February 8, 2005
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TOPIC: THE HEART OF DEBATE
Why will intelligent people come do 1000 different views. Say you had 2 equally smart people, one one a liberal, one a conservative (let’s not nit-pick on the terms for now). On Social security, on tax policy, on the economy, foreign policy, you name it, you’ll get 2 different views. How can this be?
I’m a liberal. If I were to debate a conservative who knew more than me, it would seem they would twist me in knots. However, if we move beyond the academic, beyond facts, dates, statistics, and policy, there is an underlying thesis of human nature and society that underlies each side. And as they begin to reveal itself, we can begin to have a fair debate about those underlying things. This debate is the heart of all other political debates, because given the same objective history, economics data, and news, the varying views about the heart, will result in varying views in everything else.
As I said…people on both sides will have all sorts of different interpretations of the world, and as we try to one-up each other with facts and figures, I’ve come to realize what it is that makes us unable to look at social problems such as unemployment, poverty, the environment, etc. and work together towards a solution.
The following comment by Craigramblings led me to this line of thought:
“Being poor alone is not merit. Being poor and unlucky is not merit. Being poor, talented, and hard working is a person with merit in crappy circumstances.A lot of people can be down, but from what I observe, those with merit can live in a spartan fashion and overcome adversity. In societies where the government takes care of people, there are still homeless on the streets. There will always be the extremely unfortunate whose lives cannot be helped. Then there are those that can be helped, but because their lives can be helped, they also have the ability to help themselves. I believe a society that stresses the ability of the individual will in the end have the most individuals living to how they want and choose and to me, this is the ultimate success. Social programs and spending hinders this, such as FDR’s new deal.”
So…now it becomes easier to see why one person sees FDR as a hero, and one sees him as a villain, and why one person would see Ronald Reagan as a villain, and one would see him as a hero. It’s not as simple as addressing poverty. It’s the way you do it that counts. I liken this to parenting. Some people spank their kids, some would never. Is one right? (oddly…when I watched Meet the Falkers, I couldn’t help but think about this. Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro are a perfect model for the differences between liberals and conservatives. Now how about that for a college thesis!!!)
Anyways…here were my thoughts:
It seems a person cannot separate their views on human nature and society, from their theoretical views on government. It sounds like you would be in favor for welfare for those who were poor, but also talented and hard working. Would you support welfare if it were designed in a way that fit your moral views on govt? I agree…people can get by on very little and in difficult conditions, and I agree, that people can still throw it all away and end up on the streets. But…isn’t there another moral element that says we should take care of even those who won’t take care of themselves? Should we not still try to care for the homeless, trouble-making kids, etc. and at least give them some reason to look forward to waking up each day. Or…do we say, “if they really didn’t want to be homeless, they’d do something about it themselves.” Or…do we say, “if they really didn’t want to be going to juevenile hall, they’d have done their homework and passed school like they were supposed to.”
Libertarians i believe would say…”individuals can choose to use their private wealth to help others, they should not be forced to do so through the gov’t.” However…take the tsunami for example…many people gave money, but people are altruistic to a point, gov’t aid is then able to play are large role in aiding crises. Also…in some ways, the government represents a country. That’s why people around the world hate America…not because of the people, who have displayed their generosity, but because the gov’t has not always acted in such ways. The gov’t represents the people. What message does it send if the gov’t doesn’t help its poor? I guess it’s a question of what kind of parent to be. In some ways…the spartan way works to toughen people up and make them hard-working. Everyman for themselves, rugged individualism. That works if that’s what you believe. But…if you view a country as a collective whole similar to a family, then letting people go hungry would be like letting your own children starve because they didn’t take care of themselves.
Also…when you’re surrounded by poverty, it’s harder to rise above it. There’s reasons poor schools do worse than schools w/ money.
When I was in S. Africa, i worked for a gov’t funded program that helped poor young adults develop important life skills such as self-reliance, perseverance, compassion…and after my program, they went to another gov’t funded program to teach them job skills, welding, mechanic, tailoring…My students were poor, and many had made bad decisions to do drugs, join gangs, steal, etc. Were my students not merited to receive gov’t help because of the type of people they were? I found…all my students were capable of doing amazing things, if provided with the right opportunity. Growing up in poverty, the only opportunity that they had was to join a gang. Do I think they deserved a check w/ no strings attached, “NO”, and that’s probably why conservatives are anti social-programs, but, if done properly, social programs are the only opportunity these people have to rise out of poverty. As the last post on my site shows, it’s easy to label a person, or an entire group of people, “lazy,” because of their actions, but it’s harder to look at how society may have created the conditions for those actions, and it’s even harder than that to look for solutions. I believe with the right kind of schools, plagiarism and laziness would never exist, because there’d be no grades, and work would be relevant to real life (and i’ve spoken to people who have created such schools). I also believe, w/ the right kind of gov’t programs, such as the gov’t funded program I will be working for this spring and summer, we can also help those people who are poor (and regardless of their work ethic may still need help), to succeed in life.
I think what you wrote here says something very important. Economics can be interpreted 1000 ways, and the same data can be spun 1000 ways (see the social security debates). What truly underlies those debates…is a vew of human nature, culture, and society. I think here I feel I can speak more comfortably, since it’s less a debate about history and economics, and comes down to personal opinion and values. I 100% disagree with Craig’s statement that the extremely unfortunate cannot be helped. This is a statement that has nothing to do w/ statistics, or policy, but just a belief about human nature. There’s a good book called “How to be Good,” by Nick Hornby, i read it a while ago, but it involes this middle-class guy adopting a homeless man off the street. Point being…if our culture cared for all human beings to the point where we did such things, we would do exactly what Craig says we cannot, which is to care for even the extremely unfortunate.
Then you say that those who can be helped, can also help themselves. What does this logic mean? example) A child is drowning in a pool. I can help him, therefore he is able to help himself, therefore I should not help him. Does that make sense? Rather, a person in need of help is in need of help for just that reason, they are unable to help themselves.
Your philosophy rests strongly on the ability of the individual, and the freedom to choose how to live. If you believe a person living in poverty (say they’re making $20,000/year) can use their individual ability to overcome their hardships and live their life as they choose, then a middle-class person who gets taxed (say they started w/ $60,000, and ended up w/ $50,000 after taxes), should be able to overcome the hardship of having some money taxed, and, like the person living in poverty, they should still be able to live how they want. Now…as you said, there are different types of people living in poverty, some who are hard-working, some who are not. If your definition of a successful society is one that has the most people who are able to live a life of their choosing, then your main concern should be with the poor. Clearly…the very rich, say those making $100,000+ a year, have virtually no hardships to overcome, and they can pretty much choose from a wide variety of lifestyles. Going back to our person in poverty, making $20,000/year, he could go either way. If he’s living in a poor neighborhood, odds are he may not rise above it, even if he is hard working. He may become a drop-out, and eventually a drug using homeless person, or he may start a successful business. So…to use your definition of a successful libertarian society, taxing the person making $100,000 so he ends up with $90,000 will not redcuce the number of individuals who live how they want and choose, while providing social programs to ensure our friend on the poverty line can rise above it, will increase the overall number of individuals who can pursue life as they wish.
Now…what thenarrator was probably getting at when he labeled conservatives as greedy, is the view that someone making, say, $100,000 and being taxed down to $90,000 is having his liberty infringed on, while creating a social program to aid someone in poverty, is unecessary, because any hard working person can get by on $20,000.
I believe this to be the heart of most political debate. What do you think?
Comments (3)
I think you’ve tapped into the basic issue. We are shaped by our experiences, and see the needs of the world based on that. I didn’t get a chance to answer your last post questions (work intervening) but let me try within this context.
(Warning at the start: Everyone gives examples, but within these arguments, they choose examples that meet pretty pre-conceived world views.) Now, when I say libertarian capitalism (craigramblings I suppose) or “corporate capitalism” (George W. Bush) are motivated by “greed not economic theory” I say that because “capitalism” as it has grown since Adam Smith (who would have strongly debated libertarians on the environmental issues) is, obviously, amoral. It is a system based in individual greed as the “sole motivator.” This is why London looked like it did to Dickens, why twenty thousand children slept buried in the hay barges in 1880s New York each night, why Enron behaved as they did with California consumers (no differently than the railroads did in America in 1890). This is indeed a moral issue. There are those in the world who think the child death rate in 1885 America was “simply the price of progress for society” (just as there are those who think the death rate in Stalinist Russia was acceptable for the same reason), and there are those who think that is unacceptable. That’s a human moral question: If you don’t have a society that cares for those adults that struggle the offspring of those who struggle must be eliminated or killed (Hitler), or be allowed to simply die themselves (JP Morgan, Ronald Reagan). If you can live with that, with say, the “right” of the person who has hoarded milk during a famine to take everything from the hungry in exchange for that milk, the “right” of Enron to shut down power plants during an electrical crisis, the “right” of Dow Chemical to sell poison cow feed while “letting the buyer beware,” you are a libertarian indeed, but my religious upbringing says additional things about you.
Now, again, there is the issue of what “freedom” and “democracy” mean. craigramblings can’t figure out why access to health care is important. But a European or Canadian can’t figure out how it is not an essential service. The funniest thing Bush has done this year is his claim that Social Security is unfair to blacks because they die sooner. Of course Bush is either too stupid to understand “average life expectancy” (which is unlikely) or he is deliberately lying, but the point is that the death rate for black children and teenagers is so extraordinarily higher than that for white children that it wildly skews this statistic. That’s not a “Social Security” issue, but it is an essential social security issue. The lack of consistent health care for poor Americans robs them of equal opportunity, sure (who are you more likely to hire? the applicant with no teeth and skin sores or the healthy looking one), but it literally robs them of life. I’d argue that if you can’t have access to medical care, to a reasonably equal education, to transportation that accesses those two things plus employment you have the freedom to starve, but not much else. I’d argue that without equality of opportunity you do not have democracy.
But you see, again, I’m seeing the world in one way (this is that unfathomable divide between Canadians and Americans). craigramblings thinks I’m stepping on his freedom, that I want the government to tell me what to do, and he believes I think the world is full of idiots, but I’m not a “Communist.” I’ve had friends who’ve grown up on true kibbutzim in Israel and while I admire that system (and those remain the world’s most efficient agricultural communities), that’s not for me. I am though, an absolute “Democratic Socialist.” I believe in public education, and because I believe in public education I think a black kid in Mississippi has as much right to a good education as a white kid in Scarsdale (otherwise, what’s the point?). I believe in a government that protects everyone’s health and safety (including universal health care). I believe in a government that builds roads for those who can sfford cars and trains and bus lines for those who can’t (otherwise, those who can’t afford cars will never be able to). I believe in government that insures that everyone who wants to sleep at night with a roof over their head has that roof (and maybe I just believe that because of the number of frozen corpses I’ve dealt with on winter mornings). None of this is radical. In the “industrialized world” far more people live under that system than live under ours. It does not eliminate creativity, human expression, or even the desire of some people to be wealthy (there do seem to be rich Germans, rich French, even rich Canadians; there are artists and inventors and all kinds of people in those nations). But it is indeed a moral choice. Europeans lived through Capitalism and chose a different way (at different times, the Germans tolerated capitalism for far less time than the Brits did). They did that not because they wanted to limit their freedom, but because they define “freedom” within a different moral context, through a different world view.
A few posts ago I tried to list the background for me views on history and economics. That included everything from religion (the Bible is pretty clear on government enforced “charity”) to education to experience (I’ve spent as much time in places people tend to describe as “hopeless” as most anyone I know). If you got similar statements from your other commentors, you might find the kind of patterns that reveal how these views tend to develop.
(And one last note: “If anyone working hard can get by on $20,000:” would that only be the case. The $6/hour, 36-hour week Wal-Mart employees around here gross $11,232 with no health insurance. If they combine that with 20 hours at McDonald’s for $5.50, they get to $16,952 for 52 weeks of 56 hours. They pay almost $1,300 in payroll taxes on that reducing their income to about $15,700. Subsidized two bedroom apartments in this area cost $7,200 per year usually without utilities (they usually pay for heat as well). Now, many on the right will claim that the person in this circumstance has no ambition, and isn’t working hard, and that her two kids get what they deserve (I suppose). And many on the right (obviously) are quite comfortable with the incredibly common situation I’ve just described (Wal-Mart can pay what they want, it’s not their or the government’s job to provide health care or child care), but I’m not. And yes, that’s a moral thing too.)
Being that we are tackling the majority of what you put forth hear in another discussion, I will leave it hear, but I will comment on two things.
“Would you support welfare if it were designed in a way that fit your moral views on govt? I agree…people can get by on very little and in difficult conditions, and I agree, that people can still throw it all away and end up on the streets. But…isn’t there another moral element that says we should take care of even those who won’t take care of themselves? Should we not still try to care for the homeless, trouble-making kids, etc. and at least give them some reason to look forward to waking up each day. Or…do we say, “if they really didn’t want to be homeless, they’d do something about it themselves.” Or…do we say, “if they really didn’t want to be going to juevenile hall, they’d have done their homework and passed school like they were supposed to.”…
When I was in S. Africa, i worked for a gov’t funded program that helped poor young adults develop important life skills such as self-reliance, perseverance, compassion…and after my program, they went to another gov’t funded program to teach them job skills, welding, mechanic, tailoring…My students were poor, and many had made bad decisions to do drugs, join gangs, steal, etc. Were my students not merited to receive gov’t help because of the type of people they were? I found…all my students were capable of doing amazing things, if provided with the right opportunity. Growing up in poverty, the only opportunity that they had was to join a gang. Do I think they deserved a check w/ no strings attached, “NO”, and that’s probably why conservatives are anti social-programs, but, if done properly, social programs are the only opportunity these people have to rise out of poverty. As the last post on my site shows, it’s easy to label a person, or an entire group of people, “lazy,” because of their actions, but it’s harder to look at how society may have created the conditions for those actions, and it’s even harder than that to look for solutions. I believe with the right kind of schools, plagiarism and laziness would never exist, because there’d be no grades, and work would be relevant to real life (and i’ve spoken to people who have created such schools). I also believe, w/ the right kind of gov’t programs, such as the gov’t funded program I will be working for this spring and summer, we can also help those people who are poor (and regardless of their work ethic may still need help), to succeed in life.”
As I have laid out, the role of the state as protector of property makes it concerned with chiefly and only market outcome. South Africa funded a program to mold better citizens that can save money and do work. That improves market outcome, no matter the fact it is government funded. Now, social security by no means helps market outcome, even my broad definition of it. Therefore, you are concerning govenrment with seperate roles.
And so, my other comment, what is the root of the disagreement of polar opposites?
To answer this let’s establish what these opposites are simply. Not republicans and democrats, or even libertarians and communists. As a libetarian that believes in the role of government soley that of protecting property, any sort of expansion on this short definition is immediately an opposite. The disagreement at its very base is whether it is right to limit the role of government purely to that of what I maintain is proper or otherwise.
These are two different mindsets. One believes in a maximum outcome in its totality and for every individual who takes advantage of the increased oppurtunities available to them. The other believes that maximum outcome is not that of property (being money, land, ideas, the distinct amount of air one breaths every day), but that of creating a kind of equity. IF people can be rich beyond belief, the poorest of the poor better always have food to eat and a roof over their head. And while you are at it, how about equal access to all levels of education? And retirement accounts so they will not starve when they are out of work? Or medical care so that they are not only nourished, but taken care of when they are sick?
One belief emphasizes outcomes for the individual and the other emphasizes minimal standards for people (which are ever changing with societal standards and technology) at the expense of the individual. That’s why once the other deviates ever so slightly, they immediately become polar opposites. One sacrifices the individual for an idea of the whole and one sacrifices the idea of the whole for the sake of every individual.
I am personally convinced that the whole benefits when we can live as individuals, not state machinery. Some people will always be smarter, poorer, stronger, funnier, or anything that sets someone apart from someone else. However, if one can guarentee the freedom for one to live under their own devices, everyone will be fully equal in freedom. True equality as human beings is the goal and we have been going about it all wrong! We are going backwards (intellectuals on the most part) and if we want equality, we cannot sacrifice freedom, and if you want freedom, you cannot inhibit any individual to live how one chooses as long as they do not inhibit any other individual.
Making money does not inhibit anyone, but making money by polluting the air and water surely does. You see, it is as simple as “Do onto others as you want done onto you.” That is the strength of the individual and a truly great society. We have to throw of the shackles of moral laziness and idealism, for I think if you got reading this far, you really do care about the plight of humanity. Then let humans be human, let them live their lives freely, and do not support anything else, because it amounts to nothing more than a degree of tyranny.
“That included everything from religion (the Bible is pretty clear on government enforced “charity”) to education to experience (I’ve spent as much time in places people tend to describe as “hopeless” as most anyone I know). If you got similar statements from your other commentors, you might find the kind of patterns that reveal how these views tend to develop.”
And you prove the point I just made. You believe in the bible, so you want to impose its view of morality on everyone else. The problem with many people, such as the French (like one I have spoken to about this where I work), is that they believe in universal morality, and it is universally moral to impose healthcare, education, no religious garb, and a myriad of other leftist programs, right or wrong. This is very dangerous, because one goes left and right imposing things on people.
So what I put forward is win win for everyone. If YOU believe your set of morals are the best and 51% of your nation agrees with you, but it is unconstitutional to impose such things, nothing is stopping from that 51% creating a corporation where they all pay into it and recieve the benefits they want. In fact, they can make private schools where they disallow religious garb, and they give healthcare, education, and housing to all. You are free to start it up, what is stopping you?
Well, I will tell you. You want to impose your standards on others that do no agree, because what you believe in strictly requires exploiting people that do not agree. It inherently inhibits freedom, you cannot spin it any other way.