Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!husc6!panda!genrad!decvax!cca!mirror!.misc!inmet!janw From: janw@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal Message-ID: <117400141@inmet> Date: Thu, 9-Oct-86 23:48:00 EDT Article-I.D.: inmet.117400141 Posted: Thu Oct 9 23:48:00 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 06:28:03 EDT References: <575@gargoyle.UUCP> Lines: 233 Nf-ID: #R:gargoyle.UUCP:-57500:inmet:117400141:000:10355 Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw Oct 9 23:48:00 1986 [carnes@gargoyle.UUCP ] [Richard Carnes answers my assorted points ] >>I asked you then (and was never answered) ... >You assume that all your questions and points are worth replying to. >Here are some that aren't, but I will reply anyway to make you happy: I never said you *had* to answer. Unlike boxing, here one can both run and hide... >>You wouldn't like a *zero* birth rate, would you? Whom would it >>affect adversely? Generations that wouldn't exist? >It would affect the present generation adversely. More important, >why does it have to affect someone adversely to be a bad moral >choice, as you seem to imply? That was *your* position: that someone isn't hurt by never being born, so the fact is morally indifferent. I just took that to the extreme. All that can be said, on your assumptions, about re- duced birth rate, can be said about zero birth rate, and vice versa. >The modest proposal was to make suicide pills freely available. How >does this assure (1), that only not-unhappy people live? Do people >always commit suicide when they become unhappy if they have the >means to do so? First you talked about lives' being worth living, >now you're talking about happiness. I am not: "not-unhappy" isn't "happy". "Worth living" is about the same as "not unhappy", give or take a little. The exact de- gree does not affect the argument. >Re the bell-shaped curve: why should we expect the distribution of >happiness to be normal in the statistical sense, rather than, say, >pyramidal, with the greatest number at the bottom of the happiness >scale? On the other hand, it could be an inverted pyramid... A good point. A quasi-normal distribution seems reasonable to me, but it can be challenged. Are you then *conditionally* accept- ing the "modest proposal" - provided the curve is bell-shaped? >>... the world is guaranteed a population the *worst-off* part of >>which thinks life worth living. >Apparently you believe that there is no morally significant >difference between a life that is barely worth living and one which >is extremely happy and satisfying -- that one is no better than the >other, because they are both "worth living". Apparently? From the above paragraph?? Absurd. Why then did I emphasize *worst-off*?! >Your reasoning implies the following: > For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with > a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger > imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, > would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely > worth living. It does not, without additional mathematical assumptions which I find too strong. > Parfit calls this "The Repugnant Conclusion". Do you accept it? No. If, out of this larger number, none are unhappy and at least 10 billion are happier than the original 10 billion, then yes. Mind you, I am still arguing in a Benthamite mode. The above fol- lows from the following 3 axioms for estimating the happiness of a set of people: (a) addition of a not-unhappy individual does not reduce it; (b) equally happy individuals contribute equally; and (c) increasing someone's happiness increases the to- tal. You can't derive your Repugnant Conclusion from a, b, c. >>you once argued in favor of redistribution of wealth in >>the following (approximately) way: assume a rich uncle and a poor >>nephew. If $10K is transferred from the former to the latter, the sum >>of human happiness increases, because the money is more important to >>the nephew. >> >>I asked you then (and was never answered) if you made a distinction >>between *voluntary* and *involuntary* transfer. The act of coercion >>in itself would increase the sum of misery. >How do you know that coercion would increase the sum of misery >(or decrease total utility)? The ones doing the coercing might >get a big buzz out of it, How true! (Until they, too, are sucked in by the meat-grinder). >and so might the bystanders or beneficiaries, who might be glad >to see justice done or see the envied rich get soaked. That, too. Until their turn to be soaked comes... >If we are going to add in the effects of the *process* of redis- >tribution on utility, we have to include *all* the effects, and >these additional effects are difficult to figure. Isn't >benevolence a common human motive? It is (though some of the motives you listed are its opposite). >You overlook the possibility that a person's happiness may be in- >creased merely by seeing someone *else* made better off. Or, as you indicated, by seeing someone made worse off. On the other hand, a lot of innocent vicarious happiness flows from the contemplation of the supposedly glamorous lives of the jet set... >>I think this error of omission is systematic with those who argue for >>state intervention, redistribution, regulation and taxation. They >>ignore the *overhead* involved in enforcing their pet measures, on >>the one side, and resisting them - or submitting to them - on the >>other. The IRS alone has about 100,000 employees - who are soldiers >>on *one* side of a war. It is better not to have a war. >No doubt some people ignore these costs. I try not to overlook them. >And the IRS is not conducting a war, as heavy-handed as it often is. "War" is a metaphor. The IRS is in an adversarial relation to the majority of the population. >But you have your own sins of omission: the costs entailed by the >absence of redistribution, taxation, regulation, etc. We should not >ignore either side. By all means. This is the real center of the problem of redistribution: the structural changes it makes in society. Redistribution itself is mostly a pretext, and goes into unexpected directions... >I presented an ethical argument that laid down some stringent >conditions for coercive population control measures to be morally >acceptable. *Not true*. There was *your* argument for coercive control in general. Then a list of "stringent conditions" by a certain Daniel Callahan, but with no argument at all, either for the con- ditions or for their sufficiency. Just Callahan's declarations. Why should you now decide to appropriate it, is beyond me. It was poor stuff. The "stringent conditions" were all of the type: we will try to do only this much coercion - unless we prefer to do more. >Instead of addressing this ethical argument, you went >raving about hypocrisy and slavering tyrants. But this does not >score many points with thoughtful people. You are *not telling the truth*. I addressed your argument, and refuted it (it was based on a transparent sophism about a "right to conditions of good life" - a right to end all rights). The refutation style was quite flameless. You are not quoting or answering a single line of that refutation, and you've just denied it was there. Too bad. The lines you *are* speaking of were devoted to Callahan's "stringent conditions". In them, there was no argument to answer, just a proposal to evaluate. In context, he deserved all my epithets. Epithets aside, I showed (and even some of the lines you quote show) that the "stringent conditions" open the door to unlimited coercion, that they don't bind the future population czars at all - but only serve as a soporific to help make the program initial- ly acceptable to the unwary. E.g., *one* sufficient reason given for going to any length of coercion is a perceived threat to "distributive justice". Since most people believe such justice is lacking even now, the ready justification for total tyranny is built right into the "stringent conditions". >For example, you implied that I assumed that the state must be full >of good intentions. But I neither said nor implied anything about >the "intentions of the state", whatever that may mean. Instead, I >laid down conditions for certain government actions to be morally >acceptable. You also wrote of "the implication of an omnipotent >state being the sole judge of the `justified' limits of its own >control." But the principles I set forth are entirely compatible >with constitutionalism, in which governmental powers are >constitutionally limited. None of these principles limited them. (And *you* did not set them forth, Callahan did). None of them set a rigid bound, telling the state: thus far and no further. Instead, there was a lot of talk about preferring certain means to others, when possible. Prefer- ences *are* intentions. Instead of talking about what the govern- ment is to be *prevented* from doing (constitutionalism) Cal- lahan is talking about what it ought to *prefer* doing (benevolent despotism). Well, benevolent despotism *isn't*. >Actually, Jan asked precisely, "In the name of *what* principle may >the X's punish the Y's...?" To answer the literal question, I would >have to know what Jan means by "punish". The concept of punishment >generally implies moral wrongdoing on the part of the punishee. But >in my view having an "extra" child (from a demographic standpoint) >would rarely, if ever, be morally wrong. So I do not contemplate >"punishing" people for having "too many" children. Penalties or >sanctions are a different concept from punishment. They are? Why didn't the proponents of the capital punishment think of that? They should just call it "capital penalty" to make it perfectly acceptable to everyone! Some progressive people around the world do better than "penalty", though: they call tor- ture "re-education"... The AH dictionary: "punish 1. To subject (someone) to penalty for a crime, fault or misbehavior." "penalty: a punishment established by law or authority for a crime or offense." >>Are the X's to tell the Z's : the seal's right to have puppies is, >>under our political philosophy, greater than your right to have >>children? >> >>What political philosophy is that? >Clearly, a philosophy in which animal rights play a role. Not enough: they need to be greater than human rights. >I haven't said a thing about animal rights. No, but you talked of species preservation (a worthy goal, I agree) as being a reason for restricting existing human rights (which puts us into the X-Y-Z situation). > [silly personal remarks omitted] Jan Wasilewsky