"Our society has the capacity to ensure there is literally zero involuntary poverty- e.g. by acting as an employer of last resort. We have not done so and this is a titanic crime."
This is not true. The government creating make-work jobs in order to give poor people something to do so that they could earn wages would not cause there to be more of the things that poor people want to buy with their money, so the material scarcity that causes them to lack things would not change, the government would merely be redistributing things and covering it with a 'jobs program.'
Yeah obviously to the extent that the make work program didn't produce anything (dubious, it could be productive) the program would be redistributive. But there's nothing wrong with that. A program funded by a progressive consumption tax for example could reduce wasteful positional expenditure.
not really because if those activities were, in fact, productive, then people would already be doing them as a business and making profit at it.
The jobs program would just indirectly re-allocate some of the value produced by the actual productive parts of the economy to people who were not producing any value.
"A program funded by a progressive consumption tax for example could reduce wasteful positional expenditure."
Its only 'wasteful' because you would prefer that those people spend their money elsewhere, they probably think its wasteful to redistribute their earnings to people who didn't do anything to earn them but its more efficient to you because its an end state you prefer.
"not really because if those activities were, in fact, productive, then people would already be doing them as a business and making profit at it."
Not if they're public goods. You do understand the theory of public goods and why they're necessarily undersupplied relative to the efficient level by government?
You do understand that there are fundamental reasons why some goods- non-rivalrous and non-excludable- are ill provided by government right? And public goods are only one type of goods that are better provided by the public sector than the private sector.
"Its only 'wasteful' because you would prefer that those people spend their money elsewhere"
That's pretty much what it means to call something wasteful yes, and government is all about making value judgements, but in this case, there's another dimension, for more on why position expenditure is specifically wasteful, see:
Positional goods can be such that even many participants involved would agree that it's wasteful, but they are trapped in an arms race of status seeking positional expenditure against each other. No single individual can stop that arms race without losing.
"You do understand that there are fundamental reasons why some goods- non-rivalrous and non-excludable- are ill provided by government right? And public goods are only one type of goods that are better provided by the public sector than the private sector."
Public goods don't feed people so by hiring people to come up with more public goods, the government necessarily re-allocates private goods that are not produced by the added jobs. The stuff the people want, food, housing, water, security is scarce. Creating more jobs by inventing additional public goods doesn't increase the amount of the things people really want.
"Positional goods can be such that even many participants involved would agree that it's wasteful, but they are trapped in an arms race of status seeking positional expenditure against each other. No single individual can stop that arms race without losing."
Yes but positional goods are part of life, this is why those people work for those wages doing those jobs. Your make-work employees would also be spending their income on positional goods but without contributing to the economy in exchange.
How do you respond to the objection that the state does provide the means of subsistence via welfare programs? My response is simple: Such provision is generally selective, insufficient, and tied to conditions that undermine dignity. The first two points are easily targeted by your arguments: if welfare doesn't cover your case, then there's simply no provision of means of life; and if it isn't enough to cover your needs, then it doesn't count either.
The third point is less obvious, but I think it does establish grounds for TAD. Let us assume that there is universal welfare sufficient to meet the needs of all who receive it, but that it is tied to a set of indignifying conditions. For the sake of argument, let's make these conditions far worse than those typically imposed by Centrelink in Australia: mutual obligations, daily check-ins, surveillance of expenses, controlled spending, mandatory drug tests, invasive medical checks, etc. (Essentially the program of policies imposed by the NT Intervention.)
In such a situation, is there a right to steal to achieve dignified subsistence? I think so. Put differently, there is a right to opt out of universal welfare and prefer theft instead where the conditions attached to that welfare degrade your dignity. As you put it, the basic right here is for dignified subsistence – which is a step further than mere subsistence.
> If I were not a consequentialist though, I would look at society through the lens of a social contract. People give up an enormous amount by when they enter society....
No one in my generation was asked about any social contract, thus I consider any compliance with it on my part to be purely voluntary.
> ...and some people gain an enormous amount from that agreement. Especially when we consider that prior to the state, no one could claim property and wealth on the scale, and with the security, that they do.
And with the way Canadian politicians have decided to run this country, I will never be able to own any property, and barring the winning of a lottery, neither will my children. Whether some revenge will be dispensed remains to be seen, but I know if another pandemic comes around I will be doing the opposite of all guidelines...sorry boomers!! 😂😂
1. I think you're drastically overestimating the effects of theft by the poor, relative to the benefits to the poor- particularly if panic and overreaction isn't priced in. Sheer declining marginal utility suggests these benefits should be substantial. The question of the cost incidence of theft is a complex one, a portion would be borne by owners and shareholders and a portion would be borne by the public, I can guarantee though that far, far less than 100% of the cost incidence would be borne by other poor people.
2. The point isn't to create a world where stealing is accepted, the point is the get enough people to accept it to put pressure on the government to force it to offer alternatives. If 51% of the population came to accept what I outlined here, the result wouldn't be the legalize stealing or something, the result would be to force the government to very quickly eliminate involuntary poverty, which is very possible, and has arguably been achieved in some countries.
I live in the 9th highest crime per capita suburb of my city, out of 408 suburbs. Eyeballing it, eyeballing it, it has a crime rate approximately 6 times higher than the city as a whole suburbs. Appeals to personal experience aren't going to trump me. I feel like a lot of your argument depends on treating 'crime' as a kind of undifferentiated mass. Fights, muggings, burglaries etc. have a huge impact on the poor, but the kind of crime we're talking about (largely shoplifting from chain stores) has a still significant, but much smaller impact, certainly on a per incident basis.
Of course crime creates huge problems for poor people. However, the kind of non-violent theft I talk about targeting chain stores in no way necessitates gangs or fights. You can't just take a defense of very narrow range of behavior and apply it to other circumstances.
I think that a substantial portion of the population no longer being convinced that stealing is wrong in the circumstances I describe would put considerable pressure on government, yes. I'm not denying that a bunch of people coming to believe this would lead to a period of social disarticulation. You're probably not going to create the conditions to force a major social change like the elimination of involuntary poverty without some social disarticulation. The pressure I describe is comparatively peaceful, the franchise for example, took mass murder on both sides to achieve.
Given declining marginal utility of income, theft by the destitute from the very rich, at its face, probably increases utility in package of goods by 10x or more. Even counting disproportionate effects on the other poor (price increases in certain shops, closures of certain shops), I find it unlikely social costs>social benefits.
"Our society has the capacity to ensure there is literally zero involuntary poverty- e.g. by acting as an employer of last resort. We have not done so and this is a titanic crime."
This is not true. The government creating make-work jobs in order to give poor people something to do so that they could earn wages would not cause there to be more of the things that poor people want to buy with their money, so the material scarcity that causes them to lack things would not change, the government would merely be redistributing things and covering it with a 'jobs program.'
Yeah obviously to the extent that the make work program didn't produce anything (dubious, it could be productive) the program would be redistributive. But there's nothing wrong with that. A program funded by a progressive consumption tax for example could reduce wasteful positional expenditure.
" it could be productive"
not really because if those activities were, in fact, productive, then people would already be doing them as a business and making profit at it.
The jobs program would just indirectly re-allocate some of the value produced by the actual productive parts of the economy to people who were not producing any value.
"A program funded by a progressive consumption tax for example could reduce wasteful positional expenditure."
Its only 'wasteful' because you would prefer that those people spend their money elsewhere, they probably think its wasteful to redistribute their earnings to people who didn't do anything to earn them but its more efficient to you because its an end state you prefer.
"not really because if those activities were, in fact, productive, then people would already be doing them as a business and making profit at it."
Not if they're public goods. You do understand the theory of public goods and why they're necessarily undersupplied relative to the efficient level by government?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/public-goods/
You do understand that there are fundamental reasons why some goods- non-rivalrous and non-excludable- are ill provided by government right? And public goods are only one type of goods that are better provided by the public sector than the private sector.
"Its only 'wasteful' because you would prefer that those people spend their money elsewhere"
That's pretty much what it means to call something wasteful yes, and government is all about making value judgements, but in this case, there's another dimension, for more on why position expenditure is specifically wasteful, see:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691156682/the-darwin-economy
Positional goods can be such that even many participants involved would agree that it's wasteful, but they are trapped in an arms race of status seeking positional expenditure against each other. No single individual can stop that arms race without losing.
"You do understand that there are fundamental reasons why some goods- non-rivalrous and non-excludable- are ill provided by government right? And public goods are only one type of goods that are better provided by the public sector than the private sector."
Public goods don't feed people so by hiring people to come up with more public goods, the government necessarily re-allocates private goods that are not produced by the added jobs. The stuff the people want, food, housing, water, security is scarce. Creating more jobs by inventing additional public goods doesn't increase the amount of the things people really want.
"Positional goods can be such that even many participants involved would agree that it's wasteful, but they are trapped in an arms race of status seeking positional expenditure against each other. No single individual can stop that arms race without losing."
Yes but positional goods are part of life, this is why those people work for those wages doing those jobs. Your make-work employees would also be spending their income on positional goods but without contributing to the economy in exchange.
How do you respond to the objection that the state does provide the means of subsistence via welfare programs? My response is simple: Such provision is generally selective, insufficient, and tied to conditions that undermine dignity. The first two points are easily targeted by your arguments: if welfare doesn't cover your case, then there's simply no provision of means of life; and if it isn't enough to cover your needs, then it doesn't count either.
The third point is less obvious, but I think it does establish grounds for TAD. Let us assume that there is universal welfare sufficient to meet the needs of all who receive it, but that it is tied to a set of indignifying conditions. For the sake of argument, let's make these conditions far worse than those typically imposed by Centrelink in Australia: mutual obligations, daily check-ins, surveillance of expenses, controlled spending, mandatory drug tests, invasive medical checks, etc. (Essentially the program of policies imposed by the NT Intervention.)
In such a situation, is there a right to steal to achieve dignified subsistence? I think so. Put differently, there is a right to opt out of universal welfare and prefer theft instead where the conditions attached to that welfare degrade your dignity. As you put it, the basic right here is for dignified subsistence – which is a step further than mere subsistence.
Yeah, the right to dignified subsistence is not just about the stuff you get, it's also about the strings attached.
> If I were not a consequentialist though, I would look at society through the lens of a social contract. People give up an enormous amount by when they enter society....
No one in my generation was asked about any social contract, thus I consider any compliance with it on my part to be purely voluntary.
> ...and some people gain an enormous amount from that agreement. Especially when we consider that prior to the state, no one could claim property and wealth on the scale, and with the security, that they do.
And with the way Canadian politicians have decided to run this country, I will never be able to own any property, and barring the winning of a lottery, neither will my children. Whether some revenge will be dispensed remains to be seen, but I know if another pandemic comes around I will be doing the opposite of all guidelines...sorry boomers!! 😂😂
1. I think you're drastically overestimating the effects of theft by the poor, relative to the benefits to the poor- particularly if panic and overreaction isn't priced in. Sheer declining marginal utility suggests these benefits should be substantial. The question of the cost incidence of theft is a complex one, a portion would be borne by owners and shareholders and a portion would be borne by the public, I can guarantee though that far, far less than 100% of the cost incidence would be borne by other poor people.
2. The point isn't to create a world where stealing is accepted, the point is the get enough people to accept it to put pressure on the government to force it to offer alternatives. If 51% of the population came to accept what I outlined here, the result wouldn't be the legalize stealing or something, the result would be to force the government to very quickly eliminate involuntary poverty, which is very possible, and has arguably been achieved in some countries.
I live in the 9th highest crime per capita suburb of my city, out of 408 suburbs. Eyeballing it, eyeballing it, it has a crime rate approximately 6 times higher than the city as a whole suburbs. Appeals to personal experience aren't going to trump me. I feel like a lot of your argument depends on treating 'crime' as a kind of undifferentiated mass. Fights, muggings, burglaries etc. have a huge impact on the poor, but the kind of crime we're talking about (largely shoplifting from chain stores) has a still significant, but much smaller impact, certainly on a per incident basis.
Of course crime creates huge problems for poor people. However, the kind of non-violent theft I talk about targeting chain stores in no way necessitates gangs or fights. You can't just take a defense of very narrow range of behavior and apply it to other circumstances.
I think that a substantial portion of the population no longer being convinced that stealing is wrong in the circumstances I describe would put considerable pressure on government, yes. I'm not denying that a bunch of people coming to believe this would lead to a period of social disarticulation. You're probably not going to create the conditions to force a major social change like the elimination of involuntary poverty without some social disarticulation. The pressure I describe is comparatively peaceful, the franchise for example, took mass murder on both sides to achieve.
Given declining marginal utility of income, theft by the destitute from the very rich, at its face, probably increases utility in package of goods by 10x or more. Even counting disproportionate effects on the other poor (price increases in certain shops, closures of certain shops), I find it unlikely social costs>social benefits.