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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35216 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Most anti-AA people also take a libertarian-ish view of economics and they think that wealth should be distributed based on merit. The person who works the hardest gets paid the most. The person who works the hardest should be given the most status. Not the person who "needs" it the most. I don't see what dots they're not connecting; they're being internally consistent, at any rate.

So do they think inheritance should be taxed at 100% so as to prevent lazy heirs from benefiting?

Otherwise, what is the metric for wealth distribution? Is it who works the hardest? Is roofing in the summer as a redhead especially lucrative?

All of which is to say hard work is not the only or even the main determinator of who makes the most money. So why shouldn’t the spoils go to people with the he most need? Or of a specific race?

What should determine the distribution of wealth?

Otherwise, what is the metric for wealth distribution?

How useful you are to the people with the money to pay you. Which generally implies being willing to take on extra work, or having done a bunch of work yourself for free to build expertise, so that you're useful later. The children of the wealthy are generally considered extreme outliers, who tend to lose the money within a couple generations, and don't really have much of a long-term effect.

Is roofing in the summer as a redhead especially lucrative?

Suffering doesn't buy the boss anything. Working hard may require suffering, but the suffering itself does not have any value, unless the boss is a (literal) sadist, in which case it may provide quite a bit of value. The value is generally in the work, and if you can find a way to do the work without suffering (example: the redhead wearing a wide-brim hat to protect their neck), basically nobody would say you should charge less.

To a Libertarian wealth should not be distributed at all, based not on merit or anything else, but rather sit with the person who generated it until they decide to do whatever they want with it. I think a Libertarian would argue that wealth belongs morally to the person who created it because its an extension of bodily autonomy, personal freedom, and the fact that all civilization rests on freely agreed to contracts.

And if "whatever they want" includes giving it to their heirs to squander, the state should have no opinion on the matter. Inheritance taxes are an infringement on the dying man's right to his property being disposed of in the way he wishes (in his will).

Even on utilitarianism, meritocracy is useful. The erosion of meritocratic norms and increasing resentment may cause more harm in the long run than it benefits a few black Harvard students.

Why do these libertarians take the view that their abstract notion of merit entitles them to a Harvard education? Why suddenly hate the laisses-faire outcome of Harvard deciding how to allocate Harvard's resources?

Why suddenly hate the laisses-faire outcome of Harvard deciding how to allocate Harvard's resources?

This is Culture War, the integrity of the debate crumbled long ago. As is often said here: My rules applied fairly> your rules applied fairly > your rules applied unfairly.

If all universities receiving federal funds were allowed to discriminate on the basis of race and could discriminate against any race, I think libertarians would have a more tempered view. But when its only against Whites and Asians, the one-sidedness of the argument becomes apparent and we enter the matrix above.

Our rules >> your rules applied fairly >>>> your rules applied unfairly.

We might prefer laissez-faire to anti-discrimination law, but anti-discrimination law only applied when the discrimination is against certain races is worse than either.

I agree with this, but it's a different argument than the meritocracy argument.

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