Comments on: So, what does ‘progressive fusionism’ look like?

By: NPOV

NPOV — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:27:05 +0000

As for “economics is not a zero sum game” - of course, I don’t think anyone seriously believes it is (otherwise society as a whole would be no better off than it was 200 years ago).
As for making money at the expense of others - I’d argue there are companies where the employees are responsible for creating, say, 50% of the wealth of a company, and employers the other 50% - but the proceeds aren’t split up that way: the employees might get 40% to share between them and the employers 60%. In such cases you could argue that the employers are making money at the expense of the employees. Obviously then the difficulty is how one determines what percentage of the wealth is actually created by the employees vs the employers - and I’m not sure I accept that leaving this decision entirely in the hands of the employers is always justifiable.

By: NPOV

NPOV — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:12:17 +0000

Terje, sure, I’m not suggesting that Australia is anywhere near the point that there are individuals or groups of individuals with incomes comparable to that of the government. I’m just pointing out that it would be highly dangerous to let it happen.

By: TerjeP

TerjeP — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:10:12 +0000

p.s. When you get richer it is rarely at the expense of somebody else. Economics is not a zero sum game.

By: TerjeP

TerjeP — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:09:21 +0000

NPOV - take a look at the annual revenue of the Australian federal government and then name one individual in the world that has an annual income that large? Even if you look at income collectives of the upper tier of society you are still talking about a very large mass of people (and a significant percentage) before they can rival the government. And typically they have very little interest in forming some political conspiracy. More likely they are expounding their feelings of guilt on blogs.

By: skepticlawyer

skepticlawyer — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:45:39 +0000

Many thanks for your very thoughtful input all - I’m going to take some time to take some cool DC pics just now (since I’m here) to put up on the site, and I’ll respond properly this evening (DC time).

By: “Progressive fusionism” « Sachi’s hyperbolic space

“Progressive fusionism” « Sachi’s hyperbolic space — Fri, 09 May 2008 07:35:19 +0000

[...] She writes: The idea that libertarians and ‘progressives’ could hammer out some of their differences and reach a compromise far more workable than that between conservatives and libertarians is an interesting one. [...]

By: NPOV

NPOV — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:45:07 +0000

backroom girl, your “how could I quibble” question sounds fair enough to me (with one caveat: we can’t allow a section of the population to gather so much wealth that it becomes more powerful than the government. Government has checks and balances to prevent abuse of power, corporations and other associations don’t). So it comes down to how much you believe that existing inequalities are down to free choice. My suspicion is “not all that much”. Basically, modern technology hugely amplifies the wealth-creation abilities of those who happen to have particular talents and/or grow up in privileged environments. I include myself here - I happen to have a brain that’s well-geared towards manipulating technology to achieve a level of productivity that the market values highly, and I was brought up in an environment that encouraged me to pursue that path. Consequently I’ve never really had to take any risks, or work long hours, or under high stress levels. Is it fair then that I should be in the top 2-3% of all earners?

By: backroom girl

backroom girl — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:32:44 +0000

I think I’m with NPOV here. Simple solutions to complex problems, whether proposed by progressives or libertarians, are probably wrong, but they will often be attractive to politicians. For people analysing and advising on policy, It really is quite tricky to tread the line between doing little harm and hopefully more than a little good and being broadly acceptable to the community as a whole.

I’m not sure that it’s ever possible to come up with schemes that will please all of the people all of the time, and as NPOV points out displeasing most of the people most of the time will get you thrown out of office pretty quick smart). The best you can usually hope for is to please most of the people most of the time. (Sounds kinda like the definition of democracy, don’t you think?)

As a general philosophy, I do believe that it is important for people to have the capacity to make important decisions themselves and ‘take charge of their own lives’ if you like and that, as much as possible, people should be left to get on with things themselves. But one big question about government’s role, for me, is what approach to take where individuals apparently lack this capacity, or make decisions for themselves that have adverse impacts on others, such as their children.

I don’t really like the nanny state approach of simply telling people what to do, or else. In the first place, most people do have a pretty good idea of how to improve their own lives (though they may need a bit of extra help along the way) . For those who don’t, simply expecting them to follow instructions is not really a long term solution because what those people need is help to develop the capabilities to look after themselves.

For me, then, the kinds of policies I am interested in seeing from government are those that will make a material difference to the aggregate capacity of the population as a whole to be productive and self-reliant. If, in an ideal world of equal opportunity, individuals chose freely to exercise their capacities in ways that lead to inequality of outcomes, how could I quibble?

As I hope I have made clear in a number of blog posts, I am personally comfortable with a degree of income inequality, in particular, if it arises from choices that people have freely made. This is in part because I recognise that Australian statistics don’t really measure ‘cash’ income very well, but also because cash income is not an adequate proxy for ‘true’ income, standard of living or life satisfaction. And because I think the Australian system of income redistribution, imperfect as it is at the margins, does a pretty good job overall, and couldn’t easily be expanded without risking a number of undesirable consequences.

To sum up, I have no idea whether I am a progressive fusionist, but just someone working in the policy sphere who knows that it is all an incredibly complex balancing act.

By: NPOV

NPOV — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:27:12 +0000

One comment on envy - I can’t speak for others that believe in the need for redistribution for the sake of better equality, but I can assure you in my case it is not envy, given I’m one of those that I would expect to see their disposable income reduced in order to improve the lot of those less well off than myself. If it’s anything, it’s guilt - I don’t see why I deserve to be earning so much more than plenty of other people that work harder, have taken bigger risks, and have arguably contribued far more towards society than mysellf.

By: NPOV

NPOV — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:16:22 +0000

I think the third dimension that needs to be added to any discussion about liberty and equality is political realism. Democracies will always be subject to an amount of populism - and in a broad sense this isn’t a bad thing, as it means governments can’t run countries in a way that the majority of the people are unhappy with for very long. But it also means that lots of individual policies that sound good to the masses get implemented even when they are long-term detrimental, and policies that are likely to be highly unpopular but have sound theoretical and empirical backing don’t. In that sense, even if I thought libertarianism was a “better” philosophy than progressivism, the political realist in me says that progressivism is far more likely to generate policies that voters will accept. Further, not only that but libertarianism is a problematic philosophy because once you’ve reduced government down to the level that many libertarians consider ideal, there would be constant populist pressure for the government to step in and fix this, promise that, and bail out the other, and a party that just sat there and said “no, that’s against our libertarian principles” would simply get wiped out at the next election. It’s not clear how you can ever solve this problem.