Rawls' Theory of Justice

[Anonymous No.15912352]

If we should only try to cure inequality by helping those at the bottom, where is the motivation for those at the bottom to put in effort to do better? Why should people be motivated about anything if the goal is material equality?

[Anonymous No.15912419]

>>15912352
I don't think that's the point of Rawls but I'm no political philosopher or anything. Lets say people are just self-interested if that's so than why not support a constitutional arrangement which you'd most likely benefit under the majority of foreseeable circumstances. You might benefit more now under a different arrangement but there's a much higher chance you wouldn't even today and most probably even more so tomorrow. If you don't support that you aren't self interested and just ideological or stupid.

[Anonymous No.15912428]

Egalitarianism is a fucking joke. It would mean acting to make your life worse as soon as you had a 51st percentile existence.

But every egalitarian thinks he's gonna be the animal more equal than the others.

[Anonymous No.15912435]

>>15912352
Have you tried just being a good person, it motivates you if you try.

[Anonymous No.15912454]

>>15912435
but you can be a good person without requiring material equality. Jesus was a good person and didn't have any possessions of note.

[Anonymous No.15912524]

>>15912454
You know the early Christians surrendered their money and property to the apostles and redistributed it for everyone? They 'had all things in common' and God struck down Ananias and Sapphira for lying to Peter about money they kept to themselves. Jesus was all about welfare for the poor, you've read the New Testament right? He tells the rich young man to give all his money to the poor and when he doesn't, despite him keeping all the commandments, he says it's harder for a rich man to enter heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

[Anonymous No.15912531]

>>15912454
Well, except the BBC

[Anonymous No.15912547]

>>15912352
There is a huge fucking continent as an evidence that his theory doesn't work.

[Anonymous No.15912557]

>>15912454
Ya that guys off base because what a "good person" is is contentious e.g. Jesus wasn't a good person according to Ayn Rand because he cared more about your soul than his own material interests. This guy >>15912428 is assuming he's better off with higher levels of inequality... like I said here >>15912419 it's about assumptions and obviously you're highly unlikely to benefit from high levels of inequality and are probably doing bad accounting and think lottery tickets are a good investment.

[Anonymous No.15912594]

>>15912352
The veil of ignorance is a meme. If I was behind it, I'd absolutely make the life of the bottom 10% (change the number based on your risk tolerance) worse at the expense of everyone else and roll the dice that I will be in the other 90%

[Anonymous No.15914191]

>>15912352

You're operating on the assumption that most people wouldn't be motivated to be productive members of society if they had easier access to the tools which allowed them to succeed (aka being raised out of poverty by a living wage, well-funded education, and access to healthcare). In reality people would be more motivated to pursue their career interests, because they are more economically secure, and aren't just working to survive (which is why impoverished people aren't motivated to do better anyways, they're wage slaves, drained of their spirit.)

[Anonymous No.15914673]

>>15912419
But it's not about self-interest as much as it is about loss avoidance. Rawls is playing on peoples' emotions: loss weighs much more in humans than gain, and inequality is (fallaciously) perceived loss for those with less.

[Anonymous No.15914679]

>>15914191
The "impoverished" in the west do not struggle to subsist. They buy new cars and cellphones.

[Anonymous No.15914708]

>>15912352
Inequality has nothing to do with "doing better", bugman.

[Anonymous No.15914887]

>>15914679
The impoverished in america spend most of their income on housing/rent. In developed countries, cars and cellphones are basic requirements for most workers, and monthly payments for those things stack up. Also I hope you're not implying with those quotes that western poverty is not poverty, just because it's worse somewhere else, because that's a fallacious notion.

[Anonymous No.15914911]

>>15914673
I'm not getting what you're getting at here? You can't lose anything without gain. It's obviously in your self-interest to secure as much as possible for the smallest risk. It's about self-interest in the hypothetical, in any concrete you're going to view things differently but that doesn't cover most states.
Also what "fallacy" are you're getting at? The usual criticism is the poor just don't adequately perceive trade-offs and such not that the rich literally can't leverage any differential advantage from their wealth.

[Anonymous No.15914927]

>>15914673
>inequality is (fallaciously) perceived loss for those with less.
Rawls supports inequality if it benefits those at the bottom. If as a matter of fact, a libertarian government is the best form of government to eliminate poverty, despite the inequalities that may arise, Rawls' would be forced to concede that a libertarian society is the most just by his own rules.

[Anonymous No.15914967]

>>15914887
How so? Even accounting for buying power, "poverty" in the West is luxurious and hardly worthy of the name. The world poverty line is about $2 a day. The "impoverished" in the west enjoy a monumentally, incomparably higher quality of life and standard of living than the impoverished from non-western nations. They have electricity. They have running water. They have clean water. They have sewage. They have gas. They have education (aka daycare). They have internet. They have cars. They have cellphones. They even have world-quality healthcare if they need it (though it's not cheap). That is a fact, not fallacious. The only respect in which they are similar is that they are at the bottom of their respective nations' income brackets.

[Anonymous No.15915019]

>>15914967
Some of the richest countries rank very low on happiness indexes FYI

[Anonymous No.15915021]

>>15914911
>Also what "fallacy" are you're getting at? The usual criticism is the poor just don't adequately perceive trade-offs and such not that the rich literally can't leverage any differential advantage from their wealth.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Inequality of material wealth is not evidence of oppression or mistreatment of those on the wrong side of the inequality. Is it better for inequality to exist if everyone (even those at the bottom) benefit from what creates it (eg if everyone becomes more wealthy), or is it better for inequality not to exist and not have that which would make everyone wealthier?

[Anonymous No.15915051]

>>15915019
which is emblematic of a problem that transcends simple materialism. Material wealth will not necessarily make people happier, that's why material equality is bullshit (eg not desirable in and of itself). There's more to life than material. If it's actually envy and not material circumstances that contribute to peoples' being unhappy, talk about that, not about material equality.

[Anonymous No.15915094]

>>15915021
>Inequality of material wealth is not evidence of oppression or mistreatment of those on the wrong side of the inequality
What do you mean by "material wealth"? Obviously if 1% owns 99% of all leisure time that's different than if they monopolize the strategic supply of twinkies.

>Is it better for inequality to exist if everyone (even those at the bottom) benefit from what creates it (eg if everyone becomes more wealthy), or is it better for inequality not to exist and not have that which would make everyone wealthier?
No obviously. If inequality made the poor richer or happier in overall real terms no one would care much.

[Anonymous No.15915168]

>>15915051
You're more going into what would be considered "human nature"... you're not advocating mass psychosurgery are you?

[Anonymous No.15915245]

>>15914967
It is fallacious to bring up in this context (fallacy of relative privation, or the "not as bad as" fallacy), because change has never come about by comparing the suffering of individuals as if they are competing. Western suffering is not morally less important. This is a pretty common fallacy, everyone thinks they can destroy an argument with "but what about starving african children?"

[Anonymous No.15915331]

>>15915094
You're conflating wealth and happiness again. Leisure time is not wealth, and just because that which creates inequality does not make people necessarily happier, it is incontrovertible that it has made them better off (ie deaths in childbirth, life expectancy from 45 to 77 1870-1970, reduced disutility of labor and danger of serious bodily injury, etc). Happiness is another issue entirely and not one that will be solved by simply enacting measures to reduce material inequality.

>>15915168
Just that education and the entire attitude of the west is reformed, that moral and cultural relativism is stamped out. Preferably primary and secondary schools provide liberal arts educations and the university can be left to provide vocational training if necessary. People believe what they are taught and that is why the west is as fucked up and unhappy as it is today.

>>15915245
The point is that they are not materially worse off, and yet they may be less happy. It's foolish to think that "repairing" material inequality will heal lack of happiness (unless it's envy of other peoples', which is useless for many reasons, not the least of which is because enacting unfair policy to curb envy is a laughable prospect). The problem is more endemic in the west not because of material inequality but because of the pervasiveness and dominance of materialism in general.

[今晚打老虎 No.15915372]

>>15914887
i remember growing up and thinking poor meant you were literally struggling to keep the lights on and put food on the table
then i came to the States and realized poor meant you could still own a smartphone, have a TV, and more.
if youre on food stamps or welfare, quite frankly, you shouldnt be allowed to buy a smartphone. you should be required to subsist off a flip phone.
if you require public assistance you shouldnt be allowed to own a TV, unless it was scavenged from the dump.
if youre asking for handout, you should be taking public transport like the rest of us who are trying to save money.

at one point its not poverty, its just
>BUT MR JONES HAS BIG TRUCK. I ONLY HAVE BEATER TRUCK.
you want more? you want better? get a job like the rest of us. work harder like the rest of us.
if your suffering derives from "but muh neighbors has the newer iphone" then you deserve to suffer.

[Anonymous No.15915434]

>>15915331
If people just believed what they were thought change literally wouldn't be possible. Leisure time isn't free so you have a flawed conception of wealth. Most people can't afford to waste time on liberal arts. I'm saying what's being monopolized matters, there's tons of things no one but you cares about.

>>15915372
Ya, all that government oversight would be extremely expensive and pointless. Saving money just hurts the economy, what we need is a lot more consumption if those jobs are going to be abundant enough for everyone to work lol

[Anonymous No.15915471]

>>15915434
>Saving money just hurts the economy,
If everyone saved maybe. There's obviously a continuum here. Even leaving your money in the bank leads to them lending it out to businesses for ventures like the building of new locations. Similar can be argued with more direct forms of investment. Demand stimulus only takes center stage during a recession.

[Anonymous No.15915507]

>If people just believed what they were thought change literally wouldn't be possible.
Nonsensical. See: the coverage of the George Floyd and the size of the proceeding BLM protests. People must generally be taught to think for themselves.
>Leisure time isn't free so you have a flawed conception of wealth.
You have an infantile conception of wealth.
>Most people can't afford to waste time on liberal arts.
And yet they can afford to waste money on televisions, cellphones, expensive cars, and all the other leisure material they spend money on. In other words, you're wrong.
>I'm saying what's being monopolized matters, there's tons of things no one but you cares about.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. If you're implying that leisure time is monopolized I'd be very curious as to hear what you think the hours the American/western impoverished work.

[Anonymous No.15915529]

>>15915471
>Even leaving your money in the bank leads to them lending it out to businesses for ventures like the building of new locations
Do you have any empirical proof to prove your theory? When a business borrows from a bank they just create a deposit in the borrower's bank account increasing the money supply. You gotta look a little more critically at a banks balance sheet and you'll see loans create savings not the opposite.

[Anonymous No.15915551]

>>15915529
holy shit i remember thinking like this when i was a leftist in high school

[Anonymous No.15915587]

>>15915434
"Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness." -La Bruyère

If they stopped wasting time they could probably have read a book or two. Maybe thats why they're poor

[Anonymous No.15915604]

>>15915372
yeah the "get a job" thing is also just not realistic, you're just strawmanning and creating a fictional scenario that paints poor people as parasites, completely ignorant of the working poor, and how some people can work 3 jobs and still not have enough to maintain a family, because most money goes to rent, not bigger trucks or new iphones. this is a fox news level take.

[Anonymous No.15915608]

>>15915551
Everything in his post is accurate. Deposits are not "lent out". Deposits are created out of nothing every time a bank makes a loan.

[Anonymous No.15915628]

>>15915507
People thinking for themselves means you probably won't agree with them. Also consumer goods are incentivized by a lot of factors and inequality probably is one of the biggest drivers of why people prefer conspicuous consumption over liberal arts or whatever you care about.

>>15915551
Well you were smarter in school and got a lot dumber over time which happens a lot

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001070

[Anonymous No.15915671]

Nozick+Hayek>Rawls

Theory of Justice is a sort of socialism lite for those who want to maintain a big state and at the same time to pretend to be liberal, without any of the negative connotations of socialism. This can also be seen with the 'Liberals' in US today who share more beliefs in common with 19th century Socialists than they do with classical Liberals.

Also Theory of Justice has to be one of the most poorly written philosophy books. Needlessly verbose and Rawls style is not pleasant to the reader. Closer to a grueling mathematics class than the beauty of a Platonic dialogue

[Anonymous No.15915685]

STOP POSTING RAWLS!!!
THIS IS LIKE THE THIRD THREAD IN 2 DAYS!

[Anonymous No.15915689]

>>15915671
Boys are you going to be surprised when you find out those good old liberals like Mill were commies

[今晚打老虎 No.15915737]

>>15915604
how expensive can rent be? what happened to stacking people in close quarters? what happened to moving to a cheaper place where the rent is much lower?
if youre poor, and you cant afford to live in the city, then too bad. you gotta make sacrifices.
you can share a room in the city for $500. you can probably get a single in bumfuckville in South Dakota for less.
making minimum wage (you have to be true levels of retardation to make minimum wage, and even then, youre only supposed to do it for a certain amount of time before you get promoted to less shitty job) you still earn 1200 a month. 500 goes to rent leaves you 700. 50 on food if you go rice and beans and you have 650 left. 50 for basic internet, 25 for basic phone plan, 50 for public transportation and/or bike, and another 25 to spend whatever.
now you have $500 left to save. and thats on absolute dogshit federal minimum wage working absolute retard level jobs.
1) if you are truly retarded you can only work retard level jobs without the possibility of advancement, then im sorry, you deal with the cards you were dealt. because even retards can work hard enough to inch their way up.
2) if youre one of those "but i was dumb and i have 5 kids!" then im sorry, after the first or second kid (assuming, somehow, someway, you did not know about safe sex in the 21rst century) you think you would have realized after the first or second child that "hey, children are costly and time consuming." you made life choices. we all do. deal with it. also this doesnt even count the fact that poor families get subsidized housing.
my grandmother and grandfather had 5 children, all of them stacked into a tiny little hut. my father told me stories of how he used to walk miles to school. my grandparents still saved enough money to allow every single one of their children the opportunity to not only go to college, but also masters and PhDs in the United States.
if youre retarded. if you make bad choices. if you dont learn from your mistakes. if you dont double down on your efforts to not only rectify past mistakes, but to try to get head, then im sorry, you deserve your suffering.
we make mistakes. its unfortunate. and we all like to think "just saying sorry" is enough but that frankly isnt true. you have to pay for your mistakes. you have to atone for your sins.
welcome to the water, kid

[Anonymous No.15915781]

>>15915604
>get a job is not realistic
Just get a job lol

[Anonymous No.15915793]

>>15915628
>People thinking for themselves means you probably won't agree with them.
I bet I would in general find them much more agreeable than I do today.

>Also consumer goods are incentivized by a lot of factors
Okay, such as? Perhaps that people are unable to think for themselves and buy into the advertising and social status that comes along with showing off vapid materialism?

>and inequality probably is one of the biggest drivers of why people prefer conspicuous consumption over liberal arts or whatever you care about.
Yes, what a surprise, where there is a disparity somewhere people will glorify it. More wealthy, more manly, more intelligent, more able, more funny, white and not black, stronger.

[Anonymous No.15915801]

>>15912524
Why didn’t Jesus just conjure up food and medicine for all the sick

[Anonymous No.15915820]

>>15915604
Something tells me you were born middle or upper class and have never been around poor people.

[Anonymous No.15915849]

>people still try to justify individualist frameworks
yikes

[Anonymous No.15915887]

>>15915793
>Okay, such as? Perhaps that people are unable to think for themselves and buy into the advertising and social status that comes along with showing off vapid materialism?
Your problem is you're approaching things from a very dumb reductionist form of individualism. Advertising is a massive private industry so either it's an astonishing indictment of the intelligence of such a system and waste or there's something going on there... the system is more than just the sum of its parts and it "works" and has reproduced itself despite Marxists/lolbertarians/whomstever else predicting doom. You don't want actually existing capitalism or capitalistic culture but some ideal form of society of Randian rationalists.

[Anonymous No.15915889]

>>15915801
Because they will all be saved in the end if they believe and repent

[Anonymous No.15915903]

>>15915604
My coworker works 48 hours a week at $15/hr and supports a family of five in Orange County, California (in a town on the beach). You're wrong

[Anonymous No.15915908]

>>15915889
le epic cope prank bro

[Anonymous No.15915930]

>>15915887
More like an astonishing indictment of the intelligence of the individuals making up that system. But good job deflecting into some vague notion about this being more than the some of its parts. I don't think our system is in a good state or desirable as it is today but I think it's pretty laughable you take me for a libertarian.

[今晚大老虎 No.15915936]

>>15915820
The young (you can clearly tell he's young) SJWesque (clearly left leaning) most likely has NOT actually spent time around poor people.
Poor people tend to remain (keyword is remain) poor due to a continued display of bad behavior. They need to get their smokes even though its 10 dollars a pack. They need to get their drink on. They twirl around their 1200 dollar iPhones like its free when in reality the cost is built into the plan they lock you in. They get dubious loans to rent needless furniture and then pay interest they can't afford. They spend their tax return on a new car because the dealer said "no credit checks" and then it gets repossessed in a few months. That's not even talking about hood behavior that includes purchasing drugs and getting Jordans.

[Anonymous No.15915965]

>>15915887
>liberal arts education means society of randian rationalists

[Anonymous No.15916031]

>>15915930
You're the one deflecting. The system continues to reproduces itself. You're the one who claimed individuals do as they are thought not me. Lets just say coca-cola probably can outspend your education programs. For me I'd say any sane jury should indict society and let the criminals go free and they should imprison themselves for being guilty as being members of a sick sick society

>>15915965
Ya but only Aristotle, no Plato.

[Anonymous No.15916090]

>>15915689
Mill wasn't a commie. He didn't know how it would turn out. He didn't see what Tocqueville saw.

[Anonymous No.15916095]

>>15915737
you are trying so hard but with so little brain power

[Anonymous No.15916111]

>>15915903
anecdotal evidence, do you even read books?

[Anonymous No.15916122]

>>15916111
If it's doable in the extreme, it's doable away from the extreme. People don't work three jobs and not have enough to maintain a family unless they're maintaining it like shit.

[Anonymous No.15916167]

>>15916090
Very astute anon. Tocqueville's views on socialism were prophetic

[Anonymous No.15916178]

>>15915529
Cool. Banks are still required to hold a certain percentage of their assets in reserve. More money still increases their capacity to make loans.

[Anonymous No.15916251]

>>15916122
hurr durr fallacies don't count when i'm using them, anyways watch me speculate about peoples lives with zero evidence and no research

[Anonymous No.15916267]

>>15916251
>he doesn't understand the use of extreme cases in a proof

[Anonymous No.15916484]

>>15916090
He literally advocated for worker ownership being more efficient and logical outcome

[Anonymous No.15916495]

>>15916267

honestly hilarious that you think your anecdote even remotely met the requirements of the extreme value theorem. "i know a guy that does it, therefore anyone can" ignores dozens of other influential factors (which isn't reliable anyways, because who the fuck knows if your friend even exists, and who is stupid enough to believe a family of 5 can live on 37k a year.)

[Anonymous No.15916502]

>>15916484
I don't know about that, but he was an advocate of colonialism and wrote an essay attacking socialism:
>If the poorest and most wretched members of a so-called civilised society are in as bad a condition as every one would be in that worst form of barbarism produced by the dissolution of civilised life, it does not follow that the way to raise them would be to reduce all others to the same miserable state. On the contrary, it is by the aid of the first who have risen that so many others have escaped from the general lot, and it is only by better organization of the same process that it may be hoped in time to succeed in raising the remainder.

[Anonymous No.15916531]

>>15916495
lmao so now instead of attacking the point, which you've realized is valid, you're coming up with loads of other bullshit and questioning the validity of it? You're beyond clueless if you don't think families can live on 37k a year LMAO. Lemme guess, self-hating middle-class white faggot that's never lived in a poor neighborhood and thinks that the minimum wage is below subsistence wage

[Anonymous No.15916553]

>>15916495
you can use a budgeting website and design a budget for a family of 5 on 37k. which will be an entirely theoretical case . but it will prove that it can be done

[Anonymous No.15916700]

>>15912352

Even if you resolve systemic inequality, you still end up with stark genetic inequality which is just as cruel

[Anonymous No.15916763]

>THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

[Anonymous No.15917244]

>>15916484
He seemed to like co-ops but didn't believe state action was necessary for their growth. So basically his position was, "There's good reason to believe co-ops will be the hot new thing the free market gives us. Plus all things being equal, getting rid of master servant relations is probably better than not."
My guess is he wouldn't have supported any policies for that viewpoint though.