The Arrogance Of Do-goodery

I have asked, repeatedly in fact, that those who believe in various forms of collectivism – from weak to strong – provide me the moral rationale for forcefully taking property from one person and giving it to another. Very rarely have I gotten a sophisticated answer.

I will admit that the question is loaded inasmuch as morality is an abstraction for all but staunch moral absolutists which, I suppose, most modern people are, at least selectively, as to some moral standard like, say, slavery being immoral. The question doesn’t arise primarily from what is moral individually but what are our social, collective morals. And since government is the tying institution of collective morality nowadays (it used to be the church), we wrestle with things that we would never do individually but sanction them in the collective – such as killing, taking property or interfering with consensual contracts. It seems it’s the separation from personal responsibility that allows us to condone actions we do not feel morally justified in doing personally – the state is our henchman. We will not do the hanging ourselves.

In many respects it constitutes the rule of law that we need to provide for an orderly society. In matters of encroachments of personal rights perpetrated by individuals it’s necessarily the fabric of the “social contract.” But at some point the majority will sanction actions by the, removed and third party, government that entirely violate the rights of the minority. With majority support those actions are understood as morally absolute. Then society holds government as religion with a blind acquiescence to colloquial dogma. And we do it with feel good language like “the greater good” – whatever that means.

I challenged Mark Tokarski to use as a criterion to justify various social programs:

… explain to me whether the outcomes of those programs have been:

A) Moral
B) Effective
C) Efficient

On morality he answered:

Morality is a human construct, not given us from without. It is how we decide (what) is good for us, what is not. Some say it’s evolutionary – maybe so. But the greater good is the whole point of moral systems. So some things seem right to individuals – to accumulate without purpose, to refuse to take care of the commons, to refuse to pay a share over for the common welfare. For the greater good we say these people are selfish and short-sighted, and we set our rules in spite of them. (Yes, I’m talking about you.)

This “definition” of morality may have some merit but it cannot be taken as a moral absolute and avoids any discussion of context or moral realism. For example, this was the argument that Truman made in using atomic weapons on Japan. That implies that actions are moral based on a preconceived projection of net positive outcomes. It’s classically embedded in Hume’s “is/ought” problem. An action is considered as “is” good rather than “ought” to be good and consequences are avoided. The problem is that the antecedent supposition is often wrong and it’s arrogant to assume otherwise.

Additionally, Mark’s proposition that accumulation of wealth comes without purpose. But the accumulation of wealth has a great purpose in providing capital which is employed in all economic activity. Even socialism recognizes this but asserts that such accumulation is best held by an egalitarian state. He also makes a bad assumption that those who accumulate wealth “refuse” to pay for the common welfare. This is prattle. Capitalists understand that ensuring some baseline of, as Mill would say, social happiness serves rational self interest. But the economics of doing so not only suffer from diminishing returns but, at some point, turn negative on society as a whole. Additionally, stating that capitalist “refuse” to pay for the common good is an outright canard. The only people that usually take this position are anarcho-capitalists and, as far as I can tell, none of them are captains of industry.

He says:

I leave it to you to explain to me how private greed is really a moral good. I leave it to you to explain to me how personal freedom, in a society where we each depend on the labor of others to survive, can exist without limits.

I think I’ve addressed the issue of why private accumulation of capital is a social moral good. I will not, however, associate greed with capitalism. Lots of people are greedy. Down and out drug addicts are greedy. People who game the entitlement system are greedy. Anyone can suffer from greed. Greed is one of the Seven Sins and I don’t assume it’s a moral good. At the same time I don’t know where anyone has proposed that personal freedom doesn’t have limits. I’d like to know who has said that other than Mark and those who misunderstand tenets of classical liberalism. We’re not free to steal, murder, break contracts, interfere with other’s property, etc.

We argue about the limits on private freedom, that’s all. Some of us have taken a gander at the kind of world that exists without government intervention, and decided for ourselves that we are better off with it. You’ve constructed your entire philosophical existence on the premise that government is a force for ill, yet you’ve never show how our society is worse off for government having stepped in to recitify the shortcomings of society when private greed is the ruling force. You don’t even acknowledge that we ever had a problem – seniors were always wealthy and healthy, kids always had insurance, educational opportunities were always available to everyone. I really think you believe things like that.

First, I can’t for the life of me understand where he gets this stuff. I have never said that government is a force for ill. What I’ve said is that government is a vehicle for ill. And I can use Mark’s own complaints in showing how society is worse off from government intervention. Let’s just take the tax code for starters.

Why is it fair, assuming codified unfairness is immoral, that the tax code arbitrarily rewards people who work for employers who subsidize health insurance? Why is it fair that homeowners get to write off their mortgage interest while renters don’t. Why is fair that wealthy people can get tax credits for locking up land for their personal use with conservation easements? Why is it fair that parents of young children get a refundable tax credit (which can be used to offset payroll taxes) when others don’t. Why is fair that the central bank can manipulate interest rates on the backs retirees who use CDs for income? And I’m sure if I think about it for a while I can come up with a few hundred more example.

And if one, such as Mark, asserts that greed is a motivating force then he has to look no further than government’s role in enabling the rent seeking of, say, big energy, big pharma, military suppliers and all that is lobbied for interests he contends are motivated by greed. Why is it that there is a 50 cent import duty on ethanol when we desire to separate our dependence on middle-east oil? The government’s largess is the biggest playground for mischief in the economy and it boggles the mind one who complains about the malfeasance of business doesn’t acknowledge that it’s government that’s the real complicit enabler.

As for Mark’s accusing me that I have some notion that society ever lacked suffering, well, that’s so unserious it doesn’t deserve a response.

Next:

I define a system that seeks equitable distribution of necessary resources for all – necessary resources. I don’t care about TV’s and Twinkies – only health care, education, transportation, basic foodstuffs and utilities. I seek to use government to manage these necessities and see that all have access. A system that only rewards private greed usually leads to a few select getting to best and the majority being ill served. This yields societies as we see in Latin America with enormous poverty and opulent wealth, side by side, no middle.

First, I’m not sure about his definitions of either “equitable” or “necessary.” In the roughly 14% of the population that lives in the lower class most have 2 TV’s, 2 cars, a VCR and Twinkies are eligible foods stuff that can purchased with food stamps. And the irony can hardly go unnoticed that it’s the poor who suffer the most from obesity and disease from poor nutrition (not too little but the wrong type of food) who are the primary beneficiaries of the attempt at an equitable distribution of resources. Government schools are failing the poor and the semi-socialized medical system most harms the less educated working poor with price controls that shift the burden of payment to another cohort. Yet, he uses as an example of capitalism creating economic oligarchy counties where government corruption protects the upper class while he avoids the fact that huge middle classes are being born from places with significant economic freedoms like Taiwan and Singapore. He makes the assumption that it’s capitalism that causes the disparity in wealth while completely avoiding the issue of corruption.

I’ve seen your system at work, and I see that it fails. Constantly. I also see that whenever it fails, you blame too much government. You can’t see that a society without government is dog-eat-dog, that the natural result of such a system is a few with an overwhelming claim on resources, and the majority with not enough. That’s natural, maybe you think it is good and moral becuase it comes about naturally, but I think it is immoral.

And for what it is worth, you can hide away if you want, but we are all in it together, we do owe a debt to one another. I would not have what I have without public support in the form of laws and roads, libraries and public services, and schools – I owe a debt. Call it platitudinous, but it’s a simple fact. Societies that recognize that fact, and tax and set policy accordingly, are healthier and happier than us.

Again, Mark has a fatal flaw in understanding. I have never, not once in my life, advocated that we don’t have government. But he’s right, as I’ve outlined above, that too much government is exactly the source of a great deal of inequity. As for owing a debt, I can’t speak for who owes whom for what but it is in our best interest to be compassionate and charitable. Mark, like so many on the left, assume that the only fair arbiter of charity is the government. How foolish. Organizations like the Salvation Army and the Red Cross distribute goods and services for about 5% of total resources where the government is significantly less efficient. The centralized decision making in the distribution of scares resources has never in the history of man shown to be either more “fair” or more efficient that million of consumers making choices to which business quickly adapts.

So I will concede, in a limited way that, it is a moral choice to seek an outcome where society strives to provided the greatest good. He makes no coherent argument that the government is the best at doing so and builds a straw man who acts only motivated by greed. And still, he doesn’t make the moral argument for forcibly taking money from one person and giving it to another. But if he’s really interested in it it there are places from which he might start (with whom I have multiple disagreements) – as opposed to his genuinely good heart.

And for the record, I’m not a heartless bastard  who doesn’t think we should help the needy.  I just question the fairness, efficiency, effectiveness, and wisdom of it being done so by a government that has such a poor history of doing so.  No one has ever said that free-markets are fair.  What we have said is they are more fair than anything else that has been tried.  But Mark seems to think that a few smart people in government can do the job better than a million people working for their own rational self-interest.  That’s elitism and arrogance.  The striking thing is that the paradigm he proposes has been tried over and over again with such spotty results.  One would hope that such “progressives” would look outside of the conventional wisdom for solutions.  Unfortunately they don’t.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 10:51 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.