Paging Dr. Kevorkian (was re: JEFFERSON'S SWEATSHOP)
Michael Zeleny
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From: "Paul M. Johnson" <aug...@micron.net>
To: <zeleny>
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Subject: Fw: Paging Dr. Kevorkian (was re: JEFFERSON'S SWEATSHOP)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 17:38:45 -0700
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In fact, could you post it for me, as something appears to be "hinky" with
my news server just now? Thanks.
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul M. Johnson <aug...@micron.net>
To: Michael Zeleny <zel...@math.ucla.edu>
Date: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 5:22 PM
Subject: Re: Paging Dr. Kevorkian (was re: JEFFERSON'S SWEATSHOP)
>Dear Michael,
>
>I attempted to post, and will do so again.
>
>Paul
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Zeleny <zel...@math.ucla.edu>
>To: aug...@micron.net <aug...@micron.net>
>Cc: zel...@math.ucla.edu <zel...@math.ucla.edu>
>Date: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 12:11 PM
>Subject: Re: Paging Dr. Kevorkian (was re: JEFFERSON'S SWEATSHOP)
>
>
>>Dear Paul,
>>
>>Did you post your reply as well, or are we moving to email?
>>
>>best
>>Michael
>>
>>
>
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From: "Paul M. Johnson" <aug...@micron.net>
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,va.politics,rec.arts.books
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Subject: Re: Paging Dr. Kevorkian (was re: JEFFERSON'S SWEATSHOP)
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Michael Zeleny wrote in message <7fd3i5$p9a$1...@carroll.library.ucla.edu>...
>Paul M. Johnson <aug...@micron.net> wrote:
>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>Paul Ilechko wrote:
>>>>>>>>>John Boston <johnboston@not_monticello.net> wrote:
>
>>>>>[...]
>
>>>>>>>>>>>Hmmm..what a interesting philosophy.
>>>>>>>>>>>Physical labor = more money
>
>>>>>>>>>No more or less interesting than any other arbitrary scheme,
surely.
>
>>>>>>>>Ah, yes. It's that night in which all schemes are arbitrary.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> "So entrenched are maxims of the usual form that perhaps we
>>>>>>>>should present the entitlement conception as a competitor.
>>>>>>>> Ignoring acquisition and rectification, we might say:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> From each according to what he chooses to do, to each
>>>>>>>> according to what he makes for himself (perhaps with the
>>>>>>>> contracted aid of others) and what others choose to do
>>>>>>>> for him and choose to give him of what they've been
>>>>>>>> given previously (under this maxim) and haven't yet
>>>>>>>> expended or transferred.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>This, the discerning reader will have noticed, has its defects as
>>>>>>>>a slogan. So as a summary and great simplification (and not as
>>>>>>>>a maxim with any independent meaning) we have:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen."
>>>>>>>> (Robert Nozick)
>
>>>>>>>I might have expected this sort of drivel from the redoubtable Mike
>>>>>>>Morris in his dotage, by the time his lifetime reading program will
>>>>>>>have gotten him to postmodern political philosophy -- et tu, Paul J.?
>>>>>>>It sorely rankles me to see a man of your erudition cozying up to Bob
>>>>>>>Nozick in discounting the costs of participating in the social
>>contract.
>
>>>>>>The legitimate costs, you mean?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Nozick does allow that individuals may legitimately be constrained
>>>>>>to pay their fair share* for protective services whether or not they
>>>>>>wish to, after all, and all that that entails: a judiciary,
executive,
>>>>>>legislature, a regulatory apparatus, meat inspectors and whatnot.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>That leaving aside of rectificatory justice from the scope of the
>>>>>>principle is no small caveat, since (I would think) it is under that
>>>>>>rubric that the extraction of moolah from an individual who
>>>>>>refuses to pony up would fall. The principle is only supposed
>>>>>>to hold absent a rectificatory justification for enforced transfers
>>>>>>of holdings. This bars naked transfers with no debt backing
>>>>>>them up (the very essence, as it were, of politics in a democratic
>>>>>>regime, or so it would seem). And gosh, who could ever be
>>>>>>against that (I can't decide what emoticon goes here)?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>You're probably aware that Nozick won't even cozy up to
>>>>>>himself anymore. The brief recantation that I skimmed in a
>>>>>>bookstore some years ago struck me as listless--a flopping,
>>>>>>dead fish. Right or wrong, that first book had some vitality
>>>>>>in it. Another job for Viagra, maybe.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Paul J.
>>>>>>*some principle of equality governs this--everybody pays
>>>>>>x dollars or (more likely) x percent of their income or
>>>>>>holdings.
>
>>>>>Paying for protective services does not begin to cover the costs that
>>>>>I have in mind; nor is disagreeably designated rectificatory justice
>>>>>required to underwrite the extraction of moolah from an individual who
>>>>>refuses to pony up. The brute fact stands that money, by its socially
>>>>>designated nature, cannot belong entirely to any one person, let alone
>>>>>accrue to him solely through his choice of doing, and according to
>>>>>what he makes for himself.
>
>>>>Normally, it will accrue to him through the choice of another,
>>>>who holds it.
>
>>>Indeed. So why does the libertarian fiction of property acquisition
>>>commence with its alienation from nature, irrespectively of another's
>>>choices?
>
>>You've got a problem with "Finders, Keepers" as a first principle?
>
>Depends on what is being found. How do you feel about property taxes?
Ideal would be a wealth tax which reckoned up one's net assets
and took a uniform percentage that. To the extent that a
property tax mimics this effect (probably tolerably well), I guess
it's okay.
You're not intimating that property taxes are compensation to
the non-finders, the johnny-come-latelies that missed out on
the original acquisition?
>>>>>On the contrary, as a freely convertible
>>>>>representation of an economic exchange potential, it exists, and can
>>>>>be allotted, appropriated, possessed, and expended, only through the
>>>>>sufferance of the society as a cohesive whole. Hence any allotment,
>>>>>appropriation, possession, and expenditure of money incurs direct and
>>>>>consequential social costs that are subject to just and commensurate,
>>>>>i.e. progressive, compensation through direct and indirect taxation.
>
>>>>One thing that makes this argument difficult to evaluate is the
>>>>obscurity of the predicate "sufferance". What is the damage
>>>>that society incurs when A exchanges his money for B's product,
>>>>in general? If you are talking about the kind of efforts that society
>>>>must engage in in order to make this sort of thing possible--like
>>>>enforcing contracts--your argument won't have a whisper of
>>>>plausibility unless these sort of activities can be made out to
>>>>be *net* costs. For society would be impudent in the extreme
>>>>to demand payment for activities which were beneficial to it, all
>>>>things considered.
>>>>
>>>>But it looks to me like your argument averts its eyes from the
>>>>situation too soon, and fails to take into account relevant facts
>>>>that bear on the issue of to what extent the hypothetical
>>>>exchanger is indebted to society. In particular, one relevant
>>>>fact is that the exchanger is, say, the one-millionth part of his
>>>>society, and consequently he is, on your analysis, due his
>>>>one-millionth share of his fellow citizens' debts to society
>>>>as they in turn become exchangers. A miniscule share, no
>>>>doubt, but there are one million of them. Carry out the
>>>>multiplication--that comes to a full share, just what he is
>>>>said to owe. Or put it this way: there is no reason, in general,
>>>>to think that any random exchanger's debt to society exceeds
>>>>what he is owed by society. And mutual commensurable debts
>>>>have the nice feature of cancelling. One hand washes the
>>>>other, but Lefty doesn't owe Righty anything--it's a wash.
>
>>>Suppose that Lefty the hedge fund manager is a compulsive gambler who
>>>has been rescued from the brink of ruin by a bunch of wealthy arsehole
>>>buddies in the investment banking industry, owing to their government
>>>connections. Suppose further that Lefty, bloodied but unbowed, and
>>>certainly none the wiser, is continuing to make leveraged bets to the
>>>tune of 80% of your government's budget. Suppose finally that there
>>>are some 100,000,000 Righties encumbered with the usual variable rate
>>>credit obligations. What does Lefty owe to the Righties at the point
>>>of his financial collapse precipitating a global credit crunch?
>
>>Let me say first that concentrating upon the freakish leads to
>>bad philosophizing. And that your earlier claim was that *every*
>>"allotment, appropriation, expenditure, and possession of money
>>incurs direct and consequential social costs". It's the mundane
>>case that I'd like to hear about--the social costs that are caused
>>by normal, regular old exchanges (but using private money,
>>naturally, as we wouldn't want something to creep in which
>>was a consequence of govenmentally established money--
>>forbidden by Nozick).
>
>I don't see how govenmentally established money could be forbidden in
>good conscience by Nozick, given that his minimal government emerges
>from free competition between private protective agencies in the state
>of nature, just as legal tender would inexorably emerge, and in fact
>did emerge, from free competition between privately issued currencies.
A de facto dominant currency is one thing. But the transition
from de facto monopoly to state that the dominant protective
agency makes (and is entitled to make)--the announcement and
enforcement of a prohibition on private protection/compensation
extraction/punishment--would not have an analogous justification
in the case of currency mongering. Allowing currencies that
compete with yours is not dangerous to oneself in the same way
that allowing competing protective agencies would be. See below
about fists and noses.
>As regards the freakish that reveals the mundane -- provebially, the
>attraction exercised by an entire planet upon a tiny apple might tell
>us something about forces that arise between all things big and small.
Although the example doesn't seem entirely apt (there are, after
all, many more small things than large things), I take the point.
>>As for the specific case you bring up, I can't see that Lefty
>>owes the Righties anything. If a credit crunch is a relative
>>unwillingness (compared to the status quo ante) of credit
>>vendors to extend credit at the previous rates, then to consider
>>the occurrence of this a compensatable cost is tantamount
>>to saying that the Righties somehow had a right to the
>>continuance of the credit vendors' willingness to offer credit
>>at the previous rates, which notion seems to me to be absurd
>>on its face.
>
>But if Lefty trades in legal tender, i.e. goods backed by fictitious
>mortgages upon public properties, his trades perforce manipulate very
>real mortgages that bind millions of Righties. Such manipulation can
>warrant commutative compensation even before you decide how you feel
>about property taxes.
I know diddly-squat about that spooky-seeming process whereby
a piece of paper linked to a valuable commodity, gold, say, loses
the link, but lo, retains its value. I daren't get into it. But once
you've got a state with the power to make its currency "legal
tender", you can hardly lay it at Nozick's door when the chickens
come home to roost. Or maybe the saying that I want is the one
about lying down with dogs and needing a medicated shampoo
afterwards. I've always like that one. But anyway, once you've
let things come to that pass, you're two-bits away from
fluoridated water and public radio. Yes, sirree.
>Consider another example: Soros shorting the pound sterling and the
>ringgit to enrich himself and precipitate economic turmoil in Great
>Britain and Malaysia.
Again, out of my depth.
>>It is a commonplace that bad consequences can result from
>>people acting entirely within their rights. Often, A's coming
>>to terms with B forecloses C's dearly cherished hope. This
>>is called "bad fortune".
>
>"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
It is normally thought that a vendor raising the price of his
goods can be distinguished from a punch in the nose. So
too, with the credit vendors.
"Affecting another" is too broad a category to do any good
here, as it fails to bring out a crucial distinction. A woman
who dumps me (contrary to my wishes) affects me for the
worse. Her actions initiate a sequence which leaves me
worse off than I was hitherto. But no one thinks that I am
therefore due compensation from her. Being able to trace
a causal sequence from A's activity to a worsening of B's
condition is not a sufficient condition for generating a
right to compensation. We stand in need of a principled
way of sorting these cases out. Noses everywhere await.
Paul J.
------=_NextPart_000_0044_01BE8B54.A3AA18E0--
Michael Zeleny
>>>>>>[...]
You are way ahead of me here. Once a recurring tax on net assets has
been admitted, most of the social costs of money ownership will have
been accounted for. However I suspect that taxing accumulated wealth
separately from its transfers would result in their more equitable
distribution among the responsible parties.
>You're not intimating that property taxes are compensation to
>the non-finders, the johnny-come-latelies that missed out on
>the original acquisition?
Not at all. Though you do have a fine Rawlsian question there: what
do the primordial squatters owe to the future generations whom they
mulct of their fair share of the land and its resources?
I am not sure that the distinction you rightly identify would make
much of a difference in the running of the minimal state, since a de
facto dominant currency would enjoy as much power over its denizens as
the U.S. dollar does over the Russians.
>>As regards the freakish that reveals the mundane -- provebially, the
>>attraction exercised by an entire planet upon a tiny apple might tell
>>us something about forces that arise between all things big and small.
>Although the example doesn't seem entirely apt (there are, after
>all, many more small things than large things), I take the point.
Good.
>>>As for the specific case you bring up, I can't see that Lefty
>>>owes the Righties anything. If a credit crunch is a relative
>>>unwillingness (compared to the status quo ante) of credit
>>>vendors to extend credit at the previous rates, then to consider
>>>the occurrence of this a compensatable cost is tantamount
>>>to saying that the Righties somehow had a right to the
>>>continuance of the credit vendors' willingness to offer credit
>>>at the previous rates, which notion seems to me to be absurd
>>>on its face.
>>But if Lefty trades in legal tender, i.e. goods backed by fictitious
>>mortgages upon public properties, his trades perforce manipulate very
>>real mortgages that bind millions of Righties. Such manipulation can
>>warrant commutative compensation even before you decide how you feel
>>about property taxes.
>I know diddly-squat about that spooky-seeming process whereby
>a piece of paper linked to a valuable commodity, gold, say, loses
>the link, but lo, retains its value. I daren't get into it. But once
>you've got a state with the power to make its currency "legal
>tender", you can hardly lay it at Nozick's door when the chickens
>come home to roost. Or maybe the saying that I want is the one
>about lying down with dogs and needing a medicated shampoo
>afterwards. I've always like that one. But anyway, once you've
>let things come to that pass, you're two-bits away from
>fluoridated water and public radio. Yes, sirree.
I suspect that something crucial has not been thought through here.
If your minimal state would eschew legal tender, how could it collect
its minimal taxes?
>>Consider another example: Soros shorting the pound sterling and the
>>ringgit to enrich himself and precipitate economic turmoil in Great
>>Britain and Malaysia.
>Again, out of my depth.
A simple point: one's holding and moving a substantial fraction of any
given commodity has a direct effect on its valuation by everybody else.
>>>It is a commonplace that bad consequences can result from
>>>people acting entirely within their rights. Often, A's coming
>>>to terms with B forecloses C's dearly cherished hope. This
>>>is called "bad fortune".
>>"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
>It is normally thought that a vendor raising the price of his
>goods can be distinguished from a punch in the nose. So
>too, with the credit vendors.
>
>"Affecting another" is too broad a category to do any good
>here, as it fails to bring out a crucial distinction. A woman
>who dumps me (contrary to my wishes) affects me for the
>worse. Her actions initiate a sequence which leaves me
>worse off than I was hitherto. But no one thinks that I am
>therefore due compensation from her. Being able to trace
>a causal sequence from A's activity to a worsening of B's
>condition is not a sufficient condition for generating a
>right to compensation. We stand in need of a principled
>way of sorting these cases out. Noses everywhere await.
Suppose that a prominent holder and mover of a substantial fraction of
the Malaysian currency supply decides punitively to depress its market
value owing to his allegiance to the worldwide cabal of Jewish bankers
intent upon quashing the inchoate financial powers of a Moslem state.
(Mahathir's version.) Contrast this with the parallel case wherein he
undertakes the same action solely on behalf of personal rapaciousness,
reasoning that even if he fails to profit from the ringgit's weakness,
somebody else will. (Soros' version.) Which -- if either -- of the
two currency trading actions falls within the purview of commutative
justice? For extra credit, consider the impact of another Thomistic
legacy, the doctrine of double effect.
Cordially -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu * M...@ptyx.com ** www.ptyx.com
God: "Sum id quod sum." ** 7576 Willow Glen Road, Los Angeles, CA 90046
Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum." * 323.876.8234 (fon) * 323.876.8054 (fax)
Popeye: "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum." **** www.alonzo.org
established on 2.26.1958 ** itinerant philosopher * will think for food
Paul M. Johnson
You've worked as a pollster, I take it?
These distinctions that don't make much of a difference, as you
put it, loom very large in the minds of libertarian types, for whom
history is all, and the result is as nothing. This is in contrast to
the denizens of the D.O.J., Antitrust Division, for whom the
opposite is true.
That's somebody else's job.
>If your minimal state would eschew legal tender, how could it collect
>its minimal taxes?
It's true; I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I should write Nozick
and see if he has an answer to this.
It seems to me that if the minimal state was wise, it would accept
those private currencies (excluding chickens!) which had a track
record of some stability. And don't say that by decreeing that the
citizenry had to pay with only these favored currencies, it would
in this very act be establishing these currencies as legal tender.
This much "establishment" can be stomached.
And I propose that any debt-beleaguered country proclaim in
all legal finery that henceforth the chickens minted out of its
Treasury Department shall be equal in value to $25 billion U.S.
Let it be an experiment of the sheer governmental power to
establish value.
One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although
I should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system remains
the most appetizing of the political philosophies that I've seen
to date, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement given the
alternatives. It also seems to me that whereas the libertarian
impulse, when pushed to its extremes, cannot be approved,
the egalitarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes, is
flat out ugly and exhibits a loathsomeness of soul.
>>>Consider another example: Soros shorting the pound sterling and the
>>>ringgit to enrich himself and precipitate economic turmoil in Great
>>>Britain and Malaysia.
>
>>Again, out of my depth.
>
>A simple point: one's holding and moving a substantial fraction of any
>given commodity has a direct effect on its valuation by everybody else.
This I explicitly grant. What is contested is whether everybody
else has some claim on that valuation's holding fast. Or to put the
same point another way, on whether changing the general valuation
through exchanges (of whatever magnitude, in whatever direction)
counts as damaging everybody else in the actionable sense. This
is what seems counterintuitive to me, granted that the exchanger
actually held clear title to the commodity exchanged.
>>>>It is a commonplace that bad consequences can result from
>>>>people acting entirely within their rights. Often, A's coming
>>>>to terms with B forecloses C's dearly cherished hope. This
>>>>is called "bad fortune".
>
>>>"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
>
>>It is normally thought that a vendor raising the price of his
>>goods can be distinguished from a punch in the nose. So
>>too, with the credit vendors.
>>
>>"Affecting another" is too broad a category to do any good
>>here, as it fails to bring out a crucial distinction. A woman
>>who dumps me (contrary to my wishes) affects me for the
>>worse. Her actions initiate a sequence which leaves me
>>worse off than I was hitherto. But no one thinks that I am
>>therefore due compensation from her. Being able to trace
>>a causal sequence from A's activity to a worsening of B's
>>condition is not a sufficient condition for generating a
>>right to compensation. We stand in need of a principled
>>way of sorting these cases out. Noses everywhere await.
>
>Suppose that a prominent holder and mover of a substantial fraction of
>the Malaysian currency supply decides punitively to depress its market
>value
Presumably, by parting with large quantities of it, asking buyers to
pay less than the exchange value in other currencies? So, it went
like this:
Trader1: Hey, Soros! I'll give you 3.7 shekels per ringgit. How
bout it?
Soros: No, just give me 2 shekels per ringgit.
Trader1: You're shitting me!
>owing to his allegiance to the worldwide cabal of Jewish bankers
>intent upon quashing the inchoate financial powers of a Moslem state.
>(Mahathir's version.) Contrast this with the parallel case wherein he
>undertakes the same action solely on behalf of personal rapaciousness,
>reasoning that even if he fails to profit from the ringgit's weakness,
>somebody else will. (Soros' version.) Which -- if either -- of the
>two currency trading actions falls within the purview of commutative
>justice?
The very notion of commutative justice is deservedly moribund.
Why, has there even been a just-price theory proposed in the
past 500 years by anybody who's anybody?
>For extra credit, consider the impact of another Thomistic
>legacy, the doctrine of double effect.
All the extra credit in the world won't make it worth my while
to pore over the _Summa Dormitiva_. Maybe some divinity
student could help.
Paul J.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Michael Zeleny
>>>>>>>>[...]
Indeed, I specialize in polling the unborn -- and in the present case,
the unconceived.
And yet Anarchy, State and Utopia (mind that Frostian punctuation, as
in "The woods are lovely, dark and deep"!) purports to concern itself
with `the result' as the reasoned and inevitable outcome of political
processes underwritten by epitimous (to coin a word) consideration of
property rights. Whereas my more traditional concern with commutative
justice means to make the outcome isonomous, and ultimately isocratic.
The main question is whether that could be achieved without depriving
any citizen of the rights and franchises conferred upon him by the
Lockean fiction of possessive individualism.
>>Good.
Better get your somebody else on retainer then.
>>If your minimal state would eschew legal tender, how could it collect
>>its minimal taxes?
>It's true; I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I should write Nozick
>and see if he has an answer to this.
>
>It seems to me that if the minimal state was wise, it would accept
>those private currencies (excluding chickens!) which had a track
>record of some stability. And don't say that by decreeing that the
>citizenry had to pay with only these favored currencies, it would
>in this very act be establishing these currencies as legal tender.
>This much "establishment" can be stomached.
>
>And I propose that any debt-beleaguered country proclaim in
>all legal finery that henceforth the chickens minted out of its
>Treasury Department shall be equal in value to $25 billion U.S.
>Let it be an experiment of the sheer governmental power to
>establish value.
You are well behind the times. The exchange value of frozen chicken
legs has been thoroughly solidified by the Bush administration in its
Eighties trades with the USSR.
>One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although
>I should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system remains
>the most appetizing of the political philosophies that I've seen
>to date, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement given the
>alternatives. It also seems to me that whereas the libertarian
>impulse, when pushed to its extremes, cannot be approved,
>the egalitarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes, is
>flat out ugly and exhibits a loathsomeness of soul.
In view of property being theft, I can see exactly what you mean.
Funny how Nozick quotes Proudhon only where it suits him.
>>>>Consider another example: Soros shorting the pound sterling and the
>>>>ringgit to enrich himself and precipitate economic turmoil in Great
>>>>Britain and Malaysia.
>>>Again, out of my depth.
>>A simple point: one's holding and moving a substantial fraction of any
>>given commodity has a direct effect on its valuation by everybody else.
>This I explicitly grant. What is contested is whether everybody
>else has some claim on that valuation's holding fast. Or to put the
>same point another way, on whether changing the general valuation
>through exchanges (of whatever magnitude, in whatever direction)
>counts as damaging everybody else in the actionable sense. This
>is what seems counterintuitive to me, granted that the exchanger
>actually held clear title to the commodity exchanged.
Methinks something is being missed. No farmer has a claim on fair
weather's holding fast. Nevertheless, all farmers have a legitimate
grudge when Dr. Evil rids his backyard of weeds through precipitating
an otherwise natural tornado.
Not quite. Profiting through short-selling a good is the reverse of
profiting through buying and selling it. When purchasing stock or
currency, you are expecting its price to advance, so that you may buy
low and sell high -- the plan is to buy first, then sell just before
you expect the price to decline. Whereas in short selling a good you
are expecting its price to decrease, so that in order to profit from
your short sell you must reverse the conventional sequence by buying
low only after selling high. Thus you must be able to borrow the good
from some source, sell it at today's price, and buy it back at some
time in the future after its price has fallen. Needless to say, this
is a risky ploy, since your potential transaction losses are no longer
bounded by the amount of your initial purchase.
>>owing to his allegiance to the worldwide cabal of Jewish bankers
>>intent upon quashing the inchoate financial powers of a Moslem state.
>>(Mahathir's version.) Contrast this with the parallel case wherein he
>>undertakes the same action solely on behalf of personal rapaciousness,
>>reasoning that even if he fails to profit from the ringgit's weakness,
>>somebody else will. (Soros' version.) Which -- if either -- of the
>>two currency trading actions falls within the purview of commutative
>>justice?
>The very notion of commutative justice is deservedly moribund.
>Why, has there even been a just-price theory proposed in the
>past 500 years by anybody who's anybody?
Do you expect me to stoop to rebut this pinheaded provocation?
>>For extra credit, consider the impact of another Thomistic
>>legacy, the doctrine of double effect.
>All the extra credit in the world won't make it worth my while
>to pore over the _Summa Dormitiva_. Maybe some divinity
>student could help.
According the doctrine of double effect, it is morally permissible to
perform an act that has both a foreseen and intended good effect and a
foreseen but unintended bad effect if and only if all of the following
conditions are met:
(1) the act to be done must be good in itself or at least indifferent;
(2) the good effect must not be obtained by means of the bad effect;
(3) the bad effect must not be intended for itself but only permitted;
(4) there must be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the
bad effect.
The traditional Catholic casuistry includes countenancing an indirect
abortion of a viable baby -- "as an accessory consequence, in no way
desired or intended, but inevitable", of a surgical attempt to save
its mother's life. Other useful applications include a justification
for killing civilians in war, so long as their deaths are plausibly
describable as unintended and accidental. Thus targeting a "military
command center", otherwise identifiable as somebody's bedroom, in the
middle of belligerent Belgrade is permissible, for the unprepossessing
stucco target, under its more menacing description, is legitimate, the
strike's inevitable collateral damage to civilian bystanders being but
a foreseeable though accidental effect of prosecuting a just war; and
likewise, a fortiori, in case of an unforeseeable whacking of peaceful
Sofia. And to get back to our subject matter, Dr. Kevorkian's cannier
colleagues have long been known to top their patients with a judicious
application of a painkiller overdose.
Paul M. Johnson
No need to even ask 'em. The question as posed answers itself.
Strange. My copy has more commas than that.
>purports to concern itself
>with `the result' as the reasoned and inevitable outcome of political
>processes underwritten by epitimous (to coin a word) consideration of
>property rights.
Not inevitable; I believe it's presented as being the natural
result in at least the weak Aristotelian sense of that which
happens either always or for the most part, but no doubt also
in a stronger sense. Forces conspire to make this ( = the
emergence of a state) the favored result, but alternatives
remain possible just as monstrous births remain possible.
But I meant that for Nozick and the like minded, one cannot
read the unjustness of a noxious appearing state of affairs
straight off, but must wait on the details of how it came
about. And then the world can be divided into two camps:
those who are impressed by such details as that a certain
de facto monopoly did not as a matter of fact prevent (by
force of arms) the entry of competitors, and those who don't
particularly care.
>Whereas my more traditional concern with commutative
>justice means to make the outcome isonomous, and ultimately isocratic.
>The main question is whether that could be achieved without depriving
>any citizen of the rights and franchises conferred upon him by the
>Lockean fiction of possessive individualism.
Were it a fiction, it would seem that this main question
would not possess much philosophical import.
Unfortunately, I can't afford anyone superior to myself.
>>>If your minimal state would eschew legal tender, how could it collect
>>>its minimal taxes?
>
>>It's true; I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I should write Nozick
>>and see if he has an answer to this.
>>
>>It seems to me that if the minimal state was wise, it would accept
>>those private currencies (excluding chickens!) which had a track
>>record of some stability. And don't say that by decreeing that the
>>citizenry had to pay with only these favored currencies, it would
>>in this very act be establishing these currencies as legal tender.
>>This much "establishment" can be stomached.
>>
>>And I propose that any debt-beleaguered country proclaim in
>>all legal finery that henceforth the chickens minted out of its
>>Treasury Department shall be equal in value to $25 billion U.S.
>>Let it be an experiment of the sheer governmental power to
>>establish value.
>
>You are well behind the times. The exchange value of frozen chicken
>legs has been thoroughly solidified by the Bush administration in its
>Eighties trades with the USSR.
If so, I expect the actual value, like Thoreau's jailhouse
musings, slipped right through the bars and out into the
world without let or hindrance.
>>One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although
>>I should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system remains
>>the most appetizing of the political philosophies that I've seen
>>to date, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement given the
>>alternatives. It also seems to me that whereas the libertarian
>>impulse, when pushed to its extremes, cannot be approved,
>>the egalitarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes, is
>>flat out ugly and exhibits a loathsomeness of soul.
>
>In view of property being theft, I can see exactly what you mean.
>Funny how Nozick quotes Proudhon only where it suits him.
That's SOP.
>>>>>Consider another example: Soros shorting the pound sterling and the
>>>>>ringgit to enrich himself and precipitate economic turmoil in Great
>>>>>Britain and Malaysia.
>
>>>>Again, out of my depth.
>
>>>A simple point: one's holding and moving a substantial fraction of any
>>>given commodity has a direct effect on its valuation by everybody else.
>
>>This I explicitly grant. What is contested is whether everybody
>>else has some claim on that valuation's holding fast. Or to put the
>>same point another way, on whether changing the general valuation
>>through exchanges (of whatever magnitude, in whatever direction)
>>counts as damaging everybody else in the actionable sense. This
>>is what seems counterintuitive to me, granted that the exchanger
>>actually held clear title to the commodity exchanged.
>
>Methinks something is being missed. No farmer has a claim on fair
>weather's holding fast. Nevertheless, all farmers have a legitimate
>grudge when Dr. Evil rids his backyard of weeds through precipitating
>an otherwise natural tornado.
Okay, so what is contested is whether everybody has a claim
on that valuation's not being moved as a consequence of some
exchanger's activity. But in the normal course of events,
that is how the valuation gets moved around. What a
fundamentally dubious thing exchange activity would seem
to be, on your view! Illicit at its very core; a long
series of misdeeds which need to be made right.
But there is an even more straightforward way in which a
player in the exchange game can change the valuation of a
commodity: by simply ceasing to value it. A collector in
a very small niche market just decides, for example, to
quit accumulating items. A key bidder, his abscence
causes, let us say, the market to to deteriorate. Now,
can your theory explain why the ex-collector is not
liable for the consequent "losses" of the niche item
purveyors, whose assets are worth less than they were
hitherto, whereas he would be liable had he instead chosen
to sell-off his collection, thus occasioning the same
downturn by flooding the market? Or must you treat these
cases similarly?
So what's causing the decline in value (which you are laying
at the trader's door) is simply the sale, at market price, of
large amounts of the commodity? How does he ensure that his
massive buy-back doesn't cause the value to climb back up
again?
>>>owing to his allegiance to the worldwide cabal of Jewish bankers
>>>intent upon quashing the inchoate financial powers of a Moslem state.
>>>(Mahathir's version.) Contrast this with the parallel case wherein he
>>>undertakes the same action solely on behalf of personal rapaciousness,
>>>reasoning that even if he fails to profit from the ringgit's weakness,
>>>somebody else will. (Soros' version.) Which -- if either -- of the
>>>two currency trading actions falls within the purview of commutative
>>>justice?
>
>>The very notion of commutative justice is deservedly moribund.
>>Why, has there even been a just-price theory proposed in the
>>past 500 years by anybody who's anybody?
>
>Do you expect me to stoop to rebut this pinheaded provocation?
There's an old saying: A man stands never so tall as when
he stoops to help a pinhead.
My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am
always willing to learn otherwise.
Paul J.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Michael Zeleny
>>>>>>>>>>[...]
How invigorating to see you align yourself with Louis XIV. For short
of that, the question does not answer itself regardless of metaethical
framework. The obvious historical counterpart is the "scorched earth"
agricultural strategies that were pursued by certain primitive peoples
whenever they began to tire of their nomadic lifestyle. Think of it
as the socioeconomic equivalent of buggery, opting to live your life
as if you were the last of your line who mattered, or a passenger just
going through.
Frost's original punctuation is with a single comma. I understand
that some publications sneak in an extra squiggle just for kicks.
>>purports to concern itself
>>with `the result' as the reasoned and inevitable outcome of
>>political processes underwritten by epitimous (to coin a word)
>>consideration of property rights.
>Not inevitable; I believe it's presented as being the natural
>result in at least the weak Aristotelian sense of that which
>happens either always or for the most part, but no doubt also
>in a stronger sense. Forces conspire to make this ( = the
>emergence of a state) the favored result, but alternatives
>remain possible just as monstrous births remain possible.
>
>But I meant that for Nozick and the like minded, one cannot
>read the unjustness of a noxious appearing state of affairs
>straight off, but must wait on the details of how it came
>about. And then the world can be divided into two camps:
>those who are impressed by such details as that a certain
>de facto monopoly did not as a matter of fact prevent (by
>force of arms) the entry of competitors, and those who don't
>particularly care.
If you mean that Nozick's account of the minimal state stops short of
endorsing historical determinism, I have to agree -- after all, the
state that he postulates as epitimously optimal, has failed to realize
itself even as a way station to its plenipotentiary counterparts. But
then I have to disagree with your reading of social contractarianism,
an argumentative framework that nowise concerns itself with how the
status quo came about, but addresses only hypothetical counterfactual
alternatives to its actual provenance that might have been realized by
originary communities populated by idealized rational protagonists of
game-theoretic scenarios.
>>Whereas my more traditional concern with commutative
>>justice means to make the outcome isonomous, and ultimately
>>isocratic. The main question is whether that could be achieved
>>without depriving any citizen of the rights and franchises conferred
>>upon him by the Lockean fiction of possessive individualism.
>Were it a fiction, it would seem that this main question
>would not possess much philosophical import.
Quite so: the question of property rights has little philosophical
import, in so far as no known rational arrogation of said figments has
withstood sound philosophical scrutiny. Locke's definitive treatment
of property is an embarrassing hodgepodge of wishful rationalization
of rapaciousness qualified by bashful communitarian hedging that
renders the ensuing theory utterly useless for underwriting a sound
political principle.
>>>>Good.
Your modesty is belied by grim employment prospects in the academia.
Surely you could afford to supplement the TA earnings of a half-dozen
ABDs to the point of precipitating regularly scheduled spells of their
overeducated loquaciousness, before feeling the pinch.
>>>>If your minimal state would eschew legal tender, how could it collect
>>>>its minimal taxes?
>>>It's true; I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I should write Nozick
>>>and see if he has an answer to this.
>>>
>>>It seems to me that if the minimal state was wise, it would accept
>>>those private currencies (excluding chickens!) which had a track
>>>record of some stability. And don't say that by decreeing that the
>>>citizenry had to pay with only these favored currencies, it would
>>>in this very act be establishing these currencies as legal tender.
>>>This much "establishment" can be stomached.
>>>
>>>And I propose that any debt-beleaguered country proclaim in all
>>>legal finery that henceforth the chickens minted out of its
>>>Treasury Department shall be equal in value to $25 billion U.S.
>>>Let it be an experiment of the sheer governmental power to
>>>establish value.
>>You are well behind the times. The exchange value of frozen chicken
>>legs has been thoroughly solidified by the Bush administration in
>>its Eighties trades with the USSR.
>If so, I expect the actual value, like Thoreau's jailhouse
>musings, slipped right through the bars and out into the
>world without let or hindrance.
Some people argue that Bush's chicken legs delivered the ideological
coup de grāce to the Evil Empire, thereby accruing the lion's share of
credit for the Western victory in the Cold War. How do you set the
fair value of that outcome?
>>>One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although I
>>>should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system remains the
>>>most appetizing of the political philosophies that I've seen to
>>>date, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement given the
>>>alternatives. It also seems to me that whereas the libertarian
>>>impulse, when pushed to its extremes, cannot be approved, the
>>>egalitarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes, is flat out ugly
>>>and exhibits a loathsomeness of soul.
>>In view of property being theft, I can see exactly what you mean.
>>Funny how Nozick quotes Proudhon only where it suits him.
>That's SOP.
A short-sighted one, to be sure. Take away the decision-theoretic
trappings (so where would you place them as a political counterpart
of Dana Scott's analogy of Champagne and Coca-Cola as the respective
emblems of mathematical substance in quantum and modal logic?) and
Nozick will not be able to hold a candle to Proudhon in integrity,
insight, and incision.
A fine example of market fetishism causing an otherwise intelligent
man to act obtuse. There exist clear moral differences between the
ramifications of periodically dispatching your nightsoil in regular
parcels through the conventionally provided channels, spontaneously
depositing it at will whenever and wherever nature calls you, and
collecting it for that once-in-a-lifetime performance act you stage in
the town square. And yet there is nothing dubious about the relevant
activity of your fundament.
Pop quiz: is it morally [relevant/permissible/commendable] to treat
each and every instance of human interaction as exemplifying economic
exchange? Why or why not?
>But there is an even more straightforward way in which a
>player in the exchange game can change the valuation of a
>commodity: by simply ceasing to value it. A collector in
>a very small niche market just decides, for example, to
>quit accumulating items. A key bidder, his abscence
>causes, let us say, the market to to deteriorate. Now,
>can your theory explain why the ex-collector is not
>liable for the consequent "losses" of the niche item
>purveyors, whose assets are worth less than they were
>hitherto, whereas he would be liable had he instead chosen
>to sell-off his collection, thus occasioning the same
>downturn by flooding the market? Or must you treat these
>cases similarly?
I would have thought that we had covered this issue two years ago with
reference to supererogation and Kant's distinction between perfect and
imperfect duties. Namely, in the general case, absent a recourse to
the Thomistic doctrine of double effect, moral responsibility for the
consequences of an action accrues without reciprocal responsibility
arising from the consequence of a failure to act.
He doesn't. Selling short is a judgment call as to whether or not the
commodity to be borrowed, sold, bought back later, and returned to the
lender, is temporarily overvalued by the market, with a correction of
its value forecast to fall within the interval between the selling and
the buying back. As I said, this strategy reverses the conventional
investment scenario by bounding potential gains and unbounding
potential losses.
>>>>owing to his allegiance to the worldwide cabal of Jewish bankers
>>>>intent upon quashing the inchoate financial powers of a Moslem
>>>>state. (Mahathir's version.) Contrast this with the parallel
>>>>case wherein he undertakes the same action solely on behalf of
>>>>personal rapaciousness, reasoning that even if he fails to profit
>>>>from the ringgit's weakness, somebody else will. (Soros'
>>>>version.) Which -- if either -- of the two currency trading
>>>>actions falls within the purview of commutative justice?
>>>The very notion of commutative justice is deservedly moribund.
>>>Why, has there even been a just-price theory proposed in the
>>>past 500 years by anybody who's anybody?
>>Do you expect me to stoop to rebut this pinheaded provocation?
>There's an old saying: A man stands never so tall as when
>he stoops to help a pinhead.
The obvious retort is that treating Marx as a nobody is unlikely to
advance this discussion one iota, notwithstanding the well-known
limitations of his labor theory of value (on which see Jon Elster's
Making Sense of Marx). The more general objection is that denying in
principle the possibility of calculating the value of a commodity
without essential reference to the empirical circumstances of supply
and demand, commits you to a strong version of irrationalism, for
which you may or may not be prepared to be held accountable. That is,
in order to sustain your flippant imputation of deserved moribundity,
you must contrive and defend an economical story cognate to the
radical political relativism that Isaiah Berlin deploys in his defense
of liberalism under the auspices of Leo Tolstoy.
>My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
>with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
>considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am
>always willing to learn otherwise.
I thought that we had covered that in
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=466255241&fmt=text.
Michael Kagalenko
In a discussion of moral aspects of capitalism on s.c.russian a
few weeks ago I occasioned to confront a nincompoop who asserted
that unrestricted exchange between free parties is necessarily good, because
it makes both parties "better off." When I pressed for elaboration on
the meaning of "free exchange," inquiring whether an exchange in which
one of the parties has more relevant knowledge and/or deceives another,
can be called "free," said nincompoop added that exchange is "free" if both
parties have "sufficient" knowledge of the facts relevant to the transaction.
And when I tried to uncover the meaning of the word "sufficient," the
reply was that "sufficient knowledge" would be such that costs of
acquiring any further knowledge would outweigh the benefits. The
person who came up with this theory of free exchange did not seem
to be troubled by the circular reasoning.
]>>>>>>As regards the freakish that reveals the mundane -- provebially,
]coup de grâce to the Evil Empire, thereby accruing the lion's share of
Good question. The view that I outlined above posits that
moral good (as arising from "free exchange") can be determined by
cost-benefit analysis. Thus, libertarians do set the market
as a kind of a foundation for morals, epsitemiologically
prior to the theory of morals.
]>But there is an even more straightforward way in which a
]
]
]
Michael Zeleny
>Michael Zeleny (zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote
>>Paul M. Johnson <aug...@micron.net> wrote:
>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
MZ:
>>>> [...] Anarchy, State and Utopia (mind that Frostian punctuation,
>>>>as in "The woods are lovely, dark and deep"!) purports to concern
>>>>itself with `the result' as the reasoned and inevitable outcome of
>>>>political processes underwritten by epitimous (to coin a word)
>>>>consideration of property rights. Whereas my more traditional
>>>>concern with commutative justice means to make the outcome
>>>>isonomous, and ultimately isocratic. The main question is whether
>>>>that could be achieved without depriving any citizen of the rights
>>>>and franchises conferred upon him by the Lockean fiction of
>>>>possessive individualism.
PJ:
>>>Were it a fiction, it would seem that this main question
>>>would not possess much philosophical import.
MZ:
>>Quite so: the question of property rights has little philosophical
>>import, in so far as no known rational arrogation of said figments has
>>withstood sound philosophical scrutiny. Locke's definitive treatment
>>of property is an embarrassing hodgepodge of wishful rationalization
>>of rapaciousness qualified by bashful communitarian hedging that
>>renders the ensuing theory utterly useless for underwriting a sound
>>political principle.
MK:
>In a discussion of moral aspects of capitalism on s.c.russian a few
>weeks ago I occasioned to confront a nincompoop who asserted that
>unrestricted exchange between free parties is necessarily good,
>because it makes both parties "better off." When I pressed for
>elaboration on the meaning of "free exchange," inquiring whether an
>exchange in which one of the parties has more relevant knowledge
>and/or deceives another, can be called "free," said nincompoop added
>that exchange is "free" if both parties have "sufficient" knowledge
>of the facts relevant to the transaction. And when I tried to
>uncover the meaning of the word "sufficient," the reply was that
>"sufficient knowledge" would be such that costs of acquiring any
>further knowledge would outweigh the benefits. The person who came
>up with this theory of free exchange did not seem to be troubled by
>the circular reasoning.
What exactly is the circularity that troubles you here? Remember that
a recursive definition can be well-founded, given a well-ordering in
its definiens. If you are bothered by the covariance of the benefits
accruing from the acquisition of knowledge with the gains obtainable
from the exchanges deemed free according to the ensuing criteria, it
looks like a simple exercise in optimization: you spend more to know
more how to gain more or spend less, so as to maximize your unspent
gains.
[...]
MZ:
>>>>>>A simple point: one's holding and moving a substantial fraction
>>>>>>of any given commodity has a direct effect on its valuation by
>>>>>>everybody else.
PJ:
>>>>>This I explicitly grant. What is contested is whether everybody
>>>>>else has some claim on that valuation's holding fast. Or to put
>>>>>the same point another way, on whether changing the general
>>>>>valuation through exchanges (of whatever magnitude, in whatever
>>>>>direction) counts as damaging everybody else in the actionable
>>>>>sense. This is what seems counterintuitive to me, granted that the
>>>>>exchanger actually held clear title to the commodity exchanged.
MZ:
>>>>Methinks something is being missed. No farmer has a claim on fair
>>>>weather's holding fast. Nevertheless, all farmers have a legitimate
>>>>grudge when Dr. Evil rids his backyard of weeds through precipitating
>>>>an otherwise natural tornado.
PJ:
>>>Okay, so what is contested is whether everybody has a claim on that
>>>valuation's not being moved as a consequence of some exchanger's
>>>activity. But in the normal course of events, that is how the
>>>valuation gets moved around. What a fundamentally dubious thing
>>>exchange activity would seem to be, on your view! Illicit at its
>>>very core; a long series of misdeeds which need to be made right.
MZ:
>>A fine example of market fetishism causing an otherwise intelligent
>>man to act obtuse. There exist clear moral differences between the
>>ramifications of periodically dispatching your nightsoil in regular
>>parcels through the conventionally provided channels, spontaneously
>>depositing it at will whenever and wherever nature calls you, and
>>collecting it for that once-in-a-lifetime performance act you stage in
>>the town square. And yet there is nothing dubious about the relevant
>>activity of your fundament.
>>
>>Pop quiz: is it morally [relevant/permissible/commendable] to treat
>>each and every instance of human interaction as exemplifying economic
>>exchange? Why or why not?
MK:
>Good question. The view that I outlined above posits that moral good
>(as arising from "free exchange") can be determined by cost-benefit
>analysis. Thus, libertarians do set the market as a kind of a
>foundation for morals, epsitemiologically prior to the theory of
>morals.
This priority is familiar to readers of Locke. In fact, there exists
a funky interpretation of his metaphysics that construes Locke's very
notion of personal identity as forensic, or literally constituted by
man's capacity for, and entitlement to, the appropriation of natural
goods through mixing his labor therein.
ObBooks: Jean-Pierre Aubin, Optima and Equilibria: An Introduction
to Nonlinear Analysis; and C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of
Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke.
Paul M. Johnson
zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny) wrote:
> Paul M. Johnson <aug...@micron.net> wrote:
>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul Ilechko wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>John Boston <johnboston@not_monticello.net> wrote:
>
>>>>>>>>>>>[...]
>
>>>>>what do the primordial squatters owe to the future generations
>>>>>whom they mulct of their fair share of the land and its resources?
>
>>>>You've worked as a pollster, I take it?
>
>>>Indeed, I specialize in polling the unborn -- and in the present
>>>case, the unconceived.
>
>>No need to even ask 'em. The question as posed answers itself.
>
> How invigorating to see you align yourself with Louis XIV. For short
> of that, the question does not answer itself regardless of metaethical
> framework.
Question: What do the primordial squatters owe to the future
generations whom they mulct of their fair share of the land
and its resources? Answer: Why, they owe to them their fair
share of the land and its resources. It's elementary.
Question: Do the original holders, just in virtue of being
original holders, owe anything to future generations, and
if so, what? Answer: A parrot can't say, but a largish
field of groundwork beckons which needs to be worked over
in order to even begin to get preliminary results of
interest.
>>>>>>>>bad philosophizing. And that your earlier claim was that *very*
No, no. I meant that my copy of _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_
has more commas than that.
I was thinking of distributions of holdings (putting even
market share into this category); as the Entitlement Theory
of Dist. Justice is straightforwardly a procedural one,
how a set of holdings comes to be is what legitimizes it,
or not. So even if one guy has everything, and everybody
else has dick, this might be fine (fine meaning right, not
good; it goes without saying that he doesn't act well).
>>>Whereas my more traditional concern with commutative
>>>justice means to make the outcome isonomous, and ultimately
>>>isocratic. The main question is whether that could be achieved
>>>without depriving any citizen of the rights and franchises conferred
>>>upon him by the Lockean fiction of possessive individualism.
>
>>Were it a fiction, it would seem that this main question
>>would not possess much philosophical import.
>
> Quite so: the question of property rights has little philosophical
> import, in so far as no known rational arrogation of said figments has
> withstood sound philosophical scrutiny.
I'm not sure what this means. Locke's fundamental principle
(what Nozick is calling the principle of justice in
acquisition, viz. that an unowned good can come to be an
owned good by someone's mixing his labor with it,
provided that blah, blah, blah) isn't self-contradictory.
And it is not supposed to follow from anything else.
As a bit of descriptive metaphysics (in Strawson's sense)
it even understates the case since labor or use is not
ordinarily thought of as being an absolute requirement
to gain ownership of an unowned good. I understand that
you are a tad more ambitious than Strawson, but still.
> Locke's definitive treatment
> of property is an embarrassing hodgepodge of wishful rationalization
> of rapaciousness qualified by bashful communitarian hedging that
> renders the ensuing theory utterly useless for underwriting a sound
> political principle.
Again, one's metaphilosophical views will determine what
one expects from a theory.
If they would eat, then their first task must be to
separate my wife from her credit cards--a contemporary Hydra:
no sooner is one cut in half then two more jump in from the
mail box. Having solved that one, I suppose they would
troop down to my basement and shmooze about the natural
topics: the respective merits of the programs from which
they come, the foibles and whatnot of various big-name
profs, who's sleeping with whom, who's hot, who's not.
Then I come home after an honest day's toil and solve
their personal problems with simple homespun wisdom.
Beat's me.
>>>>One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although I
>>>>should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system remains the
>>>>most appetizing of the political philosophies that I've seen to
>>>>date, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement given the
>>>>alternatives. It also seems to me that whereas the libertarian
>>>>impulse, when pushed to its extremes, cannot be approved, the
>>>>egalitarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes, is flat out ugly
>>>>and exhibits a loathsomeness of soul.
>
>>>In view of property being theft, I can see exactly what you mean.
>>>Funny how Nozick quotes Proudhon only where it suits him.
>
>>That's SOP.
>
> A short-sighted one, to be sure. Take away the decision-theoretic
> trappings (so where would you place them as a political counterpart
> of Dana Scott's analogy of Champagne and Coca-Cola as the respective
> emblems of mathematical substance in quantum and modal logic?
You've put your finger on that aspect of the work which
will (would?) most hamper its appreciation decades hence.
Fine, then you can take care of the Soroses and big dumpers
as you please, as long as the lil' droppers are not tarred
with the same brush. But I took you as saying that it was
merely a difference in scale.
> Pop quiz: is it morally [relevant/permissible/commendable] to treat
> each and every instance of human interaction as exemplifying economic
> exchange? Why or why not?
It doesn't seem plausible; picture a touching scene of
babe at mum's breast or something.
>>But there is an even more straightforward way in which a
>>player in the exchange game can change the valuation of a
>>commodity: by simply ceasing to value it. A collector in
>>a very small niche market just decides, for example, to
>>quit accumulating items. A key bidder, his abscence
>>causes, let us say, the market to to deteriorate. Now,
>>can your theory explain why the ex-collector is not
>>liable for the consequent "losses" of the niche item
>>purveyors, whose assets are worth less than they were
>>hitherto, whereas he would be liable had he instead chosen
>>to sell-off his collection, thus occasioning the same
>>downturn by flooding the market? Or must you treat these
>>cases similarly?
>
> I would have thought that we had covered this issue two years ago with
> reference to supererogation and Kant's distinction between perfect and
> imperfect duties. Namely, in the general case, absent a recourse to
> the Thomistic doctrine of double effect, moral responsibility for the
> consequences of an action accrues without reciprocal responsibility
> arising from the consequence of a failure to act.
I would say that this distinction can hardly bear the
weight which you want to put on it.
Yes, but it was the malevolent big-dumper who intended to
ruin the economy who was currently under our microscope.
To the extent that the fantastic conceit that the value
of a commodity (whether labor or what have you) might be
something other than what people are willing to pay for
it is dead, why, just to that extent, my point stands;
prevails, rather. I don't think that is a kind of
relativism.
>>My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
>>with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
>>considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am
>>always willing to learn otherwise.
>
> I thought that we had covered that in
> http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=466255241&fmt=text.
OK. I'm mulling it over. This presents a wider conception
of commutative justice than my earlier crack was aiming at.
Paul J.
--== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==--
---Share what you know. Learn what you don't.---
Michael Kagalenko
I understand that this can be seen as asserting the existence of
such degree of knowledge that both parties benefit from the transaction. In
that sense, circularity does not seem the prime problem. However,
the person advancing this definition did so in defence of his
assertion "No, the idea that greed is a virtue is a simple extension of
the idea of freedom. Whenever free agents exchange something
voluntarily, they are naturally both better off than without the exchange."
When I pointed out that such position has a curious side effect of ruling
out the possibility of voluntarily engaging in transaction that is not
beneficial, the reply was the Socratic line that it is not possible to
voluntarily engage in trasaction that is not viewed beneficial in some
sense, and that people engaging in self-destructive behaviour without
outside compulsion do so because they perceive the satisfaction they may
derive from smoking or other such things as outweighting the eventual costs.
So far so good. But then to turn around in midstream and switch
to pragmatic definition of freedom seems to me a spectacular failure of
logic. A person may believe the used car he bought from a weasely
salseman is a great deal, and therefore his transaction was voluntary.
But from a pragmatic point of view, he was deceived, and the proponent
of quoted definition explicitely agreed that "voluntary, to me, includes
some degree of understanding of what is going on. A baby giving candy to
an adult swindler is not exactly my ideal of voluntary exchange."
There seems to be a problem here, doesn't it ?
][...]
Yeah, well, C.P.Macpherson's book that you recommended is still in my to-read
pile. Perhaps I should move it up in the queue.
] In fact, there exists
]a funky interpretation of his metaphysics that construes Locke's very
]notion of personal identity as forensic, or literally constituted by
]man's capacity for, and entitlement to, the appropriation of natural
]goods through mixing his labor therein.
"New generation selects Pepsi."
]ObBooks: Jean-Pierre Aubin, Optima and Equilibria: An Introduction
]to Nonlinear Analysis; and C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of
]Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke.
As usually, thanks for suggestions.
]
]Cordially -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu * M...@ptyx.com ** www.ptyx.com
]
Michael Zeleny
MZ:
>>What exactly is the circularity that troubles you here? Remember that
>>a recursive definition can be well-founded, given a well-ordering in
>>its definiens. If you are bothered by the covariance of the benefits
>>accruing from the acquisition of knowledge with the gains obtainable
>>from the exchanges deemed free according to the ensuing criteria, it
>>looks like a simple exercise in optimization: you spend more to know
>>more how to gain more or spend less, so as to maximize your unspent
>>gains.
MK:
>I understand that this can be seen as asserting the existence of such
>degree of knowledge that both parties benefit from the transaction.
>In that sense, circularity does not seem the prime problem. However,
>the person advancing this definition did so in defence of his
>assertion "No, the idea that greed is a virtue is a simple extension
>of the idea of freedom. Whenever free agents exchange something
>voluntarily, they are naturally both better off than without the
>exchange." When I pointed out that such position has a curious side
>effect of ruling out the possibility of voluntarily engaging in
>transaction that is not beneficial, the reply was the Socratic line
>that it is not possible to voluntarily engage in trasaction that is
>not viewed beneficial in some sense, and that people engaging in
>self-destructive behaviour without outside compulsion do so because
>they perceive the satisfaction they may derive from smoking or other
>such things as outweighting the eventual costs. So far so good. But
>then to turn around in midstream and switch to pragmatic definition
>of freedom seems to me a spectacular failure of logic. A person may
>believe the used car he bought from a weasely salseman is a great
>deal, and therefore his transaction was voluntary. But from a
>pragmatic point of view, he was deceived, and the proponent of quoted
>definition explicitely agreed that "voluntary, to me, includes some
>degree of understanding of what is going on. A baby giving candy to
>an adult swindler is not exactly my ideal of voluntary exchange."
>
>There seems to be a problem here, doesn't it ?
Looks like a lot of things are going on here: (i) whether or not greed
be good under any circumstances is orthogonal to the issue of whether
or not free exchange must be good in and of itself, on which see the
Ten Commandments versus the "pursuit of happiness" clause in the U.S.
Constitution; (ii) what makes said exchange free in the narrow sense
of lacking coercion, does not yet determine its freedom in the full
sense of well-informedness, on which see Odysseus' men visiting Circe;
(iii) how beneficial the goods are (or appear) to the parties in their
exchange depends not only on the metrics of their material values, but
also on their prognoses of appreciation or depreciation of goods over
time, on which see the trade in insurance and viaticals. Even so, I
cannot see how any of these issues amount to genuine problems for, as
distinguished from constraints on, free exchange.
>>[...]
MZ:
>>This priority is familiar to readers of Locke.
MK:
>Yeah, well, C.P.Macpherson's book that you recommended is still in my
>to-read pile. Perhaps I should move it up in the queue.
MZ:
>> In fact, there exists
>>a funky interpretation of his metaphysics that construes Locke's very
>>notion of personal identity as forensic, or literally constituted by
>>man's capacity for, and entitlement to, the appropriation of natural
>>goods through mixing his labor therein.
MK:
>"New generation selects Pepsi."
MZ:
>>ObBooks: Jean-Pierre Aubin, Optima and Equilibria: An Introduction
>>to Nonlinear Analysis; and C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of
>>Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke.
MK:
>As usually, thanks for suggestions.
You are welcome.
Michael Zeleny
>>>>>>>>>>>>[...]
Now you are getting ahead of me, well into into distributive justice.
But not shitting where your progeny can be expected to eat looks like
a good heuristic start of commutative principles between generations:
Gee whiz, you're right. I must've had a brain borborygmus.
And now you appear to be jumping to conclusions by suppose that your
one guy who has legitimately come to have everything, thereafter can
exist in a stasis with everybody else having dick. But this focus on
procedural issues undercuts your insight that wealth should be taxed
commensurately with its extent, in so far as its monopolist extols a
disproportionate social cost of maintaining the status quo against the
malcontents bound to seek the common good in excess of their epitimous
rights. And that being an issue of rights, and the scale of taxation
being subject to empirical measurement of social costs of inequality,
it could well turn out that egalitarianism of outcome is a consequence
of an exclusive concern for pure property rights, as reflected by the
principles of commutative justice. As a meremost minimum, levying the
social costs of sustaining the inheritance privileges will direct the
just society towards that state of affairs in the long run. Recall
Andrew Carnegie's advocacy of a 100% inheritance tax.
>>>>Whereas my more traditional concern with commutative
>>>>justice means to make the outcome isonomous, and ultimately
>>>>isocratic. The main question is whether that could be achieved
>>>>without depriving any citizen of the rights and franchises conferred
>>>>upon him by the Lockean fiction of possessive individualism.
>>>Were it a fiction, it would seem that this main question
>>>would not possess much philosophical import.
>>Quite so: the question of property rights has little philosophical
>>import, in so far as no known rational arrogation of said figments
>>has withstood sound philosophical scrutiny.
>I'm not sure what this means. Locke's fundamental principle (what
>Nozick is calling the principle of justice in acquisition, viz. that
>an unowned good can come to be an owned good by someone's mixing his
>labor with it, provided that blah, blah, blah) isn't
>self-contradictory. And it is not supposed to follow from anything
>else. As a bit of descriptive metaphysics (in Strawson's sense) it
>even understates the case since labor or use is not ordinarily
>thought of as being an absolute requirement to gain ownership of an
>unowned good. I understand that you are a tad more ambitious than
>Strawson, but still.
Alas, one man's descriptive metaphysics of property is another man's
political propaganda. In this instance, I take exception to your
claim of consistency. To begin with, there is the matter of what
Nozick calls the Lockean proviso, that there be enough, and as good,
left for others, which is incompatible with any case of limited
material resources or proprietary intellectual standards. There is
room on this planet for at most one Panama canal, and at most one
dominant protective agency of Kosovo; as there is room on it for at
most one Internetworking standards suite, and at most one dominant
desktop operating system. Yet proprietary claims can be, and have
been, asserted in each case, on equal footing under Locke's criterion
of labor mixing, yet equally untenably under the proviso. So far so
good, until the credibility of all smaller property claims falls under
the same standard of scrutiny. Imagine a situation where the world
contains exactly enough fissionable materials to reach critical mass
and provide for the energy demands of its population. Then no single
individual could claim his proportionally fair and procedurally earned
share. Compare this to the exclusive, and potentially perpetual grant
in the Internet brand equity of common and proper English names like
sun, yahoo, coke, rebel, fortune, amazon, sex, or apple, which appears
to be currently valued somewhere between the annual registration fee
of $35, by way of a lump sum of $5,000,000, all the way to the lion's
share in a market capitalization well on its way to a trillion of
U.S. dollars. How do you ensure that there be enough, and as good,
apples or yahoos left for others?
Now it may seem frivolous to compare entitlements to intangibles with
concrete holdings, but for the fact that even thornier issues arise in
connection with pieces of matter. There is simply no way to establish
the potential long-term utility of each squirt of dino juice delivered
by four Weber DCNF carburettors into the manifolds of my 4.9 litre V-8
Maserati, as there is no way to calculate it for a vanishing genotype
of a species endangered by its exhaust fumes, aggregate scientific and
technological knowledge being the one and only human commodity that
incontrovertibly benefits from cumulative deliverances of progress.
And yet Locke's propertarian principle entitles me, a spatiotemporally
finite and bounded being, to enjoy a spatiotemporally infinite and
unbounded, because potentially terminal, dominion over this or that
gallon of gas, as over this or that live germ line. Conservation
principles notwithstanding, information tends to dissipate over time,
making the ownership of a Rembrandt -- or the library of Alexandria --
impossible under the proviso. But apply the same principle to owning
tokens of mass production, whose eventual scarcity inexorably arises
as the consequence of contemporaneous disregard for their ubiquity,
and you find yourself on a slippery slope favoring responsible and
conditional stewardship over absolute and categorical ownership.
>>Locke's definitive treatment
>>of property is an embarrassing hodgepodge of wishful rationalization
>>of rapaciousness qualified by bashful communitarian hedging that
>>renders the ensuing theory utterly useless for underwriting a sound
>>political principle.
>Again, one's metaphilosophical views will determine what one expects
>from a theory.
Again, one's metaphilosophical views need not encompass anything more
substantial than adherence to bare logical principle, to rule out the
notion of categorical property rights.
>>>>>>Good.
I never fail to find cause for innocent kakademic amusement at
http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/gourmet/.
>>>>>>If your minimal state would eschew legal tender, how could it
>>>>>>collect its minimal taxes?
>>>>>It's true; I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I should write Nozick
>>>>>and see if he has an answer to this.
>>>>>
>>>>>It seems to me that if the minimal state was wise, it would accept
>>>>>those private currencies (excluding chickens!) which had a track
>>>>>record of some stability. And don't say that by decreeing that the
>>>>>citizenry had to pay with only these favored currencies, it would
>>>>>in this very act be establishing these currencies as legal tender.
>>>>>This much "establishment" can be stomached.
>>>>>
>>>>>And I propose that any debt-beleaguered country proclaim in all
>>>>>legal finery that henceforth the chickens minted out of its
>>>>>Treasury Department shall be equal in value to $25 billion U.S.
>>>>>Let it be an experiment of the sheer governmental power to
>>>>>establish value.
>>>>You are well behind the times. The exchange value of frozen chicken
>>>>legs has been thoroughly solidified by the Bush administration in
>>>>its Eighties trades with the USSR.
>>>If so, I expect the actual value, like Thoreau's jailhouse
>>>musings, slipped right through the bars and out into the
>>>world without let or hindrance.
>>Some people argue that Bush's chicken legs delivered the ideological
>>coup de grâce to the Evil Empire, thereby accruing the lion's share of
>>credit for the Western victory in the Cold War. How do you set the
>>fair value of that outcome?
>Beat's me.
In other words, you no longer expect the actual value to slip out into
the world without let or hindrance.
>>>>>One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although I
>>>>>should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system remains the
>>>>>most appetizing of the political philosophies that I've seen to
>>>>>date, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement given the
>>>>>alternatives. It also seems to me that whereas the libertarian
>>>>>impulse, when pushed to its extremes, cannot be approved, the
>>>>>egalitarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes, is flat out ugly
>>>>>and exhibits a loathsomeness of soul.
>>>>In view of property being theft, I can see exactly what you mean.
>>>>Funny how Nozick quotes Proudhon only where it suits him.
>>>That's SOP.
>>A short-sighted one, to be sure. Take away the decision-theoretic
>>trappings (so where would you place them as a political counterpart
>>of Dana Scott's analogy of Champagne and Coca-Cola as the respective
>>emblems of mathematical substance in quantum and modal logic?)
>You've put your finger on that aspect of the work which will (would?)
>most hamper its appreciation decades hence.
See the ageometretos prevail in the long run? Or do you expect the
mathematical standard of decades hence to surpass Johnny & Oscar's
naive premisses of human motivation?
As every pinko schoolboy knows, the difference in kind comes in at the
point of appropriating the means of production.
>>Pop quiz: is it morally [relevant/permissible/commendable] to treat
>>each and every instance of human interaction as exemplifying economic
>>exchange? Why or why not?
>It doesn't seem plausible; picture a touching scene of babe at mum's
>breast or something.
Some say mum's merely securing herself in her dotage.
>>>But there is an even more straightforward way in which a
>>>player in the exchange game can change the valuation of a
>>>commodity: by simply ceasing to value it. A collector in
>>>a very small niche market just decides, for example, to
>>>quit accumulating items. A key bidder, his abscence
>>>causes, let us say, the market to to deteriorate. Now,
>>>can your theory explain why the ex-collector is not
>>>liable for the consequent "losses" of the niche item
>>>purveyors, whose assets are worth less than they were
>>>hitherto, whereas he would be liable had he instead chosen
>>>to sell-off his collection, thus occasioning the same
>>>downturn by flooding the market? Or must you treat these
>>>cases similarly?
>>I would have thought that we had covered this issue two years ago with
>>reference to supererogation and Kant's distinction between perfect and
>>imperfect duties. Namely, in the general case, absent a recourse to
>>the Thomistic doctrine of double effect, moral responsibility for the
>>consequences of an action accrues without reciprocal responsibility
>>arising from the consequence of a failure to act.
>I would say that this distinction can hardly bear the weight which
>you want to put on it.
In that case all of your supernumerary assets had better follow Peter
Unger's royalties to Oxfam America and the U.S. Committee for UNICEF:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/unger/lhld/index.html.
But the economy does get ruined. You don't expect the lemmings to
halt at the correct valuation on their way to dumping the goods?
Nonsense. In so far as every account of market activities involves
normative folk notions of value, on which see above, what you decry as
a "fantastic conceit" is alive and well. Just try reading your Wall
Street Journal unhampered by the empiricist blinkers, which you have
shown yourself capable of shedding on other occasions. Indeed, what
strikes me as preposterous is the premiss that any human activity may
be exempted from a normative accounting.
>>>My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
>>>with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
>>>considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am
>>>always willing to learn otherwise.
>>I thought that we had covered that in
>>http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=466255241&fmt=text.
>OK. I'm mulling it over. This presents a wider conception of
>commutative justice than my earlier crack was aiming at.
Keep us posted.
Paul M. Johnson
zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny) wrote:
>Paul M. Johnson <aug...@micron.net> wrote:
>>zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny) wrote:
>>> Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul Ilechko wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>John Boston <johnboston@not_monticello.net> wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Zeleny <zel...@math.ucla.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,va.politics,rec.arts.books
To: ku...@math.brown.edu <ku...@math.brown.edu>; nik...@fas.harvard.edu
<nik...@fas.harvard.edu>; roo...@oxy.edu <roo...@oxy.edu>;
thch...@mother.com <thch...@mother.com>; zel...@math.ucla.edu
<zel...@math.ucla.edu>; v...@virgo.sdc.org <v...@virgo.sdc.org>;
fe...@cc.umanitoba.ca <fe...@cc.umanitoba.ca>; aug...@micron.net
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opu...@cwix.com <opu...@cwix.com>; chr...@artnet.net
<chr...@artnet.net>
Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: Paging Dr. Kevorkian (was re: JEFFERSON'S SWEATSHOP)
I though I was asking the same question, shorn of the leading
language.
Well, they're going to die of starvation or exposure or
whatever, is what's going to happen. Although, more likely,
they'll become Indian-givers and disgrace themselves in that
fashion.
>But this focus on
>procedural issues undercuts your insight that wealth should be taxed
>commensurately with its extent,
That was for funding legitimate government services, not
for bringing about a new distribution of holdings.
>But this focus on
>procedural issues undercuts your insight that wealth should be taxed
>commensurately with its extent, in so far as its monopolist extols a
>disproportionate social cost of maintaining the status quo against the
>malcontents bound to seek the common good in excess of their epitimous
>rights.
Name a wealth monopolist of U.S. dollars.
You're not making the absurd claim that it costs more to protect
Bill Gates with his $5 billion from the ravaging hordes than it
does to protect 1000 mere 5-millionaires??
>And that being an issue of rights, and the scale of taxation
>being subject to empirical measurement of social costs of inequality,
>it could well turn out that egalitarianism of outcome is a consequence
>of an exclusive concern for pure property rights, as reflected by the
>principles of commutative justice.
How is it subject to empirical measurement when one of the
endpoints of the measurement is a counterfactual state of
affairs, or worse yet, a partition of continuum-many possible
worlds where equality of outcome is achieved? And which
of these do you measure the inequality of the actual world
against in order to reckon up the "cost of inequality"?
The completion of the one mentioned by Korchnoi?:
"I was born in 1931, during the first Stalin Five-Year Plan.
My parents were poor, but there was nothing unusual
about this: at that time there were frequent purges, and
particular attention was paid to purging the purses of the
population--with the aim, of course, of achieving genuine
equality for all people. In this respect the authorities were
highly successful: on the eve of the war there were tens
of millions of people living in poverty."
(_Chess is My Life_, p. 7)
Or maybe some happier equality, where everyone has lots
of stuff? And what's the rationale for placing a state
of affairs like this as the normative default position?
>As a meremost minimum, levying the
>social costs of sustaining the inheritance privileges will direct the
>just society towards that state of affairs in the long run. Recall
>Andrew Carnegie's advocacy of a 100% inheritance tax.
So people will give more of their assets to their
kids before they die. Or would you outlaw that too?
And again, your formulation concerning the "costs" of
this, that, and the other, is fraught with baseless
presuppositions. To use this kind of terminology is
to invoke some default condition which could have been
expected to obtain if only the "costly" condition had
not come along. The two conditions are then measured
against each other. One subtracts how things would be
without material inequality from how they are (with
material inequality) to get the "cost of inequality".
So tell me, how would things be if there were no material
inequality?
Huh? If the "others" are limited in number (which they are),
then the shares do not vanish to nothing. If there are
x acres of good land and n folks that fall under the scope
of the proviso, one appropriates x/n acres and calls it a
day. And who are these others? First of all, I'm pretty
sure we're talking about a bigoted society where modal status
can keep you from getting a share. Non-actuality is a
heavy cross to bear, and the possible-child-in-the-doorway
doesn't count as an "other". So she's out in the possible
cold. And since these so-called "future generations" that
we have been referring to have the status of mere possibilia
at the divvying-up time...
But let's be generous and include the future people who are
going to eventually show up. That's still a finite number
of people.
Proprietary intellectual standards I leave to the side. It's
hard enough to find common ground on the more basic
cases.
It's a good thing, then, that the principle does not ask us
to carry out such a calculation.
I recommend my grey '94 Escort wagon as more fitting
philosophers' ride. And ironical--it all but winks at you!
>aggregate scientific and
>technological knowledge being the one and only human commodity that
>incontrovertibly benefits from cumulative deliverances of progress.
>And yet Locke's propertarian principle entitles me, a spatiotemporally
>finite and bounded being, to enjoy a spatiotemporally infinite and
>unbounded, because potentially terminal, dominion over this or that
>gallon of gas, as over this or that live germ line. Conservation
>principles notwithstanding, information tends to dissipate over time,
>making the ownership of a Rembrandt -- or the library of Alexandria --
>impossible under the proviso.
The principle does not apply to manufactured items, which
come into the world already attached to certain people, but
to the unowned bounty (or booty, should I say?) of
nature. Land, primarily.
>But apply the same principle to owning
>tokens of mass production, whose eventual scarcity inexorably arises
>as the consequence of contemporaneous disregard for their ubiquity,
>and you find yourself on a slippery slope favoring responsible and
>conditional stewardship over absolute and categorical ownership.
Like the stewardship exercised over the steak now making
its way through your intestines?
>>>Locke's definitive treatment
>>>of property is an embarrassing hodgepodge of wishful rationalization
>>>of rapaciousness qualified by bashful communitarian hedging that
>>>renders the ensuing theory utterly useless for underwriting a sound
>>>political principle.
>
>>Again, one's metaphilosophical views will determine what one expects
>>from a theory.
>
>Again, one's metaphilosophical views need not encompass anything more
>substantial than adherence to bare logical principle, to rule out the
>notion of categorical property rights.
I don't see it. Can you make it simpler?
A nifty site!
The Western victory is worth whatever the West was prepared
to pay for it. If they got it for cheaper than that, that's
called getting a good bargain.
>>>>>>One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although I
>>>>>>should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system remains the
>>>>>>most appetizing of the political philosophies that I've seen to
>>>>>>date, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement given the
>>>>>>alternatives. It also seems to me that whereas the libertarian
>>>>>>impulse, when pushed to its extremes, cannot be approved, the
>>>>>>egalitarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes, is flat out ugly
>>>>>>and exhibits a loathsomeness of soul.
>
>>>>>In view of property being theft, I can see exactly what you mean.
>>>>>Funny how Nozick quotes Proudhon only where it suits him.
>
>>>>That's SOP.
>
>>>A short-sighted one, to be sure. Take away the decision-theoretic
>>>trappings (so where would you place them as a political counterpart
>>>of Dana Scott's analogy of Champagne and Coca-Cola as the respective
>>>emblems of mathematical substance in quantum and modal logic?)
>
>>You've put your finger on that aspect of the work which will (would?)
>>most hamper its appreciation decades hence.
>
>See the ageometretos prevail in the long run? Or do you expect the
>mathematical standard of decades hence to surpass Johnny & Oscar's
>naive premisses of human motivation?
Not quite. It's just that the writing seems overly smitten with
that kind of patter, and lacks the timeless seeming appeal of a
true classic.
Oh, pish-tosh. Only oxygen is more widely distributed than
the means of production.
>>>Pop quiz: is it morally [relevant/permissible/commendable] to treat
>>>each and every instance of human interaction as exemplifying economic
>>>exchange? Why or why not?
>
>>It doesn't seem plausible; picture a touching scene of babe at mum's
>>breast or something.
>
>Some say mum's merely securing herself in her dotage.
Mums are generally less foolish than that.
Well, don't leave out the difficulties on your side. For example,
the man taking an evening stroll who comes upon a small child
drowning in a shallow pond, and whom he could snatch out
ever so easily.
Okay. But there is an impending buy-back which is going
to exert pressure in the other direction.
Oh, I agree with this. But that just goes to say that paying
more than something is worth (or higher wages, say) can
sometimes be the right thing to do. That doesn't make
the something worth more.
>>>>My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
>>>>with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
>>>>considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am
>>>>always willing to learn otherwise.
>
>>>I thought that we had covered that in
>>>http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=466255241&fmt=text.
>
>>OK. I'm mulling it over. This presents a wider conception of
>>commutative justice than my earlier crack was aiming at.
>
>Keep us posted.
Absolutely.
Paul J.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Michael Zeleny
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>[...]
The leading language is admittedly ambivalent. By mention of fair
shares, I didn't mean to invoke distributive principles, but merely
intended to preempt total or partial exhaustion of non-renewable
resources within a single generation, as exemplified below:
>>>>The obvious historical counterpart is the "scorched earth"
>>>>agricultural strategies that were pursued by certain primitive
>>>>peoples whenever they began to tire of their nomadic lifestyle.
>>>>Think of it as the socioeconomic equivalent of buggery, opting to
>>>>live your life as if you were the last of your line who mattered,
>>>>or a passenger just going through.
I don't see you attend to this example at all. And yet it remains
unaccounted for in your Lockean entitlement to the appropriation of
any limited and exhaustible resource.
>>>>>>And yet Anarchy, State and Utopia [...] purports to concern
Indian-giving: a fate worse than death of starvation or exposure or
whatever, to be sure. But its likelihood drives home the point that
the holder of vast wealth perforce benefits from a disproportionate
share of the communal protective services in its maintenance, whence
he incurs a commutative obligation to the community, which otherwise
would be forced to subsidize his security.
>>But this focus on
>>procedural issues undercuts your insight that wealth should be taxed
>>commensurately with its extent,
>That was for funding legitimate government services, not for bringing
>about a new distribution of holdings.
But these goals may become linked, according to the allocation of
protective service costs within the community of property holders.
>> in so far as its monopolist extols
>>a disproportionate social cost of maintaining the status quo against
>>the malcontents bound to seek the common good in excess of their
>>epitimous rights.
>Name a wealth monopolist of U.S. dollars.
>
>You're not making the absurd claim that it costs more to protect Bill
>Gates with his $5 billion from the ravaging hordes than it does to
>protect 1000 mere 5-millionaires??
I am certainly making the claim that you naively deem absurd. How
many mere 5-millionaires benefit from international legislation and
enforcement designed to maximize the aggregate returns on their
intellectual property holdings? How many of them control the most
influential technological monopoly of our time through incessant
manipulation of their socially underwritten mandate to preempt or
subsume all competition? How do you begin to estimate the cost of
such social privilege?
>> And that being an issue of rights, and the scale of taxation
>>being subject to empirical measurement of social costs of inequality,
>>it could well turn out that egalitarianism of outcome is a consequence
>>of an exclusive concern for pure property rights, as reflected by the
>>principles of commutative justice.
>How is it subject to empirical measurement when one of the endpoints
>of the measurement is a counterfactual state of affairs, or worse
>yet, a partition of continuum-many possible worlds where equality of
>outcome is achieved? And which of these do you measure the
>inequality of the actual world against in order to reckon up the
>"cost of inequality"? The completion of the one mentioned by
>Korchnoi?:
>
>"I was born in 1931, during the first Stalin Five-Year Plan. My
>parents were poor, but there was nothing unusual about this: at that
>time there were frequent purges, and particular attention was paid to
>purging the purses of the population--with the aim, of course, of
>achieving genuine equality for all people. In this respect the
>authorities were highly successful: on the eve of the war there were
>tens of millions of people living in poverty." (_Chess is My Life_,
>p. 7)
>
>Or maybe some happier equality, where everyone has lots of stuff?
>And what's the rationale for placing a state of affairs like this as
>the normative default position?
None whatsoever. The only default position is the one of commutative
principles demanding commensurate restitution from anyone who incurs
measurable damage upon the society as a whole or any of its individual
citizens. Do you agree or disagree with this principle? Why or why
not?
>> As a meremost minimum, levying the
>>social costs of sustaining the inheritance privileges will direct
>>the just society towards that state of affairs in the long run.
>>Recall Andrew Carnegie's advocacy of a 100% inheritance tax.
>So people will give more of their assets to their kids before they
>die. Or would you outlaw that too?
I would tax any transfer of wealth, commensurately, and in accordance
with, its social or individual costs. Gifts are no exception to this
rule, whatever the relationship between the donor and his recipients.
Note that the social costs of transferring a given amount to a bona
fide charity meant to distribute it among multiple recipients, are
likely to differ dramatically from the costs of giving to any single
entity whose increasingly concentrated capital holdings would in all
likelihood extol greater protective costs than the aggregate of costs
required to sustain a more homogeneous distribution of wealth.
Elsewhere, the rank and file who make do with a 4% annual salary
increase tend to grumble at the CEO who gets away with a 30% raise.
And labor grumbles cost money.
>And again, your formulation concerning the "costs" of this, that, and
>the other, is fraught with baseless presuppositions. To use this
>kind of terminology is to invoke some default condition which could
>have been expected to obtain if only the "costly" condition had not
>come along. The two conditions are then measured against each other.
>One subtracts how things would be without material inequality from
>how they are (with material inequality) to get the "cost of
>inequality". So tell me, how would things be if there were no
>material inequality?
You are just baiting here. The calculation of social costs of wealth
acquisition, holding, and transfer, be they marginal or salient, need
not depend on actual comparisons with any counterfactual conditions or
events, any more than the calculation of physical work need depend on
suspending or revoking the physical order. The historical fact that
our economic science to date has gone without her Galileo, let alone
her Newton, says nothing about the intrinsic susceptibility of her
subject matter to rational quantitative analysis.
While I cannot stand in an antecedent or present moral relation to any
heretofore unactualized possible subjects, the possibility of their
future realization may well be incumbent upon me as my moral duty, as
I have argued to attain my standing as a Usenet legend. And if that
is the case, I must already stand in a moral relation with the future
human generations, a relation that forecloses the use of putative
finitude of human progeny as a premiss in any human moral argument.
But it does ask us to carry it out, as sure as Locke is a rationalist.
>I recommend my grey '94 Escort wagon as more fitting philosophers'
>ride. And ironical--it all but winks at you!
All ironical conveyances are best left to the experts, whereas I
resolve to remain an amateur. Besides, a modest ride would ill serve
the moral exhibitionism characteristic of philosophy as a way of life.
>>aggregate scientific and
>>technological knowledge being the one and only human commodity that
>>incontrovertibly benefits from cumulative deliverances of progress.
>>And yet Locke's propertarian principle entitles me, a spatiotemporally
>>finite and bounded being, to enjoy a spatiotemporally infinite and
>>unbounded, because potentially terminal, dominion over this or that
>>gallon of gas, as over this or that live germ line. Conservation
>>principles notwithstanding, information tends to dissipate over time,
>>making the ownership of a Rembrandt -- or the library of Alexandria --
>>impossible under the proviso.
>The principle does not apply to manufactured items, which come into
>the world already attached to certain people, but to the unowned
>bounty (or booty, should I say?) of nature. Land, primarily.
Do not overestimate the proprietary artefactual attachment to certain
people. After all, their essence could differ from that of nature's
bounty only in relation to the human labor, which in Locke's view is
eminently alienable between humans, and hence cannot be internal to
the object that stands as its reciprocal term. In other words, either
the manufactured object essentially and therefore permanently, belongs
to its makers, or it cannot belong to any man, except by accident of
contract and exchange. Whence arises another contradiction in Locke's
possessive doctrine.
>>But apply the same principle to owning
>>tokens of mass production, whose eventual scarcity inexorably arises
>>as the consequence of contemporaneous disregard for their ubiquity,
>>and you find yourself on a slippery slope favoring responsible and
>>conditional stewardship over absolute and categorical ownership.
>Like the stewardship exercised over the steak now making its way
>through your intestines?
Alas, we never seem to get away from the perennial problem of waste
disposal. So tell me already: as its absolute and categorical owner,
do you eliminate yonder steak (a) in your pants; (b) in the commode;
or (c) in the town square? For extra credit, try to explain the moral
basis of any permanent relation between a spatiotemporally bounded
human subject and his similarly limited designated human successors,
and indefinitely enduring dry goods.
>>>>Locke's definitive treatment
>>>>of property is an embarrassing hodgepodge of wishful rationalization
>>>>of rapaciousness qualified by bashful communitarian hedging that
>>>>renders the ensuing theory utterly useless for underwriting a sound
>>>>political principle.
>>>Again, one's metaphilosophical views will determine what one expects
>>>from a theory.
>>Again, one's metaphilosophical views need not encompass anything more
>>substantial than adherence to bare logical principle, to rule out the
>>notion of categorical property rights.
>I don't see it. Can you make it simpler?
Simpler than steak? How could I?
>>>>>>>>Good.
>A nifty site!
>>>>ideological coup de grāce to the Evil Empire, thereby accruing the
>>>>lion's share of credit for the Western victory in the Cold War.
>>>>How do you set the fair value of that outcome?
>>>Beat's me.
>>In other words, you no longer expect the actual value to slip out
>>into the world without let or hindrance.
>The Western victory is worth whatever the West was prepared to pay
>for it. If they got it for cheaper than that, that's called getting
>a good bargain.
Don't be so harsh on yourself. The value of your life and limb is
nowise limited by your wherewithal in bailing it out of adversity.
Otherwise Might would be the only conceivable basis of Good.
>>>>>>>One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although I
>>>>>>>should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system remains
>>>>>>>the most appetizing of the political philosophies that I've
>>>>>>>seen to date, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement given
>>>>>>>the alternatives. It also seems to me that whereas the
>>>>>>>libertarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes, cannot be
>>>>>>>approved, the egalitarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes,
>>>>>>>is flat out ugly and exhibits a loathsomeness of soul.
>>>>>>In view of property being theft, I can see exactly what you
>>>>>>mean. Funny how Nozick quotes Proudhon only where it suits him.
>>>>>That's SOP.
>>>>A short-sighted one, to be sure. Take away the decision-theoretic
>>>>trappings (so where would you place them as a political
>>>>counterpart of Dana Scott's analogy of Champagne and Coca-Cola as
>>>>the respective emblems of mathematical substance in quantum and
>>>>modal logic?)
>>>You've put your finger on that aspect of the work which will
>>>(would?) most hamper its appreciation decades hence.
>>See the ageometretos prevail in the long run? Or do you expect the
>>mathematical standard of decades hence to surpass Johnny & Oscar's
>>naive premisses of human motivation?
>Not quite. It's just that the writing seems overly smitten with that
>kind of patter, and lacks the timeless seeming appeal of a true
>classic.
A tendentious young man's book, and so far its author's best.
Not when capital and copyright come into play. Are you really
thinking this sloganeering all the way through?
>>>>Pop quiz: is it morally [relevant/permissible/commendable] to
>>>>treat each and every instance of human interaction as exemplifying
>>>>economic exchange? Why or why not?
>>>It doesn't seem plausible; picture a touching scene of babe at
>>>mum's breast or something.
>>Some say mum's merely securing herself in her dotage.
>Mums are generally less foolish than that.
And yet most mums come to depend on their offspring in their dotage.
Attend to your Social Security taxes for palpable corroboration.
That is why we admit supererogation. Our moral universe would be an
arid place, were the categorical obligation the only alternative to
the absolute proscription.
But it comes a day late and a dollar short.
>>>>As I said, this strategy reverses the conventional investment
>>>>scenario by bounding potential gains and unbounding potential
>>>>losses.
>>>>>>>>owing to his allegiance to the worldwide cabal of Jewish
>>>>>>>>bankers intent upon quashing the inchoate financial powers of
>>>>>>>>a Moslem state. (Mahathir's version.) Contrast this with the
>>>>>>>>parallel case wherein he undertakes the same action solely on
>>>>>>>>behalf of personal rapaciousness, reasoning that even if he
>>>>>>>>fails to profit from the ringgit's weakness, somebody else
>>>>>>>>will. (Soros' version.) Which -- if either -- of the two
>>>>>>>>currency trading actions falls within the purview of
>>>>>>>>commutative justice?
>>>>>>>The very notion of commutative justice is deservedly moribund.
>>>>>>>Why, has there even been a just-price theory proposed in the
>>>>>>>past 500 years by anybody who's anybody?
>>>>>>Do you expect me to stoop to rebut this pinheaded provocation?
>>>>>There's an old saying: A man stands never so tall as when
>>>>>he stoops to help a pinhead.
>>>>The obvious retort is that treating Marx as a nobody is unlikely
>>>>to advance this discussion one iota, notwithstanding the well-
>>>>known limitations of his labor theory of value (on which see Jon
So what is the difference between the right price to pay for a given
commodity, and its intrinsic worth?
>>>>>My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
>>>>>with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
>>>>>considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am always
>>>>>willing to learn otherwise.
>>>>I thought that we had covered that in
>>>>http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=466255241&fmt=text.
>>>OK. I'm mulling it over. This presents a wider conception of
>>>commutative justice than my earlier crack was aiming at.
>>Keep us posted.
>Absolutely.
Nu?
Paul M. Johnson
I'm afraid that I am unfamiliar with the practices of primitive
peoples, so it's difficult for me to comment. Certainly there
is a prohibition against acquiring more than you can use or
work in the principle's fine-print, or there ought to be.
I don't see any obligation to treat a resource in such a way
as to make it last forever, however. Suppose, for example,
that the entirety of the world's petroleum had amounted to a
few hundred thousand barrels. I see nothing wrong with the
first generation that had the capacity do so bringing it up
and using it all.
[...]
If you mean out of proportion to the average citizen's use
of protective services, that is plausible. If you mean he
needs more protective services per dollar than the average
citizen does, that would be very surprising. See further below.
Another group that benefits from a disproportionate share
of the communal protective services is that of individuals
who are perceived to be attractive targets for criminals. And
one way of becoming more attractive to a victimizer is to
appear to be weak and defenseless. So these people ought
to be paying more than their more dangerous-seeming counterparts,
is the logic of your argument. Little old widowed ladies, for
example.
>>>But this focus on
>>>procedural issues undercuts your insight that wealth should be taxed
>>>commensurately with its extent,
>
>>That was for funding legitimate government services, not for bringing
>>about a new distribution of holdings.
>
> But these goals may become linked, according to the allocation of
> protective service costs within the community of property holders.
>
>>> in so far as its monopolist extols
>>>a disproportionate social cost of maintaining the status quo against
>>>the malcontents bound to seek the common good in excess of their
>>>epitimous rights.
>
>>Name a wealth monopolist of U.S. dollars.
>>
>>You're not making the absurd claim that it costs more to protect Bill
>>Gates with his $5 billion from the ravaging hordes than it does to
>>protect 1000 mere 5-millionaires??
>
> I am certainly making the claim that you naively deem absurd. How
> many mere 5-millionaires benefit from international legislation and
> enforcement designed to maximize the aggregate returns on their
> intellectual property holdings? How many of them control the most
> influential technological monopoly of our time through incessant
> manipulation of their socially underwritten mandate to preempt or
> subsume all competition? How do you begin to estimate the cost of
> such social privilege?
In the absence of a Galileo? That's a tough one.
(You know, Lew Mammel once likened me to Galileo.
Makes you feel right dobby, that does.)
Bill Gates has definitely become the man everybody loves
to hate lately. His pasty face was being grilled yet
again by some subcommittee or other today. And the
Justice Department (tm) is doing what it can to get in
his way. But this time it does seem to be my fault for
allowing you to muddy the waters with the intellectual
property issue again.
All right; instead of Bill Gates, pick a generic $5 billionaire.
The point is a simple one: it is easier to guard one stash of
$5 billion than ten stashes of $5 million, and easier still than
guarding one hundred stashes of $500,000, and so on. And
likewise it is easier, ceteris paribus, to enforce one contract
worth $5 billion than ten contracts worth $5 million, or one
hundred contracts worth $500,000. No doubt, economist types
have a name for this.
I'd have to disagree with it. And this is because I think
that individuals have the right to engage in various
activities which can bring about the worsening of others'
condition. Damage them, in a word. Business activities,
for example. If I bring it about that my competitor gets
no business (business that he would have gotten had I not
undercut his prices), and getting no business that he loses
his business, I shouldn't normally think that I owe him
restitution. Or isn't this damage?
>>> As a meremost minimum, levying the
>>>social costs of sustaining the inheritance privileges will direct
>>>the just society towards that state of affairs in the long run.
>>>Recall Andrew Carnegie's advocacy of a 100% inheritance tax.
>
>>So people will give more of their assets to their kids before they
>>die. Or would you outlaw that too?
>
> I would tax any transfer of wealth, commensurately, and in accordance
> with, its social or individual costs. Gifts are no exception to this
> rule, whatever the relationship between the donor and his recipients.
> Note that the social costs of transferring a given amount to a bona
> fide charity meant to distribute it among multiple recipients, are
> likely to differ dramatically from the costs of giving to any single
> entity whose increasingly concentrated capital holdings would in all
> likelihood extol greater protective costs than the aggregate of costs
> required to sustain a more homogeneous distribution of wealth.
Well, no. If McX gives his billion to McY (who has nothing
much), you've not got an increase in concentration but a
continuation of the status quo with two players having
exchanged jerseys.
> Elsewhere, the rank and file who make do with a 4% annual salary
> increase tend to grumble at the CEO who gets away with a 30% raise.
> And labor grumbles cost money.
Getting away with it = someone's being willing to give it
to him. That is his manner of getting away with it. It's
true that this can cause more indignation among those who
are essentially unconcerned onlookers (unconcerned in the
sense of its not being any of their business, not in the
sense of their not being emotionally keyed-up at the
spectacle) than many goings on more traditionally styled
as "getting away with it".
>>And again, your formulation concerning the "costs" of this, that, and
>>the other, is fraught with baseless presuppositions. To use this
>>kind of terminology is to invoke some default condition which could
>>have been expected to obtain if only the "costly" condition had not
>>come along. The two conditions are then measured against each other.
>>One subtracts how things would be without material inequality from
>>how they are (with material inequality) to get the "cost of
>>inequality". So tell me, how would things be if there were no
>>material inequality?
>
> You are just baiting here. The calculation of social costs of wealth
> acquisition, holding, and transfer, be they marginal or salient, need
> not depend on actual comparisons with any counterfactual conditions or
> events, any more than the calculation of physical work need depend on
> suspending or revoking the physical order.
The calculation of costs or damage is carried out by reference
either to a status quo ante condition or else to a presumptive
would-have-been-the-case condition. For example, to reckon
up the damage to his health of 60 year-old McX's smoking,
one has recourse to the presumptive state of his health had
he not taken up the practice. The evaluation the pecuniary
cost to McX of his last pack of cigarettes is backward
looking--backward to the state of his wallet before the
purchase. Neither sort of evaluation of the so-called costs
of inequality is meaningfully available, however.
> The historical fact that
> our economic science to date has gone without her Galileo, let alone
> her Newton, says nothing about the intrinsic susceptibility of her
> subject matter to rational quantitative analysis.
Her Galileos absence ought to give you pause, however, in
your opinions of what is costing what.
Okay, here’s another argument. The act of not leaving any
Unclaimed land (for example) for future generations must
Either be wrong or not, regardless of the later activities of
Third parties. Suppose it is wrong. Then, in particular, it is
Wrong even if mankind en masse later on decides to leave off
Having any children. But in this case, there is nobody who has
Been wronged. So there has been a wrong done which has
Wronged nobody. But this is an absurdity. Consequently, the
Supposition that not leaving any of the resource unclaimed for
Future generations is wrong must be wrong.
>>>There is
>>>room on this planet for at most one Panama canal, and at most one
>>>dominant protective agency of Kosovo; as there is room on it for at
>>>most one Internetworking standards suite, and at most one dominant
>>>desktop operating system. Yet proprietary claims can be, and have
>>>been, asserted in each case, on equal footing under Locke's criterion
>>>of labor mixing, yet equally untenably under the proviso. So far so
>>>good, until the credibility of all smaller property claims falls uder
>>>the same standard of scrutiny. Imagine a situation where the world
>>>contains exactly enough fissionable materials to reach critical mass
>>>and provide for the energy demands of its population. Then no single
>>>individual could claim his proportionally fair and procedurally
earned
>>>share. Compare this to the exclusive, and potentially perpetual
grant
>>>in the Internet brand equity of common and proper English names like
>>>sun, yahoo, coke, rebel, fortune, amazon, sex, or apple, which
appears
>>>to be currently valued somewhere between the annual registration fee
>>>of $35, by way of a lump sum of $5,000,000, all the way to the lion's
>>>share in a market capitalization well on its way to a trillion of
>>>U.S. dollars. How do you ensure that there be enough, and as good,
>>>apples or yahoos left for others?
>>>
>>>Now it may seem frivolous to compare entitlements to intangibles with
>>>concrete holdings, but for the fact that even thornier issues arise
in
>>>connection with pieces of matter. There is simply no way to etablish
>>>the potential long-term utility of each squirt of dino juice
delivered
>>>by four Weber DCNF carburettors into the manifolds of my 4.9 litre V-
8
>>>Maserati, as there is no way to calculate it for a vanishing genotype
>>>of a species endangered by its exhaust fumes,
>
>>It's a good thing, then, that the principle does not ask us to carry
>>out such a calculation.
>
> But it does ask us to carry it out, as sure as Locke is a rationalist.
Is that your tortured reading of the proviso.
>>I recommend my grey '94 Escort wagon as more fitting philosophers'
>>ride. And ironical--it all but winks at you!
>
> All ironical conveyances are best left to the experts, whereas I
> resolve to remain an amateur. Besides, a modest ride would ill serve
> the moral exhibitionism characteristic of philosophy as a way of life.
>
>>>aggregate scientific and
>>>technological knowledge being the one and only human commodity that
>>>incontrovertibly benefits from cumulative deliverances of progress.
>>>And yet Locke's propertarian principle entitles me, a
spatiotemporally
>>>finite and bounded being, to enjoy a spatiotemporally infinite and
>>>unbounded, because potentially terminal, dominion over this or that
>>>gallon of gas, as over this or that live germ line. Conservation
>>>principles notwithstanding, information tends to dissipate over time,
>>>making the ownership of a Rembrandt -- or the library of Alexandria -
>>>impossible under the proviso.
>
>>The principle does not apply to manufactured items, which come into
>>the world already attached to certain people, but to the unowned
>>bounty (or booty, should I say?) of nature. Land, primarily.
>
> Do not overestimate the proprietary artefactual attachment to certain
> people. After all, their essence could differ from that of nature's
> bounty only in relation to the human labor, which in Locke's view is
> eminently alienable between humans, and hence cannot be internal to
> the object that stands as its reciprocal term. In other words, either
> the manufactured object essentially and therefore permanently, belongs
> to its makers, or it cannot belong to any man, except by accident of
> contract and exchange. Whence arises another contradiction in Locke's
> possessive doctrine.
That an artifact was made by so-and-so is no part of an answer
To the question of *what it is, and so no part of its essence.
So I will grab the second horn of your dilemma and stipulate
That being owned by so-and-so is a mere relational property
Of any artifact that happens to be owned. What of it?
>>>But apply the same principle to owning
>>>tokens of mass production, whose eventual scarcity inexorably arises
>>>as the consequence of contemporaneous disregard for their ubiquity,
>>>and you find yourself on a slippery slope favoring responsible and
>>>conditional stewardship over absolute and categorical ownership.
>
>>Like the stewardship exercised over the steak now making its way
>>through your intestines?
>
> Alas, we never seem to get away from the perennial problem of waste
> disposal. So tell me already: as its absolute and categorical owner,
> do you eliminate yonder steak (a) in your pants; (b) in the commode;
> or (c) in the town square? For extra credit, try to explain the moral
> basis of any permanent relation between a spatiotemporally bounded
> human subject and his similarly limited designated human successors,
> and indefinitely enduring dry goods.
I pick (b). And I expect full credit for that answer even though I
am not wearing pants. The point, such as it was, was that there
are some things that we must destroy utterly in course of using
them (black gold, Texas tea is another example), which doesn’t
jibe so well with your “conditional stewarship” line.
>>>>>Locke's definitive treatment
>>>>>of property is an embarrassing hodgepodge of wishful
rationalization
>>>>>of rapaciousness qualified by bashful communitarian hedging that
>>>>>renders the ensuing theory utterly useless for underwriting a sound
>>>>>political principle.
>
>>>>Again, one's metaphilosophical views will determine what one expects
>>>>from a theory.
>
>>>Again, one's metaphilosophical views need not encompass anything more
>>>substantial than adherence to bare logical principle, to rule out the
>>>notion of categorical property rights.
>
>>I don't see it. Can you make it simpler?
>
> Simpler than steak? How could I?
I am available to instruct you in simplicity. Ask about our reasonable
Individual and group rates.
>>>>>>>>And I propose that any debt-beleaguered country proclaim in all
>>>>>>>>legal finery that henceforth the chickens minted out of its
>>>>>>>>Treasury Department shall be equal in value to $25 billion U.S.
>>>>>>>>Let it be an experiment of the sheer governmental power to
>>>>>>>>establish value.
>
>>>>>>>You are well behind the times. The exchange value of frozen
>>>>>>>chicken legs has been thoroughly solidified by the Bush
>>>>>>>administration in its Eighties trades with the USSR.
>
>>>>>>If so, I expect the actual value, like Thoreau's jailhouse
>>>>>>musings, slipped right through the bars and out into the world
>>>>>>without let or hindrance.
>
>>>>>Some people argue that Bush's chicken legs delivered the
>>>>>ideological coup de grâce to the Evil Empire, thereby accruing the
>>>>>lion's share of credit for the Western victory in the Cold War.
>>>>>How do you set the fair value of that outcome?
>
>>>>Beat's me.
>
>>>In other words, you no longer expect the actual value to slip out
>>>into the world without let or hindrance.
>
>>The Western victory is worth whatever the West was prepared to pay
>>for it. If they got it for cheaper than that, that's called getting
>>a good bargain.
>
> Don't be so harsh on yourself. The value of your life and limb is
> nowise limited by your wherewithal in bailing it out of adversity.
> Otherwise Might would be the only conceivable basis of Good.
Germane here is the pretium/dignitas distinction, picked
up by Kant and carried forward by him. The Western victory,
being a state of affairs and not an agent can only have
the former. This is the sense of value or worth that is
relevant to this discussion
No argument here.
All the way to a contradiction? We all ought to
be able to do that even if we use only rationally
held beliefs as premises, since anyone's set of
rationally held beliefs will be inconsistent, or
ought to be (since it ought to include the belief
that at least one of one's rationally held beliefs
is false).
Perhaps one ought not deduce too far, lest one deduce
an explicit contradiction (tres disconcerting, as the
schoolgirls say, he-he). But also because the justification
for each conclusion grows ever weaker, or so say some.
Rock solid types among them (though it's always probabilities
and likelihoods with these gentlemen, so you likely wouldn't
cotton to them).
Regarding consistency in moral and political philosophy
generally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if human
moral consciousness was at bottom inconsistent (for
example, eschewing utilitarian considerations when
the stakes are small, but then importing them back
in when something big is at stake). In which case
a good moral theory ought to mirror that inconsistency.
>>>>Pop quiz: is it morally [relevant/permissible/commendable] to
>>>>>treat each and every instance of human interaction as exemplifying
>>>>>economic exchange? Why or why not?
>
>>>>It doesn't seem plausible; picture a touching scene of babe at
>>>>mum's breast or something.
>
>>>Some say mum's merely securing herself in her dotage.
>
>>Mums are generally less foolish than that.
>
> And yet most mums come to depend on their offspring in their dotage.
> Attend to your Social Security taxes for palpable corroboration.
And yet it is a dependency largely of their own making,
since investing for the next thirty-five years or so all
of the resources spent on the child would obviate the
later need.
So when he snatches out the child, he is going above and
beyond the call of duty, hmm? I'd have to consider that
a reductio of your view. I'm not going to find anything
more certain in moral philosophy than that it is possible
to tell the story in such a way that the gentleman is
obligated (and this without his making any promise) to
snatch out the child.
Regarding whether the alternative is the one you mention
above, I'd say that there is something about *proximity*
that enters in here. It is permissible to live one's
life--one needn't be forever on charity missions. But
when a situation fall across one's path...
[...]
Are you expecting a formula?
And I wouldn’t say that commodities have any intrinsic worth.
It’s a relational property.
>>>>>>My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
>>>>>>with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
>>>>>>considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am always
>>>>>>willing to learn otherwise.
>
>>>>>I thought that we had covered that in
>>>>>http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=466255241&fmt=text.
>
>>>>OK. I'm mulling it over. This presents a wider conception of
>>>>commutative justice than my earlier crack was aiming at.
>
>>>Keep us posted.
>
>>Absolutely.
>
> Nu?
Not yet. Incredibly busy, super busy, killer busy.
It's frikkin killing me.
Michael Zeleny
>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul Ilechko wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>John Boston <johnboston@not_monticello.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>[...]
>>>>>>>>>>Though you do have a fine Rawlsian question there: what do the
Here is a heuristic moment to be cherished. Perhaps the consideration
of limited resources shows us that the Lockean proviso of leaving
enough, and as good to the others, is subverted by the hypothetical
boundlessness of mankind that I have been advocating as the starting
point of all moral arguments. Alternatively, and more deleteriously
to the rationalism that I favor, the apparent inconsistency that we
are confronting requires the abandonment of all hope for conflict-free
public morality.
>[...]
I am comfortable with the requirement that all those unwilling or
unable to take charge of their own security be forced to bear the
consequences of their failure. However I do not believe that society
owes any guarantee of individual security to any of its members.
The name that you are groping for, "economies of scale", is of prime
relevance to the undoing of your position. For by the same token, a
single capital investment worth $5 billion and capable of marshalling
the resources of an entire state, is therefore more than a thousand
times more productive than a thousand of capital investments worth
only $5 million each, and considerably more than a million times more
productive than a million capital investments worth a mere $5 thousand
each. This fact alone justifies progressive taxation rates of wealth
on the basis of its real value.
Once again I advert you to the doctrine of double effect, which is a
necessary correlate of the principle of commutative justice, even if
in the present instance, malicious undercutting of prices that goes by
the name of dumping, preempts the need to invoke such complex moral
considerations.
>>>> As a meremost minimum, levying the
>>>>social costs of sustaining the inheritance privileges will direct
>>>>the just society towards that state of affairs in the long run.
>>>>Recall Andrew Carnegie's advocacy of a 100% inheritance tax.
>>>So people will give more of their assets to their kids before they
>>>die. Or would you outlaw that too?
>>I would tax any transfer of wealth, commensurately, and in accordance
>>with, its social or individual costs. Gifts are no exception to this
>>rule, whatever the relationship between the donor and his recipients.
>>Note that the social costs of transferring a given amount to a bona
>>fide charity meant to distribute it among multiple recipients, are
>>likely to differ dramatically from the costs of giving to any single
>>entity whose increasingly concentrated capital holdings would in all
>>likelihood extol greater protective costs than the aggregate of costs
>>required to sustain a more homogeneous distribution of wealth.
>Well, no. If McX gives his billion to McY (who has nothing much),
>you've not got an increase in concentration but a continuation of the
>status quo with two players having exchanged jerseys.
Your sports analogy fails at the point of the players themselves not
being fungible, as witness the vast history of failure in corporate
succession in business and politics alike.
>>Elsewhere, the rank and file who make do with a 4% annual salary
>>increase tend to grumble at the CEO who gets away with a 30% raise.
>>And labor grumbles cost money.
>Getting away with it = someone's being willing to give it to him.
>That is his manner of getting away with it. It's true that this can
>cause more indignation among those who are essentially unconcerned
>onlookers (unconcerned in the sense of its not being any of their
>business, not in the sense of their not being emotionally keyed-up at
>the spectacle) than many goings on more traditionally styled as
>"getting away with it".
No, "getting away with it" in the present instance means primarily the
art of keeping the Great Unwashed quietly compliant whilst cultivating
the bottom line, through some combination of suborning the elected
legislature, deploying the Pinkertons, and dispensing the Christmas
bonuses.
>>>And again, your formulation concerning the "costs" of this, that, and
>>>the other, is fraught with baseless presuppositions. To use this
>>>kind of terminology is to invoke some default condition which could
>>>have been expected to obtain if only the "costly" condition had not
>>>come along. The two conditions are then measured against each other.
>>>One subtracts how things would be without material inequality from
>>>how they are (with material inequality) to get the "cost of
>>>inequality". So tell me, how would things be if there were no
>>>material inequality?
>>You are just baiting here. The calculation of social costs of wealth
>>acquisition, holding, and transfer, be they marginal or salient, need
>>not depend on actual comparisons with any counterfactual conditions or
>>events, any more than the calculation of physical work need depend on
>>suspending or revoking the physical order.
>The calculation of costs or damage is carried out by reference either
>to a status quo ante condition or else to a presumptive would-have-
>been-the-case condition. For example, to reckon up the damage to his
>health of 60 year-old McX's smoking, one has recourse to the
>presumptive state of his health had he not taken up the practice.
>The evaluation the pecuniary cost to McX of his last pack of
>cigarettes is backward looking--backward to the state of his wallet
>before the purchase. Neither sort of evaluation of the so-called
>costs of inequality is meaningfully available, however.
The calculation of physical work is carried out by reference to force
and displacement, both being quantities measurable between the status
quo ante and the post displacement condition, without any reference to
a presumptive would-have-been-the-case of no displacement condition.
The sort of hypothetical evaluation that proceeds by subtraction of
the counterfactual from the actual is only required in the absence of
any meaningful mathematical analysis of lawlike dependencies between
the variables. Granted that no such analysis is as yet available,
your position still depends on the improbable (because irrationalist)
prognosis of its permanent lack.
>>The historical fact that
>>our economic science to date has gone without her Galileo, let alone
>>her Newton, says nothing about the intrinsic susceptibility of her
>>subject matter to rational quantitative analysis.
>Her Galileos absence ought to give you pause, however, in your
>opinions of what is costing what.
I would be the first to admit the provisional nature of my opinions.
Indeed, what I find implausible is the doctrinary irrationalism
required for sustaining the inscrutable material values of market
fetishism.
Here is a more modest counterpart of your alleged argument. The act
of stealing property must Either be wrong or not, regardless of the
later activities of Third parties. Suppose it is wrong. Then, in
particular, it is Wrong even if its victim should spontaneously decide
a moment before the act to forgo all of his past, present, and future
claims on Having any property. But in this case, there is nobody who
has Been wronged. So there has been a wrong done which has Wronged
nobody. But this is an absurdity. Consequently, the Supposition that
stealing is wrong must be wrong.
>>>>of my 4.9 litre V-8 Maserati, as there is no way to calculate it
>>>>for a vanishing genotype of a species endangered by its exhaust
>>>>fumes,
>>>It's a good thing, then, that the principle does not ask us to carry
>>>out such a calculation.
>>But it does ask us to carry it out, as sure as Locke is a rationalist.
>Is that your tortured reading of the proviso.
Sure thing.
>>>I recommend my grey '94 Escort wagon as more fitting philosophers'
>>>ride. And ironical--it all but winks at you!
>>All ironical conveyances are best left to the experts, whereas I
>>resolve to remain an amateur. Besides, a modest ride would ill serve
>>the moral exhibitionism characteristic of philosophy as a way of life.
>>>>aggregate scientific and technological knowledge being the one and
>>>>only human commodity that incontrovertibly benefits from
>>>>cumulative deliverances of progress. And yet Locke's propertarian
>>>>principle entitles me, a spatiotemporally finite and bounded
>>>>being, to enjoy a spatiotemporally infinite and unbounded, because
>>>>potentially terminal, dominion over this or that gallon of gas, as
>>>>over this or that live germ line. Conservation principles
>>>>notwithstanding, information tends to dissipate over time, making
>>>>the ownership of a Rembrandt -- or the library of Alexandria --
>>>>impossible under the proviso.
>>>The principle does not apply to manufactured items, which come into
>>>the world already attached to certain people, but to the unowned
>>>bounty (or booty, should I say?) of nature. Land, primarily.
>>Do not overestimate the proprietary artefactual attachment to
>>certain people. After all, their essence could differ from that of
>>nature's bounty only in relation to the human labor, which in
>>Locke's view is eminently alienable between humans, and hence cannot
>>be internal to the object that stands as its reciprocal term. In
>>other words, either the manufactured object essentially and
>>therefore permanently, belongs to its makers, or it cannot belong to
>>any man, except by accident of contract and exchange. Whence arises
>>another contradiction in Locke's possessive doctrine.
>That an artifact was made by so-and-so is no part of an answer
>To the question of *what it is, and so no part of its essence.
>So I will grab the second horn of your dilemma and stipulate
>That being owned by so-and-so is a mere relational property
>Of any artifact that happens to be owned. What of it?
That an artifact was made by so-and-so is no part of an answer to the
question of what it is as a physical object, and so indeed no part of
its material essence. Even so, you cannot address the question of its
artefactual identity without answering the questions of its particular
manufactured provenance, in so far as they impinge upon and determine
its intended and actual function. And in so far as the purpose or the
function of an artefact is fundamentally social, and consequently
relational, its nature cannot be determined by its essence. There
remains the possibility that the nature of property is relational.
But no relation that subsists in rebus can outspan or outlast any of
its terms. Therefore it is impossible for the Lockean propertarian
principle to entitle a spatiotemporally finite and bounded human
being, to enjoy a spatiotemporally infinite and unbounded, because
potentially terminal, dominion over any naturally enduring though
artificially exhaustible resources.
>>>>But apply the same principle to owning
>>>>tokens of mass production, whose eventual scarcity inexorably arises
>>>>as the consequence of contemporaneous disregard for their ubiquity,
>>>>and you find yourself on a slippery slope favoring responsible and
>>>>conditional stewardship over absolute and categorical ownership.
>>>Like the stewardship exercised over the steak now making its way
>>>through your intestines?
>>Alas, we never seem to get away from the perennial problem of waste
>>disposal. So tell me already: as its absolute and categorical
>>owner, do you eliminate yonder steak (a) in your pants; (b) in the
>>commode; or (c) in the town square? For extra credit, try to
>>explain the moral basis of any permanent relation between a
>>spatiotemporally bounded human subject and his similarly limited
>>designated human successors, and indefinitely enduring dry goods.
>I pick (b). And I expect full credit for that answer even though I
>am not wearing pants. The point, such as it was, was that there are
>some things that we must destroy utterly in course of using them
>(black gold, Texas tea is another example), which doesn’t jibe so
>well with your “conditional stewarship” line.
Your point came through the first time around. The problem had to do
with its irrelevancy. The cases of a pound of meat or a galon of gas
are simply not very problematic in the context of questioning the
basis of categorical entitlement to vast inequities of ownership.
Consider instead the case of the beef rancher who selectively breeds
his cattle to produce milk that cures cancer. The U.S. constitutional
law, in its infinite wisdom, allows him the option of protecting his
property rights to the ensuing genotype for a limited period of time
that enables him to parlay his monopoly on embodying that intangible
into an accumulation of tangible goods, which subsequently get
gradually confiscated from him through the graces of the publican.
That is the modal case of property acquisition, possession, and
transfer that I wish to address.
>>>>>>Locke's definitive treatment of property is an embarrassing
>>>>>>hodgepodge of wishful rationalization of rapaciousness qualified
>>>>>>by bashful communitarian hedging that renders the ensuing theory
>>>>>>utterly useless for underwriting a sound political principle.
>>>>>Again, one's metaphilosophical views will determine what one
>>>>>expects from a theory.
>>>>Again, one's metaphilosophical views need not encompass anything
>>>>more substantial than adherence to bare logical principle, to rule
>>>>out the notion of categorical property rights.
>>>I don't see it. Can you make it simpler?
>>Simpler than steak? How could I?
>I am available to instruct you in simplicity. Ask about our
>reasonable Individual and group rates.
As I pointed out above, no universalia in rebus could outspan or
outlast the extension or duration of their terms. What is so
complicated about that?
>>>>>>>>>And I propose that any debt-beleaguered country proclaim in
>>>>>>>>>all legal finery that henceforth the chickens minted out of
>>>>>>>>>its Treasury Department shall be equal in value to $25
>>>>>>>>>billion U.S. Let it be an experiment of the sheer
>>>>>>>>>governmental power to establish value.
>>>>>>>>You are well behind the times. The exchange value of frozen
>>>>>>>>chicken legs has been thoroughly solidified by the Bush
>>>>>>>>administration in its Eighties trades with the USSR.
>>>>>>>If so, I expect the actual value, like Thoreau's jailhouse
>>>>>>>musings, slipped right through the bars and out into the world
>>>>>>>without let or hindrance.
>>>>>>Some people argue that Bush's chicken legs delivered the
>>>>>>ideological coup de grÁce to the Evil Empire, thereby
>>>>>>accruing the lion's share of credit for the Western victory in
>>>>>>the Cold War. How do you set the fair value of that outcome?
>>>>>Beat's me.
>>>>In other words, you no longer expect the actual value to slip out
>>>>into the world without let or hindrance.
>>>The Western victory is worth whatever the West was prepared to pay
>>>for it. If they got it for cheaper than that, that's called getting
>>>a good bargain.
>>Don't be so harsh on yourself. The value of your life and limb is
>>nowise limited by your wherewithal in bailing it out of adversity.
>>Otherwise Might would be the only conceivable basis of Good.
>Germane here is the pretium/dignitas distinction, picked up by Kant
>and carried forward by him. The Western victory, being a state of
>affairs and not an agent can only have the former. This is the sense
>of value or worth that is relevant to this discussion
As you note, Kant argues that in the kingdom of ends everything has a
price or a dignity. Admittedly, it would be absurd to claim that a
mere state of affairs had an intrinsic dignity. But in as much as a
political state of affairs can enable autonomous agents to realize
their dignity, or prevent them from doing so, its human value can be
meaningfully correlated with your second sense.
>>>>>>>>>One more thing: it's not quite "my" minimal state. Although
>>>>>>>>>I should say that although a Nozickian-flavored system
>>>>>>>>>remains the most appetizing of the political philosophies
>>>>>>>>>that I've seen to date, that's not exactly a ringing
>>>>>>>>>endorsement given the alternatives. It also seems to me that
>>>>>>>>>whereas the libertarian impulse, when pushed to its extremes,
>>>>>>>>>cannot be approved, the egalitarian impulse, when pushed to
>>>>>>>>>its extremes, is flat out ugly and exhibits a loathsomeness
>>>>>>>>>of soul.
>>>>>>>>In view of property being theft, I can see exactly what you
>>>>>>>>mean. Funny how Nozick quotes Proudhon only where it suits
>>>>>>>>him.
>>>>>>>That's SOP.
>>>>>>A short-sighted one, to be sure. Take away the decision-
>>>>>>theoretic trappings (so where would you place them as a
>>>>>>political counterpart of Dana Scott's analogy of Champagne and
>>>>>>Coca-Cola as the respective emblems of mathematical substance in
>>>>>>quantum and modal logic?)
>>>>>You've put your finger on that aspect of the work which will
>>>>>(would?) most hamper its appreciation decades hence.
>>>>See the ageometretos prevail in the long run? Or do you expect
>>>>the mathematical standard of decades hence to surpass Johnny &
>>>>Oscar's naive premisses of human motivation?
>>>Not quite. It's just that the writing seems overly smitten with
>>>that kind of patter, and lacks the timeless seeming appeal of a
>>>true classic.
>>A tendentious young man's book, and so far its author's best.
>No argument here.
>>>>>>and Nozick will not be able to hold a candle to Proudhon in
>>>>>>integrity, insight, and incision.
>>>>>>>>>>>>Consider another example: Soros shorting the pound sterling
>>>>>>>>>>>>and the ringgit to enrich himself and precipitate economic
>>>>>>>>>>>>turmoil in Great Britain and Malaysia.
>>>>>>>>>>>Again, out of my depth.
>>>>>>>>>>A simple point: one's holding and moving a substantial
A good one. Did you get it from Church? Note that it works better
with a prefatory disclaimer in a scholarly tome than it does with a
sincerely held belief, being that minds, unlike books, are always
subject to instant revision.
>Perhaps one ought not deduce too far, lest one deduce an explicit
>contradiction (tres disconcerting, as the schoolgirls say, he-he).
>But also because the justification for each conclusion grows ever
>weaker, or so say some. Rock solid types among them (though it's
>always probabilities and likelihoods with these gentlemen, so you
>likely wouldn't cotton to them).
>
>Regarding consistency in moral and political philosophy generally, I
>wouldn't be at all surprised if human moral consciousness was at
>bottom inconsistent (for example, eschewing utilitarian
>considerations when the stakes are small, but then importing them
>back in when something big is at stake). In which case a good moral
>theory ought to mirror that inconsistency.
This is bad news in view of ex falso quodlibet, whereby you align
yourself with the old man of the mountain: a contradiction implies
that nothing is true, whence everything is permitted.
>>>>>>Pop quiz: is it morally [relevant/permissible/commendable] to
>>>>>>treat each and every instance of human interaction as exemplifying
>>>>>>economic exchange? Why or why not?
>>>>>It doesn't seem plausible; picture a touching scene of babe at
>>>>>mum's breast or something.
>>>>Some say mum's merely securing herself in her dotage.
>>>Mums are generally less foolish than that.
>>And yet most mums come to depend on their offspring in their dotage.
>>Attend to your Social Security taxes for palpable corroboration.
>And yet it is a dependency largely of their own making, since
>investing for the next thirty-five years or so all of the resources
>spent on the child would obviate the later need.
I heard Tom Waits suggest that mum should take time with the babe
because somebody else took time with her. Fancy the span of the
Categorical Imperative.
I doubt that you can make a moral distinction of situations falling
across your pass. But feel free to look at Unger and give it a try.
>[...]
Relational to the needs of homo sapiens sapiens, to be sure. Or are
you claiming that their worth is relative to individual human wants?
It is that last claim that I denounce as irrationalism.
>>>>>>>My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
>>>>>>>with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
>>>>>>>considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am always
>>>>>>>willing to learn otherwise.
>>>>>>I thought that we had covered that in
>>>>>>http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=466255241&fmt=text.
>>>>>OK. I'm mulling it over. This presents a wider conception of
>>>>>commutative justice than my earlier crack was aiming at.
>>>>Keep us posted.
>>>Absolutely.
>>Nu?
>Not yet. Incredibly busy, super busy, killer busy.
>It's frikkin killing me.
And how does that make you different from anyone else worth talking to?
Paul M. Johnson
>Paul M. Johnson <aug...@micron.net> wrote:
>>zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny) wrote:
>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul M. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Paul Ilechko wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>John Boston <johnboston@not_monticello.net> wrote:
>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>[...]
>
[...]
If Locke intends by the "others" in the proviso every human
that ever shall walk the Earth, then I repudiate him and have
no interest in defending his principle, and there's an end to
it. It could be no part of a sound theory.
[...]
I'm actually liking this argument so far. It would seem that this
factor ought to be reflected in interest rates; it ought, then, to
be more expensive (in terms of rates) to borrow $100 million than
to borrow $100 thousand, when other factors are taken off the
table (such as the risk of non-repayment).
Since I intend this as a counterexample to your principle,
I want it as innocuous as possible--no dumping. Here's
an even better example. Manufacturer M produces 64 Meg
DRAM, and has, let us say, 100,000 unsold chips in
inventory, each worth $10 on the spot market. Now
Manufacturer S holds a press conference and announces
that, effective immediately, three of its fabs will be
switching from logic devices and assorted foundry hoo-ha
to DRAM. By the end of the day, the spot price average
on 64 Meg DRAM is down to $6.50. So here we have all
the elements: manufacturer M has taken a measurable
hit, brought about through the agency of manufacturer
S. Now you bring in a further hurdle to jump over. Okay,
it looks to me like the first three conditions of the DDE
are satisfied. All that remains is the fourth--"there must
be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the bad
effect". Is that satisfied?
[...]
I don't think we have any reason to expect this sort of
relationship between these sorts of variables. Let's say
your thesis is that as the concentration of wealth increases,
some other cost also increases (the cost of maintaining
societal security, say). But the situation where I'm one
of the mondo richies and you are one of the peasants
is mathematically indistinguishable from the situation
in which these roles are reversed. The formalization
abstracts from the haecceities of those involved. This
can only be successful if our activities are fully
determined by our species-nature.
>Granted that no such analysis is as yet available,
>your position still depends on the improbable (because irrationalist)
>prognosis of its permanent lack.
What do I need to do to avoid this appellation? Swear
by the principle of sufficient reason? There is another
alternative which can hardly be deemed irrationalist, but
which rules out your looked for mathematization: suppose
our activities were determined by our individual natures.
Then we still avoid the existence of any brute facts, but
the mathematical analysis you foresee would not be
possible, since outcomes would depend on *which*
people were put into which circumstances. At best, there
would be huge lookup tables--no pretty equations.
[...]
The victim has been wronged despite his decision, and despite
his reaction to the thief. A decision to relinquish property is
not a relinquishing of property--we have various rituals to
accomplish that. To take the property prior to that wrongs
both the victim as well as society, which is thereby made
less secure.
Either the proviso to leave enough, and as good, for others,
allows us to use the prevailing standards of the time for
judging the quality of the resource in question, and, again,
only to the benefit of existing human beings (and perhaps
not even the ones living great distances from the resource--
this will depend on the modes of travel available at the
time), or else I and it part company.
Agreed that a resource that no longer exists is no longer
owned, and that a person that no longer exists, no longer
owns anything. If to admit that is to admit that our dominion
over resources is not infinite and unbounded nor absolute
and categorical, then I hereby admit this. I can't see
that I've given up anything of substance.
And the one that I been vainly struggling to banish, as it
is not a fundamental sort of case, as patents, copyrights,
trademarks, and such, form a sort of uncertain and unclear
extension of the basic institution (which is the ownership
of concrete particulars). And I have no present ambitions
to come to the defence of this extension were it to come
under withering attack.
[...]
As far as I know, the debate over rational inconsistency
wasn't launched in a serious way until Henry Kyburg's
discovery of the lottery paradox--around 1960. (A nice
path into how the debate was progressing by the late 60's
is _Induction, Acceptance, and Rational Belief_, Swain,
ed., which contains Kyburg's nice paper "Conjunctivitis".)
John Pollock wrote several papers in the 80's which take
up the issue, but it's been seven years since I followed
the literature--God knows what they're coming out with
these days; "non-monotonicity" was coming into fashion
as I was leaving.
The upshot would seem to be that deductive inference
has a very limited role to play where non-mathematical
beliefs are involved. In general it will not be rational
to accept the deductive consequences of one's rationally
accepted beliefs (excluding the case where one draws out
the consequences of a single rationally accepted premise).
Ack! A nice example of surprising and powerful results
flowing out of quite elementary considerations. Consider,
for instance, that the probability that the conjunction of
two statistically independent events (each individually
having a probability of occurence of .9) occur will be the
product of their individual probabilities--in this case .81.
String seven of these events together and the probability
drops below .5. That really suggests it all.
>>Perhaps one ought not deduce too far, lest one deduce an explicit
>>contradiction (tres disconcerting, as the schoolgirls say, he-he).
>>But also because the justification for each conclusion grows ever
>>weaker, or so say some. Rock solid types among them (though it's
>>always probabilities and likelihoods with these gentlemen, so you
>>likely wouldn't cotton to them).
>>
>>Regarding consistency in moral and political philosophy generally, I
>>wouldn't be at all surprised if human moral consciousness was at
>>bottom inconsistent (for example, eschewing utilitarian
>>considerations when the stakes are small, but then importing them
>>back in when something big is at stake). In which case a good moral
>>theory ought to mirror that inconsistency.
>
>This is bad news in view of ex falso quodlibet, whereby you align
>yourself with the old man of the mountain: a contradiction implies
>that nothing is true, whence everything is permitted.
Well, I guess what I was suggesting is not so much inconsistency
in the formal sense as what is going on in the rules of "Fizz-bin":
the player to the dealer's left bids first--except on Tuesday, etc.,
(but without such a clear-cut application). Or perhaps the best
moral theory just has to take the following form: "In moral
decision-making, one ought to take the following factors into
consideration..." followed by a list, followed by a few general
considerations on how to weight the factors against each other.
But that's it. It would admittedly be a "hodge-podge", but maybe
any theory that wasn't a hodge-podge must die the death of a
thousand counterexamples. I am thinking here of Utilitarianism
and Kant's moral theory (surely the best effort that normative
ethics has seen) as approaches which latch onto one or another
of the most weighty considerations and make it into everything.
I don't have to look at Unger. Leaving logical considerations
aside, the primary method of refuting ethical theories is by
counterexample. This presumes that we already know, at least
in many cases, how to make moral judgements. Ordinary human
moral consciousness is what constrains moral theorizing. Pre-
theoretic moral beliefs are the phenomena that the theory is
supposed to be saving, and explaining. Thus, the *fact* that
the moral urgency of coming to the aid of others in trouble
wanes with distance can be taken as established; what
remains is how to get it into the theory and how to explain
why it is so. It does seem rather puzzling why it should be
so. I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that
people have a life to live and that that is, justifiably, their
primary business.
Setting aside some complications, the high bidder determines
what something is worth.
I understand by "rationalism" either the doctrine that the mind
has the capacity to grasp or apprehend various necessary
truths concerning the nature of reality, or else the doctrine
that for any event that happens, there is a reason why it
happened. You must have something else in mind?
>>>>>>>>My Cam-Dic-Phil gives commutative justice as concerning itself
>>>>>>>>with the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. I had
>>>>>>>>considered this an activity for base poltroons, but I am always
>>>>>>>>willing to learn otherwise.
>
>>>>>>>I thought that we had covered that in
>>>>>>>http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=466255241&fmt=text.
I'm pasting some of that in here:
MZ:
"Following Aristotle and Aquinas, it is customary to distinguish
commutative justice, which deals with the relations that arise between
individuals, between individuals and groups, and between groups that
comprise any given community, from distributive justice, which deals
with the overarching relation of that community as a whole to all of
its constituent individuals and groups. The principle of distributive
justice, of treating equals equally and unequals unequally, always in
proportion to their relevant differences, allots to each individual
and group a fair share of the common resources that their society has
to divide. By contrast, commutative justice, in aiming to preserve
the fairness of antecedently allotted shares, concerns itself with
proper restitution or compensation that rectifies undue differences
caused by an injury between parties assumed to have been equals prior
to it. It does so by balancing the harm that resulted from said
injury through forcing the offender to pay something of value back to
his victim, so that their former equality may be restored. Which is
to say that the aim and scope of distributive justice is to establish,
maintain, and revise a social order that upholds some fixed principle
of fair allocation of goods to its constituents, whereupon the charter
of commutative justice becomes to apportion rewards to their merits,
and punishments to their crimes. Hence in keeping with its purpose,
commutative justice proceeds in accordance with an arithmetic mean,
requiring that one receives something of equal value to what one has
given or has taken from oneself; whereas distributive justice allows
that common goods be allotted according to a particular standard of
rank such as virtue, knowledge, wealth, power, expertise, need, and so
on, taking as its overall mean the equality of geometrical proportion
between the common goods subject to just distribution and the various
individuals and groups, who therefore need not be treated in exactly
the same way, with those designated with a greater or lesser ranking
receiving unique privileges or suffering unique disabilities, in an
arrangement meant to contribute to the well-being of the whole."
So far, so good.
MZ:
"Thus both Marx' maxim demanding "from each according to his ability,
to each according to his need", and Rawls' difference principle
requiring that "the social order is not to establish and secure the
more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to
the advantage of the less fortunate" belong to classical distributive
justice, in so far as they seek to place a perpetual constraint on the
outcome of the distribution of goods within a given social order."
I don't find the "perpetual" part in classical distributive justice.
There the task is to distribute (justly) to citizens goods which
are held in common. Depending upon how the state was founded,
this normally means land, water and mineral rights, and offices.
Once these goods are distributed, the task for distributive justice
is finished until some new goods come into the state's possession.
Normally, this won't happen until victory in war occurs, and then
there will be land, slaves, more offices, and assorted loot to
distribute. Then the distributive task goes dormant again. I've
never seen in the most authoritative ancient sources (i.e. Aristotle)
the notion that part of distributive justice is to *maintain* the
shares distributed in their same pattern. If a nobleman gambles
away his estate, shall the state restore it to him? I think not.
Patterned distributive principles which seek to maintain a
distribution over time and which sanction corrections
(redistribution) when individuals' holdings start to diverge
from the favored pattern do not belong to the classical tradition
as far as I can see.
