The fruit of extreme leftism: the talented have no right to their rewards

"Never give a party if you will be the most interesting person there." - Mickey Friedman

***

A:

> Hang on. I understand that the talent and the production it enables are
> not the same thing. However, my stance still applies: (In my view) The
> fruits of talent aren't illegitimately obtained either, so people have a
> right to what they produce.

I don't see the logical progression here at all. Let's break what you are saying down:

1. The fruit of the exercise of talent is undeserved.
2. But that fruit is not illegitimate either.

Therefore

3. The talented have a RIGHT to what they produce.

(3) does not follow from (1) and (2). All one can conclude from (1) and (2) is that it is neither legitimate nor illegitimate for the talented to keep the fruit of their talent. A right can only arise if the talented in some way own the fruit of their talent, which you denied.

Now since it is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, and since there are less advantaged people in society whose disadvantage also has no basis in desert, surely then it would be legitimate for the state to redistribute the premium?


> To add a reductio argument here: Substitute "hands" for "talents" in
> your above line of reasoning. What you'd essentially be saying is that
> if I produce stuff because I have hands and someone doesn't because he's
> quadriplegic, then my labour must be redistributed, because, hey,
> there's someone without hands out there. Where do we draw the
> distinction between "basic capability that all humans possess" and
> "special talent"?

As for the quadraplegic example: YES, the answer is yes.

Surely if there were a person who is severely retarded, who without external help would quickly die. Would it not be unjust for the advantaged not to transfer some of their resources to help her?


> Look, I understand this you feel this way already. Repeating slowly and
> loudly won't make me come around to your point of view. The logic
> "talent is undeserved" = "the fruits of talent should be redistributed"
> is not only unclear to me, but seems to lack logical and intuitive
> connection. Offer an argument as to why it holds. I have already told
> you why I think that equating the two fails (because, strictly
> speaking, not deserving something doesn't mean you have no right to
> keep it. The gift analogy comes to mind again).

Clearly if I don't deserve something, it would be unjust for me to withhold it from those who are disadvantaged. This is usually how we think about, say, earning money legitimately:

I work.
Therefore there is a basis of desert (work).
Therefore I deserve my salary.
Therefore I may legitimately keep my salary.

Let's use the gift analogy:

My friend works.
Therefore there is a basis of desert (work).
Therefore he deserves his salary.
With his salary he decides to buy a vibrator and give it to me.
Therefore I deserve the vibrator (respecting his free choice and the original basis of desert in him.)

How about finding treasure:

I find treasure.
I do not deserve it.
Therefore I am not entitled to keep it.
(This, by the way, is the legal position in most countries. If you find treasure, it belongs to the state, and you may be prosecuted if you do not declare it.)

You are saying that we are somehow ENTITLED to the fruit of our labour. But there must be some basis for that entitlement. Nozick echoes you when he says that there are some things we may 'just have, not illegitimately'. But it is hard to see how that leads to the claim that we are entitled to it. It merely means we should not be
persecuted for owning these things (e.g. a thief would go to prison, etc). We are merely saying it can be redistributed.


B: When did I say that the talented do not have a right to what they produced? My last post explicitly said "people have a right to what they produce." Talented are people too, you know. In fact, almost everybody can be considered talented (re: your response to my example with the quadriplegic) because the vast majority of us aren't in a coma or something similarly debilitating.

To restate (please ignore if you already know this) (caveat, it's my opinion, again, that:) The act of production grants a right to that which is produced. You'd have no rights to your "production" if it was illegitimately gotten (theft, etc), but because the excess from talent was not illegitimately gotten you don't lose your original right of production. Now, simply being a member of society means that one has some moral obligation to give up stuff to society (taxes, and you'd be taxed higher because you effectively have more), but that obligation (and society's right to take) has to be balanced against your right to what you produced.

So, my line of reasoning is more like:
1. Everyone has a right to the fruit of their labour
2. Rule 1 does not apply if what is gained was through illegitimate means.
3. Talent and its fruit are not illegitimate.
So:
4. The talented have a right to what they produce, like everybody else.
5. They also have rights to their excess production, since talent doesn't make production illegitimate.


Look, Rawl's take from "the we choose behind a veil" thing is to say we would all agree on a maximin strategy (maximise the happiness of those with the least happiness) right? Well, I don't agree. Some people, myself included, might want a priori, without knowledge of our lives ahead, to be guaranteed enough to live a decent life if we were in the "worst off" position but not maximise our happiness. Why? Altruism for everyone else knowing we will be a huge burden, perhaps? Maybe a belief that its overall social utility that ought to matter? Maybe we think that we want to maximise our expected wealth in our lives (as in, we're not 100% risk averse and automatically assume we're going to be the worst off). Or maybe I might have confidence in my own determination to succeed despite the odds (given that I am guaranteed enough to have a decent life). The fact is that Rawl's entire thesis is based on assumptions about the way people act, just as your arguments are based on assumptions that people agree with what you see as just. Neither set of assumptions hold.


> Who will determine this balance? You? God? The
> government? The individual? You are merely re-stating the question.
>
It's already being done. That's why we have tax brackets.
Besides, this is an entirely abstract debate and we have ignored all the practicalities on both sides. I could put the question back to you: how do you (and who will) determine what I have gained from "talent" and what is "basic." Judging by your replies, I suppose you'd say that any capability I have in excess of someone in a vegetative state is "talent"? What then gives you the right to define who is talented and who is not? And how do you intend to force people to give up what they view as their property?


> Clearly if I don't deserve something, it would be unjust for me to
> withhold it from those who are disadvantaged. This is usually how we
> think about, say, earning money legitimately:

Yes, it may be unjust for me to withhold it, but its wrong for someone to come along and just take it away. I don't have to be a saint unless I choose to be. In fact, the act of taking by force is arguably more "wrong" than refusing to give.

How much of your income do you give away? To make an argument like this you'd have to devote your entire income beyond bare living essentials to the disadvantaged. You believe that any income you have or might gain that exceeds that of someone who has no use of their limbs should be given away. Aren't you totally wracked with guilt because you lead a better life than most quadriplegics?


> I work.
> Therefore there is a basis of desert (work).
> Therefore I deserve my salary.
> Therefore I may legitimately keep my salary.

No, by your own admission, you may not keep most of your salary. Most of your salary was gained because you had capabilities exceeding said quadriplegic above, and hence should be redistributed.

> Let's use the gift analogy:
>
> My friend works.
> Therefore there is a basis of desert (work).
> Therefore he deserves his salary.
> With his salary he decides to buy a vibrator and give it to me.
> Therefore I deserve the vibrator (respecting his free choice and the
> original basis of desert in him.)

Again, there's a logical disconnect here. By your reasoning:
1) Your friend has no right to give you a gift. The vast majority of your friend's earnings are from "talent" and so should be redistributed to the worst off in society. Since you're not one of them, your friend can't give you stuff.
2) Even if your friend has a right to give you stuff, you have no right to keep it, since you, personally, have not earned it. (Your friend earned the value of the gift, not you).

> How about finding treasure:
>
> I find treasure.
> I do not deserve it.
> Therefore I am not entitled to keep it.
> (This, by the way, is the legal position in most countries. If you
> find treasure, it belongs to the state, and you may be prosecuted if
> you do not declare it.)

If I owned a plot of land and discovered gold on it, I do not turn it over to the state. The land is mine, so any gold on it is mine as well. In the same way, no one is going to prosecute me for picking up $0.10 on Orchard road on a busy day.

> You are saying that we are somehow ENTITLED to the fruit of our
> labour. But there must be some basis for that entitlement. Nozick
> echoes you when he says that there are some things we may 'just have,
> not illegitimately'. But it is hard to see how that leads to the claim
> that we are entitled to it.

I worked for it.

> It merely means we should not be
> persecuted for owning these things (e.g. a thief would go to prison,
> etc). We are merely saying it can be redistributed.

And I agree that it can be redistributed. But any redistribution has to take into account my prior rights. Moreover, I add that having my stuff be taken away just because I got it through talent would piss me off to no end, and that in itself might constitute a form of persecution.


Me: Basically I think this argument is pointless, since it's a conflict of world views. To wit:

Right wing market fundamentalist: "tax is theft

all spent on fruitless endeavous like supporting laggards and slackers and losers who are incapable of self-supporting. either that, or paying for the military-industrial complex"


Left wing communist: "the bourgeoisie's salary is theft from the proletariat, earned from exploiting it

all spent on rubbish like $18,000 bottles of wine, fuel-inefficient SUVs and casino gambling. either that or supporting rich wastrels"


Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat


C: I don't agree with this form of Rawlsian distribution, simply because there is no perfect information. Any attempt to redistribute in some egalitarian way will result in some other inequality somewhere, because the distributor doesn't know everything.

For example, what if effort is genetically predisposed and therefore by A's definition morally arbitrary? Without being racist here, anecdotally it appears that Asians here seem to be more hardworking than White Americans, for example.

To model this more formally (but of course not totally formal): If we have two people A and B with equal talent, but A has a lower utility from leisure than B, the result is that A works more than B, but both end up with the same utility, assuming a perfect market, since their initial endowments (talent) are equal. But A ends up with more $$$ because he works more, and his utility from leisure (not working) is less. Would you redistribute the cash from A to B?

Doing so because there is some "moral arbitraryness" in the genetic predisposition to effort is clearly stupid here, as (using utility to measure outcome) the non-redistributive outcome is totally equal. Here, to use the terminology from the email below, "effort" is in fact unchosen and is arbitrary.

But this begs the question: How do you know that A earned more $$$ because he worked more or simply because he is more talented? The utility function of each individual is unknown, and so is initial endowment (although you can get gauges of initial endowment by social status etc.).

On a more personal note, I would be pissed if I worked my ass off getting myself through uni only to have my wealth siphoned to people who simply played computer games throughout ITE, simply because I'm more genetically predisposed to hard work than they are.