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I like the idea of liberalism as a utilitarian balance between the competing concerns of “men have a right to reap the fruit of their labor” and ”no one should hoard and abuse resources which are not integral to their pursuit of happiness”. I don’t see the philosophy of natural rights as having any direct influence on people’s political beliefs today; it hardly ever comes up. Instead, in terms of the capitalism vs redistribution debate, I see two camps separated by two intuitions regarding justice. One is that people deserve the resources which they fairly obtain, one is that people do not deserve to hoard 100x the resources of their employees. The idea that there is a universal principle that someone necessarily deserves their income if they make it is nonsensical superstition, it’s magical thinking, a dogma of mammon. Someone can argue that this is the best dogma to establish social stability, but it can’t be a self-evident fact.
I think the most realistic points of disagreement in mainstream America are that conservatives fear redistribution will go to the wrong people (demotivating and harming the status of the middle class), and liberals fear that the wealthy waste resources frivolously that could go to the greater social good. At root, I think these are utilitarian intuitions.
I attribute the absence of natural rights from the discussion as the appalling dearth of political education in the modern demos rather than its irrelevancy. Ask the average voter where their rights come from and you'll get unhelpful answers (God? the State? being a 'decent' human being?). The degradation of rights into entitlements given by governmental fiat is something to be fought against.
Although it may be irrelevant in people's day to day lives it is of the greatest importance to the philosophy of government, and therefore its character.
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The conservative impulse is that welfare creates a poorly-behaved underclass governed by bad incentives that compound over generations. They are in large part correct. The progessive impulse is that capitalism creates a class of elites that will inevitably interfere in the democratic process both to preserve their wealth and status and to further their own politics (regardless of whether these are shared by the majority of people). They are also in large part correct.
The question is whether both problems are actually worse than the alternatives. Modern developed countries are now so materially prosperous that allowing poor people to starve, or freeze, or die of easily treated illness really does seem inhumane (in the sense that it is an easily preventable tragedy, and that preventing it does not cripplingly burden wider society). And as for the effects of great wealth inequality, hierarchy is a natural part of all human civilization, as you note, and elites will always use their influence to serve themselves and their ideas, so it's hard to see how this too is preventable without attempting damaging forms of economic leveling.
Welfare is one iota of a large group of policies, some of which are prosocial and some of which are antisocial. If we want a “well-behaved lower class”, we would be making shift work illegal and enforcing rules on maternity leave and company-provided healthy meals. And banning children from accessing certain media. This would be a great boon to mental and physical health. Alas, we don’t do this, and so the middle class pays a disproportionate amount of their income on the consequences of our antisocial society, via healthcare and police services and jails. So in addition to welfare and unemployment checks, we also have other policies: unions, capping C-Suite pay at a percent of employee pay, domestic protection from foreign immigrant workers… there’s a lot.
I don’t think this is the root of the progressive impulse. The root is that they feel their quality of life is not proportional to what they deserve, given the vast mass of wealth that is wasted by the 1%. Interference in democracy and self-serving tendencies are secondary concerns. Progressives see the social policies of other countries and find them desirable, and they can also imagine better conditions in the US.
If we disperse more of the funds that the mega-wealthy waste, and lobby for better employee conditions, then people will be healthier and live longer. So progressives are merely asserting that there is a superior possibility for America, instead of the steadily decreasing health and purchasing power and increasing debt the middle class. I think that the way they go about this is wrong but that’s the impulse.
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