Ok, lets take David Beckham and make some simplifying assumptions

1. David and the rest of us start today at the same point in terms of the initial distribution of income/wealth (I did say simplifying assumptions!!)
2. Ignore the fact that David has an advantage over us in the unfair distribution of natural talent and assume that he is a better footballer than us for one reason only – he has worked harder than us
3. We are prepared to pay £10 to watch David play a match (either in absolute terms) or even on top of the ticket price to watch the whole team. We love him that much.
4. David Beckham will keep the £10
5. Other people (maybe 70,000 or so? ) feel the same way

Does this sound ok?

THM – careful with this! This could end in tear!

…But in doing this, you appear to accept that the freedom of individuals should be compromised.

You raise a very good point. However the logic doesn’t follow. In a finite world, if you allow someone the freedom to earn/collect more money than they can spend, then you impinge on the freedom of many more people who can’t afford the basics of a comfortable life. This is the point of fairness. I couldn’t care less how much money people have, what bothers me is that there are millions/billions of people in this world who struggle to feed their families and/or don’t have a roof over their heads.

Does this sound ok?

Sort of. Does he get his kit off though?

Ok so David has a really good season. He plays in every match and we go to watch everyone along with lots of other people. At the end of the season, David walks away with several millions of pounds – you can make your own judgement call on the extent to which that is due to the unfair natural lottery of talent at birth and how much id due to his own hard work.

So assumption 1 – no longer holds. David is considerably richer than the rest of us, by a factor that would probably be at the extremes of the IFS analysis but I haven’t done the maths. Bottom line – he has more, we have less – actually a helluva lot less. Some may feel uncomfortable with this – what kind of society allows a footballer to earn that much money? Its not fair that he now has so much more money that me etc?

But this situation arose from a completely voluntary set of choices.

1. We cant complain – we voluntarily chose to pay, we enjoyed it (I assume) and we were free to buy the tickets

2. People who hate football may resent this, but can they complain. Hardly, they stay at home and don’t spend any money watching David Beckham play.

3. Does David Beckham complain – dooh?!?

So what’s the point? OK let’s assume that I hate wide distributions of income – it makes me sick, it makes me angry and it assaults my sense of fairness. What should I do now? I have to intervene repeatedly and continuously to undo the choices that you and I freely made. Plus, not only, are we going to overturn the results of completely voluntary choices, we are also going to violate David Beckham’s rights to his earnings. Is this fair?

BTW – this is not my view or position necessarily. Just a scenario that highlights that fairness is not that simple.

THM – regards “Anarchy, State and Utopia”, yep, read it, and am a rough supporter of the ethos, but then, I also think that Robert A. Heinlein was one of the great political visionaries of the last century 😉

if you allow someone the freedom to earn/collect more money than they can spend, then you impinge on the freedom of many more people who can’t afford the basics of a comfortable life.

You do realise that the pay off, is that those people use that money to invest – they take risky decisions, knowing that they may lose their money, but they may also make a million. Risk and reward has been the foundation of society and a huge motivator in the development of society – take drug development as an example, costs millions to develop a new drug, most new drugs fail at a research level, and people lose money from investing in them – a small number come through and make billions, but in the process can change the quality of life for millions of people

take that away, and there is no reward for risk, people will not risk money they have not got, and suddenly we’ve hit the great leap backward.

Just for balance here – a quick alternative scenario for balance – that will probably lead to a different conclusion. Sorry, this one is a bit of a cliche.

There is a run away train hurtling down a track towards some workmen that can’t hear/see it – you are watching this happen and know that if you do nothing the workmen will die. You also notice that there is a fork in the track and that Jenny Aggatur is ripping her underwear off (sorry, that’s another film). You see that that there is a points lever that will divert the train onto the other fork. Phew! But just before you pull the lever, you see that there is one, solitary worker also on that line. He can’t see or hear the train either. If you pull the switch, he will die but the others will survive. What’s fairer? The individual liberty of the one guy (David Beckham’s brother!!) or the saving more lives of the other workers?

THM – now rewrite that example, and instead of Beckhams brother, imagine its a young Louis Pasteur – suddenly its the lives of the workers, against what turns out to be (but you don’t know at the time) the lives of millions 😀

…including Adolf Hitler’s parents… 😉

Where could this end!!!

JY – currently changing jobs so time on my hands plus waiting in for deliveries today and yesterday. Hence it became an interesting read! I would prefer to be on some singletrack!!

The beckham assumptions are ridiculous though I can see the point you are trying to make but we cant really run with it. To reply i would siomply point out that beckham will bne playing the football whatever we pay him as he loves it and he , like everyone, gives his best all the time [ to each according to their ability] we ll you do say we were allowed simplyfying assumptions
AdamW i always had you down for more taste than that …you just come across as so shallow 😉
Ronaldo floats some boats so to speak

I am enjopying moral philosphy lesssons though.
I prefer the uboat hscenarios where it h. just sunk a ship and there are surviovrs in the water You can get a depth charge and sink the U-boat but the survivors will die ..if you dont it will go on to sink more boats
what do you do.

Isn’t that Joe McElledry??

I also forgot to add that Beckham uses the money to support the obviously disadvantaged (in so many ways). Just wish he would stop!!

THM,

Here’s a more typical example of how the rich get rich.

1. Would you like to live in a house or a hole in the ground?

2. Now, which bank would you like to borrow the money off?

3. Lets say Barclays.

4. So you borrow £100

5. You are now obliged to pay back £200

6. Lets say 1,000,000 other people do this.

7. Barclays have done rather well.

8. Nobody can complain, because it was all done voluntarily.

9. The people who work at Barclays are especially pleased, but they deserve to be because they are especially talented, and work really hard.

PS – I’d divert the train. Unless it was someone I knew of course.

you missed out the bit about when they lent the money to someone who could not pay them back [then sold the debt on in a convulted way no one really understands] so we paid them instead as it would have been worse for us if we had not…then they engaged in tax avoidance to say thanks 😉

so we paid instead as it would have been owrse for us if we had not

I think you’ll find that the real right wingers were even less of a fan of that idea than the lefties 😐

The proper free market fans would point out that risk is an essential component in the capitalist system, and its the half arsed application of a concept that leads to problems 👿

teamhurtmore .

TJ – the problem is that none of us have a monopoly on defining fairness. You appear to approach this from the perspective of a virtue concept (ie a vision of society) combined with an element of utilitarianism in maximising benefits for the largest number of people. But in doing this, you appear to accept that the freedom of individuals should be compromised.

Not at all – more individuals have more freedom if money is redistributed. More equal societies are happier.

Progressive taxation does not restrict a few – it liberates many. Accumulation of excessive wealth thru abuse of power is inherently unfair.

RPRT – we are both using hypothetical examples although mine was to make a point. I guess yours is more heartfelt. It feels like Millaband at the TUC to try to argue for a bank – but in the sake of balance let’s see.

Ok – lots of voluntary choices. I assume that this is interest only and if for 20 years then 3.5% CAGR could well make the 1,000,000 people happy. Not exactly extortion if inflation is 4%. But then the loaded question 9 – hmm, so Barclays in this example is/are neither talented nor do they work hard. So their ability to win the business was completely random…I guess there was no physical infrastructure involved, Barclays didn’t need to arrange any funding, there were no need for any credit analysis, no need to monitor the loan, everyone paid them back. Merely sit on their backsides and let the money role in. Of course, blimey why isn’t everyone a banker?

Now of course, if you had mentioned that they had lent the money to people who would never be able to pay them back, packaged them in transparent off-balance sheet vehicles, used massive and unsustainable leverage etc.. I may have been able to follow it more!!

But forget the contentious stuff. Ok, like most of us, you would divert the train. Logic – better to kill on person that several, I assume?

Ok different scenario. You are now a doctor (NHS of course, no private sector bias here!!). You are in A&E and there are a range of patients that are in a critical way – one is in urgent need of a heart transplant, one needs blood and you have run out of supplies, one needs an new kidney, another a lung….(you see where I am going…)…All are about to die unless you do something now. And in cubicle 10, there is a healthy man with an ingrowing toe nail. On the same logic, are you tempted…..?

(p.s. he wouldn’t survive the procedures involved and he was only in A&E by mistake!! :wink:)

OOPs – X-post with JY – hey we agree again!!

Risk and reward has been the foundation of society and a huge motivator in the development of society

It has been one of the foundations, but not THE foundation. Many of the greatest achievements of human society have been achieved without the profit motive to drive them, and have instead relied upon cooperative effort.

I have absolutely no problem with people profiting from their investments, but these days capitalism is characterised more by the accumulation and concentration of wealth within a tiny elite, with no particular end product or benefit to wider society.

hey we agree again!!

who should be most worried 😉

Not sure 😉

Who are you going to kill BTW?

pull the lever – surely we would all kill the least?
My example is much harder though as you do the killing ot they live if you let them though others – you dont see- die.

in my youth I would have dropped the charge these days probably still would but with many more reservations

in my youth I would have dropped the charge these days probably still would but with many more reservations

That’s the joy of getting older – you can challenge the assumptions of your own youth – that is until you become a cantankerous OAP!!

I like your example. The usual follow on to the runaway train scenario (which as you say, most people argue is solved by pulling the lever) is that there is no lever, but you are watching the events from a bridge. You then notice that there is a very fat man standing next to you. If you push him off, he will hit the track and stop the train. Would you push him? If not (most find this hard), why not? Same logic surely?

TJ – you are merely confirming exactly what I said and repeating yourself.

Not at all – more individuals have more freedom if money is redistributed – a utilitarian view

More equal societies are happier. – a virtue view

Progressive taxation does not restrict a few – it liberates many. – an anti libertarian view, they would argue that there is a cost/restriction to taxation

Accumulation of excessive wealth thru abuse of power is inherently unfair. An identity that few would argue against even the aggressive libertarians like Nozick. But if you are saying that all the 300,000 people who earn the top incomes have only done so because they have all abused a position of power, then that is simply silly. As silly as saying that all the people on low incomes are lazy.

RPRT – we are both using hypothetical examples although mine was to make a point. I guess yours is more heartfelt.

No, I’d say my example was slightly more sensible than yours.

Ok different scenario. You are now a doctor (NHS of course, no private sector bias here!!). You are in A&E and there are a range of patients that are in a critical way – one is in urgent need of a heart transplant, one needs blood and you have run out of supplies, one needs an new kidney, another a lung….(you see where I am going…)…All are about to die unless you do something now. And in cubicle 10, there is a healthy man with an ingrowing toe nail. On the same logic, are you tempted…..?

No, I’d kill the guy with the dodgy ticker and use his bits.

I thought you were the master of logic?

Risk and reward has been the foundation of society and a huge motivator in the development of society

True. But that was then. This is now.

But if you are saying that all the 300,000 people who earn the top incomes have only done so because they have all abused a position of power, then that is simply silly. As silly as saying that all the people on low incomes are lazy.

Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

RPRT

No, I’d kill the guy with the dodgy ticker and use his bits. I thought you were the master of logic?

I make no claim to be a master of logic, but I like the answer. It’s a smart one, correct and not many people make it. The guy with the dodgy ticker is going to die anyway, so what’s the harm?

Which is exactly what the survivors of the shipwrecked Mignotte thought in 1884. Four sailors survived including a cabin boy. In short, they drift for ages and becoming increasingly desparate. The cabin boy is approaching death and after some debate the others finally killed him (he was dying anyway) and survived by eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

The court didn’t think this was such a smart solution and sentenced the three survivors (including the captain – although I am not sure if he was a fat cat captain!!) to death, later commuted to a jail sentence.

just to continue that footballer analogy, if it transpires that the footballer was doped? effectively defrauding the audience then what?

The court didn’t think this was such a smart solution and sentenced the three survivors (including the captain – although I am not sure if he was a fat cat captain!!) to death, later commuted to a jail sentence.

I expect they got them on CCTV evidence.

Did you read this in the Daily Mail?

Who say’s my answer is the “correct” one BTW?

Daily Wail!! Very amusing but sadly not true. Classic law school and philosophy case study actually!

But RPRT you are correct at least from a Utilitarian perspective but you would still have gone to jail !