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- Apr 14, 2006
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I have a simple question for you Armor: Before you were born, what did you ever do to deserve any of the abilities or talents that you were born with? The answer is simple -- you did nothing to "earn" your abilities, just as those born with disabilities did nothing to "earn" their disabilities. You may have been the fortunate heir of good genes, but that is all it is -- good fortune, not merit.
Given that fundamental precept, it is not unfair to have a system that taxes some of the benefits flowing to the fortunate to ensure that the unfortunate have some minimally acceptable level of life. Rawls' "veil of ignorance" is a thought experiment that asks "if you could not know how you would be born (i.e. - you didn't know if you would be smart or dumb, athletic or physically disabled, majority or minority, etc.), what system would you choose?" Rational people would choose a system that does not end up with the unfortunate starving in the street.
To my mind, a fundamental flaw shared by libertarians is a complete inability to imagine that they might have been born as one of the less fortunate. Of course you will favor a system in which someone of your abilities will succeed once you know what those abilities are. But such ex post facto rationalization is hardly the way to choose a political and economic system.
I have cautioned before about setting up strawmen. I have never advocated equality of outcome, or communism if you will. In fact, I believe a system that forced equality of outcome would be absurd. I enjoy Kurt Vonnegut's short story Harrison Bergeron because it highlights just that absurdity. As others have correctly pointed out, intelligence, talent and ability alone do not make success; it is also necessary to work hard with the talents that we have been given. That is one of the faults of communism -- that it does not incentivize people to work hard. But you cannot deny that of two people who work exactly as hard as each other, the one with more talent will nearly always be more successful (not counting lucky breaks or other exogenous forces).
The primary point of my posts has been to encourage libertarians to look beyond the ends of their noses. There are real people, suffering real hardship in the world. Those people are, in a moral sense, no worse or no better than you. Certainly, through hard work, you have made optimal use of the talents you were given. But others can work equally hard and still not be as successful, because they do not have your abilities. To consign those others to metaphorically "starve in the street" because you want a system that places no tax on your own success is, in my view, wrong.
Given that fundamental precept, it is not unfair to have a system that taxes some of the benefits flowing to the fortunate to ensure that the unfortunate have some minimally acceptable level of life. Rawls' "veil of ignorance" is a thought experiment that asks "if you could not know how you would be born (i.e. - you didn't know if you would be smart or dumb, athletic or physically disabled, majority or minority, etc.), what system would you choose?" Rational people would choose a system that does not end up with the unfortunate starving in the street.
To my mind, a fundamental flaw shared by libertarians is a complete inability to imagine that they might have been born as one of the less fortunate. Of course you will favor a system in which someone of your abilities will succeed once you know what those abilities are. But such ex post facto rationalization is hardly the way to choose a political and economic system.
I have cautioned before about setting up strawmen. I have never advocated equality of outcome, or communism if you will. In fact, I believe a system that forced equality of outcome would be absurd. I enjoy Kurt Vonnegut's short story Harrison Bergeron because it highlights just that absurdity. As others have correctly pointed out, intelligence, talent and ability alone do not make success; it is also necessary to work hard with the talents that we have been given. That is one of the faults of communism -- that it does not incentivize people to work hard. But you cannot deny that of two people who work exactly as hard as each other, the one with more talent will nearly always be more successful (not counting lucky breaks or other exogenous forces).
The primary point of my posts has been to encourage libertarians to look beyond the ends of their noses. There are real people, suffering real hardship in the world. Those people are, in a moral sense, no worse or no better than you. Certainly, through hard work, you have made optimal use of the talents you were given. But others can work equally hard and still not be as successful, because they do not have your abilities. To consign those others to metaphorically "starve in the street" because you want a system that places no tax on your own success is, in my view, wrong.