Multiculturalism to a Native Americans just means.. "Oh cool, I see you there.. but you're not getting your shit back". And of course, any animus to the point of war is long gone.. So yeah... It's easy to learn when you did the deed already. Study, analyze, do whatever you'd like. — schopenhauer1

I really can't make heads or tails out of this kind of criticism. Yes history exists. Do we have any other options apart from starting where we are and trying to make things better?

Arguing that much of history is ethno-history and that the West is not separate from it.. Doesn't mean it can't change over time. — schopenhauer1

I don't know. This seems like the reification of a category to me. History is driven by the contingencies of situations and the long-term evolution of ideologies and political alliances. If there is a "real" force behind ethnicity I'd argue it's the human tendency towards familial affiliation and xenophobia.

But look how it does so, mainly (if it does). It's out of an idea of Pax (fill in the blank). How does that Pax happen though? — schopenhauer1

Does it matter? State of affairs don't have moral values attached to them in my view, only behaviour does. There isn't a way to roll back history to the first injustice ever perpetrated and then start basing your utopia on this. By necessity, we must start where we are and move somewhere. History should inform our decisions, not put them in a straightjacket.

The crucial thing is to have inclusive, pragmatic categorisations which transcend divisive, racist narratives. — Judaka

:up:

Now, this isn't an Israeli/Palestinian point, but just more evidence that Western nations are ethnic identities fighting other ethnic identities. I further don't buy that British are a "nation" and not an "ethnicity".. It has a shared culture, history, (somewhat of) ancestry, etc. It is butting up against other ethnicities (other people in places they are sending their people to). — schopenhauer1

Ethnicities are socially constructed though. It sounds like you're arguing some kind of "ethnic essentialism" where the world can only ever consist of ethnic identity groups "fighting".

Ethnic histories justify racism because they allow people to inherit grievances, fault and characteristics through their ethnicity. We can claim credit, responsibility and ownership of historical events based on our race or ethnicity. We are allowed to exclude or include on the basis of ethnicity and we are allowed to see political and cultural issues as disputes between ethnic groups. That's why I oppose them. — Judaka

I agree with this, by and large. I think the difficult part is to still recognise that people with a different history from you will have genuinely different experiences where you might not even know that you don't know. So from this perspective it seems important to get voices and participation from people of different backgrounds, and in practice those backgrounds will often be based on racial or ethnic groupings. So you basically have to invite these groupings to form in order to avoid "normalcy" bias, while at the same time avoiding falling back into narrowly identitarian thinking.

The best way to do that is probably to have strong political affiliation that can transcend these groupings (preferably towards overall good outcomes, of course. Inclusive authoritarians would still be bad).

Theft, robbery and forced labor are evils — NOS4A2

Theft and robbery rely on a distribution of goods sanctioned by some higher authority.

If it is true that the impact of these consequences depend on your circumstances, and not on morals or principle, then it seems the circumstances that favor this sort of relationship is one of servility and obedience to authority, and not much else. — NOS4A2

"People who like the state are servile and obedient". Yes, nice ad-hom.

I personally know some people, none of whom were well off, that were born stateless, born in anarchy, and happened to have parents who believed they could "go it alone". Indeed, they did go it alone for decades, their lives consisting of mostly surfing and fishing, but state enforcers burned their houses to the ground because the government wanted to expand a provincial park. So it's just untrue that a sheltered life begets disdain for state meddling, theft and taxation. — NOS4A2

And they'd have died of a simple infection if there wasn't a society behind their idyll that they could rely on. I don't begrudge people who want to live alternative lifestyles like that one their place. In fact I think we can often learn a lot about what really matters from folks like these. But let's not kid ourselves into believing that a population of 11 Billion (projected) can live a similar lifestyle and survive very long.

No one wields similar power to the state, is my point, and I still do not understand how one can conflate state power with anything else. — NOS4A2

That's because states exist, and they already have the power. No-one can take it because it's taken. But if it wasn't taken, it would be.

We can argue about how much power really large corporations have. It's not as visible in developed countries, but in e.g. south america going against the interests of some large corporation can be a death sentence, no state involved (though paid off to look the other way).

Perhaps you can explain it because no one seems to be able to move beyond simply repeating it. The state has the monopoly on violence, with military and civilian enforcement at its beck and call. It can defend its interests from domestic and foreign threats with violent force, with little accountability. — NOS4A2

Very simply, the explanation for why the state has so much power is that more powerful states were more successful, mostly due to their improved ability to project force. A tribally organised people can deploy a vastly bigger proportion of their adult male population as fighters compared to some loosely organised bands. A kingdom still more. A centralized nation state even more. Once state centralisation started, the fiscal power of the state became paramount. China was a huge empire, but it only had tax revenues around 1-2% of GDP. At the same time, European nation states had several times that amount. That was still only a few percent, not enough to fund public schools or hospitals, but enough to finance armies to conquer the world.

The only really exception to this trend has been the invention of the social state, when states went from around 10% of GDP in tax revenue to above 40% not for war, but to finance a vast social state, which resulted in the most prosperous period of human history.

But, long story short, abandoning the state is a bit like turning all your swords into ploughs. Good idea, but it only works if everyone does it, or else you're going to have a really bad time once the other people with the swords show up. Dismantling the state would just mean someone else will take those powers, and there won't be centuries of custom and institutions limiting their usage of those powers.

I am not persuaded. To me, willingly paying for goods and services are not the same as having my wealth coercively taken from at every transaction. If I refuse to buy from private hands I do not receive their service; if I refuse to buy from state hands I go to jail and have to pay anyways, and with interest. I fear the latter, not the former, and I am unable to see how one could say otherwise. — NOS4A2

You always face consequences for your decisions. How much those impact you depends on your circumstances. If you're well off and live a sheltered enough life to think that you could easily "go it alone", having relatively minor burdens like taxation might feel like the greatest evil. If you work in some sweatshop which pays you barely enough to rent and feed your family, your view on choices will likely be different.

I don't understand how one can arbitrarily "fear" the state, but not extend that same fear to anything else that wields similar power. It strikes me as magical thinking, where the state is some big dragon with extraordinary powers, and if we could only slay it, the problem would disappear. In reality the state is simply the current form that social organisation has taken, and if it were to go away, all the same powers would simply move to some other body. It's simply not plausible to run a technological civilisation on the basis of ad-hoc agreements of individuals. If all states disappeared tomorrow, the first to reconstitute itself would easily rule the world, by the simple metric of being able to marshall power beyond any individual.

In the case of food and shelter, one can choose between a variety of options. If a loaf of bread is too expensive or too stale I can decline to purchase it and choose another. — NOS4A2

Yes, you may have "options" but that doesn't make spending the money in any way optional.

Well no, it’s just that I understand the basics of trade. Which private actors take your wealth without your consent, and how are they able to do it? — NOS4A2

The landlord, the train you take to work, the supermarket you get your basic foodstuffs from, whatever you have to pay for basic insurance. "Consent" here is purely a formality. The contracts are consensual only in a superficial way.

I expect almost no one here has ever lived under such a regime and are using censorship in a comparatively shallow egregious manner. — Andrew4Handel

Censorship is the suppression of ideas before they can be disseminated. The ideas that are supposedly being censored by the "left wing woke pc brigade" are widely circulated and have a lot of, often fervent, adherents. There is simply no comparison to a totalitarian regime. "Canceled" people get hours of airtime on media dedicated to their creed, or at least the creed that's opposed to whoever canceled them.

There is a problem with "cancel culture", but the problem is not it's suppression of ideas. The ideas are all out there. The problem is that our societies are splitting up into narrowly defined camps who are increasingly less able to reach common ground, leaving exile the only option to deal with opposing voices.

This is a wider social issue that's not limited to "the left" though.

I do get a say in the private arena, however, by accepting or refusing the terms of their contracts. I, too, am a part of this arena after all. If I don’t like the offer I can find one elsewhere and they can do the same in a reciprocal fashion. — NOS4A2

You can also evade the tax authorities and live in a cave. Theoretical options abound. But you must eat, have shelter, etc. So in a practical sense you are not free to decline any offer, just as you're not free to not pay taxes or refuse someone with a gun to your head.

In any case, private actors are not taking my wealth without my consent. — NOS4A2

Then you must be quite wealthy. Lots of people are less lucky then you are and don't really have the option to think about their consent.

I'd say the analysis would have to be multi-dimensional. As @tim wood pointed out, a stereotype is always impermissible in the context of a formal, deductive inquiry. But stereotypes are also a useful shorthand our brain uses - useful because it conserves "bandwith" we might better use for other endeavours.

In addition to what @Bitter Crank has said about positive stereotypes, it could also be argued that stereotypes can be and are actively used by people to make statements about themselves. They're used to demonstrate group affiliation, or political leanings etc.

So what are the various factors that go into it? I'd say:
It's worse to generalize over more people
It's worse to generalize based on bad evidence
it's worse the more you affect the individual
It's worse the more the stereotype leads to a systematic treatment.

The transfer of my wealth to the state occurs at the point of every single purchase I make. In which of these transactions do I get a say? — NOS4A2

Technically VAT is paid by the store, they just add it to the price. And indirect taxes like VAT are trash and ought to be abolished except for specific goals.

Anyways you don't get a say for every single tax payment. Nor did I claim or allude to that in any way. You do get a say in government policy though, which is more than you get for any wealth not held by the government.

If I do not pay my taxes I am subject to many penalties, up to and including jail time. If I do not pay a the federal or provincial sales tax on food I do not eat. If I do not pay property taxes I lose my home. Do you suppose I have a say in this? — NOS4A2

Provided you live in a democracy, you do have a say. Merely that you do not get what you want is not the same as not having a say.

I said I had no say in the transfer of my wealth to the government. — NOS4A2

So you do not live in a democracy? I thought you were living in Canada?

All I see here is an appeal to authority and abuse. You offer me no reason to continue an argument I consider, conclusively proven. Thanks for the chat. — counterpunch

Your philosophical training was apparently insufficient to distinguish a reference from an appeal to authority.

But it is quite obvious that you have long since made up your mind.

UBI amounts to a forced redistribution of capital from this tiny minority to everyone else. Correct me if i'm wrong, but I suspect that there aren't any billionnaires participating in this forum thread, so I am somewhat confused by the personal anxieties in this thread concerning the idea of UBI. — sime

Piketty argues that seeing it merely as "people voting against their interests" is mistaken. Every system is propped up by ideology as well. The ideas of the meritocracy, of the primacy of the market and perhaps above all the idea that there is simply no alternative to massive inequality are very pervasive.

The invisible hand is a miracle. — counterpunch

And just like miracles, it doesn't actually exist.

All these self interested economic decisions knit together miraculously, to produce and distribute what is needed and wanted. — counterpunch

Human ingenuity is indeed miraculous. No need to invent some fiction to hide it behind.

The alternative is you will plough the field or I'll have you shot! I'd much rather get paid! Then I can go buy something from someone else, anticipating my needs! — counterpunch

Yes, that's the only alternative. Nothing but orthodoxy is possible. Everything else leads to hell. So recant your heresy and buy a coke, lest your soul be forfeit!

No. I imagine you're a Russian chained up in a server farm somewhere - stirring shit in the west through divisive propaganda. — counterpunch

Oh yeah, that's an even better story.

It seems like you're talking about the debate, rather than the subject of the debate. Am I wrong? — counterpunch

You're right. Mostly because this debate is a microcosm of debates about economic policy elsewhere. Very little knowledge, no talk about concrete proposals or specific effects. Just a lot of "seems" and "I reckon" coupled with some nicely simple metaphors.

It's a testament to the power of the current orthodoxy that we are unable to even properly talk about alternatives. It's like 1615, only our God is "the invisible hand of the market" and our doctrine is Neoliberalism.

You've questioned the veracity of scope of my knowledge base and I've admitted my limitations. — counterpunch

The problem is you're basing your views on your ignorance.

If there's anyone here putting a strain on social cohesion, I'd argue - that's you. Indeed, it seems to me that the left's standard strategy is to point out things that strain social cohesion and exploit the resulting discontent. — counterpunch

A lot of things "seem" to you this way and that, which is a nice way of saying you don't really know, and you're just making stuff up to suit your existing narrative of evil lefties out to destroy the world.

But then I don't suppose you'd understand the pride there is in coming home, covered in dirt, having performed heroic labours, and slapping an envelope down on the kitchen table. — counterpunch

Because in your mind I'm a leftist, so I must be an unemployed guy living in his parent's basement with a Che Guevara T-Shirt, right?

UBI and open borders and free immigration do not mix. — Outlander

What country has open borders and free immigration?

I see opportunity in private concentrations of wealth and capital. It’s approachable, reasonable, and ultimately, through varying degrees of effort, accessible, I can provide services, seek employment, investment or opportunity. This is an obvious oversimplification, but the basics hold, I think. — NOS4A2

What it is is obvious word-salad.

On the other hand there is an all-powerful institution dedicated to taking my wealth every day and skimming from every purchase I make. This transfer of wealth is what concerns me because I have no say in it. I am unable to bargain or engage in common enterprise with it, or refuse its terms. It sets the rules and enforces them. And it is for this reason private wealth tries to curry favor with them, at everyone’s peril. — NOS4A2

This is exactly backwards. It's the private wealth that is completely unaccountable and gives you no say in how it is used. If every service was privatised tomorrow, you'd be less able - not more, to refuse any terms. You can refuse any terms as much as you can refuse to have over your money to a robber with a gun - the freedom is there, just the consequence is obvious.

But if your argument is that inequality is bad because some people have pot-loads, I don't agree. Large concentrations of capital are necessary to an economy - in ways I don't pretend to understand. — counterpunch

It's genuinely baffling to see someone so confidently make an argument from ignorance.

In what sense bad? If you're saying it's bad because the poorest don't have enough, then your argument has my sympathies. What can be done? How about increasing minimum wage? — counterpunch

It's bad because it damages social cohesion, in ways that are already quite obvious. You cannot expect people to not notice that their real income doesn't go up, while the stock market breaks record after record and managers in large companies get millions of dollars in bonuses even if they fail. You can't expect people to not notice that lots of new flats are being build, but they are build for international investors who buy them and sometimes don't even rent them out, on the grounds that the value of real estate increases so quickly that it's better to leave them empty. In order for people to work together in a society, they need to actually feel that there is a minimum level of justice involved. Else they turn to one extremist or the other. Europe has been there before.

Tackling the problem from the supply side does not imply authoritarian government imposing poverty on people forever after. If not wanting equality of poverty is utopian; if wanting genuine sustainability is utopian, then I'm utopian, but not unrealistically so. — counterpunch

But the supply still does need to be build first, and then the question of who decides how the supply is handled needs to be answered. Not everyone will own their own geothermal plant. I imagine you don't want one giant profit-driven conglomerate to own all the new power plants, and for good reason.

It is desirable to have wealth vigorously percolate up the economy (rather than a glacially slow trickle-down), but getting the wealth to the base so it can percolate up requires a revolutionary change in the way wealth is controlled. I don't see that on the horizon. — Bitter Crank

Certainly not while people fervently defend the right of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to be arbitrarily rich on the basis that any kind of redistribution is born from jealousy and leads to communism. It also doesn't help that very few people are aware of the economic history of the last century in their own country, let alone the world.

I'm trying to think of one that demonstrates that inequality is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. There's always the brain surgeon/ road-sweeper analogy. — counterpunch

I have pointed out elsewhere that inequality is not simply "different outcomes". But regardless, the problem isn't that some theoretical amount of inequality might perhaps be good. It's that the current amount of inequality is bad.

My view is that inequality isn't a problem if the poorest have enough, and effectively limitless clean energy from magma can do that sustainably. — counterpunch

Just be careful not to forget actually involving the poor in your calculation of what's "enough", because they won't just sit around watching you build your utopia if they're fed only the scraps.

Capitalism can be sustained — counterpunch

The proof on that is still out, I'd say. It has collapsed once before (into two world wars).

I think the left are better pushing on a living wage than trying to sneak communism in by the back door, by handing out a big bag full of someone else's cash! — counterpunch

I'd personally he happy with the left getting any kind of political momentum going somewhere, but for the time being, they appear gridlocked most anywhere.

As for handing out others people's cash: it's very important that we start doing it, because right now it's much too concentrated.

That sounds like ideologically motivated ignorance to me. Ha ha. I've offered my inexpert opinion Echarmion. I am more naturally inclined toward approaches that raise the floor, rather than pull down the ceiling — counterpunch

Well that's essentially what I mean by ideologically motivated ignorance. It wasn't intended as a personal insult. I have my own ideologically motivated ignorance. I just wanted to point out that you seem less inclined to look into something which might be in contradiction to your existing views.

It's like some Far Side cartoon - two stalls, one says 'free money' and has an enormous queue, and the other says "a fair days pay for a fair days work" - and no-one's interested. — counterpunch

Metaphors are all fine and good, but it's too easy to just brush the question aside with a smirk. Rising inequality is a real problem, and one that directly impacts your stated aim of providing everyone with cheap and clean energy.

Tempting offer... but if there are less drastic means to have much the same effect, then what's the real purpose of UBI? Is it in fact, primarily - a political statement? — counterpunch

Of course different people have different purposes in mind when they make a proposal. But are there less drastic measures that do the same thing? The people affected by UBI are not the same as the people affected by a minimum wage increase.

So too are all the people at the free money booth in solidarity, but they're not there because they love each other. I don't believe the communist manifesto was ever a legitimate expression of the working class interest. — counterpunch

You're changing the subject.

I don't think solidarity moves people like rational self interest, and offering free money appeals to rational self interest even while being a footbridge to communism. — counterpunch

That's a false dichotomy. Solidarity is part of a "rational self interest". Of course when people talk about "rational self interest", they rarely take these words at their usual meaning, and instead refer to some kind of purely commercial cost-benefit analysis.

As to the "footbridge to communism" part, please imagine me rolling my eyes theatrically. The countries of western Europe have by and large been giving out "free money" to people for more than 70 years, and communism is farther away than ever.

I attempted to google some information on the socio-economic distribution of wealth in support of the idea of a growing middle class, but the ONS data is labyrinthine and my internet is a trickle. — counterpunch

Oh the middle class isn't growing right now, but it was essentially invented in the mid 20th century, a period of high tax rates.

but worry that UBI would undermine natural incentives, whereas, significantly increasing minimum wage could be revenue neutral for companies, and achieve much the same result - while retaining, indeed promoting socially useful incentives. — counterpunch

Yeah, I understand the concern. Unfortunately it's hard to make conclusive statements on this without large scale experimentation. Which is to say we'd need a major economy - something the size of France, Germany or the UK at least - to actually implement an UBI to have any real chance of getting a good idea of the effects. UBI isn't uncontroversial even on the left. It should be noted, however, that basic income - that is some form of welfare to keep you alive - doesn't seem to have destroyed people's willingness to work.

I'm not a corporate tax expert. I am aware of the perception that large companies don't pay a fair share, but I don't know how true that is. I secretly suspect they can just as justifiably claim to be over taxed as the middle class; but that doesn't fit with a jealous left wing narrative — counterpunch

This sounds like ideologically motivated ignorance. It's easy enough to find accounts of how corporate tax avoidance works, and what kind of results this has - Amazon paid 0 federal income tax in 2018 and 2019 thanks to a clever licensing scheme, for example.

Of course not all companies are the same. It's mostly large, multinational corporations that have access to all the tricks.

Philosophically, I always consider Bill Gates - and imagine him in his shed, or whatever, noodling away at his computer, trying to invent windows - about to unleash an enormous wave of value, and I cannot be jealous of his success - such that I demand he be taxed to death in every country, state and townsville that has wifi. — counterpunch

I don't really see why asking for high taxes on rich people is a sign of jealousy. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a principle of solidarity, not jealousy. Would it have been unfair to tax Bill Gates' 10th or 100th million earned at 70%, or 80 or 90? I think a few tens of millions is enough for anyone, does that make me jealous?

Taxation reduces demand - for the poor. The rich don't give a shit; carry on as they are, while poor people are dying of hypothermia because they can't afford fuel. I cannot understand how the left can advocate such a policy approach; while weeping buckets about equality. — counterpunch

That's because the left you are talking about are not the left they were 40 years ago. Taxation can absolutely work to combat inequality, and has done so after WW2. But the last 40 years we have seen a consistent process of making the taxes less progressive (in some cases, like the US, taxes have become effectively regressive) while trying to sustain roughly similar social programs. The result is that the burden of these programs falls more and more on the middle class, which consequentially is breaking apart under the strain.

International agreements all enshrine the free movement of capital and goods, but contain no provisions for the cross-border taxation of profits and wealth. The result is that states are less and less able - and due to increasing interstate competition also less and less willing - to tax the wealthy. The resulting alienation of the least privileged classes leads to increasing identitarian conflict and isolationist sentiment. See e.g. Brexit and Trump, but also the likes of Orban and Le Pen. Meanwhile, all the center left has to offer is statements of soildarity and a focus on identitarian conflicts of a different type, while offering no alternative economic vision.