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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Monday, July 02, 2012
My favorite play in baseball is the second base steal. In the play, the base runner watches the pitch, and at just the right moment, he sprints toward second. The catcher snatches the pitch, springs up and rockets the ball to the second baseman who snags it and tries to tag the runner as he slides into the base. As the dust clears, all eyes are on the second base umpire who, in a split second, calls the runner safe or out. When the play is over, the players dust themselves off, and the game goes on.
Some on the field may disagree with the umpire’s call. However, the umpire’s decision is final, and arguing can get you ejected. To stay in the game, great teams simply adjust their strategy based on the umpire’s call.
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Given the volatility of the market over the last few years I'm constantly surprised by people running back to 401k's as the most obvious be-all, end-all of retirement savings.
If you spend you paycheck on money for your kids, saving is a nice dream to have one day.
Boy, the banks would love this.
Disagree that saving is always possible. It simply isn't on low-wage jobs for people with families.
Why don't you support paying living wages?
And living without it, before they had it, was much harder. There's even a history of this.
That's simply not true. Many people want more government than is merely necessary.
Nobody can argue in good faith that preventing businesses from selling large high-calorie beverages is necessary. You can argue that it does more good than harm, but once you're thinking about these sorts of laws, you're well past the bare minimum intervention.
I don't know what you'd call someone who believes that every law must be justified as either critical for the proper functioning of society or designed to prevent some remarkably repugnant circumstances if not a minarchist. I also don't know how you'd say with a straight face that everyone's approach to government is so limited.
In that sense, everything is necessary, and the word itself is rendered entirely meaningless. It's necessary to have a few drinks after work in order to become drunk, so perhaps forcing people to have a few drinks would be an appropriate use of government too according to a minarchist.
That's nonsense. Everyone knows what libertarians mean by necessary government, even if different people might have different ideas of what would prevent a functional society or would lead to some overwhelmingly outrageous situation. One can defend anti-slavery laws under minarchist principles; one cannot defend a trans-fat ban, a seatbelt law, or a beverage size restriction under minarchist principles. There is a clear difference.
I would probably be a minarchist if we didn't live under a government so far removed from those principles. I would not have government at all involved in the business of marriage, for example, but once government is involved, I end up advocating the extension of those rights to homosexual unions. I would rather have a bit more government intervention in a particular area than to have the government intervene in a discriminatory way, once no intervention at all is off the table.
sure, and everyone knows what socialists mean by necessary government. And both groups want only what's necessary.
Both are entirely proper uses of necessary because they assume different conceptions of what is necessary. I'm afraid your lack of an adequate theory of language theory is getting in your way here.
No, I have to disagree with you. I don't believe that even Michael Bloomberg thinks that the large-sized beverage ban is remotely close to necessary. Useful, or worthwhile, or justifiable, or reasonable... absolutely.
It's not a matter of a lack of adequate language theory. It's a matter of distinguishing between necessary and merely desirable. "Necessary to do all the things I find desirable" isn't distinguishable.
I'm constantly surprised by the amount of people (not necessarily you Sam) that think 401k plan choices consist solely company stock, 3X leveraged Bear/Bull Funds, and other high volitility securities. It is almost always possible to throw your 401k money into cash, TIPS, stable-asset, or other less volitile securities. I may want to punch you in the face for doing that with 100% of your portfolio, but those are almost always options available to you. I follow this closely, being in the biz, in truth what happened, a lot of people 'got out' (of equities)at the bottom during early '09 after they were crushed, and didn't really move back in until after they missed a helluva rally.
It is those who choose (remember choice) to invest in company stock and keep it there that are the fools.(I would advise at always less than 20% of your portfolio, even less if you're over 40 yrs or frankly are risk averse. Many companies 'match' in company stock, but it is very easy to 'rebalance' and move the $ out of the stock and into something else 'more safe' within a single pay period.
given the tax treatment, it is terrific, plus people are foolish to not grab a match (if you get one from your employer.). I would still invest on own w/ other tools of savings (IRA, Roth (if eligible), even HSAs).
If people look at their 401k as their only nest egg for retirement, yes that is foolish, unless you've been disciplined since your early 20s and were diligent at socking away as much as you could during that time frame. People (my experience) don't realize just how much they need to be saving (assuming they want to retire at their present lifestyle) and either can't afford to save, or simply aren't doing it, even though they can afford it.
You may not believe that's a necessary function of government. Fine; others do and have for a long long time.
So you sit yourselves down and you debate the sort of government you want to have and what's necessary to it. That's called politics.
if you lose, it may be what's called democracy.
So you sit yourselves down and you debate the sort of government you want to have and what's necessary to it. That's called politics. if you lose, it may be what's called democracy.
I do believe that it's a necessary function of government to preserve public health. I'm in favor of universal health care. I'm not saying that people can't disagree over what might or might not be necessary; I'm making an entirely different argument.
I'm saying that some people believe in government intervention where it is not necessary, but merely beneficial. It is simply untrue that every single person that advocates for any law always believes that it is required. Claiming that everyone is the same, that nobody wants even the tiniest bit more regulation than is necessary is disingenuous; some people believe in some laws simply because they lead to (in their opinion) a better society.
This depends greatly on what you mean by "necessary." It is not necessary for government to prevent businesses from selling large high-calorie beverages in the sense that failing to do so will bring down society.
If you state that reducing the average serving size of soft drinks is a worthy goal for society, then yes, it is necessary for government to do so, as no one else is capable of doing it.
401Ks are bad because people are bad at making those kind of choices. Also, they get bad advice from financial planners, the financial media and others who have incentives to encourage trading.
This still fails to make the important distinction between "being a worthy goal for society" and "being something that government must do in order for society to function properly."
If we don't criminalize, say, theft or murder, there is no society. Those are certainly necessary restrictions of behavior if we are to have any sort of advanced community at all. I think we pretty all agree on that.
If we don't provide for the basic needs of people in our community, we are allowing conditions to exist that logically lead those people to reject the idea of the social contract. That is less absolute, but I believe it is necessary to prevent that sort of condition. (I believe it will ultimately lead to the collapse of society, either directly, or indirectly as a nation behaves so repulsively that other nations will not work with it and it is isolated from the world community.)
If we don't legislate beverage sizes, some people will drink more sugared drinks, and will gain more weight, and will end up in worse health. But nobody really believes that everything that increases net public health is something that demands government interference. Once you get down to the level of needing to protect people from big drinks with lots of sugar, you're obligated to entertain restrictions on pretty much every unhealthy behavior. Should we make it illegal to sell double cheeseburgers? Force people to buy individual cigarettes? Mandate smaller shot glasses in bars? Prevent people from riding motorcycles? This represents a reduction of the idea of what is necessary to such a degree that the word loses practically all meaning.
Of course it is. That's part of "theft."
Beeeeep! There have been plenty of tribal societies where there was no private property, and everything was considered to belong to the whole society. They did not need a law against theft. The fact that societies functioned without that law, pretty much invalidates that it is necessary for a society to function.
It's subtle, but I think you're begging the question here.
Why is it theft? Because "property" is sacrosanct. Why is property sacrosanct? Because it's "theft." You're arguing your assumptions. As FP points out, there have been plenty of examples of human society where the concepts of "property" are so weak and unvalued that the idea of "theft" (and thus the requirement of government to protect against theft) is marginal at best.
Actually, you could make a similar argument against "murder." Why is it murder for me to bring righteous vengeance down upon bad umpires, but "justice" for Texas to execute 700 people per day while selling snocones and funnel cakes? Because it's only "murder" if society or the government deems that particular form of killing criminal, which begs the question of why the government gets to decide my moral judgements on the validity of Bill Hohn's life for me. (At gunpoint!)
Again, you're sort of begging the question. (Not as obviously as many, I grant you.)
I'm inclined to agree. Sanctioned murder probably indicates the lack of a social contract. I think you have sanctioned murder in totalitarian societies, but the people being murdered aren't really "agreeing" to the society, they're forced to comply.
Theft requires ownership, which is simply a much more morally neutral thing. At some level, if any one of us is able to own something, shouldn't everyone else agree that it's okay for an individual to own it? Why would anyone agree to be born into a society where some inherit vast sums of property, while others inherit nothing or perhaps even debt? Why would anyone agree to that other than that they were coerced into doing so?
EDITed by Ron J: Changed the code tags to quote tags because page width was screwed up.
and everything was considered to belong to the whole society. They did not need a law against theft.
The fact that societies functioned without that law, pretty much invalidates that it is necessary
for a society to function.
How are those tribal societies doing? What happened to those societies when they came into
conflict with societies that did have laws protecting private property?
There has never been an advanced society that didn't respect property rights, and a
society that doesn't advance gets left behind (and ultimately exploited) by the
rest of the world.
No, it has nothing to do with property being sacrosanct. I'm not making a moral rights argument here.
I'm making a practicality argument. It is not a coincidence that we find certain things in every
advanced society; there has been a sort of social evolution. There is a world community that
simply doesn't accept certain behaviors as civilized, and there's some pressure to conform.
This pressure may come from within the society itself (as its citizens refuse to tolerate restrictions on
freedoms and rights that citizens of other countries enjoy) or from without (as other countries limit
trade, are less disposed to offer aid in times of need, or even potentially use military force to change
policies). I think China is in for a rude awakening within the next 50 years or so; they're not going
to be able to keep their citizens ignorant of the freedoms that other citizens enjoy, and they'll be in a
position where they'll either have to change to stop rebellions, or do terrible things to put rebellions
down that draw the ire of the world community.
Actually, you could make a similar argument against "murder." Why is it murder for me to bring righteous
vengeance down upon bad umpires, but "justice" for Texas to execute 700 people per day while selling
snocones and funnel cakes? Because it's only "murder" if society or the government deems that particular
form of killing criminal, which begs the question of why the government gets to decide my moral judgements
on the validity of Bill Hohn's life for me. (At gunpoint!)
There's a difference between killing and murder. I am opposed to the death penalty, but you're comparing two
entirely different things. We can argue that dead is dead (and I might be inclined to mostly agree with you);
that's a different discussion entirely.
Isn't there some sense of lost respect in the international community because of that behavior in Texas? If
there were a nation that didn't generally limit its execution to the sorts of people that engage in truly
anti-social behavior, I think we'd see some international consequences.
Thanks for playing; this concludes our game.
I'd say that the Supreme Court of Canada is now every bit as powerful and active as the US Supreme Court. The difference to date is that there's (almost) no belief that the rulings are motivated by partisan considerations. The (almost) comes from some rumblings on the right about a too liberal (as opposed to Liberal -- ie the political party) court. But it's at the fringes of the party right now.
Sure the Courts could be temporarily over-ridden, but it's never been done by the Federal government and almost never by a provincial government. Mostly because the courts are highly respected (even if the attitude to lawyers is about the same as it is in the states) and there would almost always be a huge political cost to doing so. As in the likely loss of the next election.
It has not expanded at all. You're arguing with something other than what I'm saying.
1) Different people may define the limits of necessary differently. We agree completely about this.
2) Some people believe in more government than is necessary, based on their own concept of what necessary means. That's what I'm arguing.
Some people are opposed to universal health care because they don't believe it is necessary. Some people are in favor of universal health care because they believe it is necessary. Some people are in favor of universal health care despite believing that it is not necessary.
Some people are opposed to large beverage sale bans because they don't believe they are necessary. Some people are in favor of large beverage sale bans despite recognizing that they are not necessary. Practically nobody believes that large beverage sale bans are necessary, even among those who advocate in favor of them. (Michael Bloomberg likely doesn't believe them necessary so much as desirable.)
The context of my argument is in response to the idea that everyone is a minarchist. Everyone doesn't believe in the bare minimum of government.
¹ BTW, not including banning large sodas. That's just dumb.
But from a practical standpoint you would need a very large have:need ratio to have such a property free working society (star trek, almost), so its a disagreement on a technicality only.
I think he is partially right about necessiity, in that there are at least SOME people who want laws that _they_ would agree are not really _necessary_. I dont know and cannot guess the actual fraction of "Bloombergs" in the usa (or for that matter, the world)
This seems obviously true to me. And I'm one of those people. I don't think that universal health care is by any means necessary, but I think it's nice that some governments aspire to provide it.
Hell, aren't there a million things that the government does that aren't necessary? Is all of NASA's research necessary? Is it necessary to give millions of dollars in foreign aid to Senegal? Is National Public Radio necessary? Is it necessary Barak Obama can order a cheeseburger from the White House kitchen on Tuesday evenings? The list is almost endless. Every representative in history has angled for money for his district for projects that were not necessary.
Now, that's an interesting question when your university is not only smack in the middle of TeaPartyNation but abuts NASA, for whom or for whose contractors said Party animals work.
He gladly pays on Tuesday for a hamburger today.
When I describe "social evolution" I'm not suggesting that it works precisely like biological evolution, but merely in an analogous way. There are sets of rules that lead to more successful societies. That we can discover our rules more efficiently than through the random process of mutation is a clear difference, but not one that matters in terms of the end result.
Some societies live under conditions that are supportive of that society's dominance. It may well be that societal evolution is more important for human survival that biological evolution throughout human history, but it is almost certainly true for modern humanity. We can correct biological "defects": people with bad vision don't die or fail to reproduce even though bad vision would be, biologically speaking, a disadvantage for survival and gene propagation.
In the general sense, we're still engaged in the same competition for survival and reproduction in a world with limited resources. The sort of society we form is, in part, a result of genetic predisposition toward forming such a society.
But from a practical standpoint you would need a very large have:need ratio to have such a property free working society (star trek, almost), so its a disagreement on a technicality only.
That would be pretty much the point where I'd agree we don't need property rights to have a legitimately functioning society: in a post-scarcity world. It's a genetic thing: we're not the descendents of people who respected the right of others as equivalent to our own; we're the descendents of people who forced, stole, or connived their way to full stomachs at the expense of those who are no longer with us.
If there's no struggle for survival, there's no need to fight over resources. Until there is, we need some sort of community overrule of individual action to adjudicate those disputes if we don't want to be reduced to a chaotic, grossly inefficient society that will promptly have its limited resources taken from it by more cooperative societies.
It seemed obvious to me as well, which is why I remain so surprised that I'm getting such resistance from Mayor Blomberg.
I don't think that universal health care is by any means necessary, but I think it's nice that some governments aspire to provide it.
I do think it's necessary in the long run. It's certainly not imminent, but I strongly believe that people who are denied basic human needs represent a legitimate threat to the continued existence of an advanced society (and I would not blame those people for rejecting the social contract).
I would favor universal health care even if I did not believe that it were necessary, but I would not advocate for it as government policy it under those circumstances. (I ultimately believe that we have grown too large as a society for individuals to be emotionally/mentally capable of addressing the problem.)
So you cannot say "well we selected this sociology over sociology x so therefore its better adapted" because there are actually 3 different (in this case, sociological) environments - the current one, the ones where both were selected for/against.
I agree that our social structures evolve (and in fact are coupled to our genetics) but evolve just means "change" not "improve". Selection implies improvement, but only atomically
Guess how many satellites were involved between you posting that message and me reading it.
I'm not sure on the definition of 'evolve'-- I've always understood it to have a progressive connotation. In social theory, evolutionary narratives are heavily criticized because they imply betterment and improvement. Obviously,you're far more qualified to speak on it's meaning in a biological context, and this may just be a case different fields porting the term and using it for their own ends.
That all depends on how you define "in the long run".
The life span of this planet is limited. Very, very, very, long but limited. And that last very assumes that another large cosmic collision is a very long way away, which we cannot always know.
It may take us several more generations to figure out how to get out of here in large numbers. Might as well start now.
In the meantime, it encourages the training and employment of large numbers of scientists and engineers, whose skills and discoveries quite often have many other uses, including military. The overlap between NASA and things the military does is fairly large, and satellite technology has been and will continue to be a huge economic player.
EDIT: Diet Coke to Monty.
My understanding of evolutionary fitness is not that it be local nor constant, but that it take place in a closed system. Selection can occur in a small pond, a medium-sized lake, or a giant ocean.
I think we could have a reasonable disagreement about whether the planetary system is itself closed, and constitutes its own environment for social and biological evolution.
I may be overly pessimistic on this, but I think there are a number of problems that represent far more imminent threats than cosmic disaster.
Many of the things NASA does could be done by the private sector; government-subsidized scientific innovation is not the only means of scientific advancement. I can see defenses for NASA's necessity as a matter of national security, or even just the critical nature of understanding our universe. It's not my personal belief, but it doesn't make a person ridiculous to disagree with me.
In a very selfish sense, I want lots of funding for all areas of science, including astronomy, for a number of reasons, but I think it is a luxury that we cannot afford while people are without adequate food, shelter, and health care. At the very least people in the country that is spending money on exploration.
The Mayans think you are being overly optimistic.
Please guys, give me a little bit of credit. I didn't say that NASA is useless or frivolous.
I brought it up because it's a good example of an "unnecessary" expenditure that is worthwhile.
(I realize now that I obscured my meaning by placing it in a list with Obama's room service)
There are two types of societies: Those that have failed, and those that are going to.
The vast majority of societies that valued personal property have also failed, and in most cases, their view on property played the dominant role in the downfall (2 biggest reason for societies to fail: corruption/exploitation of power, and war).
And correlation does not imply causation. You could replace "protection of private property" with monogamy, or anti-drugs, or anti-gay marriage, and have as much evidence that that is what causes societies to succeed. The fact that most societies today have strict personal property values is merely a reflection of current dominant moral values, not the reason for their success.
Jared Diamond says it's deforestation.
Fair enough, but we can only judge on the most successful ones in our history.
The vast majority of societies that valued personal property have also failed, and in most cases, their view on property played the dominant role in the downfall (2 biggest reason for societies to fail: corruption/exploitation of power, and war).
As you said above, all societies are ultimately doomed to failure. How many dominant societies exist (or ever existed at all) that do not respect property? How much influence do the members of those societies have in the modern world?
When a society that values personal property has come into conflict with a society that does not, there is a clear historical tendency for the property-respecters to win that conflict.
And correlation does not imply causation. You could replace "protection of private property" with monogamy, or anti-drugs, or anti-gay marriage, and have as much evidence that that is what causes societies to succeed. The fact that most societies today have strict personal property values is merely a reflection of current dominant moral values, not the reason for their success.
Strong correlation and the complementary correlation in the other direction when the characteristic is absent don't prove causation, but certainly do imply it. If every time you eat grapes, you get hives, and every time you eat non-grapes, you don't, we haven't proved that the grapes are responsible but it is a fairly reasonable working assumption.
The reason societies come into conflict are almost always over one group having the nerve to have control of resources that the other group wants. There's a sort of competition that comes with a society that rewards possession that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been on the losing end of a major inter-societal conflict. On the other hand, there have been long-existing, powerful, world-dominant societies that weren't monogamous, nor were anti-drug, nor were anti-gay. They all respected property rights to some degree.
That last little bit is not so obvious to me. I'd say that it's quite possible that the relationship flows in the other direction: we have these particular moral values because they are the ones that make us successful. Or more likely, that our morality and success are co-dependent. I can't imagine that it's merely coincidental.
There is a chasm between things that could, and the things that would, be done by the private sector. The fact is that (aside from the hey day of Bell Labs) the private sector almost NEVER does basic research because there is no ROI they can show. Without government-subsidized scientific research, it just does not happen -- except in the libertarian utopian fantasy world.
If you would examine the literature (e.g., the work by Robert Solow of MIT), you would see that a very sizable portion of economic growth can be tied in with technological innovation. A huge amount of that innovation can in turn be traced back to government funded work, including a large amount of work done at universities.
Hell, without DARPANET, we aren't having this conversation.
This funding is not a luxury -- it is an absolute necessity for continued scientific growth and economic expansion.
Roman morality was quite different in many respects from our own. They had a damn good long run.
I'm not saying our morality is the one path to success. I'm saying that certain particular aspects of our social values are common elements in pretty much every society that enjoyed or enjoys dominance in a multi-societal interaction. I'm certainly willing to entertain the idea that property values (not specifically our idea of property values, but some acknowledgement of the concept of individual ownership and government-sanctioned protection of that concept) aren't fundamentally necessary to compete successfully in the world community, but I'd want to see some examples of societies that succeeded without them.
This funding is not a luxury -- it is an absolute necessity for continued scientific growth and economic expansion.
I suppose that raises the question of whether "continued scientific growth and economic expansion" should be prioritized over homelessness or lack of health care. I can see an argument that these problems are unsolvable under our current technological capabilities and therefore we really are properly allocating our resources in advancement. I can see an argument that if we don't spend this money that we'll be left behind other nations that do, and we'll be conquered by them. Those would be reasonable justifications for the necessity of government funding.
I was responding specifically to a particular area of funding, however, and that's NASA. Understanding the nature of the universe beyond our planet is a lofty, worthy goal, but is it really a legitimate priority in the face of the problems we're experiencing on the planet (or in the most tribal sense, just our own country)?
NASA does a lot more than that. And the research that NASA funding generates does a lot more than that.
I'll say it: I would gladly live in a work camp - and assign you all to do the same - if it meant we could add six to ten more zeroes to NASA's budget.
Well, sometimes rich guys set up foundations and research facilities. But that's not really any different than what the government would do. It's research not immediately directed to profit, and you're right, it's not something the frontline businesses are interested in doing.
One of the issues in society today is the impact of technology on income distribution. Hedge fund managers couldn't have done their job on that scale years ago because the computers weren't in place to make moving the money around so much easier. Well now they are. And 100 middle men are cut out, but the savings/profits all go to the one manager.
We're also all well aware of the incestuous positive feedback loops between boards of companies and the C level. The point of the system is to keep all of that money flowing to those people, and they have the means to do that. Sure, other people could do those jobs too, but they'll never get the access or opportunity.
Again, technology has greased things and cut out a lot of the inefficiency and the middle men. But has been said many other places, all the benefits of the improved productivity are going to the top. I see no change to this system coming up, it's only going to get worse. The one benefit that the lower classes may get out of the system is lower prices, which I think is true. Though we may reach the point soon where the lowered income expectations outweigh the benefits of low prices, if we're not there already.
I'd be happy to see us have the attitude to make most of our human capital. Every day someone has to spend unemployed or underemployed is a day of productivity that's gone forever. It's a sea change from our current focus, though.
But why does it even happen there without the ROI?
Well three words spring to mind fairly quickly: This. Is. Sparta.
Citizens of Sparta were not allowed to own silver or gold, were not allowed to engage in trades or manual labor, and spent age 7-30 living in communal buildings with their peers. They never seemed to have much trouble holding off those aggressive materialist invaders.
A couple of thousand people that lived off other's labors on their land. Sure, they eschewed flashy lifestyles, that doesn't mean they didn't take their own wealth seriously.
And if in 1000 years every human society consists of people with chips implanted to make them slaves of The Overmind, will that mean that implanting people with mind control chips is a necessary function of government?
This is one of the primary reason the finance sector is so utterly #############. There's simply no relationship to reality involved in the transactions any more. It's like MLB suddenly decided that in addition to those quaint little "games" the teams play on the field, they'd also include the results of 1000 Diamond Mind sims in their results every morning too, and in addition to whatever happens in real life, the front offices would get paid on the results of the simulations too.
She knows there's no success like failure
And failure's no success at all.
(Source: Economist review of The Hedge Fund Mirage)
I'm in support of large amounts of government investment in technology, because it's very efficient, but this argument is terribly simple.
For one, it has this weird assumption that because government did do something, there is no way for that something to have happened without government. One of the reasons that there's less payoff for companies to do some of this basic kind of research is because this type of research does exist. The risks and gains of a world in which the government is not doing extensive research are unlikely to be the same than those risks and gains of a world in which the government is already doing extensive research.
Another reason is that antitrust laws don't allow the same kind of large-scale cooperation among large incorporated groups. Legislation like NCRPA helps it, but it's still a legalistic maze. I'm not saying antitrust laws are bad or anything but if you put laws in the books that hinder groups from cooperating for a specific purpose, it's a bit of dodgy pool to complain that groups could not cooperate for that specific purpose.
I'm not saying the libertarians are right, because they're probably not, but this is a very misleading argument. The Catholic church made similar arguments in the Middle Ages as to why the Catholic church is indispensable and while they did do a lot of good for people (outside of all the bad stuff they did) an insistence that because the Catholic church does something and has the power it could not possibly be any other way, betrays a lack of vision more than anything.
Well, at certain points in the Middle Ages the Catholic Church was the largest organization to do certain things, so they did them. Then governments got larger, or richer.
Of course, even a non-libertarian can agree that religious organizations and governments are prone to capture by bureaucrats or the power-mad. However, that's a human problem, and I don't think that goes away if you give the same kind of power to the corporate model. Moreover, we think of religious organizations and governments as being things that are supposed to help everybody, at least ostensibly, because it's usually in the "mission statement." Megacorps aren't going to have that sort of mission statement. The libertarians have the faith that the market/capitalism model will be the best if we let Megacorp make as much money as possible, I guess. I think it would be worse, since you'll still have the power-mad and bureaucrats with less offsets from the mission statement.
The neo-classical vision of the corporation as simply the extension of its owners has become dominant both in theory and in practice since the 80s, but it is not the only way of understanding the corporation, and it's not the only way that capitalists and managers have run corporations. The "shareholder value" vision of the corporation has created its own reality by convincing people it was always the case that the corporation was merely an extension of its owners.
Citizens of Sparta were not allowed to own silver or gold, were not allowed to engage in trades or manual labor, and spent age 7-30 living in communal buildings with their peers. They never seemed to have much trouble holding off those aggressive materialist invaders.
Sparta had and enforced property rights. They had money (made of iron, and deliberately designed to be difficult to hoard). The members of the privileged class were required to pay tribute to the government to maintain that favored status, and entrance to the privileged class demanded not only sponsorship by a Spartanite, but payment as well. The middle-tier social class (perioeci) were permitted to own their own land. Sparta was an example of a society with limited property rights, but not a property-less society.
Sparta is a reasonable example to support the idea that there's not a linear relationship between protection of property rights and national success, although that would be a different argument.
The Marxist response here would be that property rights are not one of the causes of social success, but a function of the usual processes of power consolidation, theft, and defense of originary theft. Where did property come from? It begins with the seizing of land, since in pre-modern economies the vast majority of economic surplus was derived from the land rather than from manufacturing, service, or trade. And there's no narrative of the beginnings of land ownership that isn't mostly a story of powerful people taking what they want from less powerful. Property rights were then maintained through most societies because the people who had been powerful enough to seize the land remained powerful enough to defend it both through their own force and through the capture of governmental power and the construction of philosophies to defend intellectually their original theft. The maintenance of property rights can be explained without it serving an evolutionary process, but instead as powerful people taking and defending what's theirs.
Another way of looking at this argument is that lots of things have been true in most long-term successful societies. Exceptionally few societies recognized women as equal economic actors before the late modernity, but it turned out that wasn't a precondition for "success". Why should the correlation of property rights with this "success" be understood as a causation running from property rights to success?
If it is impossible to otherwise avoid being conquered and exterminated by those societies that do implant their citizens with mind control chips, then yes, it would be. I don't see this as particularly likely, but that's my answer. If your society simply can't survive without it, then it's necessary.
I don't think I'm denying this so much as counting on it as part of my argument. The idea of being successful in an environment where one competes for resources depends on the idea that one can possess those resources. The evolution is toward a set of social values that respects that right. Without some mechanism to prevent people within a society from constantly fighting over limited resources, that society will be doomed to destruction from within and without.
You cannot function efficiently if you're constantly worried that you need to protect your possessions from others. This is what I think makes property rights inevitable and necessary for an advanced society.
Another way of looking at this argument is that lots of things have been true in most long-term successful societies. Exceptionally few societies recognized women as equal economic actors before the late modernity, but it turned out that wasn't a precondition for "success". Why should the correlation of property rights with this "success" be understood as a causation running from property rights to success?
I think you've just indicated why there's a difference. There has never been a society that functioned successfully in the broader "world community" without property rights. There have been societies that functioned (and continue to function) without recognizing economic equality of women.
Of course, what is needed in a particular society depends on the current world conditions. In a post-scarcity society, property rights will be entirely unnecessary. In a modern society, we would hope that the consequences for treating women as second-class citizens would be sufficiently damaging to international relationships as to force those countries without equality to grant it, but sadly, we're not completely there yet. (I don't think we get there until we have a much lower tolerance for religious justification of this sort of behavior.)
The secret of success in any endeavor is lack of competition.
So it's a necessary function of government today, in the year 2012? Surely not.
Perhaps you are saying that what functions of government are "necessary" change from time to time. But your analysis is entirely post-hoc. You say that anti-soda laws are not necessary, but if my anti-soda-powered country conquers the world, then they are.
Or you are saying that the first country to create a new paradigm is always engaging in non-necessary government activity. So the first country to create property rights in land was engaging in unnecessary government activity, and was therefore bad, but the last country to create such rights was simply responding to the need for survival in a world where its peers had such laws, and was therefore right and proper. That makes little sense to me.
"respects" is an interesting word here. I don't know that social values can "respect," and scratching the surface suggests, as so much of your evolutionary argument does, that it has nothing to do with right, everything to do with power.
I won't lie. Seeing someone argue the "Marxist" position on the internet and be correct in that description is shocking at this point. I blame Ray.
Honestly, I essentially dismiss all "evolutionary" defenses of social or cultural institutions as high concept post hoc ergo prompter hoc performance art. There's just no real justification for saying "this complex social formation must be the best (or 'fittest') because it exists in preponderance today." There's even less justification for saying "this complex social formation must be the most moral or just because it exists in preponderance today." This is an unbelievable, indefensibly wide brush application of "evolutionary theory" to #### that evolutionary theory simply does not adequately apply.
I broke this middle bit out because I want to pose a question about this critique and its assumptions. Let me start by stating up front that I hold this critique of history to be self-evident. I would strongly defend this narrative of the historical formations of 'property' under pretty much any assault, I think. (Let your barbs of "Marxist" and "Socialist" fly as they will, but again, this critique of property seems self-evident to me.)
With that said, I wonder why we are so intent on undermining the natural skills required to seize and control land, while reifying other natural born skills. I have my notions and theories, but I'd enjoy seeing other folks take a swat at the question. Why is it unjust and unnatural for me to advance my stature and wealth in the world by dint of my Jaime Lannister skill set, while it's perfectly just for David or Ray or anyone else to advance their stature and wealth in the world by dint of their Peter Baelish skill sets? What makes my physical skills - and the ability to use them in the world - immoral and wrong, and their physical skills* perfectly okay?
*I do not accept the notion that mental and intellectual skills are anything other than a particularly discrete set of "things you do with the muscle in your skull."
That other people in your society are okay with it, by custom and law.
Two very different issues there. It is, in fact, perfectly natural and is seen everywhere at all times. Predators exist because there is prey. If God did not want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.
So the sheep band together and decide to fight back, and when they achieve success, they declare the actions of the original predators as unjust.
Of course, I can't think about the word justice without remembering Red Foxx's great line:
I went down the Hall of Justice.
And that's who I saw there.
Just us.
This is more than just a joke, of course; it is a commentary on the use of the "justice system" to maintain control by the elites. Which, I suppose is better than the alternative of paying 1/2 the poor to shoot the other 1/2 -- assuming it is functionally different.
How can what is natural be unjust?
You only need closure for speciation, not selection. And the closure itself is dynamic and local. I.e, weird marsupial species evolved in Australia because it's was closed to mixing. But it's not any longer.
Actually because increasing information content (of genomes... or socieomes I guess) costs Entropy then the system (smaller than a solar system) cannot be closed or it violates the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.
@2343 Yes, that is a colloquial usage of the term - but if you are arguing fitness/selection i.e, something parallel to biological evolution then it's incorrect to say that evolution "advances" (except locally)
I am saying precisely that. Not only from time to time, but from place to place as well. Israel, by nature of its geography and political position, needs stronger border security than the United States does. We have the luxury of being a country where you need not carry identification (much as it is contested and in jeopardy of changing); other countries may not have that same luxury.
But your analysis is entirely post-hoc. You say that anti-soda laws are not necessary, but if my anti-soda-powered country conquers the world, then they are.
We're dealing with a giant, complex, multivariable system that changes as we measure it. Post-hoc analysis is all that is available to us.
You're not precisely stating my position. I'm saying if the only way to avoid being consumed from within or conquered by another nation were to embrace anti-soda laws, then such laws would be necessary. I cannot imagine a remotely likely set of circumstances where that is the deal-breaker. Even should such a set of circumstances exist, soda sizes would be very far down on the list of self-destructive human behavior to correct, even limited to the area of consumption.
In contrast, it is very simple to see what happens when there is a contest for limited resources and no centralized power structure setting rules on how those resources are allocated. That doesn't prove it to be the case, but it does make for a much stronger argument that property rights of some sort (even if those rights are "the government controls all property and distributes it as it sees fit") are fundamental to societal success.
"respects" is an interesting word here. I don't know that social values can "respect," and scratching the surface suggests, as so much of your evolutionary argument does, that it has nothing to do with right, everything to do with power.
Of course it does. That's the whole point. Certain societal values are bound to the exercise of power. Whether it is property rights that come with power or power that comes with property rights is not the important question so much as whether the two must co-exist to exist at all.
I want to be clear that I am not arguing in favor of an American or a libertarian concept of property rights as necessary. I'm saying the concepts of ownership and government protection of ownership (implemented in some way) are necessary to be an advanced society (as in, one that can exert its own pressures through competition in the global community). I don't see a realistic view of human nature in a world with scarcity that would allow otherwise.
I don't think it's a matter of morality (outside of consensus). I think it's a matter of what use of resources is superior in sustainability and efficiency. You can exercise your physicality as a means to power for a limited number of years until age robs you of your strength, but a mental/social advantage lasts almost an entire lifetime.
I think in small, tribal communities with a very harsh struggle for survival, physical muscle might be the dominant form in which to exercise power. In larger communities, it is almost certainly not the case.
It's not about good or bad. It's a matter of power and not a matter of morality.
I am in favor of limited government for a number of reasons, but I would not take the position that all non-necessary interventions are "evil" and all necessary interventions are "good." If it's you and me in a room and there's enough for for only one of us to live, I might well consider it necessary to kill you so that I may live; that doesn't make it morally justifiable simply because it is practically justifiable. It isn't necessary to have public transportation in order for our society to exist, but I think it is a good and desirable thing.
Why would "justice" and "nature" be the same thing?
Along these lines, I've been thinking about the conversation upthread, where some were talking about eating meat as something that future humans will look back on as a great moral failing of our times.
And while I think that's possible, I also think that another good candidate for that distinction is the automobile. Automobiles are really quite dangerous, they're extremely resource-intensive, and they're fairly inefficient to boot. Furthermore, building roads is a very destructive activity, especially the high-volume freeways in populated areas, traffic jams are a hideous waste of time for everyone, and parking lots are mostly a waste of space as well (most spaces are empty most of the time).
One way or the other, transportation policy is going to have to change pretty radically. I'm not saying that it necessarily has to involve the eradication of the personal automobile; maybe they'll get better and we humans can better work out public policy to accomodate them. But either way, I think future generations will look back on the status quo, and wonder just what in the hell we were thinking to allow things to get the way they are now.
Homo ecomomicus uber alles? Herbert Marcuse on line one.
If these two concepts are at odds, why would one preference the pretend over the real?
I don't know if it's a moral failing. People have had a need for some personal transportation for a long time. There will probably always be a need for bikes, scooters, at least an electric car, and some trucks.
The USA is a rich country with still relatively low population density. This has afforded it the luxury of inefficiency in some areas. I am baffled as to the amount of commuting some people do. That is just wasted time to me, why would anyone volunteer to drive an hour plus every workday. But again, our richness in resources has allowed us to do things others can't. It's not so easy in Europe or Japan to move 10 miles out of town because you don't like something that's happening in your neighborhood. So people probably spend more time vaoiding and fixing their neighborhood problems. Here people don't like something, they move, so you get sprawl.
If you don't can it with the Marxist crap, someone's gonna call Joey B. on your ass.
I don't mean to say that I think driving a car is a moral failing. I'm just saying that, if we're looking for things that our descendents will not really understand why we tolerated them, our automobile-centered culture seems like a decent bet to be one of those things.
I dunno. It seems like a pretty "natural" thing to want to hoard resources for our own personal uses, at the cost of the suffering of others. Is that "justice"?
Call him if you like. I won't see him.
It's neither just nor unjust. It just is. Similarly, if I beat you to death with a hammer and take your hoarded stuff, that's neither just nor unjust. It just is.
Scalability. Sam the Barbarian and his mighty thews and furry codpiece turned out to be a poor match up against well drilled troops wearing armor and wielding superior weapons. Social and intellectual ability proved themselves to be far more advantageous to societies than physical strength. One badass is just one badass, but a smart guy can create ways to turn non-badasses into badasses. They won the debate and got to determine the morality everybody else lives under.
But we're all in agreement that morality was determined by the winners and has no natural state in the world outside of the decisions of those who happened to bleed out the slowest?
Winners set the rules, but me? I think a man's gotta have a code.
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