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'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

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Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#141

Post by Jabanga »

openasocket wrote: post #139
Jabanga wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution is a well understood phenomenon. It's reasonable to extrapolate its long term effect, especially when very high levels of government spending on education is such a recent phenomenon.

You have a hypothesis, but do you have evidence supporting your conclusion? A study suggesting that increased access to education, or welfare in general, increases the birth rate among the poor? Maybe an example of a species which, upon a decrease in difficulty raising offspring (I'd accept a decrease in infant mortality as an example), started to produce more offspring than normal?

I certainly have evidence that suggests welfare leads to people having children when they're in poorer financial circumstances:

https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Gl5Xvza-bmsC&oi=f...

The rise of the welfare state over the last 50 years has been associated with a massive rise in out-of-wedlock childbirth:

http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/images/r...

>Maybe an example of a species which, upon a decrease in difficulty raising offspring

It's a well known maxim that feeding animals leads to a population explosion.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#142

Post by Jabanga »

douche wrote: post #129
Jabanga wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean some people are born smarter than others. Maybe low IQ people deserve a monthly stipend, that high-IQ people are forced to pay, to compensate them for how unfair the universe was to them. I'm sorry for the facetiousness, but I just don't see any reasonable case for the government playing this kind of role in society. It all seems very moralizing and controlling.

Harrison Bergeron was supposed to be a work of satire, but I'm not sure it won't prove to be prescient, these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

That's frighteningly true.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#143

Post by Jabanga »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #133
Jabanga wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that if funding primary education produces societal returns, that must mean the net increase in earning potential exceeds the cost of the education, and therefore it would be profitable to issue student loans to the poor parents of children who would make good use of that education.

Great, get a child locked into debt slavery from the start. Sounds like a good recipe for violent revolution.

It's not slavery when the debt is assumed with informed consent. We currently force people to pay taxes, and that is vastly less consensual than a student loan. If being compelled to pay a student loan that you chose to take on is slavery, what is being forced to pay a tax debt that you never agreed to assume? As for violent revolution, the history of education before the state got involved does not suggest that would be the outcome.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#144

Post by Jabanga »

kefka wrote: post #138
Jabanga wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a matter of "How does the government serve the citizenry". By taking other people's income? I don't think that's fair. >Because people who are rich did not do so themselves in a little bubble. Their successes rest in part on all of us. That doesn't seem like a scientific way to determine how much one owes another person. In my opinion it's not consistent with the principle of justice. It's a very sweeping ge…

> By taking other people's income? I don't think that's fair. But you don't ask that when they extract peoples' money on the upswing. Only when I express that "socialism for losses and privatization for profits" do you have any problem with fairness. > That doesn't seem like a scientific way to determine how much one owes another person. In my opinion it's not consistent with the principle of justice. It's a very swe…

>But you don't ask that when they extract peoples' money on the upswing.

I always ask that.

>You want scientific and fair? We the people should own the proceeds from public lands.

The proceeds of public land is not sufficient to pay for a sizeable welfare state. All land in the US is worth $23 trillion. Assuming a tax equal to 3% of its value is levied per year, that would raise a little less than $700 million.

That has to first be spent on the essentials, like interstate highways, federal courts, and national defence. There's nothing left for welfare. Even if there were, it would better serve society to spend it on general goods to boost productivity, rather than private goods for the poor that discourage it.

No I'm not an ancap.

>But there's a point that fairness surpasses when you have 1 person (or company) that owns an impressive amount of goods.

I don't see this being based on a principle of justice. It's just a gut feeling, which will be highly susceptible to our biases.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#145

Post by eastWestMath »

Jabanga wrote: post #88
eastWestMath wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus fucking christ dude, it's not about giving parents the opportunity to see their children be successful. It's about giving children the chance to be successful.

That's a great ideal to strive toward, but I don't see the case for forcing everyone to adopt that ideal.

Well Western society has, by and large.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#146

Post by Jabanga »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #135
Jabanga wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't deserve to take someone else's money by force, in order to pay for those things. I don't think opposing forced income redistribution puts me on the side of history.

Every capitalist fortune can be trace to appropriation of shared culture and resources. Nothing is created from nothing. The people cede control of culture and resources so that they might maximize the shared good. Intellectual and physical property rights are a grant by the people. Redistribution of income as a condition of that grant is an agreement, not stealing.

If you're alleging a particular fortune traces its roots to an illegitimate acquisition, then prove it in a court of law, in front of a jury of your peers. Your statement is a sweeping generalization, and prejudicial indictment, and that is in my opinion not consistent with basic principles of justice.

I personally believe we have a natural right to our private property. Otherwise, why stop at our physical possessions, and not go to our physical body as well?

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#147

Post by Jabanga »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #125
Jabanga wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm expressing my views. It's not constructive to tell people with minority viewpoints to stop expressing them. I did nothing more than what the parent comment did. I also don't think we're in a position to judge the full impact of our words on others, so I don't accept your assessment that no minds were changed by the previous discussions.

> I'm expressing my views. It's not constructive to tell people with minority viewpoints to stop expressing them. Nobody's telling you not to express your view. The obnoxious thing is to snidely pretend everyone else has to justify their own positions in terms of your view. If you want to say, "taxation is theft", just say it, instead of dragging things out from, "Well why should children have equal opportunities to…

My position is not that "taxation is theft" though. I do oppose certain kinds of taxation, because of the rights that I believe we have. I thought the way I addressed the parent comment was much more on-topic than the response you insist I should have provided. It was within the context of what the parent comment's argument was, making it relatable and relevant. It also expressed exactly what I believed. I don't think it's constructive to attack me because I expressed my view in a manner you disapprove of.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#148

Post by eli_gottlieb »

nailer wrote: post #134
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I welcome the discussion and Jabanga has been polite so far. No, I don't think he has been. His core premise is, "taxation is theft ", that is, providing government services with tax money is morally wrong. From there, he has dragged us all into trying to refute his entirely rationalized ideological structure, which claims descriptively that taxing people and using it to provide services has inferior results to…

Believing in something you find morally wrong is not downright rude. Insisting someone else has no right to their opinion is.

>Believing in something you find morally wrong is not downright rude.

He's entitled to his own normative moral opinions, not his own facts.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#149

Post by openasocket »

Jabanga wrote: post #141
openasocket wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a hypothesis, but do you have evidence supporting your conclusion? A study suggesting that increased access to education, or welfare in general, increases the birth rate among the poor? Maybe an example of a species which, upon a decrease in difficulty raising offspring (I'd accept a decrease in infant mortality as an example), started to produce more offspring than normal?

I certainly have evidence that suggests welfare leads to people having children when they're in poorer financial circumstances: https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Gl5Xvza-bmsC&oi=f... The rise of the welfare state over the last 50 years has been associated with a massive rise in out-of-wedlock childbirth: http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/images/r... >Maybe an example of a species which, upo…

1. Welfare doesn't mean access to education. At no point have I mentioned welfare, only access to public education, specifically public primary and secondary education.

2. Just because people are having more out-of-wedlock children doesn't necessarily mean they are having more children over all. It could simply mean people aren't getting married anymore.

3. Your first link has the following quote in the introduction section: "a reasonable reading of the evidence to date is that the welfare system may increase non marital childbearing, but the magnitude of its effect may not be large relative to the effect of other factors in contributing to recent increases in nonmarital child bearing in the US. In fact, the simplest evidence indicates that the welfare system has not been largely responsible for the recent increases in nonmarital child bearing."

4. Feeding animals increases population, but that's not the same as increased fertility. If an animal normally gives birth to a litter of 5, and only 3 normally live to adulthood, but now all five live to adulthood, then population will increase even though each couple is producing offspring at the same rate. And I'd also like something showing that human beings would exhibit the same phenomenon, because human behavior is a complicated thing governed by more than evolution.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#150

Post by Jabanga »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #130
Jabanga wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're not punishing them. We're simply not taking, by force, money from one person, to spend it raising the children of another. If we force people to subsidize other people's poor children, we create perverse incentives to have a maximum number of children with minimum personal investment in each. It cannot end well for society.

What cannot end well for society is an underclass with limited social mobility and access to guns. If justice is the greatest happiness for the greatest number, some degree of equitable income redistribution is a moral imperative. The exact degree needs to be experimentally determined, as income redistribution does reduce individual autonomy (which has the side effect of reducing happiness) and incentive to work (whi…

The standard of living of the world's poor is improving faster than ever. I don't see cause to be concerned about a violent revolution.

As for the greater good justification: given income redistribution reduces how much wealth is generated, which you acknowledge, it goes to reason that over an infinite timescale, the society without income redistribution will become infinitely wealthier than the one with. A permanent boost to the exponent of economic growth leads, over a long enough time period, to a cumulatively larger gain for the welfare of the poor than any increase in redistribution could provide them, since the benefits of a permanent increase in the growth rate are recurring.

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