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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29464 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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I do think 'it is a fundamental good to help people', and decreasing marginal utility of money, applies to the entire group

That fails to be more sophisticated than "food good", except it's "help good" instead. Not just because it contains few words, but because it implicitly assumes that there's no need to balance the benefit from the help against anything else.

because it implicitly assumes that there's no need to balance the benefit from the help against anything else.

er, that's what 'decreasing marginal utility of money' is about. we're evenly weighting personal well-being or happiness or w/e, and the balance is that taking money away from high-earners lowers their utility less than it increases the utility of low earners. In non-robot terms, that means "joe affording an android phone is worth denying Sarah her 20th dress of the month", or even "bill affording two nights at a a cheap bar is worth jeff not having one night at an expensive bar".

And I think that this, while obviously complicated, like everything, is a "single, coherent reason" in a way that avoids the 999 reasons thing

(if this isn't a specific nit and it relates to a larger-scale point about my original post, it's going over my head)

that's what 'decreasing marginal utility of money' is about. we're evenly weighting personal well-being or happiness or w/e, and the balance is that taking money away from high-earners lowers their utility less than it increases the utility of low earners

There are other things to balance against than the benefit to high earners. "What bad incentives does it create", for instance. And if you're going to argue for welfare in such general terms that you're making one argument for the entire category, you haven't actually restricted it to situations where the money is taken from high earners in the first place.

(if this isn't a specific nit and it relates to a larger-scale point about my original post, it's going over my head)

The larger point is that "my side of the argument" is different from "the argument". If you don't need to defend your argument, it's easy to state it in very broad terms that apply to a very broad category. If you do have to defend it, this is no longer so.

There are other things to balance against than the benefit to high earners

I agree. But if we engaged in a debate about 'is welfare good', we could nail down the primary benefit (marginal utility, increasing total welfare), and then move onto potential countervailing issues - you'd probably agree that there are that and 0-5 other general things that make welfare potentially bad, and then we could go into detail on those.

If you don't need to defend your argument, it's easy to state it in very broad terms that apply to a very broad category. If you do have to defend it, this is no longer so.

Sure, but the broad statements help scope the more detailed defense. You may have hundreds of distinct points to oppose welfare, but they can all be grouped into broad categories - which you'd name when Destiny asked you 'what are your reasons for opposing it', and if he said 'would you be fine with welfare without those' you'd say 'yes' or 'yes, but that's an impossible hypothetical' (which is what i'd say in that circumstance), and then the discussion would narrow into one of your points.

With Megan, he can't do that - he can either engage with her on 'it's about women' or 'it's about penetration', and then if he wins that argument megan will just say 'yeah but its still bad without those' an hour later, and then both parties will run out of time, unsatisfied.

Sure, but the broad statements help scope the more detailed defense. You may have hundreds of distinct points to oppose welfare, but they can all be grouped into broad categories

The broad statements help scope the more detailed defense, yes, but the more detailed defense is still important enough that answering one objection doesn't necessarily mean, and often doesn't mean, answering another. You can't just say "the welfare argument is about helping poor people, and either you do or you don't agree with that" and claim it's some kind of gotcha when someone specifically objects to, for instance, building homeless shelters, because "don't you think it's good to help poor people?"

If you mean that the number of arguments isn't literally 999, sure.

I did just mean that the number of arguments isn't literally 999 or even 99, tbh. It it's more like there are 4 big arguments, each with 4 sub-arguments within them, and so on. (obviously it's much more nebulous and interconnected than that literally)

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