How conservative are you?
Dave
I think income redistribution is (largely but not completely) wrong. I think the problems of sexism against women and racism against people who aren't white and Jewish are generally very overstated, or at least overstated by vocal political minorities who can overcome indifferent majorities, and government and institutional policies reflect this (family law, much affirmative action, contracting quotas, "wage gap" advocacy, etc.). I think legal color-blindness generally minimizes errors relative to color-consciousness. I think we have too much rather than too little economic protectionism and favoritism.
I do believe in principle that details matter (duh!), but many of my disagreements with median liberal opinion are stark enough that small differences in the specifics either of the policies or the world wouldn't make a difference.
Me
I have similar instincts, but I'm not confident enough in my knowledge of even the big picture (e.g., how bad these -isms are) to take a general stand.
What do you think we should we do about kids who are born poor and culturally disadvantaged?
Dave
I think I find "equality of opportunity" appealing. I think the battle for good public education is worth fighting. I especially like the class of arguments for good public schooling that emphasize the divergent interests of parent and child; I think these form a strong libertarian case for public schooling (I don't know if anyone has bothered to put it that way).
That's only a partial answer, though, because (arguably) it's possible for kids to be irredeemably fucked by their home lives (etc.), or for public schooling to fail them by being really shitty. I think I'm for state support for the very worst off, but the more provocative question is whether (and if not why not?) this same logic operates over the whole spectrum of different starting positions. As between myself and Dave^1, an otherwise-identical version of myself whose parents owned only 10% as many books, are differences in outcomes unfair? Should they be remedied by the state? It does seem unfair. But I think it's hard to systematically disentangle differences that are unfair from those that are fair.
The question of which differences in starting position are unequal opportunities is at least somewhat tricky. What about Dave^2, an otherwise-identical version of myself who's (even) lazier(!) than I am? I don't think Dave^2 deserves the same outcomes as I do, though this conclusion doesn't feel like it has a utilitarian logic (one could be devised; I'm not sure how I feel about this). And Dave^3, an otherwise-identical version of myself who's significantly dumber than I am -- are differences between his outcomes and mine unjust, at least insofar as he'd prefer to be closer to my outcomes? Some would say yes, some would say no, I think. I would summarize differences like those between Dave^2 and myself as differences in character (that does sound conservative!). I guess my anti-redistribution position grows largely out of the feeling that differences in outcome that correspond to differences in character are fair, and that those differences account for a large share of observed differences in outcome.
PS notwithstanding all the grappling above, I think it's easy to reach the conclusion that even the massively underprivileged should not be admitted to Amherst College, unless they demonstrate levels of proficiency similar to those required for the median student. The median student ain't even that bright.
PPS (Why the median student? I sorta figured the bottom of the class is crowded with special cases right now, and so not exemplary of good admissions standards.)
Me
I'm also committed to equality of opportunity; I suspect (hope) that the vast majority of people are and that disagreements are really about what meat to put on the concept's bones. The issue isn't ensuring equality but rather how much inequality is optimal (it's okay if only some kids get violin lessons).
I wish there were a good way of publicly addressing bad home lives/bad socialization. It seems that good public education and maybe a national propaganda campaign (to put it cynically) are the best we could do.
My off-the-cuff answer to your "more provocative question" is that we simply have to make a value judgment about where to make the trade-off between equity and efficiency -- hence common arguments in favor of a "right" to (a certain amount of, but no more) education, food, etc. It's also important to keep in mind that redistribution does not necessarily entail pie shrinkage; it provides social benefits such as crime control and the productivity of disadvantaged achievers who would otherwise have failed (especially if public funds are skewed towards promoting particularly productive achievement such as engineering degrees). Of course, there are borderline cases, but Dave^1 clearly has enough opportunity such that publicly providing for him would not be in the optimal basket of public expenditure; we'd be eating the harms of socialism at that point. It's also true that some people who don't have enough opportunity have character defects that render publicly lifting them up unproductive ex post, but that's a price that we've got to pay.
Given inadequate public assistance for the disadvantaged, institutions face the problem of identifying who would succeed if given the opportunity, and whether providing the opportunity would be worth it. This is of course difficult and depends on a given institution's values/purpose. This would be easier and largely obviated if there were effective public assistance from day one.
What about the simple fact that Dave^2 hasn't demonstrated as much proficiency as you but could have (so what if it would have been really hard -- see my discussion with Tarun on moral culpability)? His worse outcome encourages people to work hard and follows from allowing institutions to select for proficiency -- seems like good utilitarian logic. I don't get the point of Dave^3. Okay, he lost the genetic lottery. But his outcome is fair if he had enough of a chance to be all that he could be.
As for Amherst, I think underprivileged students should be given a bit of a leg up, especially if there are factors that suggest that they would readily thrive in a land of opportunity (obvious example: someone who did worse in high school just because she had to work two jobs, assuming this cause can be isolated). (Perhaps your [academically] median student point sufficiently accounts for this, since the median is lowered by athletic admitees and the like.) But I agree that Amherst is not the place for significantly unprepared applicants, no matter how unfair their unpreparedness. It's bad for the range of academic ability among students at an elite educational institution to be too big.
Dave
I'm in a bit of a hurry and don't have time to reply fully. Here are some disjointed thoughts:
I don't think you're engaging the Dumb Dave^3 hypo. Your "okay, he lost the genetic lottery" assumes the conclusion at "okay." Why is it fair for someone to suffer worse outcomes for losing the genetic lottery? (Especially if it's not fair for someone to suffer worse outcomes for losing the social lottery?) Is this true for any case of losing the genetic lottery? You offer a utilitarian rationalization for this in the Dave^2 hypo (even if laziness is not necessarily genetic), but it's a justification that's specific to laziness / work ethic and doesn't cover the gamut of genetic lottery outcomes.
I think your response to the Lazy Dave^2 hypo suffers from a similar infirmity.
If I may free-associate in the guise of summarizing, I think you're relying heavily on unexamined notions of "could have": It's fair for society to treat Lazy Dave^2 worse because he "could have" worked harder; what does that mean? This can probably be boiled down to a pure utilitarian point, but is that what you meant? I think if you look closely at these "could have" intuitions, you'll find yourself at the notion of "character" I outline above, and the rough conclusion that it's okay to allow differences in outcome when they are explained by differences in character.
Of course, I broadly agree with your actual social-policy suggestions.
Anyway, gotta run, more later.
PS Of course, as Kaplow & Shavell show in their tautological book, giving any concern to "fairness" that's not completely anchored in utilitarianism fails to maximize utility. That compels one of just a few ways of resolving the interplay between fairness and utility here; I'm not sure which I choose.
PPS another class of redistribution I think I disapprove: Devoted Dave^4 graduates law school and decides to do "public interest" working, earning total pre-tax income of well under what Dave will make (inshallah); Devoted Dave^4 is subsidized by the government at the expense of Dave.
Me
I think you're needlessly complicating things. I agree with your "rough conclusion;" it seems to follow from the concepts of personal responsibility and equality of opportunity. Let me try to clear up my position.
Genetics are a built-in constraint (as of now) on opportunity; social environment is not. Dave^3 shouldn't starve if he's too dumb to earn a living, but it's okay if his stupidity keeps his standard of living below yours. True, this is no more "fair" than socially-induced inequality, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that the latter kind of inequality can be remedied to some extent; we can give Dave^3 books, but we can't up his INT.
To put it differently, everyone should be guaranteed a basic quality of life, regardless of opportunity concerns. (We have to assume that people who seem capable of providing themselves with a basic quality of life but refuse to either can't, are irrational, or both, not to mention the externalities they create.) This ensures that the losers of life's lotteries don't lose too badly (fairness rationale, though not necessarily pie-shrinking). Then we should consider public assistance to create equality of opportunity (equity rationale, no conceptual conflict with efficiency). Social lottery losers (such as the poor) are obviously a better target than genetic lottery losers (such as the dumb) because we can help them reach their potential; we can actually redress their inequality and possibly get a good return on our investment.
Regarding Dave^4, I presume you're okay with the "subsidization" resulting from progressive taxation. That said, I share your anti-subsidy inclination, but I worry about market failures. By the way, do you think donations to non-profit organizations should be tax deductible? (What if we could perfectly and costlessly identify which organizations serve the "public interest?") Might this policy promote efficiency by avoiding the transactions costs of government redistribution? (Or did I stop making sense?)
To be continued in the comments...
6 comments:
This discussion is now so large that I can't (given present time constraints) come close to corralling all the loose ends. For now, I have to hope that most of my positions are obvious from what I've said so far.
However, Alan, I do think you are making a general error. I don't think the immutability of intelligence (or choose your favorite genetic advantage) does the work you want it to.
Your position is that social disadvantages are changeable, so we should try to change them; by a similar argument, we shouldn't and can't try to change genetic disadvantages. "We can give Dave^3 books, but we can't up his INT." But once Dave^3 has grown up without books, the disadvantage is immutable -- you can't go back in time and give him books. At this point, the no-books disadvantage is indistinguishable from a genetic intelligence deficit, at least by the standards of your argument.
Since we can't go back in time, do we choose a next-best solution that involves helping out the present Dave^3? Do we just "guarantee [him] a basic quality of life," presumably low compared to what he could have achieved with more starting advantages? If that's your position, fine (and I probably agree). But I think many people would say, Dave^3's life prospects shouldn't be so thoroughly determined by morally arbitrary facts like how many books his parents wanted / could afford, and we should remedy that by somehow estimating what he could have achieved and giving him that (or, equivalently, roughly equalizing outcomes for people who differ only in morally arbitrary dimensions). Maybe you think that's not advisable because socialism is inefficient. (But how inefficient does it have to be to justify your position?)
The place where this ties back into the main discussion is the question, what kinds of starting advantages should be smoothed out retroactively? I'm suggesting that the proffered distinction between genetic intelligence differences (don't smooth em out) and social background differences (smooth em out) is not well defended.
Fair enough. To me it's clear that we should treat victims of immutable disadvantages equally, whatever the cause. It would be arbitrary, speculative, and costly to award victims of environmental disadvantages payouts for unrealized potential; they don't deserve more than those whose potential is genetically limited. The only coherent socialist approach is "roughly equalizing outcomes for [all] people who differ only in morally arbitrary dimensions." Needless to say, on efficiency grounds I prefer my approach of guaranteeing a basic quality of life and equality of opportunity ("meaningful opportunity" is probably a better term). Keep in mind that in reality this approach still entails more benefits for victims of environmental disadvantages because these disadvantages are usually not completely immutable or all-or-nothing. For example, a 10-year-old who hasn't had "enough" books can still benefit from more books even though he has irreparably lost some opportunity (relative to if he had enough books from day one). But we should not provide him with even more benefits to compensate for the lost opportunity.
The difficult question is when to hold people (or the state) responsible for immutably disadvantaging someone. How much child-rearing discretion should the state give to parents? Should we distinguish between immutable disadvantages caused by parental choice (e.g., rich technophobic parents) and those resulting from parental constraints (e.g., parents who couldn't afford a computer)? My gut rails against practices such as raising kids Amish, but my head tells me that greater state control is its own can of worms; the real problem is that people are born babies.
I can reinforce one of my original points by questioning whether you would really "treat victims of immutable disadvantages equally, whatever the cause." What about the immutable characters of being lazier, more impulsive, more violent, more venal and so on? If (e.g.) someone is born with their traits, it hardly seems their fault: in this sense they are morally arbitrary just like genetic intelligence.
In at least some of these cases, you can respond that society has to (in effect at least) punish the behavioral manifestations of these traits, to avoid encouraging destructive behavior. But the result of this stance is to hold some people disproportionately responsible for the well-being of everyone for morally arbitrary reasons, like being born impulsive. Why is it morally acceptable to impoverish someone (relatively speaking) for being born lazy? You can explain why it's efficient in some sense, but why is it fair to hurt these particular people so society will be more efficient?
The arbitrariness you identify is inescapable; everyone is significantly shaped by factors beyond their control. Life's not fair, and any serious attempt to make it so through redistribution would destroy too much value.
Victims of immutable character defects, unlike victims of defective upbringings, have some control over the manifestation of their defects, so I don't generally feel as bad about their victimization. Venal Vernor can choose not to accept bribes (though it may be exceptionally difficult for him), but Dave^1 can't do anything about the fact that his childhood library was suboptimally stocked. Practically, Vernor's venality may put an upper bound on his integrity akin to the upper bound of genetic intelligence. But he does have a choice, and if he's reasonable he has a second-order desire not to be venal.
We are all just prisoners here.
(I think equality of opportunity is too problematic a concept -- however appealing it sounds -- to be useful, for the reasons Dave outlines. I also think most of our intuitions about desert are crap in practice. On the other hand I do think the redistribution of wealth is fair to the rich (leaving aside whether it's a good policy idea) as long as government is more sustainably efficient than vigilantes at enforcing property rights. Progressive taxes are a relatively cheap way of buying off insurrections.
BTW, Dave, do you think busing is unfair?)
Re busing: I'm not sure.
But it's certainly possible to draw a case for busing in terms consistent with the other arguments I've made. Think of it as prophylaxis against unfair discrimination in the quality of public schools.
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