> > Brad DeLong wrote:
> >
> > >But at the moment there isn't enough to give everyone once-a-year
> > >vacations at Kapalua Beach in Hawaii a broadband connection to the
> > >internet, or a large-screen TV-VCR on which to watch their own
> > >copies of "Don Giovanni," "Casablanca," "The Seven Samurai," and
> > >"The Rules of the Game" when it strikes them.
>>So, Brad, to push the question I asked that you never answered (we aren't
rich enough for justice, do you really believe that?): most people who have
thought about justice have regarded it as a way of dealing with scarcity.
Hume says that if we are too poor, we cannot make ourselves be just, and if
we are rich beyond imagination, it doesn't matter if we are, we all get what
we want anyway.
As far as I can tell, your view is that we cannot afford justice until we
have overcome scarcity, that is, until we don't need justice any more. As
long as we need it because we cannot all have everything we want, we cannot
have it. You realize, of course, that this puts off treating people decently
not one or two generations, but, as I suspected, forever, because unlike our
communist friends here, I agree with you that we will never overcome
scarcity. ***********
The bigger problem is uncertainty, not scarcity. And the scarcest "thing" of which we are in great need is better knowledge of how nature constructs systems. I think the left should take Freeman Dyson at his word when he says there's nothing in the laws of physics that says diamonds can't grow on trees. Sure, there are always going to be constraints and optimality on a "dancing landscape" is probably permanently foreclosed to our desire to construct a thoroughly benign ecological society, but science and engineering are still in their adolescence. This is where an egalitarian push for free education makes total sense as a demand for justice. We need all the brains we can get to make it through this century without wrecking a lot of foodwebs, nutrient flows and energy flows. It also makes sense on the issue of global technology transfer as a public good-Brian Barry is very strong on this, as is Ted Benton and a lot of the other contributors to "Fairness and Futurity" [Oxford U Press]-- way better than Rawls.
>>Ina ddition, doesn't it make you worry, as one of the beneficiaries of the
position that the rich can screw the poor until that glorious day. never to
arrive, when they have created so much wealth that they can give it away
without missing it, that your attitude is basically, "I'm all right, Jack,"
that it's so cynically self-serving that it deserves a very long hard look
and an enormously skeprical attitude?
To push a question Gerry Cohen has been pushing lately, I think wrongly, but
it applies to you, why are you entitled to be well off in the circumstances?
You are not contributing to creating wealth so that someday, on your view,
the poor in Oakland and Calcutta will be able to live decently, if only in
two or ten or a hundred generations. You are sitting around teaching
privileged kids at Berkeley. No reason you shouldn't teach, but what do they
pay you, $150,000? What are you doing not giving it away to those less
fortunate at least down to the level of diminishing marginal returns, say
the median family income of $35,000 for a family of four. Or if your family
is larger or smaller, that size. I am just guessing, that is probably a lot
higer than the level of DMR, but surely if you gave away $60,000 after tax a
year to Oxfam, it would do more good than your keeping it, and on your own
theory, why are you entitled to wallow while others suffer, and you not even
helping their graet-great-grandchildren to look forward to a better life?
--jks
**********
Pete Singer says similar things on the above; not that that's bad mind you.
BTW two books that do an inside job on the welfare enhancing claims of neo-realism/neoliberalism in international relations theory, Alan Gilbert's "Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy" & Lloyd Gruber's "Ruling the World" are musts for metaglobalization activists. I'm just digging into the latter and he too rips Pareto arguments for welfare enhancing efficiency gains via Supranational institutions and does provide a possible tapeworm argument for collapsing the Bretton Woods triad--very interesting argument with lots of data and a tough stance on realpolitik issues. Great stuff to fuel neoimperialist discourse/counter arguments.
Ian