Is equality an absurd notion?

[JollyRoger]

There's only so much you can buy/want to buy. The guy has a private airport. Thats a lot more than a middle-class person like me, has.

But you as a middle class guy, live in a situation where you can fly relatively easy. You also have a shot at getting in a position to own your own airport. Without some attention paid to equality, you wouldn't enjoy either as easily.

 

[Souron]

So with all these communism threads here lately. I want to dig a little deeper into the root of it all.

Is equality among members of Homo Sapiens an absurd notion?

Nature did not create individuals of our species to be equal. We are not genetic photocopies of each other. Some are just in a natural sense "superior" to other in terms of intelligence, physical prowess, or whatever.

Why should we even try to make everyone equal? To each according to their own ability.

Almost every primate(our closest relatives) has established systems of dominance in their societies. Why do people think we are different. Do they really think just because they have heightened intelligence, we have somehow gone outside of nature's and evolution's bounds for us? How absurd!

Bonobos are the only primate that I can think of that lack this system of dominance. Unlike every other type of primate, females dominate their society and not males.

So is trying to achieve equality among humans even the right thing to do?

That's a rather Eugenicist argument.

My grandmother may be old, and not as useful to society as me, but that doesn't make her less deserving of prosperity than me.

As I see it, talent and usefulness are not virtues. Hard work is. Capitalism rewards talent, not hard work. The idea of "From each according to his ability to each according to his need" corrects the problem of rewarding talent, though it fails to incentivise hard work.

 

[Gary Childress]

When we debate religion/evolution, you guys tend to point out that we are primates profusely. However, when we discuss human nature, scientists seem to want to throw biology and evolution entirely out the window.

There's no inconsistency here. That we are descended from primates is probably true. That we therefore must copy their behavior is nonsense.

 

[Gustave5436]

As I see it, talent and usefulness are not virtues. Hard work is. Capitalism rewards talent, not hard work. The idea of "From each according to his ability to each according to his need" corrects the problem of rewarding talent, though it fails to incentivise hard work.

Because communism is anarchic. If a task needs to be incentivized, it is because no one wants to do it. Thus, it is implied that when you speak of work, you do not mean it in the sense of activities freely, spontaneously undertaken by a free person. Rather, "work" means the soul-crushing drudgery of labour which one is compelled to do.

Communism, in a modern, anarchist sense, entails (indeed, requires) the abolition of work. It is true, no one wants to crawl around in a coal mine or a sewer all day; an external authority must be imposed in order to force people to perform these tasks, and the existence of this authority necessarily precludes a free society. It is assumed that the creative, autonomous labour which free individuals will undertake spontaneously is sufficient to support society; that the pure drudgery of cotton picking can be automated, freeing humans from soul-crushing mechanical work to engage in intellectually fulfilling pursuits.

This is a simple extrapolation of current tendencies, towards greater industrial production despite lower levels of employment due to continually accelerating rates of technological advance, particularly in the area of computer science.

 

[Souron]

Because communism is anarchic. If a task needs to be incentivized, it is because no one wants to do it. Thus, it is implied that when you speak of work, you do not mean it in the sense of activities freely, spontaneously undertaken by a free person. Rather, "work" means the soul-crushing drudgery of labour which one is compelled to do.

Communism, in a modern, anarchist sense, entails (indeed, requires) the abolition of work. It is true, no one wants to crawl around in a coal mine or a sewer all day; an external authority must be imposed in order to force people to perform these tasks, and the existence of this authority necessarily precludes a free society. It is assumed that the creative, autonomous labour which free individuals will undertake spontaneously is sufficient to support society; that the pure drudgery of cotton picking can be automated, freeing humans from soul-crushing mechanical work to engage in intellectually fulfilling pursuits.

This is a simple extrapolation of current tendencies, towards greater industrial production despite lower levels of employment due to continually accelerating rates of technological advance, particularly in the area of computer science.

Even for us in the tech industry, some of what we do is fun, but if doing what we do wasn't rewarded, we'd be spending much more time playing video games.

 

[Narz]

So with all these communism threads here lately. I want to dig a little deeper into the root of it all.

Is equality among members of Homo Sapiens an absurd notion?

Nature did not create individuals of our species to be equal. We are not genetic photocopies of each other. Some are just in a natural sense "superior" to other in terms of intelligence, physical prowess, or whatever.

Why should we even try to make everyone equal? To each according to their own ability.

Almost every primate(our closest relatives) has established systems of dominance in their societies. Why do people think we are different. Do they really think just because they have heightened intelligence, we have somehow gone outside of nature's and evolution's bounds for us? How absurd!

Bonobos are the only primate that I can think of that lack this system of dominance. Unlike every other type of primate, females dominate their society and not males.

So is trying to achieve equality among humans even the right thing to do?

Humanity lived in fairly egalitarian societies for most of the species' history. It's not that unreasonable to assume we can live that way if society is structured to support it.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

That's a rather Eugenicist argument.

My grandmother may be old, and not as useful to society as me, but that doesn't make her less deserving of prosperity than me.

As I see it, talent and usefulness are not virtues. Hard work is. Capitalism rewards talent, not hard work. The idea of "From each according to his ability to each according to his need" corrects the problem of rewarding talent, though it fails to incentivise hard work.

Not really. You just have the government deciding what you "need" and that's what you get. That doesn't reward talent in any way.

 

[Souron]

Not really. You just have the government deciding what you "need" and that's what you get. That doesn't reward talent in any way.

I don't think you understood that right.

Communism, unlike capitalism, doesn't reward talent. This is good.

Capitalism rewards talent, but it also rewards hard work.

 

[kulade]

Humanity lived in fairly egalitarian societies for most of the species' history. It's not that unreasonable to assume we can live that way if society is structured to support it.

Well yes, human societies have been mostly egalitarian, but were so only by being equally poor.

 

[amadeus]

Humanity lived in fairly egalitarian societies for most of the species' history. It's not that unreasonable to assume we can live that way if society is structured to support it.

It wasn't egalitarianism, it was survival. Fortunately, we developed far beyond the tribal system.

 

[aelf]

The OP is quite simply crippled by the is-ought problem. I can see no further recourse for it. It's stillborn.

How do similarities in structure imply similarities in another way?

Well, perhaps this can be analyzed as a logical relation:

'If A then B'. Where A refers to a particular person and O refers to their outcome (E.g in terms of wealth).

From that it does not follow 'If B then O' or 'If C then O'.

I think what we are trying to do in our discussion of equality is establish that every person (A, B and C), implies outcome O. That is, everyone implies the same outcome. So we couldn't justify inequalities.

To do this we must find some sort of identity function such that A=B=C. Thus B implies O. If being is not found in conjunction with O, something somewhere has gone wrong. In a dualistic conception of mind this identity is easy; Given that everyone has the same type of mind there is a very real identity between different people. A genuinely is identical to C.

The problem I see in a materialistic theory of mind is that people are more different than similar, and there is no reason to believe that their similarities should be taken as paramount when determining the relation of implicature between person and outcome.

That is, A and B and C do not equal eachother, they are all genuinely different. And different not just in the minutiae, but the broad strokes.

Thus again, the fact that 'if A then O' does not imply 'if B then O'. When we find inequalities there is no reason to believe something has gone wrong at all. Compared to our original presumption of total equality we are likely to find only marginal equality to be justified.

You seemed to have compared Perfection's response to a Rawlsian one. If you still think so, how does the criticism that he is seeking equality of outcome stick? Rawls was quite clearly for equality of opportunity both for offices and in general, the latter in the sense that all are ensured equal opportunity to appreciate life in whatever way they wish (as long as it does not compromise the liberty of others to do the same). This already indicates that he was not so much concerned about particular outcomes, which would certainly differ between individuals (some would prefer to trade wealth for more leisure, for example).

And I think we can say that people should be given equality of opportunity without having to support a dualist position. At the very least the notion is much more intuitive, whatever your inclination.

 

[civver_764]

You realize that last all of 3 years in a Tiny region of span right? Thats not really a good argument for anything.

The Communists party's redistribution of land in China also worked great for like 3 or 4 years before everything fell apart. The majority of the great successes of anarchists were in the beginning(late 1936 and early 1937). But the 1938 and 1939, it was already falling apart because of itself and outside forces.

Also the Anarchists were not communist:



They actually felt that compromising with communist elements of the republican side of the civil war were betraying their principles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Catalonia

It was a libertarian collective and it lasted far too short and covered an area too small to show it to be sustainable on any sort of large scale.

They were also one of the parties (along with the USSR-backed communist party) that were ultimately responsible for the Barcelona May days.

Another problem is that there was no way that nation was going to survive as it simply did not have the resources without outside support either to fend off Franco or survive WWII that was coming.

Thats the problem, you only had a very small amount of people wanting this. The majority of people in Spain eventually did not want absolute equality. Thats the whole problem with this kind of system over time.

1) It didn't last long, but that wasn't because of the failings of communism.
2) Luckily fascists like Franco don't have near the power they did.
3) It isn't absolute equality, just equality of opportunity. No is saying you have to have the same house as someone else or live the same lifestyle, that would be completely insane.
4) China, along with other forms of authoritarian "socialism" can be more accurately defined as state capitalist.
5) I think you'll find that an anarchist society meets Marx's definition of communism pretty much on the mark.
6) As far as only a small number of people wanting this, yes but that's mostly due to ignorance. The capitalist system only allows for views that don't threaten its survival to be heard by the general populace. People generally believe what they're told to. If this was fair all sorts of different viewpoints would be heard by people world wide, and then they could truly make an informed decisions, instead of having to choose from the corporate-bought Republican and Democratic parties.

 

[Elrohir]

Almost every primate(our closest relatives) has established systems of dominance in their societies. Why do people think we are different. Do they really think just because they have heightened intelligence, we have somehow gone outside of nature's and evolution's bounds for us? How absurd!

Bonobos are the only primate that I can think of that lack this system of dominance. Unlike every other type of primate, females dominate their society and not males.

Wait, what? Did you just say that females are less intelligent than males?

 

[Tani Coyote]

The thing about equality of opportunity is that parents usually want what they perceive as a good start for their children. So richer and more educated parents try to provide better education and other mental stimulation for their children. However we then call for equality of opportunity...

And poorer families request more government assistance so their kids have a fair shot at making it big. What's the problem? If this is in place, equality of opportunity is much closer to reality: the dumb sit at the bottom, the smart hopefully rise to the top.

Of course, while education is important, you don't have to make much to get rich: if you sock away so much of your paycheck, no matter how low, and let it grow for several decades, by the time you take it out, you'll be "rich" - if we're talking tax brackets.

So even if you don't get an education, you still have opportunity; it's called investing for your future. You might have to invest more of a percentage than the lucky educated higher ups, but if you flat out refuse to save, that's your own damned fault. Even if you have to live on ramen and 1 dollar burritos, you can make a small income go quite far.

I know people often say poor people can't afford to save; I call bull. If you spent 1 dollar a day on food, you'd spend 365 dollars a year to cover all your food needs. All the bills and taxes probably suck up a few thousand more. But if you can save around 10% of each paycheck, and do it regularly up until you're of retirement age, you'll likely be sitting on a rather large bank account, especially if you've invested it in a variety of things. Now of course, there's the question of what to when you have a family: just a spouse and child triples all the living expenses more or less. That's just more reason to abstain from having kids until you're good financially, and until you have kids, your spouse should work too. Every penny counts.

Sorry for the rambling, but the point was, even without an education, there is plenty of opportunity for everyone; it may not be equal, but to say there's none if just nonsense. It might be more difficult to make more without an education, but often, sound financial planning is just as important as whatever a school can teach you.

Just because some people are smarter/stronger than others doesn't mean they deserve economic advantages, which is the entire point of communism.

But then you remove any self-serving incentive to apply your maximum potential.

What, short of getting into genetic manipulation and/or mind control and purging all creeds of selfishness from the human mind, allows you to keep people from saying, "I'm not going to do 20,000 dollars of work for 10,000." Or, rather, "I'm not going to do a million dollar job for 50,000."?

Elected business owners would be career politicians, afraid of making any bold financial changes because of the fact they'd be removed. If he needs to cut wages a bit in order to save the company from bankruptcy, the workers - out of self-interest - will vote him out; bam, bankrupt company. All because of worker's democracy. A propertied business owner might not always have his workers' best interests at heart, but if he's smart, he will: without a healthy, fit labor force, he cannot make profits; without plenty of benefits, they can leave for elsewhere in a flash. Similarly, a business owner can afford to take risks; he's not accountable to a miniature electorate, with all the pros/cons that brings.

Furthermore, as a business owner works for personal profit, he has incentive - or at least I hope to God - to minimise costs and hire the optimal number of people to increase his margins, creating more money, goods, and services to pump into the economy. An elected manager cares only about being re-elected, and likely will only do the bare minimum so as to keep the company afloat, and therefore, him re-elected. Workers' democracy, at the least, would require term limits to solve the "career management" issue; you don't have to be afraid of making bold moves if you're already ineligible to serve again.

There's of course, still plenty of muddy issues with the Communist system; in theory it sounds good, but it can fall apart in practice because it rests on too many idealisms. I don't see why you all must do it as Marx wanted; you live in a different era. You have history to look at. With all the information at your fingertips, you can think of a way to develop a better system by looking at all the variables and realities. I don't doubt the intelligence of well-intentioned communists; therefore, they should apply it to get as realistically close to Marxist ideals as they can, without breaking the system. Sustainability is more important than any temporary victory over the evil capitalists.

 

[Kerozine]

Equality of outcome, maybe, but certainly not equality of opportunity.

 

[Yeekim]

The only form of equality that is not absurd is equality under the law.

Indeed.

Equality of outcome, maybe, but certainly not equality of opportunity.

Equality of opportunity requires equality of wealth and talent. Perhaps you mean some sort of guaranteed threshold of opportunity?

 

[luiz]

Equality of outcomes is obviouly impossible, and I don't see why it is even desirable.

Most of the answers supporting greater equality are along the lines of "everybody deserves this and that" or "I think it is unfair that this and that". In other words, they come from people supporting a bizarre engineering of society to fit their own views of right and wrong.

Even the people supporting greater equality admit that it would come at the expense of freedom.

 

[civver_764]

But then you remove any self-serving incentive to apply your maximum potential.

What, short of getting into genetic manipulation and/or mind control and purging all creeds of selfishness from the human mind, allows you to keep people from saying, "I'm not going to do 20,000 dollars of work for 10,000." Or, rather, "I'm not going to do a million dollar job for 50,000."?

You seem to be under the impression that all work would be rewarded the same, this is untrue. "From each according to his ability to each according to his contribution" is the motto that would take hold at first, probably in the form of labor credits.

Elected business owners would be career politicians, afraid of making any bold financial changes because of the fact they'd be removed. If he needs to cut wages a bit in order to save the company from bankruptcy, the workers - out of self-interest - will vote him out; bam, bankrupt company. All because of worker's democracy. A propertied business owner might not always have his workers' best interests at heart, but if he's smart, he will: without a healthy, fit labor force, he cannot make profits; without plenty of benefits, they can leave for elsewhere in a flash. Similarly, a business owner can afford to take risks; he's not accountable to a miniature electorate, with all the pros/cons that brings.

That's exactly what anarchism and communism is trying to prevent. You don't elect any business owners, because everyone is the owner. If there was a big decision to be made everyone would likely vote on it. And there's no profits in communism with which to be risky about.

Furthermore, as a business owner works for personal profit, he has incentive - or at least I hope to God - to minimise costs and hire the optimal number of people to increase his margins, creating more money, goods, and services to pump into the economy. An elected manager cares only about being re-elected, and likely will only do the bare minimum so as to keep the company afloat, and therefore, him re-elected. Workers' democracy, at the least, would require term limits to solve the "career management" issue; you don't have to be afraid of making bold moves if you're already ineligible to serve again.

Again, you wouldn't elect a business owner to make all the decisions because that's hierarchy, which contradicts the whole idea of anarchism. Unless is were a small management job(like making sure everyone made it to work on time or compiling some data) everyone would take part in the decision making process.

There's of course, still plenty of muddy issues with the Communist system; in theory it sounds good, but it can fall apart in practice because it rests on too many idealisms. I don't see why you all must do it as Marx wanted; you live in a different era. You have history to look at. With all the information at your fingertips, you can think of a way to develop a better system by looking at all the variables and realities. I don't doubt the intelligence of well-intentioned communists; therefore, they should apply it to get as realistically close to Marxist ideals as they can, without breaking the system. Sustainability is more important than any temporary victory over the evil capitalists.

Oh no, I'm certainly not a Marxist and I disagree with him on a lot of things(for instance I think a violent revolution should avoided at all costs). However, he did basically invent the term communism so it only makes sense to use his definition.

 

[Bill3000]

Equality of opportunity requires equality of wealth and talent. Perhaps you mean some sort of guaranteed threshold of opportunity?

Equality of opportunity certainly doesn't require equality of talent; it means that any individuals who have the same native talent and the same ambition will have the same prospects of success. (If you want to be more specific, the concept is called equality of fair opportunity.) As for equality of wealth, no, it doesn't require that, merely that wealth would be irrelevant; that is, one born poor with the same native talent and ambition as one born rich would have the same prospects of success.

 

[Murky]

I think there should be relative equally based on your career choice. For instance, if you are are employed as an engineer, you should be close to or above the median salary for engineers.

There should be no discrimination based on race, sex, religion, etc. People that merit higher than average pay should make a bit more but there should not be a great deal of disparity.

If a person is making well below the median average for their career choice, they need to find out if they are being unfairly discriminated against or if they need to choose a different career path. There is no excuse for an employer to pay someone significantly less than other people who are making relatively equal or greater contributions.