Wow! Now on to income distribution....

I don't question that the money of the richest should go to the poor, but is it the government that should do it morally? You can make arguments against wealth redistribution by saying that the government isn't as efficient with the money as private citizens and private organizations. But assume a perfectly efficient government...would it be morally right for the gov't to redistribute?

no. because that money is yours. it does not belong to the whole society.

but you choose to live in that society. and if it's democratic, majority rules.

but certain rights trump the majority rule of democracy. freedom of religion. is possession of property at that level? no.

but does that mean that if, in this society you choose to live in, the majority decide that all your property should be taken away, that's ok?

Is there a moral argument you can make against wealth redistribution without saying that that money is YOURS?

because, thinking about this from a Biblical perspective, that money isn't yours. Give to Ceasar what is Ceaser's. But then you could say that you don't have complete freedom of speech either because Biblically we shouldn't say certain things. But that, I think is different. The heart and the mouth are not Ceaser's. A person isn't Ceaser's. Is their labor? no? so than neither is their money.

But gov't IS the people in a democracy.


WOAH. I'm stuck.

please take me back, Mill

The truth is though that we use utilitarian thinking ALL the time to make decisions. On a small scale, in our individual lives: I decide to spend money on school because it means that afterwards I'll get a better job. We use it on a political scale as well: we're building a new interstate and we have the choice to choose a route that will require one home to be demolished or ten to be demolished. We'll choose the one, all things being equal. This, really, is the very basic and innate way that humans make daily decisions. But still it can't exist on its own. There are value choices being made. In the personal example I am putting value on money over time, perhaps. In the second, is maybe a pure utilitarian example, actually. but when do these ever exist? A more likely scenario: do we demolish one historic home or ten tacky plastic-plywood homes? There we have to base our judgement of utility on some standard of WHAT is in fact better overall for society?

So UT. is good, but it can't stand on it's own.

sorry, JS MILL.

I'm a pragmatism and I appreciate a straight-forward style of thinking, especially when I'm thinking theoretically. I think it's because the realm of morality is so weighty and impossible to quantify, that when I theorize, it's nice to take a break from it. This meant, in college, I was a realist, not a flaky international institutionalist.

Now Staple's conversation has turned to Utilitarianism (basically the idea of 'consequentialism' discussed in the previous session) and this is a concept I can appreciate. I read John Stuart Mill a couple years ago and I really enjoyed it. It's straight-forward.

The problem with it is that it's not really useful for making decisions. Take the example of the internment camps that the US rounded up the Japanese into during WWII. The thought at the time was that this would keep many people safe while hurting a few: utility maximization. But it could also be argued, again using utilitarianism, that detaining families in the name of prevention in fact harmed the overall society by making its laws unstable, or whatever you wanted to argue-- even that it bound the people outside the camps in fear or racism. The point is, you still need some sort of standard for what utility IS.

So while utilitarianism is a helpful framework, it's not useful for making decisions on its own. Because what standard do we use to rank benefits?

Careening Trolley

Sandel's first hypothetical scenario is that you're the driver of an out of control trolley that's about to hit and kill 5 men, but you also have the choice to change the direction of the trolley and kill only one man. My choice would be to kill the one man. I'm not sure why though. Simple addition of value? 5 human lives are more valuable than one human life? But if our value is infinite, then one matters as much as the many. hmm..

Then he makes it harder. You're a bystander now, 5 men will be killed, but you have the choice to push one fat man into the way of the train and save the other five. Somehow this seems wrong. And my first thought was that it was involving someone against his will who wouldn't have otherwise been involved. But then I realized that's exactly what swerving the trolley in the first scenario would have been too.

So there are questions of how to determine value of humans, there's also a question of choice though, I think. Because if the fat man willingly threw himself in front of the train that would be heroic.

Oh no. scenario one and I'm already stuck!

In both cases you have a choice to make between killing one or five people. In both cases if you do nothing, then the five men will die. Pushing someone onto the tracks just seems like it's always the wrong choice. But what if the stakes were higher? What if you push the guy on or a whole city full of people die?

bleh. this isn't fun anymore.

Oh. here's a good distinction brought up by a student: your choice in the matter. in the first scenario, your involvement is sealed. In the second, it is not. But really I think that's a false distinction as well. If we witness something and have the capability, then we are automatically involved.

Sandel says that what's going on here is two competing standards for decision making: the first is consequential, the second, categorical. Consequential just looks at outcomes, categorical looks at the intrinsic rightness of an action.

So above where I said, pushing someone into the tracks is just always wrong- categorical, but then when I rose the stakes- a whole city of people will die- the consequential standard rose to prominence.

Justice

I am so fed up with US politics that after moving overseas I almost never read domestic news. In fact, the only reason I have any idea what is going on in the States is because I love a good does of Jon Stewart from time to time.

What irritates me is the irrationality of it all. No one is making strong arguments, everyone is just looking to win a seat or sway mass opinion with emotionally or religiously charged rhetoric. Now I don't want to completely bash on emotional rhetoric, because when things are very right or very wrong, we should stand up and say so, not just with our heads, but with our hearts. What bothers me is when emotional rhetoric distracts from concrete action and change and when its effect is to blur thinking and create division.

Part of my frustration, also, I'm realizing, is my own inability to sort out the rhetoric from the truth. I tend to always play devil's advocate and be the moderating force. But there are some things that are just right or just wrong, and I don't want to be ambivalent about those. I don't want to be plagued with doubt when it's time to stand for something.

In his book, Generous Justice (which I first started reading to figure out what the connection was between the evangelical gospel and social justice, but that's a huge and happy topic I'll write about later) Tim Keller explains that one of the reasons we can't come to an agreement on "justice" issues is because we don't have a common standard or definition for the idea. He uses a helpful framework from a book by Harvard Professor Michael Sandel called Justice: by "justice" a person may mean 1) "maximizing welfare" (as in JS Mill's Utilitarianism: the greatest good for the greatest number of people), 2)"respecting freedom" (bill of rights type stuff), or 3) "promoting virtue"

So, being me, I want to create a systematic way to answer all these questions of US policy debates. (Something, of course, that mankind has debated for thousands of years, I know!) but I'm pretty sure I can come up with some working theories for how to think through questions.

So I've dived into it all by starting Michael Sandel's lecture series on YouTube.

Lives of South Africa

I finished Alan Paton's second autobiography recently. I think it's the first autobiography I've ever read and I really like it. Of course, I love Alan Paton's work, but I don't think that's why I enjoyed the book. The book didn't have the literary preciseness of his other works. It was just an old man recording his memories as they came to him.

Now I've started Nelson Mandela's biography. It's a brick of a book and I was afraid that without the direct voice of the protagonist, I would grow bored quickly. Quite the opposite has happened, however. The writing is good and the details are well-chosen so far.

I enjoy learning about history in this way- through the lives of primary actors. It brings a real understanding to what is otherwise just a list of events.

I thin that South Africa must be a beautiful country, because there is so much reference to the land in Alan Paton's fiction works. And there seems to be such a deep attachment to the country in the hearts of its people, despite its brokenness. It's an almost spiritual attachment, that I can only attribute to nature.