Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Mr. Cairo]

Gavagai, you seem to believe that there is no overlap between "personal good" and "societal good".
So therefore taxes, and the things they pay for, benefit society (overall health, education, lifespan, general well-being and happiness) but not you, since presumably you can accomplish all that for yourself with your own money.

But this assumption is obviously false.

Healthcare: without any healthcare for the poor, diseases would spread much more easily than they do today. A significant amount of the population might not be able to afford vaccines, compromising herd immunity and leading to epidemics of preventable diseases. Injuries would go untreated, and many people would die who could have been saved.

Education: if a significant proportion of the population were illiterate and innumerate, then they wouldn't be able to work most jobs today, including jobs that you might personally rely upon. I don't know what you do but in the modern world there are basically no jobs that do not rely upon many other people doing other jobs, which pretty much all require an education.

Well-being and happiness: I'll just say I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be available to everyone, as a right, but I don't think that'll convince you. However, from the stand-point of pure self-preservation, allowing for a significant proportion of the population to get hungry, sick, and unhappy, is bad news for everyone else, especially the rich. Those are the ingredients for civil strife and revolution.

[ipecac]

There is this blindness in leftism about inequality, leading them to assume that all sort of equality is a good and achievable thing.

Take the fashionable idea of free college education for all. As I've already pointed out, that doesn't make sense primarily because most people pursue a college education for the advantage it gives, i.e. they seek a degree for an inequality that favours them over the non-degreed.

There's a lot of sentiment and talk about equality and justice, but unfortunately often not a lot of rational thought about concrete issues.

[Trasson]

I'll give a shot at bringing it back to productive discussion then.  My point all along is that the liberal side can't engage in progress because all they do is throw insults and labels like vile, rather than looking to address everyone's interests with inclusive solutions.

The gif is over-the-top, of course.  But the point it's making is real and what Gavagai said.  The facts of reality include unbalanced and unfair factors everywhere.  Some of those factors were established in the past by people who looked like me, for reasons that could be called immoral or bigoted.  That does not confer upon me any immorality or bigotry, I never committed those actions, and that's why such insults just bounce off as the gif shows.  Those factors may have led generations later to a beneficial environment for me that you call privilege.  That still does not obligate me to act against my own interests.

Lurker here chiming in.

The issue raised by this viewpoint is this. If a group sees that you have privilege through an accident of birth and that others don't and seeks to raise everyone up to an equal level, how do they go about getting your support? Part of being born into privilege involves others not having that advantage. Put another way, there are very real systemic biases in American society that advantage (for example) white men over other groups when it comes to employment and educational opportunities. Any group seeking to address that through any number of means is by definition taking away from white men (even if said solution ultimately raises everyone up). How then do they secure or at least argue for the support of a white man who holds views similar to yours without any form of deception?

If my question isn't clear, let me put things in a more quantified thought experiment form.

Let's say everyone is born with a Privilege Number, from 0 upwards. A higher number is better. Higher numbers confer additional advantages in basically all walks of life. You name it, higher is better. However, not only does your absolute Privilege Number afford you a better life, but also a higher number relative to others. If you're applying for a job, it's not just having a high Privilege Number that increases your chances of being hired, it's also based on your relative advantage compared to that of other applicants. Additionally, not only is it better to have more than other applicants, you want to have much more. 150 compared with 140 is good, but 150 compared with 90 is even better. Lower Privilege Numbers are worse; a lot worse. You can consider this scale logarithmic if it makes it easier.

"This doesn't make sense for how things work in real life" you might say, or "wait there's a lot of holes and questions to be had about this society". Like I said, thought experiment. Run with it.

Now, a group comes along, and proposes a system to raise everyone's privilege level to 150 if they're under that. This captures a very large portion of the population; unfortunately, not quite a majority. They would need the support of people over 150. A person at 150 (consider this you for these purposes) would see no benefit. How would this group convince you to support their system?

I imagine they might not. By your own words, you're not obligated to act against your own interests, and this is very clearly against your own interests (as everyone else getting bumped to 150 means you've lost your advantage). Maybe in real life you'd support them based on a number of more nuanced factors, but this is thought experiment land.

Now we get tricky. Let's say this group is now proposing a system to bring everyone up to 200. Now you gain (being put at a higher baseline, which would improve your life) but you also lose out (as you no longer have a relative advantage over a bunch of other people). Just as before, they need the support of people at or above 150 in order to gain a majority approval and implement the system. How could they gain your support?

Now, there are a number of initial responses, but one I imagine could follow would be "well how do I know if I'm gaining more than I'm losing? Are these even comparable concepts?".

The answer is: I don't know. What do you value more? I couldn't tell you what you value, so I won't assign any sort of value to those gains and losses. Hell, I'm barely assigning qualities to these because they'd vary so much for each person, even those at the same level of Privilege. What I can do is ask you the hypothetical being posed: what would you pick if you didn't know the values involved? You're not sure if you'll like your gains more than your losses. All you know is that your life will be:
--better in some ways
--worse in others, but no worse than anyone else would have it (as all that disappears is the advantage brought about from being relatively higher)
--a whole bunch of other people will have better lives as well (possibly with it being worse in others, possibly not), and that 

If your response to that question is "well, I can't be sure I'm going to win out so I'm not going to support this system" or "even though some parts would be better, I don't want to give up on my relative advantage so I oppose this" then we've got the problem at hand.

Because at this point, the only options remaining are to lie, to give up on you, or to convince you through means other than logic and truth (actually there's a fourth option; hold that thought).

Why?

Because, put simply, if you're unwilling to support an across-the-board increase for a large number of people's general well-being because of an unwillingness to accept the possibility (or reality) of a lesser decrease in some aspects of your own life (i.e. those affected by your relative advantage), then no form of the logic is going to convince you otherwise without hiding the truth (that you stand to lose your relative advantage).

But this group also can't give up on you, despite that being an option. After all, they need your support. Maybe not you specifically, but there's a whole bunch of people with Privilege Numbers going up to 200 and a lot of them share your viewpoint. Enough that giving up is not an option.

And so we get to convincing you through means other than logic. Such as, say, emotional appeals or shaming. Whether or not that works is besides the question; it is the only option left for success (after all, no matter how offended you get, your "No" vote can't count any more than it does).

Or is it? A fourth option remains: seek to change your concept of self-interest. Find a way to convince you that losing your relative advantage is actually for your own good. One method (I say one, though it's all I can think of) would be to convince you that not having a relative advantage is to your own benefit (such as being sure that any gain you make in life is earned entirely through work and skill, not through luck of birth). That's not easy to convince someone of, especially if they see no value in that confidence. One could also say that this is just another form of option 3, that this is just an emotional appeal. I can't say that's definitively wrong.

My thought experiment up there, I feel, illustrates some problems liberal activists face when proposing changes. I'll use a historical example here to follow, just to make things easier (since with discussing modern problems and modern solutions is that then the question of practicalities arises, and I'm trying to focus on more abstract principles with this inquiry). The example I shall use it women's suffrage. Put simply, any man who was acting entirely from their own self-interest had very little reason to support the right for women to vote. I say little, because of what I like to think of as the "First They Came For..." argument. This comes, of course, from the famous poem with those same words. The argument goes like this: you should support the general liberty and prosperity of marginalized groups in order to safeguard your own should you find yourself later to be part of a marginalized group. I think it's a very effective emotional argument, which is why it's so famous. However, while emotions can work according to a logic, they are not logic. As a logical argument, "First They Came For..." lends itself too easily to a slippery slope fallacy. I personally don't think it's correct to view it as such in many circumstances, but this tendency makes it unhelpful to those who don't share my viewpoint.

So men during the late 19th and early 20th century had no reason to support the right of women to vote in America if they were thinking entirely from self-interest (seeing as how that would reduce the power of their own vote to half). How could one go about convincing men that they should support women's suffrage? If arguments about equal protection and equal rights didn't work (based in both philosophical theories of justice and in law itself via the Constitution), what then? Well, I suppose then you could argue that a man's self-interest lay not only in his own gain but in safeguarding those of his family and so empowering his wife and daughters to be able to vote is to his benefit. That's not necessarily going to work, since not every man was married with daughters and not every one would necessarily care for what happened. At that point your options would be to lie, give up quietly, or turn to means other than logic. This could mean emotional appeals ("don't you want your loved to have the same rights you do"). More often it proved the saying true of "well-behaved women seldom make history".

So what's my point with all this? My original question, of course. How could a liberal group get, or at least make a case for, your support (vote, donations, whatever) for a proposal (universal healthcare, higher minimum wage, etc.), that benefits a great deal of others and grants them at least some of what you obtained by who you were born as? Such a proposal by definition diminishes some of your advantages simply because some of what you have in life is as a result of having more than others. I suspect the answer to this would depend on the precise issues involved, but luckily the advantage of discussing real life scenarios is that we can assume that hard numbers and concrete ideas (as opposed to abstract privilege numbers). I would hope that there is at least some argument or middle ground to be found, because far more people than I would like think mostly of their own self-interest.

[Japper007]

Take the fashionable idea of free college education for all. As I've already pointed out, that doesn't make sense primarily because most people pursue a college education for the advantage it gives, i.e. they seek a degree for an inequality that favours them over the non-degreed.

India has an excellent solution to this problem, the state funds your schooling, but because of that you also have to work for the state for a few years after you earn your degree.

Also if you pursue your degree solely to get an advantage over people, then I pity you  Oh and many of the highest paying jobs aren't actually university level but far below, many blue collar jobs (particularly plumbers and electricians) have higher pay than most white collar ones.

[Mr. Cairo]

There is this blindness in leftism about inequality, leading them to assume that all sort of equality is a good and achievable thing.

Take the fashionable idea of free college education for all. As I've already pointed out, that doesn't make sense primarily because most people pursue a college education for the advantage it gives, i.e. they seek a degree for an inequality that favours them over the non-degreed.

There's a lot of sentiment and talk about equality and justice, but unfortunately often not a lot of rational thought about concrete issues.

Your assuming that if tertiary level education (college, university, etc.) was free for all, then all would seek to attain it. But in fact, this is not the case. Enrollment rates are lower in countries with free tertiary education. If you don't believe me you can look up the OECD stats yourself: https://stats.oecd.org/ It's fairly easy to navigate.

In fact, making college/university education cost money seems to increase enrollment rates. In the UK for example, despite the ever-increasing cost of going to university, each year more and more students apply. This is because, as you say, there is an assumption that you need a degree to get a job, to get an advantage. It's a financial investment, you go to university in order to get paid more later in life. These days, that simply isn't true, a degree does not promise a better job in the future. Even STEM degrees are no guarantee.

When I talk to people in western Europe for whom tertiary education is free, they don't go to university just to end up with a better paying job than if they hadn't. They go with purpose. They go to study what they're interested in, to advance in a specific, chosen career; or simply to expand their own knowledge and experience. The issue with tertiary education in the USA, UK, Canada, etc. is that it's seen as just something you need to do in life, like high-school. Instead, it should be something you chose to do. Making it free gives everyone the opportunity to make that choice. Right now, despite the prohibitive costs, young people feel as though it isn't a choice, that they must go to college/university in order to succeed in life. Which results in a lot of highly indebted and embittered people with degrees doing whatever work they can get.

[ipecac]

Take the fashionable idea of free college education for all. As I've already pointed out, that doesn't make sense primarily because most people pursue a college education for the advantage it gives, i.e. they seek a degree for an inequality that favours them over the non-degreed.

India has an excellent solution to this problem, the state funds your schooling, but because of that you also have to work for the state for a few years after you earn your degree.

A) What about finding a job afterwards?
B) India is still developing and most likely at the stage where they lack sufficient degreed graduates. Most developed nations are at the stage where they have too many. This is another example of your naivety about 'it works over there, so it should work here too', completely blind to all the significant differences.

Also if you pursue your degree solely to get an advantage over people, then I pity you

A lot of people have historically done that, but that is less likely to pay off because of all the liberalness about 'we must get more people into college' and thereby devaluing the worth of a college education.

 Oh and many of the highest paying jobs aren't actually university level but far below, many blue collar jobs (particularly plumbers and electricians) have higher pay than most white collar ones.

Thanks again for bolstering my argument. Despite all the fashionable talk about 'it's soooo unfair many people are disadvantaged and can't go to college', in some places many college graduates would be better off if they hadn't pursued a degree.

[ipecac]

Your assuming that if tertiary level education (college, university, etc.) was free for all, then all would seek to attain it. But in fact, this is not the case. Enrollment rates are lower in countries with free tertiary education. If you don't believe me you can look up the OECD stats yourself: https://stats.oecd.org/ It's fairly easy to navigate.

You misunderstand the point. Making college more accessible causes an increase in college graduates for a time, until people realise that this floods the job market with graduates, which then results in a decrease.

This then devalues the value of a college degree, which is counter to the purpose of 'mass college for all', motivated by the inequality that some people have the advantage of a degree and most do not.

These days, that simply isn't true, a degree does not promise a better job in the future. Even STEM degrees are no guarantee.

As I said to Japper, that's because there are already too many college graduates. But Bernie and others want to increase the numbers, and people cheer. What idiocy.

Right now, despite the prohibitive costs, young people feel as though it isn't a choice, that they must go to college/university in order to succeed in life. Which results in a lot of highly indebted and embittered people with degrees doing whatever work they can get.

I agree, people should mock arrogant liberals who think their education makes them superior to 'uneducated hicks' and socialise the fact that having a degree is instead often a dumb move.

[Japper007]

As I said to Japper, that's because there are already too many college graduates. But Bernie and others want to increase the numbers, and people cheer. What idiocy.

People do not cheer for a flat increase in number, they cheer because more and more demographics who didn't get to go to college before now do go. This is a good thing, degree flooding being an unfortunate side-effect.

Now that there are more people getting to college, I say raise the bar. Make that degree harder to obtain, filter out the chaff that way. I just think a privilege like your parents wealth or how deep you want to throw yourself into debt should not be a factor in who gets filtered into that "chaff" pile. Your individual skill should do so. Make intelligence the measuring post for higher education, as it should be. It's how universities are solving it in countries with free education, for instance computing science programs have been getting tougher almost on a yearly basis over here, but they can afford to raise the bar since the competing students increase.

[Mr. Cairo]

Your assuming that if tertiary level education (college, university, etc.) was free for all, then all would seek to attain it. But in fact, this is not the case. Enrollment rates are lower in countries with free tertiary education. If you don't believe me you can look up the OECD stats yourself: https://stats.oecd.org/ It's fairly easy to navigate.

You misunderstand the point. Making college more accessible causes an increase in college graduates for a time, until people realise that this floods the job market with graduates, which then results in a decrease.

This then devalues the value of a college degree, which is counter to the purpose of 'mass college for all', motivated by the inequality that some people have the advantage of a degree and most do not.

These days, that simply isn't true, a degree does not promise a better job in the future. Even STEM degrees are no guarantee.

As I said to Japper, that's because there are already too many college graduates. But Bernie and others want to increase the numbers, and people cheer. What idiocy.

You're missing the point ipecac by assuming that those advocating for free college want everyone to go to college. What us 'liberals' want is the ability for anyone to go to college. Without ending up with mountains of debt.

You're right in saying that college degrees have been devalued, but the solution isn't to make college inaccessible for most people. As I pointed out, despite the high cost of education in the UK and USA, they have higher enrollment rates than places where it is free. Clearly, increasing the costs doesn't reduce the amount of degrees. What is needed is to change the idea of "a generic degree" having a financial value. That is what has caused vast numbers of unmotivated people to go to college and get a degree in something they're not interested in.
What I want is for people interested in specific fields, industries, or careers that require higher education, should be able to go and study degrees relating to that field, to help them start a career. People who are interested in solely earning enough money to get by comfortably can enter the workforce after high school, or learn a trade, etc. etc. without this requirement of "a degree". Both types people will ahve the opportunity to succeed in life, however they choose, and be happy.

[ipecac]

Be a Bernie-type socialist in the USA.

Start here: 'we need to make college free for all because it gives a significant economic advantage!'

What happens is that college admissions balloon, too many graduates pursue too few jobs, then college degree is devalued in the eyes of employers, as in countries where college is already free

Then a college degree doesn't give a significant economic advantage anymore.

ipecac: 'So why is it so important in the first place to make college free for all?'