There was a lot of discussion on billionaire's conspicuous consumption. I was disappointed that Bryan didn't point out that their consumption amounts to a tiny portion of their wealth. The bulk of with is invested in companies and products that create wealth throughout the world.. I would have challenged Singer as to why he thought philanthropy does more good than investing.
I think you could push that a little farther. I like the "politician throws kid in water, demands you pay" etc. but considering that most third world countries are poor largely because of super bad government institutions (kleptocracies) I think a better question to pose to Singer is "Are we not obligated to help these people by removing the governments that harm them?"
After all, sending them money and resources that will then be stolen by their corrupt governments seems like a bad idea. The people don't get the help and the governments are made stronger, supported in their corruption. That'd be like saving the kid from drowning, giving the kid 500$ to go see a doctor and get checked for secondary drowning, only to have the politician snatch the money and throw the kid right back in, demanding we save them again.
So, why isn't Singer arguing that we should donate money to overthrow their governments and set up a more stable and honest regime?
Excellent opening statement. Particularly like the revised drowning child scenario.
But I wish you would point out, or that someone would clarify to whom the rich are not paying their fair share. The argument isn't really that the rich don't pay their fair share to the poor, first of all because they don't owe them anything and second there is no direct transfer method to do just that.
The rich don't pay enough in taxes, yes? So, the argument is that the government doesn't have enough money because the rich won't pony up their wealth to an enterprise that makes the most corrupt charity look like a pristine model of efficiency, Some liberals will always see the government as a charity, a giving hand that binds the poor to lifelong poverty, A few might quietly admit that the aforementioned is not a bug, but a very useful feature.
Perhaps a different take from a person from a developing country: we desperately need you to consume - wine, wildlife, web content creators, whatever - so that we can sell those things to you. If you cut consumption by 90%, we're doomed.
Exports allow us to pay for cheap imports which keep the kid alive. Aid will never reach him.
You reference "the last time" the US had allowed immigration as 1924, but that's really when the US restricted European immigration based on a quota system. It had restricted Asian immigration prior to then. Of course, it was never the case that immigrants to America mostly came from what would be the Third World. Back when travel had to be by ship, the poorest couldn't afford to travel and wouldn't have had much of an economic niche available once they got here if they had. There were many who came from Africa, but they weren't immigrants and their transportation costs were paid via their purchase price. In the modern context where transportation costs are cheaper and many more people could potentially move here, "open borders" means something very different practically speaking. An economist should think on the margin in terms of greatly expanding legal immigration, which does not actually require us to adopt fully open borders.
This ignores the issue of how the rich billionaire vs the "rich" middle class American got their money in the first place. If you think the middle-class American created their wealth by working, while the billionaire extracted (most but not all of) their wealth that was created by the workers, it looks rather different.
Another possible solution would be to fix "legal immigration," admittedly a course that Bryan described "as almost impossible." However, why can't we welcome all comers who go through an efficient and rapid vetting process designed to admit honest hard-working citizens? Is that too much to ask?
Our country manages to check the voting rights of over 150 million individuals during a few weeks of voting every year, process millions of hunting licenses every season, multi-millions of driver's licenses every year, the distribution of over a hundred million social security checks and welfare payments every month, etc. Why cannot they process a mere 5-10 million legal applications for admission to the country? Making legal immigration work would minimize the chaos and deaths at our borders, reduce the influx of illegal drugs, reject known criminals, and reduce human trafficking, smuggling and corruption.
Usually when people say they can't do something it's because they don't want to. I suspect that our political and corporate elites prefer unskilled low earning illegal immigrants over self-supporting experienced individuals. That may be why our bureaucracy processes all "legal" applications slowly and makes it very difficult to enter or stay long in America. I know of very worthy and legally admitted individuals being sent back when their temporary Visas expire. But our elites do nothing to remove those obstacles for law-abiding applicants.
Governments in rich countries are also the biggest source of "ineffective altruism" in the world. By forcing people (through taxation) to spend a substantial portion of their income on their relatively well-off fellow citizens, these governments actively prevent people from donating that money more effectively by giving it to people in poor countries instead, who are in much more desperate need.
1) "What then is the point of singling out one of the most philanthropically heroic segments of the population as uniquely “unfair”? " There's degrees of unfairness (and the worse the degree, the greater the wrong, the blameworthiness and the appropriateness of public rebuke. But in any case, middle class people also failing to pay their fair share doesn't change that rich people don't - the topic of debate.
2 "We have a word for people who live far below their means in order to help strangers. And the word isn’t “fair.” It’s “heroic.”"
You're basically falling short of your own standards of moral reasoning here. You've said that conventional wisdom (and labels) is often wrong and the way to reason is from v simple concrete cases to more complex abstract ones. Singer does exactly that. His thought experiment is v simple and concrete and good at eliciting a clear moral intuition - it's not so much heroic to save the drowning child, as it is merely your duty (we might call a person who saves a drowning child a hero, but we're just being nice, we would consider a person who did nothing a villain). You do *wrong* for every drowning child you choose not to save for the sake of some luxury. It seems to follow pretty clearly from this that most middle class who each choose not to save hundreds (thousands?) of people do wrong. But also that billionaires, cos they have the potential to save many more (millions?) do even greater wrong.
3) All of your stuff about immigration restrictions is a red herring. Restrictionists can be the biggest (by far) villains in the story but that doesn't mean the rich who fail their duty aren't also guilty of wrong-doing.
4) Perhaps while what Singer says is true, if that truth was publicly accepted by the masses it would hurt everyone including the poor by dulling the incentive of the most productive to produce (human nature being what it is). Does this consequence, change the original calculus? And if it doesn't (and I'm not sure it can), then perhaps there's still grounds for a noble lie where we still publicly deny the truth of Singer's claims (as unpalatable an approach as this would be).
5) My way of reconciling my intuitions with Singer's thought experiment is to bite the bullet (given you chide Robin for this approach I imagine you'll find my take unpersuasive). But basically, I accept that I would emotionally *regard* the person who lets the child drown as a villain. However, I think this is a moral illusion of sorts. It's not wrong to let the stranger die, but anyone who would not feel psychologically compelled to save the kid, would be like an alien to me. Sort of like someone who was capable of burning alive their kid to save the world. The morality of their action is secondary to the disgust I feel. I think we confuse the disgust with a genuine moral intuition. [I suspect this argument might be bs, but it's the best I have lol- would be interested to know what you think].
Having said all this, I probs regard you Bryan as one of the best (and certainly the clearest) thinkers alive. You've done a lot to help my thinking. I'm also not a socialist and/or an effective altruist. I'm a centrist liberal (in the British not American sense), and I desperately want to reject Singer's thought experiment. But I've not found a single compelling argument against it. Hopefully there's something I'm not grasping from your argument, that you can clear up. But I also wonder, if you're suffering from motivated reasoning at this point? I know you pride yourself on being intellectually honest and rigourous (and you are). But I imagine conceding Singers' point would be quite psychologically difficult given your political identity for all your career. Anyways, best wishes, and keep doing what you do.
I would have thrown the demagogic politician and photographer in the pool, waited, found a pole or stick to help retrieve the child, then continued with my business.
Better to encourage other nation’s people to demand free and open economies. Massive immigration can only help those who get here— there are a billion people who need help. Letting them in is mot scalable except over very long time period. But it is the elites who are to blame—mostly those in the 100 nations that hsve closed economies
Those foreign elites like to get rid of troublemakers. Those who remain will still suffer unless se spread the idea of free economies. Instead of promoting free economies our elites are meeting with the worst autocrats because they really don’t want free economies. They are in fact on their say to making America another oppressed people. That is why elites are called parasites. This is not new problem. Throughout history elites have always sought to prevent free economis_they want it tilted in their favor
There was a lot of discussion on billionaire's conspicuous consumption. I was disappointed that Bryan didn't point out that their consumption amounts to a tiny portion of their wealth. The bulk of with is invested in companies and products that create wealth throughout the world.. I would have challenged Singer as to why he thought philanthropy does more good than investing.
I think you could push that a little farther. I like the "politician throws kid in water, demands you pay" etc. but considering that most third world countries are poor largely because of super bad government institutions (kleptocracies) I think a better question to pose to Singer is "Are we not obligated to help these people by removing the governments that harm them?"
After all, sending them money and resources that will then be stolen by their corrupt governments seems like a bad idea. The people don't get the help and the governments are made stronger, supported in their corruption. That'd be like saving the kid from drowning, giving the kid 500$ to go see a doctor and get checked for secondary drowning, only to have the politician snatch the money and throw the kid right back in, demanding we save them again.
So, why isn't Singer arguing that we should donate money to overthrow their governments and set up a more stable and honest regime?
Excellent opening statement. Particularly like the revised drowning child scenario.
But I wish you would point out, or that someone would clarify to whom the rich are not paying their fair share. The argument isn't really that the rich don't pay their fair share to the poor, first of all because they don't owe them anything and second there is no direct transfer method to do just that.
The rich don't pay enough in taxes, yes? So, the argument is that the government doesn't have enough money because the rich won't pony up their wealth to an enterprise that makes the most corrupt charity look like a pristine model of efficiency, Some liberals will always see the government as a charity, a giving hand that binds the poor to lifelong poverty, A few might quietly admit that the aforementioned is not a bug, but a very useful feature.
Perhaps a different take from a person from a developing country: we desperately need you to consume - wine, wildlife, web content creators, whatever - so that we can sell those things to you. If you cut consumption by 90%, we're doomed.
Exports allow us to pay for cheap imports which keep the kid alive. Aid will never reach him.
You reference "the last time" the US had allowed immigration as 1924, but that's really when the US restricted European immigration based on a quota system. It had restricted Asian immigration prior to then. Of course, it was never the case that immigrants to America mostly came from what would be the Third World. Back when travel had to be by ship, the poorest couldn't afford to travel and wouldn't have had much of an economic niche available once they got here if they had. There were many who came from Africa, but they weren't immigrants and their transportation costs were paid via their purchase price. In the modern context where transportation costs are cheaper and many more people could potentially move here, "open borders" means something very different practically speaking. An economist should think on the margin in terms of greatly expanding legal immigration, which does not actually require us to adopt fully open borders.
This ignores the issue of how the rich billionaire vs the "rich" middle class American got their money in the first place. If you think the middle-class American created their wealth by working, while the billionaire extracted (most but not all of) their wealth that was created by the workers, it looks rather different.
Where can we watch the full debate?
Another possible solution would be to fix "legal immigration," admittedly a course that Bryan described "as almost impossible." However, why can't we welcome all comers who go through an efficient and rapid vetting process designed to admit honest hard-working citizens? Is that too much to ask?
Our country manages to check the voting rights of over 150 million individuals during a few weeks of voting every year, process millions of hunting licenses every season, multi-millions of driver's licenses every year, the distribution of over a hundred million social security checks and welfare payments every month, etc. Why cannot they process a mere 5-10 million legal applications for admission to the country? Making legal immigration work would minimize the chaos and deaths at our borders, reduce the influx of illegal drugs, reject known criminals, and reduce human trafficking, smuggling and corruption.
Usually when people say they can't do something it's because they don't want to. I suspect that our political and corporate elites prefer unskilled low earning illegal immigrants over self-supporting experienced individuals. That may be why our bureaucracy processes all "legal" applications slowly and makes it very difficult to enter or stay long in America. I know of very worthy and legally admitted individuals being sent back when their temporary Visas expire. But our elites do nothing to remove those obstacles for law-abiding applicants.
Someday, I will begin a novel -- or at least a short story -- with the words, "'Hello,' the politician lied."
Governments in rich countries are also the biggest source of "ineffective altruism" in the world. By forcing people (through taxation) to spend a substantial portion of their income on their relatively well-off fellow citizens, these governments actively prevent people from donating that money more effectively by giving it to people in poor countries instead, who are in much more desperate need.
1) "What then is the point of singling out one of the most philanthropically heroic segments of the population as uniquely “unfair”? " There's degrees of unfairness (and the worse the degree, the greater the wrong, the blameworthiness and the appropriateness of public rebuke. But in any case, middle class people also failing to pay their fair share doesn't change that rich people don't - the topic of debate.
2 "We have a word for people who live far below their means in order to help strangers. And the word isn’t “fair.” It’s “heroic.”"
You're basically falling short of your own standards of moral reasoning here. You've said that conventional wisdom (and labels) is often wrong and the way to reason is from v simple concrete cases to more complex abstract ones. Singer does exactly that. His thought experiment is v simple and concrete and good at eliciting a clear moral intuition - it's not so much heroic to save the drowning child, as it is merely your duty (we might call a person who saves a drowning child a hero, but we're just being nice, we would consider a person who did nothing a villain). You do *wrong* for every drowning child you choose not to save for the sake of some luxury. It seems to follow pretty clearly from this that most middle class who each choose not to save hundreds (thousands?) of people do wrong. But also that billionaires, cos they have the potential to save many more (millions?) do even greater wrong.
3) All of your stuff about immigration restrictions is a red herring. Restrictionists can be the biggest (by far) villains in the story but that doesn't mean the rich who fail their duty aren't also guilty of wrong-doing.
4) Perhaps while what Singer says is true, if that truth was publicly accepted by the masses it would hurt everyone including the poor by dulling the incentive of the most productive to produce (human nature being what it is). Does this consequence, change the original calculus? And if it doesn't (and I'm not sure it can), then perhaps there's still grounds for a noble lie where we still publicly deny the truth of Singer's claims (as unpalatable an approach as this would be).
5) My way of reconciling my intuitions with Singer's thought experiment is to bite the bullet (given you chide Robin for this approach I imagine you'll find my take unpersuasive). But basically, I accept that I would emotionally *regard* the person who lets the child drown as a villain. However, I think this is a moral illusion of sorts. It's not wrong to let the stranger die, but anyone who would not feel psychologically compelled to save the kid, would be like an alien to me. Sort of like someone who was capable of burning alive their kid to save the world. The morality of their action is secondary to the disgust I feel. I think we confuse the disgust with a genuine moral intuition. [I suspect this argument might be bs, but it's the best I have lol- would be interested to know what you think].
Having said all this, I probs regard you Bryan as one of the best (and certainly the clearest) thinkers alive. You've done a lot to help my thinking. I'm also not a socialist and/or an effective altruist. I'm a centrist liberal (in the British not American sense), and I desperately want to reject Singer's thought experiment. But I've not found a single compelling argument against it. Hopefully there's something I'm not grasping from your argument, that you can clear up. But I also wonder, if you're suffering from motivated reasoning at this point? I know you pride yourself on being intellectually honest and rigourous (and you are). But I imagine conceding Singers' point would be quite psychologically difficult given your political identity for all your career. Anyways, best wishes, and keep doing what you do.
I would have thrown the demagogic politician and photographer in the pool, waited, found a pole or stick to help retrieve the child, then continued with my business.
This is sad. Is this really the society you would create under Rawls' veil of ignorance?
Very well done Bryan! There is much to think about in your very clear statement.
Better to encourage other nation’s people to demand free and open economies. Massive immigration can only help those who get here— there are a billion people who need help. Letting them in is mot scalable except over very long time period. But it is the elites who are to blame—mostly those in the 100 nations that hsve closed economies
Those foreign elites like to get rid of troublemakers. Those who remain will still suffer unless se spread the idea of free economies. Instead of promoting free economies our elites are meeting with the worst autocrats because they really don’t want free economies. They are in fact on their say to making America another oppressed people. That is why elites are called parasites. This is not new problem. Throughout history elites have always sought to prevent free economis_they want it tilted in their favor
You basically reiterate that you should tithe 10% of your income to good works and then move on with your life (we figured this out millennia ago).