Rolling Political Philosophy Thread

(where "expanding social welfare provisions" could obviously also be "maintaining at a given level" or "not cutting back", etc, depending on context)

right, but keynes ultimately believed that economic efficiency would lead to greater good for society.

for the individual iirc

i agree you can't really have a moral argument for the welfare state without addressing the rest of the political-economic system

xxp "ultimately", sure, but along the way everything is framed in terms of an amoral analysis of the tendencies of a capitalist economy—business owners are asked to go along with it not out of some altruistic desire or obligation to help their fellow man, but because it will help avert (a certain type of) economic crisis!

(I mean I guess you can say that "the economy ought not collapse" is a moral stance, but hopefully it's an uncontroversial one...?)

I don't think the 'along the way everything is framed in terms of an amoral analysis of the tendencies of a capitalist economy' matters. there is a moral belief system behind the logic of capitalism and the 'along the way' is not objectively amoral. those businessmen would say they're creating wealth and jobs for society and it's morally wrong to prevent that.

if you remove political-economic considerations then how would a purely moral argument differ from that for almsgiving or any other 'social' altruism?

max is right, I would like arguments for having a welfare state that aren't just "it's stimulus!", that make a case that it's a morally good thing to collaborate under the aegis of a state to ensure the common welfare of fellow citizens via the redistribution of wealth.

Arguments that a welfare state protects the state sit in a middle ground, since "the state" is a moral structure inasmuch as it has the legitimacy to dispense justice & thus protecting it could be a moral end in itself...but also could be stand-ins for "we need to preserve the present economic status quo & this'll do the trick".

Yeah, a welfare state is an economic structure, since it involves transferring wealth. But it's a moral structure too, & I want to see what kind of secular case can be made for it as a moral structure. I get that the case is gonna depend on which society we're talking about; the "social imaginary" of the USA is different than France, etc.

again, I don't think you can isolate that moral structure.

I mean you can say

"if we are to agree that political-economic system X works irl and is the 'best', what's a moral argument for a welfare state?"

otherwise how can we argue about the moral structure of whether the gov't should give poor people $ if we don't agree on the real world effects of the gov't receiving/spending money and poor people receiving/spending money?

I think we can take for granted that some basic degree of wealth is necessary for the good life: enough for food & shelter at least. Let's add health care also. How much more do we need to know about the "real world effects" of having the wealth necessary for those transferred by the state?

Of course in taking for granted that such wealth is needed for the good life, I don't mean to assume that it's self-evident that everyone is entitled to the good life, if even only on other people's dime. That's exactly what I want to see argued for.

real world effects:

a. does gov't wealth transfer XYZ ultimately (after all short and long-term effects are factored in) lead to more economic growth for the country?
(are we assuming that more economic growth is an inherently good thing, if we already have reached the basic degree of wealth?)
b. does gov't wealth transfer XYZ ultimately (after all short and long-term effects are factored in) lead to a fairer share of wealth?
(are we assuming that a small gini coefficient is an inherently good thing? why?)
c. if we have to make a decision between a 'rising tide' vs. smaller gini coefficient, what's the point where we'll sacrifice one for the other?
d. does the economic context affect the morality of wealth transfer XYZ? (is it moral for greece to increase the size of its welfare state today?)

wrt a: no, we shouldn't assume economic growth is an inherently good thing.
wrt b: fairness is a moral concept.
wrt c: I'm interested in arguments that decide the "point" on moral grounds.
wrt d: I think morality doesn't apply to democratic nations as a whole, but only to individual agents.

It's not shocking that so many classical economists were utilitarians.

c. you can't decide that point on moral grounds without agreeing to an economic framework and working out the math. you can plot that trade-off on an graph, put your finger on it and say "there, that's the moral point" but the graph first requires an agreed-upon economic framework.
d. then how can you discuss the morality of an economic concept?

and b. yeah I prob shouldn't have used the word fair, that term already assumes something. I meant 'smaller disparity'.

I think that if you are asking 'why should...' anything, then you are asking a moral question. All of the arguments for the welfare state (or any other kind of state) are moral, because you have to decide on a goal, and why that goal is better than any other. For us in general? We all know why the welfare state is better - fewer people starve, die of unnecessary illnesses or exposure due to homelessness, Whether these are worthy ends is, of course, a moral argument.

fewer people also starve, die of unnecessary illness etc. thanks to the wealth gains from free markets

wrt c: sure, fix some economic framework & ask what's the right action given that framework. I was thinking of this as less "first principles work" than "given current economic reality, what's the best secular moral case for a welfare state?"

wrt d: we're being asked to pay taxes in order to support our welfare state. is our participation in that transfer of wealth morally permissible? obligatory? optimal?

alternately: is participating in that transfer conducive to the good life?

Well, if we assume that reducing death, illness, homelessness etc. are worthy goals then the question becomes socio-economic: Does our current course of action help us achieve these goals. Free markets do help in this process, to a point, but a stage is reached (a long time ago) when it becomes an obstacle to these goals. Either way, we always have to first decide what we want from life, what a society or government is for. Then it's just statistics.

'given current economic reality' - I mean, there is no easy or absolute 'economic reality', there are drastically different ways of looking at macroenconomic data and there are very different lenses with which people look at it. and even those have changed drastically over the last decade. 'fix some economic framework' isn't easy or quick - and in the process, you've already included a certain moral framework.

basically I think economists are the moral philosophers you're looking for

By "current economic reality" I mean our present economic practices: how we trade, etc. My proviso was there to indicate that I'm not envisioning some kind of reductio against Western capitalism.

xp absolutely not, they are as I said earlier mostly utilitarians, & that's the kind of technocratic reduction I want to avoid.

Who would be a deontological economist, some of the hardcore Monetarists or Adam Smith types?

idg technocratic as a bad word. I mean it's used to describe mcnamara types, but in a strict sense, why is a technocratic view of things reductionist?

I'd say anyone approaching this subject without realizing how much of it is political-economic is being reductionist.

Well, if we assume that reducing death, illness, homelessness etc. are worthy goals then the question becomes socio-economic: Does our current course of action help us achieve these goals. Free markets do help in this process, to a point, but a stage is reached (a long time ago) when it becomes an obstacle to these goals. Either way, we always have to first decide what we want from life, what a society or government is for. Then it's just statistics.

if, changing nothing else, we decided it was illegal to charge more than $1 for a prescription in america, the immediate effect would be very, very good socio-economically, as millions of people would have cheap access to medicine. the long-term effect would not be entirely good. you can't isolate these actions from their effect on markets.

i feel as if iatee you are saying that all political or economic arguments are founded on a fully-examined set of ethical beliefs? is that correct or what am i misunderstanding?

euler do you think there's a religious argument for the welfare state?

no, not always full-examined! but it makes more sense to examine the morality *behind the system* than a specific concept within it.

why is a technocratic view of things reductionist?

Here's why. Take the following passage:

if, changing nothing else, we decided it was illegal to charge more than $1 for a prescription in america, the immediate effect would be very, very good socio-economically, as millions of people would have cheap access to medicine.

Being "good socio-economically" ≠ being good. That's the reduction I'm trying to avoid.

I was responding to "are worthy goals then the question becomes socio-economic"

max: yeah, I think so, in classical Catholic writing on social justice for instance.

it makes more sense to examine the morality *behind the system* than a specific concept within it.

is that a kind of abstract morality belonging to or residing in the system itself then?

Euler, are you looking for a non-utilitarian argument for the welfare state?

NV: that would be great! A secular non-utilitarian argument.

the long-term effect would not be entirely good. you can't isolate these actions from their effect on markets.

No, I agree with you. I think we're making the same point. So the decision to immediately charge $1 for meds would end up not fulfilling our criteria for a good economic policy.

(because if we're going to have any impact on the current austerity programs in the West, we're going to need arguments that don't simply have sectarian appeal.

basically, I think this is a great question: is 'clearly defined form of keynesianism xyz' moral? y/n

moral analysis of a welfare state will be an inherent part of that discussion. and 'how should a welfare state operate' is included in that model.

I agree, iatee.

i have real difficulties with secular, deontological ethics. where do you begin to draw the authority for your "ought" from?

so maybe we don't disagree much!

but until you pick and very clearly define your keynesian economics xyz / whatever else - which involves economic logic of some sort - I don't think you can approach the welfare state. it doesn't exist as an approachable concept without that context.

xp

Sure, iatee: but I don't think that's the end of the task. Transfers of wealth within such an economic system is what needs to be judged as moral or not. I'm happy to fix such systems & ask for each one, if that transfer is moral, & then vary the systems & ask those questions again. We could treat those systems as a parameter & see how the morality of the welfare state varies for each such value.

xp to NV: Kant says that "oughts" derive from the nature of rationality. That's pretty wacky too.

yeah i get what Kant says

okay I gtg but I will try and make this point quick:

I don't think you can construct an overarching economic logic from the bottom up - from judging the morality of a billion individual acts. the economic logic ultimately has to be overarching and so while you can maybe 'judge' the individual acts moral or not moral, the morality of the bigger system itself is far more important.

xp to NV: yeah; my impression of the "state of the art" today is that no one really gets why rationality itself should be the ground of morality & so neo-Kantians like Korsgaard are working on grounding morality on autonomy, which Kant mentions in accord with the categorical imperative ("treat people as ends not means to ends") but whose connection in the texts is not especially.

what i'm getting at seems to relate to your idea that states can't be "moral" in themselves. i agree to the point where i wd argue that systems of economic organisation aren't "moral" and that an individual's political beliefs have to be founded on something other than morality.

xp to iatee: not sure what you mean by "the morality of the bigger system itself is far more important" but I think we're just failing to communicate properly a bit here.

ok, NV: the hard thing for me is to see where an individual's beliefs about what she ought to do are "political" & where they are "moral".

a big part of the problem is that we can probably agree on a very broad deontological morality that is pragmatically true for the vast majority of people. eg. it is wrong to kill another human being (except in defence of yourself or a third party). as soon as i apply that kind of ethics to the political sphere, i get into a hugely difficult argument about how my actions contribute to the state, whether states' actions contribute to killing people, what would be the best kind of state to avoid killing people etc.

the sheer multiplication of individual contributions to the functioning of a state makes an uncomputable system of consequences based on individuals' ethical choices, it seems?

and i'd argue that the same near-chaotic system works to exclude utilitarian moral decisions too.

Wondering why utilitarianism is out of the equation here, and if you're similarly down on other forms of consequentialism eg Rawls' theory of justice. Deontology is a non starter imo.

xp to euler