My thoughts wandered this morning and I started writing......
When you think about what "Equality" means one understands that effectively equality is not necessarily an absolute but rather it must be seen as a polarity covering 2 extremes and the distance and various gradations between them. Equality of opportunity and equality of results…
My thoughts wandered this morning and I started writing......
When you think about what "Equality" means one understands that effectively equality is not necessarily an absolute but rather it must be seen as a polarity covering 2 extremes and the distance and various gradations between them. Equality of opportunity and equality of results, whether it be at birth, in school, at work or in life, are the 2 absolutes, the ends of the range of possibilities and we organize society somewhere along the divide between them.
Implementing "Total Equality of Opportunity" would necessarily entail the denial and confiscation of the work of previous generations to improve their lot and pass on the fruits of their hard labour...or inherited advantages...to their descendants and thus making the starting point at birth evidently unequal. It would require societal or governmental control of genetics, reproduction and upbringing of children and the removal of basic parental rights to ensure that all children start on equal terms. It would require also that each child be taught the same material, fed the same foods and play the same games until such a time as "natural talents" emerge which then could be examined to ensure that they are in no way influenced by exogenous or biological factors. Sounds a bit like some futurist SF movie which makes one shudder to think of...a truly undemocratic state of affaires.
Implementing "Total Equality of Results" would possibly look very much like the "polar opportunity scenario" above in which "emerging talents" are not remunerated higher than the non-talents OR would effectively be the famous "socialism" of which the trumplings are accusing the Dems of targeting. It would be a world, without private property, in which, if harmonious, all gave willingly according to their abilities and all received according to their needs. The needs of the "one" however would not be allowed to differ effectively from the needs of the "other". All inequalities of results would be taken away by tax or other means so that none can raise a nose higher than his neighbour....all are in the same government or society determined hole.
We actually live somewhere in between these two poles and slide marginaly towards one end or the other to try to balance....or unbalance....society according to the will of the people or the power of minorities to impose their preference on the majority. The Voting Rights/John Lewis Bills are pitched at moving the median point along the polarity towards greater equality of opportunity with the obvious intention of producing indirectly thereby a greater equality results.
The trumpling Republicans on are saying very clearly with their "voter restricting bills" that they feel that Equality of Results has gone too far and is already excessively dominant in this existing society and this "unbalanced" position is stiffling the development of society, does not justly remunerate their "natural talents and hard work" and denies the work of their forbears in "creating"America....as if they were alone! They are "redressing" the balance and are wanting to move the median point away from what they see as this overweaning equality of results towards their definition of equality of opportunity where money, private property, inherited advantages, family status and networks are acceptable as part and parcel of "innate talents" that must be justly rewarded...alongside hard work of course..... which is an "opportunity" apparently open to all!
The obvious innanity of the extremes is one thing and the difficulties of trying to turn, nostalgically, the clock back to days when we had "Gentlemen" and their lessers another....both are undesireable in a reasonable, democratic society. How we achieve the balance and thereby harmony is not obvious as forces pull in both directions. Society evolves and with it its median point moves between the Equality's opposing poles.
A little "reality" and "oxygen" needs to be introduced into the debate and in terms of "voting rights" in a democratic society people have both rights and obligations...and both must be respected. Each has a right to vote but being served the voting papers with your tea at home or through your car window on the way to the store is perhaps not the best way of meeting your obligations in this democracy...a little effort should be required if at all possible. The requirement of that effort by society imposes an obligation on that society to educate all citizens to a level in which they fully understand and are capable of exercising the rights and meeting the encumbant obligations of being a citizen. That effort, those rights and obligations and the resulting electoral decisions must be protected by society by an absolute neutrality of the policing and judicial system. Without equality in the voting booth and of education, neutrality before the law and a great respect for the obligations that society requires of its citzens we are not living in a democracy.
Stuart, I think what you're talking about are "rights and responsibilities" and it is a concept that isn't very universally applied. With the right to vote comes the responsibility of registering to vote, studying the candidates/issues, and casting your ballot in whatever method is applied. In a just world (dare I say equitable), all the voting regulations would be the same for all people. If a "state issued Voter ID" is required, then ALL ELIGIBLE VOTERS should have the ability to obtain one. If (for instance) a person does not have the money to obtain a certified true copy of their birth certificate and pay the state fee for a Driver's License or ID Card, then those should be provided by the state.
I have seen a photo of three kids at a fence watching a baseball game by looking over the fence. Equality means they all stand on a 12" box. The tall kid can see easily, the middle kid can barely peek over the top, and the small kid cannot see at all. Equity has the tall kid on the ground, the middle kid on a taller box, and the small kid on a taller box yet.
I am wondering if what we are really seeking is equity rather than equality.
Ally, yes!!!!! The issue is equity, not really "equality," which is a flawed construct that can be misused. Equity means that those whose circumstances do not give them the privileges and opportunities of the privileged classes, races, and sexes are given opportunities and assistance to achieve what they have the potential to achieve. Equity connected to the idea of citizenship also means that those whose privileges give them outsized advantages have an obligation to assist those less privileged in achieving their potential. This is what progressive taxation (rather than regressive, such as sales taxes and VAT, which oppress the poor) is all about, for example.
Equity is the word that comes up in every BIPOC meeting, seminar, workshop etc I've been to in years. Even signs at protests. Sounds like maybe we just need to get out of our own silos and rethink how we think about things.
Very true, Ally. Equity says that we all have the opportunity if we care to take it. Equality would like to ensure that that chance exists for all despite ourselves. It does come down to taking one's responsibilities.
What I think is that “a great respect for the obligations that society demands of its citizens” has been trashed and is the pivot that many individuals act from...a balance point that is based upon self interest, not the common interests of a citizenry.
To think that science and technology has given this country the lead in ending the pandemic globally....and our citizens fight with each other over the vaccinations???? It becomes a badge of honor NOT to get a vaccination because one’s politics demand that view?
Well, the Republicans sure got what they waited decades for. A president who deluged a huge swath of this country’s citizenry with a thirst for war against fellow citizens.
Based on the original corrupted download from the Creator.... there is NOT enough to go around.
I don't agree with the premise that "Total Equality of Opportunity would necessarily entail the denial and confiscation of the work of previous generations to improve their lot and pass on the fruits of their hard labour...or inherited advantages...to their descendants and thus making the starting point at birth evidently unequal."
This is an argument is a scare tactic that has been made by white supremacists and other in power groups for throughout human history.
Yes, we would have to pay more taxes. Yes we would have more government involved in acquiring property and distributing it, such as creating affordable land, housing, healthcare, education, quality jobs, improving and protecting all forms of rights from voting to employee unions. Clearly we need more supervision of the affluent and those in power who have significant ability to abuse their positions than we need for vehicle infractions, minor violations and petty crimes which often lead to incarceration or death of disenfranchised people.
But David you are only going half way as even with greater government etc.....Total Equality means total! It is an absolute and anything less gets you into the sort of grey areas of compromise that i was taliking about. Such compromises are evidently essential in a democratic society. Their absence leads to dictatorship and total autocratic control of the human species. You cannot undo totally advantages generated by history without total confiscation of property and wealth and seperation of parents and children. Otherwise you leave the inbred advantages of comfort and parental education in place for the child to take advantage of.
But this is a purely philosophical argument and not a political or practical one. Literally no one, not even the Chinese, is advocating for total equality, even though that is the putative goal of communism. The Chinese recognize that the health of their society assumes some inequality. The true question is what degree of redistribution is required to create a society of fairness and compassion. To do this we must not only examine current conditions of poverty, but deeply embedded inequity, such as those that could be reconciled with reparations. How do you account for those advantages that accrued to white people over centuries at the expense of unpaid labor and theft of property? If my ancestors acquired their status through Indigenous genocide and slavery, do I truly have any right to keep what they stole?
My first thought is that we don't need to solve the theoretical problem of individual equality, which is an oxymoron anyway. "Individual" is pretty much the antonym of "equal." We actually don't need to solve that much.
I'm thinking of the "giving people money" experiments communities have been performing, actually for decades. The premise is simple: give people money, with no strings attached. No forms, no needs assessment, no monitoring of any sort. Here kid: here's $1000.
The result, which seems to replicate quite well, is that the majority of the poor immediately turn the money into opportunity. They buy new clothes. They buy new household goods that free up their time, and they use that time and new clothing to look for jobs, or to start small single-proprietor businesses. They invest in themselves.
In the US, we've created a blisteringly awful zero-sum game that is heavily stacked in favor of certain races, sexes, classes, and sets the bottom end thoroughly underwater, where people drown in poverty.
I went to a mountain festival some years back, and worked setup/teardown. During teardown, the truck drove past a fellow who showed all the signs of having a heart-attack: skin blue-grey, troubled breathing, obviously in very serious pain. We all thought he needed immediate care, as did the EMT with us, but the gray man firmly declined any help at all. The reason he gave was that he could not AFFORD the cost of being treated for a heart attack. He insisted he had a problem with chronic pancreatitis, and he'd be fine. What do you do when the patient is coherent and refuses treatment?
He died that night, in his tent.
His final care -- in the form of the sheriff, a medical examiner, body transport, and a pauper's funeral -- was fully socialized. We all paid for that through our taxes. Somehow -- somehow -- that outcome is preferable in the US to having an ambulance pick him up while he is still alive, and treating him for a heart attack.
It was a pointed, overnight case of the slow suffocation of lives that are lost to the vicious cycle of poverty in the US.
Would it break the US economy irreparably to lift people just the little bit necessary to raise everyone above the waterline? The answer is, of course, no. No other civilized nation lives in this kind of perpetual terror of falling below the water line. Frankly, it seems to me that freedom from that kind of naked fear of starving to death in the cold is the whole damn point of "civilization."
The vast differences between the rich and the poor are not such a big deal, so long as the poor can survive with enough free time and resources to make something of themselves if they choose to. If they don't want to, they shouldn't have to.
Your first paragraph hit the point right on. Thanks, Joseph.
The rest broke my heart. It expressed the whole damn thing perfectly. I am in tears. And awfully glad I decided to come here to read Heather's first mailing (it missed me this morning). Your letter alone made it worthwhile.
This is brilliant, so well-written. You captured the clawing desperation of existing at the poverty line. I’ve seen it in my family. It is awful and so unnecessary.
The Declaration of Independence made it clear that all men are created equal. The Constitution went a long way in endorsing that principal but for political reasons included some compromises. Seventy-two years later, we fought a bloody Civil War over those compromises in order to complete the promise made in the Declaration and added three crucial Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, giving citizenship to all born here, and including voting among the rights of those citizens (excepting women who didn’t get the right to vote until 1920). Therefore, no longer are there any constitutional impediments to recognizing that all men (all humans) are created equal. Republican State legislation in regard to voting which has the effect of diluting that equality is unconstitutional. It is that simple. Educating the ignorant and gullible would make this clearer to many.
At the time of writing the Declaration, none of the signatories would have considered, unfortunately and in tune with universal values of the ruling classes at the time, that the definition of "man" went beyond white, Northern European males; anything else would hardly have come to mind. The Constitution also set up a "minor" ambiguity creating a potential for significantly different state-wide interpretaions as to what was constitutional and what was not. It certainly wasn't intended that power would shift to the masses. There are perhaps nolonger any constitutional impediments as you say but there is a serious lack of political will to either enforce the amendments or challenge the sinning laws.....and the Supreme Court (Chief Justice Warren aside) has mostly been there to stop it happening and to gut any possible threat to the 18th century values instilled in the founding documents.
But we are living in the 21st century. Even during the 20th and certainly during the 19th century, those who recognized the obsolescence of earlier centuries' culture and values had to walk a tightrope in expressing their ideas, and that included Abraham Lincoln. And as you say, this is reflected in the political will of many today who are still unwilling to walk that tightrope. But it is hoped they will fade into history, along with those who believed the world was flat.
This is an interesting paradox that both Equal Opportunity and Equal Results in service of fairness are decidedly undemocratic. There must be more to tease out in our conceptions of fairness and democracy.
Quakers value the wellbeing of the group over the individual and do decision-making by consensus. (Thank you, TPJ!) As a result, the process can be dragged out for a long time, and a minority can hold up the majority, but eventually, consensus is achieved. With such Equal Opportunity to affect the final decision, individual experience of irritation would probably be mitigated by the group experience of ultimately having achieved equal input, or Equal Results from a community perspective, and the process, however cumbersome, deemed fair.
Maybe the key elements are what you write at the end, respect and education, which brings us back to the necessity of a loyal opposition informed about the issues.
Society has been concentrating on "growth" of the whole while neglecting the assymetric accretion in geographic and human terms of its fruits. The winners and the losers in this game are decidedly not the same people or regions. Economics and poliitics are only just waking up to this gaping hole in the distribution question. The people, Quaker or not, no longer accept society's existing"'normal" as it structurally skewed to reimburse the "hard work" of capital more generously than that of labour. We are not seeing either recompense according to need or consensually according to merit. Merit is being defined politically to favour private property and inherited advantages rather than individual effort, charactor and intelligence. We might not be able or want to rectify this biased philosophy totally but we can most certainly change the rules of the game and balance more the division of the spoils and thereby "level the playing field" to a significant degree. We are thereby achieving a move of the median point towards...but still quite far from..the Equality of Results polarity.
Merit is the cornerstone of a civil service system, and it is well intended to structure fairness, or Equal Opportunity into all levels of government. Civil service is supposed to be the antithesis of nepotism and patronage, the cornerstones of monarchy and other autocracies. But civil service decision makers still have too much room to operationally define merit in their own terms in service of quid pro quo favoritism—as you say, for capital and/or a person’s preferences based on race, sex, gender identity, age—the so-called protected classes—to make their own pockets of privilege. Nevertheless, civil service is better than its absence and does function to move the needle toward fairness and Equal Results.
Stuart, I think to provide equity (equitable situations, a level playing field). First, there needs to be equality for all under the law, which cannot happen if voting rights are not protected. Equity, providing resources on a needs basis, in my thinking, can only be achieved if there is equality under the law. To have equality under the law, citizens must vote for the government they want without duress, without threat, without the other party pushing false claims of election fraud and doing sham recounts as what is happening in Arizona. When a citizen casts their vote for the representative of their choice, hopefully, that rep will pass legislation that benefits (betters) the lives of that constituent, providing greater equality for them. Democracy works when all parties believe facts, compromise, don't gaslight constituents, or tell/spread Big Lies. Opinion is not fact. Republicans are stealing power, the power of citizens' voting rights--that's not democracy.
Morning, Stuart!! I follow you for the most part, though limited by my own cognitive skills. I think you've "hit the nail" here. Now if people would just get out of the way and let your ideas populate, oh what a wonderful world this would be?
Morn' Lynell! Erh well! Methinks i gotta start somewhere! Hopefully i can always be strategic as well as theoretical...and make sure my thoughts are clear my proposals concise, practical and accessible to all. The idea is to get things done. We are in a severe drought of people who can see clearly how society works and where it should be going and how to get there. We have lots of tinkerers playing on the margins and the nostalgic wishing to turn the clock back. We need people who are leaders of all the people and not career bound party hacks. A lot to ask apparently and should one put his nose above the ledge he or she is swiftly dispatched by minority interests fearing for their particular priviledge or thought replacing ideology....be they in power or not.
I think this is a somewhat hazardous line of inquiry because the argument that assuring equality ipso facto involves redistribution by government so easily leads to the fundamental capitalist doctrine there is the possibility of determining who deserves to hang on to resources they acquire and who does not. The fact is, the acquisition of any resource in excess of immediate need is nearly always exploitative and has antecedents in past instances of exploitation. Take, for example, the fact that Black wealth is a fraction of white wealth. To attempt to parse out the myriad factors which led to this outcome and determine who deserves to have which portion of those resources is literally impossible. While I am enough of a capitalist that I believe there needs too be some incentive in order for innovation to thrive, I also believe that redistribution of wealth and property is inherently just in a society in which certain classes of people have had their labor exploited for centuries.
In Hyde Park Corner...zone of total free speech in the pre-woke days in London's park of that name, orators stood traditionally on "orange boxes" to draw crowds and be seen as well as heard. I guess I'd lend you my box anytime as i don't really need it.
You brought back old memories -- I loved walking there as a child. Half the time, I didn't understand the ins and outs of their passions, but as a painfully shy youngster, I certainly admired their chutzpah.
I remember one day while wandering from group to group, seeing and hearing there the Anglican Bishop of London debating with the head of the Communist Party and a policeman. Putting their points of view and...laughing at each other's jokes.
That's a new Lincoln quotation for me, Peter; I usually squeeze as much mileage as possible from the same few quotes. Thank you for expanding my repertoire.
I find your use of the term “Gentlemen” interesting since it shows how perplexing language can be. Who or what is a gentleman anyway? Our examples through history suggest that superlative behavior might be the proper definition: for instance knights, or the well-educated, or the “born with a silver spoon” person. But actually, it is just what it says: a “gentile man”. What is the core definition of that French adjective? How does it stand against our many definitions of the word?
The behavior of our current Republican flamethrowers, who dream of somehow finding themselves living the lives of “Downton Abbey” gentlefolk, certainly doesn’t begin to portray any semblance of what a gentleman might actually be in any of our definitions of that term. Perhaps I am just not in tune with contemporary usage, but your use of that term made me realize how desperately we need the “reality” and “oxygen” you call for.
When, in the past, the term was used to impose significant class division upon society the "Gentleman" was neither gentle nor a gentile. The term was used to impose, arrogantly, superiority of the person over the "hoi poloi" or rabble if you like...the agricultural or industrial peasants who were the gentiles..those not belonging to the favoured race". The said Gentleman used the expression mostly to affirm his connexion with the aristocracy even when he had no "title" as such...a member of what was called a "good family" and as such not quite worthy of the "top table" .
Thank you for that clarification. So I can assume that power (force), property (wealth, land, etc.), leaves only prestige (education, talent, personal ability) to become the “coin” of the rising middle class. Once they gained prestige, they gained wealth and could aspire to to property). Does this Weberian outline really work?
Where would the current mega-rich (who sometimes appear to have little positive education, talent, or personal ability) in this ladder? I am referring
, of course, to the various gangster or dictator creatures. Thank you for considering this question.
Firstly let me respond by saying that there is an interesting stream of thought now that the rise in the university educated population seeking their place in the controlling elite is leading to severe friction as there are not enough highly-paid jobs to go round; the graduates are nolonger guaranteed their share of the loot and will rebel.
Secondly. On the question of the "gangster/dictator" creatures. Either they are " frontmen" for the really rich à la Trump or they come from within the state machine and use its coils to capture its wealth in collaboration with organized external criminal elements as with Putin. Not many succeed in overhauling the state using uniquely exogenous force. Che Guevara was a romantic myth. Whichever way, it is control of the rules of the game which leads to this massive capital concentration...hence Koch etc's strategies and expenditures...and a "modicum" of brutish, official force generating fear throughout society certainly helps consolidate the gains and stops any competitors atempting to wrest away control.
I don't know yet exactly what I think, but you have given me a structure here to hang ideas on so I can view and consider them. I really appreciate what you've written here. More later.
My thoughts wandered this morning and I started writing......
When you think about what "Equality" means one understands that effectively equality is not necessarily an absolute but rather it must be seen as a polarity covering 2 extremes and the distance and various gradations between them. Equality of opportunity and equality of results, whether it be at birth, in school, at work or in life, are the 2 absolutes, the ends of the range of possibilities and we organize society somewhere along the divide between them.
Implementing "Total Equality of Opportunity" would necessarily entail the denial and confiscation of the work of previous generations to improve their lot and pass on the fruits of their hard labour...or inherited advantages...to their descendants and thus making the starting point at birth evidently unequal. It would require societal or governmental control of genetics, reproduction and upbringing of children and the removal of basic parental rights to ensure that all children start on equal terms. It would require also that each child be taught the same material, fed the same foods and play the same games until such a time as "natural talents" emerge which then could be examined to ensure that they are in no way influenced by exogenous or biological factors. Sounds a bit like some futurist SF movie which makes one shudder to think of...a truly undemocratic state of affaires.
Implementing "Total Equality of Results" would possibly look very much like the "polar opportunity scenario" above in which "emerging talents" are not remunerated higher than the non-talents OR would effectively be the famous "socialism" of which the trumplings are accusing the Dems of targeting. It would be a world, without private property, in which, if harmonious, all gave willingly according to their abilities and all received according to their needs. The needs of the "one" however would not be allowed to differ effectively from the needs of the "other". All inequalities of results would be taken away by tax or other means so that none can raise a nose higher than his neighbour....all are in the same government or society determined hole.
We actually live somewhere in between these two poles and slide marginaly towards one end or the other to try to balance....or unbalance....society according to the will of the people or the power of minorities to impose their preference on the majority. The Voting Rights/John Lewis Bills are pitched at moving the median point along the polarity towards greater equality of opportunity with the obvious intention of producing indirectly thereby a greater equality results.
The trumpling Republicans on are saying very clearly with their "voter restricting bills" that they feel that Equality of Results has gone too far and is already excessively dominant in this existing society and this "unbalanced" position is stiffling the development of society, does not justly remunerate their "natural talents and hard work" and denies the work of their forbears in "creating"America....as if they were alone! They are "redressing" the balance and are wanting to move the median point away from what they see as this overweaning equality of results towards their definition of equality of opportunity where money, private property, inherited advantages, family status and networks are acceptable as part and parcel of "innate talents" that must be justly rewarded...alongside hard work of course..... which is an "opportunity" apparently open to all!
The obvious innanity of the extremes is one thing and the difficulties of trying to turn, nostalgically, the clock back to days when we had "Gentlemen" and their lessers another....both are undesireable in a reasonable, democratic society. How we achieve the balance and thereby harmony is not obvious as forces pull in both directions. Society evolves and with it its median point moves between the Equality's opposing poles.
A little "reality" and "oxygen" needs to be introduced into the debate and in terms of "voting rights" in a democratic society people have both rights and obligations...and both must be respected. Each has a right to vote but being served the voting papers with your tea at home or through your car window on the way to the store is perhaps not the best way of meeting your obligations in this democracy...a little effort should be required if at all possible. The requirement of that effort by society imposes an obligation on that society to educate all citizens to a level in which they fully understand and are capable of exercising the rights and meeting the encumbant obligations of being a citizen. That effort, those rights and obligations and the resulting electoral decisions must be protected by society by an absolute neutrality of the policing and judicial system. Without equality in the voting booth and of education, neutrality before the law and a great respect for the obligations that society requires of its citzens we are not living in a democracy.
What do you think?
Stuart, I think what you're talking about are "rights and responsibilities" and it is a concept that isn't very universally applied. With the right to vote comes the responsibility of registering to vote, studying the candidates/issues, and casting your ballot in whatever method is applied. In a just world (dare I say equitable), all the voting regulations would be the same for all people. If a "state issued Voter ID" is required, then ALL ELIGIBLE VOTERS should have the ability to obtain one. If (for instance) a person does not have the money to obtain a certified true copy of their birth certificate and pay the state fee for a Driver's License or ID Card, then those should be provided by the state.
I have seen a photo of three kids at a fence watching a baseball game by looking over the fence. Equality means they all stand on a 12" box. The tall kid can see easily, the middle kid can barely peek over the top, and the small kid cannot see at all. Equity has the tall kid on the ground, the middle kid on a taller box, and the small kid on a taller box yet.
I am wondering if what we are really seeking is equity rather than equality.
Ally, yes!!!!! The issue is equity, not really "equality," which is a flawed construct that can be misused. Equity means that those whose circumstances do not give them the privileges and opportunities of the privileged classes, races, and sexes are given opportunities and assistance to achieve what they have the potential to achieve. Equity connected to the idea of citizenship also means that those whose privileges give them outsized advantages have an obligation to assist those less privileged in achieving their potential. This is what progressive taxation (rather than regressive, such as sales taxes and VAT, which oppress the poor) is all about, for example.
Equity is the word that comes up in every BIPOC meeting, seminar, workshop etc I've been to in years. Even signs at protests. Sounds like maybe we just need to get out of our own silos and rethink how we think about things.
Very true, Ally. Equity says that we all have the opportunity if we care to take it. Equality would like to ensure that that chance exists for all despite ourselves. It does come down to taking one's responsibilities.
What I think is that “a great respect for the obligations that society demands of its citizens” has been trashed and is the pivot that many individuals act from...a balance point that is based upon self interest, not the common interests of a citizenry.
To think that science and technology has given this country the lead in ending the pandemic globally....and our citizens fight with each other over the vaccinations???? It becomes a badge of honor NOT to get a vaccination because one’s politics demand that view?
Well, the Republicans sure got what they waited decades for. A president who deluged a huge swath of this country’s citizenry with a thirst for war against fellow citizens.
Based on the original corrupted download from the Creator.... there is NOT enough to go around.
Yes, there is. If we remember human beings are supposed to be part of communities and we remember how to be communities.
I don't agree with the premise that "Total Equality of Opportunity would necessarily entail the denial and confiscation of the work of previous generations to improve their lot and pass on the fruits of their hard labour...or inherited advantages...to their descendants and thus making the starting point at birth evidently unequal."
This is an argument is a scare tactic that has been made by white supremacists and other in power groups for throughout human history.
Yes, we would have to pay more taxes. Yes we would have more government involved in acquiring property and distributing it, such as creating affordable land, housing, healthcare, education, quality jobs, improving and protecting all forms of rights from voting to employee unions. Clearly we need more supervision of the affluent and those in power who have significant ability to abuse their positions than we need for vehicle infractions, minor violations and petty crimes which often lead to incarceration or death of disenfranchised people.
But David you are only going half way as even with greater government etc.....Total Equality means total! It is an absolute and anything less gets you into the sort of grey areas of compromise that i was taliking about. Such compromises are evidently essential in a democratic society. Their absence leads to dictatorship and total autocratic control of the human species. You cannot undo totally advantages generated by history without total confiscation of property and wealth and seperation of parents and children. Otherwise you leave the inbred advantages of comfort and parental education in place for the child to take advantage of.
But this is a purely philosophical argument and not a political or practical one. Literally no one, not even the Chinese, is advocating for total equality, even though that is the putative goal of communism. The Chinese recognize that the health of their society assumes some inequality. The true question is what degree of redistribution is required to create a society of fairness and compassion. To do this we must not only examine current conditions of poverty, but deeply embedded inequity, such as those that could be reconciled with reparations. How do you account for those advantages that accrued to white people over centuries at the expense of unpaid labor and theft of property? If my ancestors acquired their status through Indigenous genocide and slavery, do I truly have any right to keep what they stole?
My first thought is that we don't need to solve the theoretical problem of individual equality, which is an oxymoron anyway. "Individual" is pretty much the antonym of "equal." We actually don't need to solve that much.
I'm thinking of the "giving people money" experiments communities have been performing, actually for decades. The premise is simple: give people money, with no strings attached. No forms, no needs assessment, no monitoring of any sort. Here kid: here's $1000.
The result, which seems to replicate quite well, is that the majority of the poor immediately turn the money into opportunity. They buy new clothes. They buy new household goods that free up their time, and they use that time and new clothing to look for jobs, or to start small single-proprietor businesses. They invest in themselves.
In the US, we've created a blisteringly awful zero-sum game that is heavily stacked in favor of certain races, sexes, classes, and sets the bottom end thoroughly underwater, where people drown in poverty.
I went to a mountain festival some years back, and worked setup/teardown. During teardown, the truck drove past a fellow who showed all the signs of having a heart-attack: skin blue-grey, troubled breathing, obviously in very serious pain. We all thought he needed immediate care, as did the EMT with us, but the gray man firmly declined any help at all. The reason he gave was that he could not AFFORD the cost of being treated for a heart attack. He insisted he had a problem with chronic pancreatitis, and he'd be fine. What do you do when the patient is coherent and refuses treatment?
He died that night, in his tent.
His final care -- in the form of the sheriff, a medical examiner, body transport, and a pauper's funeral -- was fully socialized. We all paid for that through our taxes. Somehow -- somehow -- that outcome is preferable in the US to having an ambulance pick him up while he is still alive, and treating him for a heart attack.
It was a pointed, overnight case of the slow suffocation of lives that are lost to the vicious cycle of poverty in the US.
Would it break the US economy irreparably to lift people just the little bit necessary to raise everyone above the waterline? The answer is, of course, no. No other civilized nation lives in this kind of perpetual terror of falling below the water line. Frankly, it seems to me that freedom from that kind of naked fear of starving to death in the cold is the whole damn point of "civilization."
The vast differences between the rich and the poor are not such a big deal, so long as the poor can survive with enough free time and resources to make something of themselves if they choose to. If they don't want to, they shouldn't have to.
Your first paragraph hit the point right on. Thanks, Joseph.
The rest broke my heart. It expressed the whole damn thing perfectly. I am in tears. And awfully glad I decided to come here to read Heather's first mailing (it missed me this morning). Your letter alone made it worthwhile.
This is brilliant, so well-written. You captured the clawing desperation of existing at the poverty line. I’ve seen it in my family. It is awful and so unnecessary.
The Declaration of Independence made it clear that all men are created equal. The Constitution went a long way in endorsing that principal but for political reasons included some compromises. Seventy-two years later, we fought a bloody Civil War over those compromises in order to complete the promise made in the Declaration and added three crucial Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, giving citizenship to all born here, and including voting among the rights of those citizens (excepting women who didn’t get the right to vote until 1920). Therefore, no longer are there any constitutional impediments to recognizing that all men (all humans) are created equal. Republican State legislation in regard to voting which has the effect of diluting that equality is unconstitutional. It is that simple. Educating the ignorant and gullible would make this clearer to many.
At the time of writing the Declaration, none of the signatories would have considered, unfortunately and in tune with universal values of the ruling classes at the time, that the definition of "man" went beyond white, Northern European males; anything else would hardly have come to mind. The Constitution also set up a "minor" ambiguity creating a potential for significantly different state-wide interpretaions as to what was constitutional and what was not. It certainly wasn't intended that power would shift to the masses. There are perhaps nolonger any constitutional impediments as you say but there is a serious lack of political will to either enforce the amendments or challenge the sinning laws.....and the Supreme Court (Chief Justice Warren aside) has mostly been there to stop it happening and to gut any possible threat to the 18th century values instilled in the founding documents.
But we are living in the 21st century. Even during the 20th and certainly during the 19th century, those who recognized the obsolescence of earlier centuries' culture and values had to walk a tightrope in expressing their ideas, and that included Abraham Lincoln. And as you say, this is reflected in the political will of many today who are still unwilling to walk that tightrope. But it is hoped they will fade into history, along with those who believed the world was flat.
This is an interesting paradox that both Equal Opportunity and Equal Results in service of fairness are decidedly undemocratic. There must be more to tease out in our conceptions of fairness and democracy.
Quakers value the wellbeing of the group over the individual and do decision-making by consensus. (Thank you, TPJ!) As a result, the process can be dragged out for a long time, and a minority can hold up the majority, but eventually, consensus is achieved. With such Equal Opportunity to affect the final decision, individual experience of irritation would probably be mitigated by the group experience of ultimately having achieved equal input, or Equal Results from a community perspective, and the process, however cumbersome, deemed fair.
Maybe the key elements are what you write at the end, respect and education, which brings us back to the necessity of a loyal opposition informed about the issues.
Society has been concentrating on "growth" of the whole while neglecting the assymetric accretion in geographic and human terms of its fruits. The winners and the losers in this game are decidedly not the same people or regions. Economics and poliitics are only just waking up to this gaping hole in the distribution question. The people, Quaker or not, no longer accept society's existing"'normal" as it structurally skewed to reimburse the "hard work" of capital more generously than that of labour. We are not seeing either recompense according to need or consensually according to merit. Merit is being defined politically to favour private property and inherited advantages rather than individual effort, charactor and intelligence. We might not be able or want to rectify this biased philosophy totally but we can most certainly change the rules of the game and balance more the division of the spoils and thereby "level the playing field" to a significant degree. We are thereby achieving a move of the median point towards...but still quite far from..the Equality of Results polarity.
Merit is the cornerstone of a civil service system, and it is well intended to structure fairness, or Equal Opportunity into all levels of government. Civil service is supposed to be the antithesis of nepotism and patronage, the cornerstones of monarchy and other autocracies. But civil service decision makers still have too much room to operationally define merit in their own terms in service of quid pro quo favoritism—as you say, for capital and/or a person’s preferences based on race, sex, gender identity, age—the so-called protected classes—to make their own pockets of privilege. Nevertheless, civil service is better than its absence and does function to move the needle toward fairness and Equal Results.
Pause all that. Thank you, Ally and Linda, it’s about equity, not equality, as aspiration, as the path to fairness.
And merit is the product of “gentlemanly” behavior.
In today's values one would hope...somewhat forlorny. While hope is eternal current behaviour and definitions of merit hardly support that thesis.
Only if it remains"civil" and in the "service" of the people and not the "force de frappe" of their political masters.
You're stretching my brain this morning, and I thank you. Your sentence about the definition of Merit is very descriptive.
My fingers were doing the thinking for me this morning.
Stuart, I think to provide equity (equitable situations, a level playing field). First, there needs to be equality for all under the law, which cannot happen if voting rights are not protected. Equity, providing resources on a needs basis, in my thinking, can only be achieved if there is equality under the law. To have equality under the law, citizens must vote for the government they want without duress, without threat, without the other party pushing false claims of election fraud and doing sham recounts as what is happening in Arizona. When a citizen casts their vote for the representative of their choice, hopefully, that rep will pass legislation that benefits (betters) the lives of that constituent, providing greater equality for them. Democracy works when all parties believe facts, compromise, don't gaslight constituents, or tell/spread Big Lies. Opinion is not fact. Republicans are stealing power, the power of citizens' voting rights--that's not democracy.
Morning, Stuart!! I follow you for the most part, though limited by my own cognitive skills. I think you've "hit the nail" here. Now if people would just get out of the way and let your ideas populate, oh what a wonderful world this would be?
Morn' Lynell! Erh well! Methinks i gotta start somewhere! Hopefully i can always be strategic as well as theoretical...and make sure my thoughts are clear my proposals concise, practical and accessible to all. The idea is to get things done. We are in a severe drought of people who can see clearly how society works and where it should be going and how to get there. We have lots of tinkerers playing on the margins and the nostalgic wishing to turn the clock back. We need people who are leaders of all the people and not career bound party hacks. A lot to ask apparently and should one put his nose above the ledge he or she is swiftly dispatched by minority interests fearing for their particular priviledge or thought replacing ideology....be they in power or not.
Stuart you are very good at putting your ideas into words. You have given me a lot to think about this morning.
I think this is a somewhat hazardous line of inquiry because the argument that assuring equality ipso facto involves redistribution by government so easily leads to the fundamental capitalist doctrine there is the possibility of determining who deserves to hang on to resources they acquire and who does not. The fact is, the acquisition of any resource in excess of immediate need is nearly always exploitative and has antecedents in past instances of exploitation. Take, for example, the fact that Black wealth is a fraction of white wealth. To attempt to parse out the myriad factors which led to this outcome and determine who deserves to have which portion of those resources is literally impossible. While I am enough of a capitalist that I believe there needs too be some incentive in order for innovation to thrive, I also believe that redistribution of wealth and property is inherently just in a society in which certain classes of people have had their labor exploited for centuries.
Stuart, I believe that Brenda, Ally and Linda are on the right track. here is the picture which Linda mentions below.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fces101fall2018.wordpress.com%2F2018%2F09%2F10%2Fequity-versus-equality-triple-participation%2F&psig=AOvVaw1UA5KeXqrO-rmVedtITY0F&ust=1621450244484000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCPjXz4Hz0_ACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI
I'm 6ft 6in!
😂😂😂😂I'm 5 feet short!
In Hyde Park Corner...zone of total free speech in the pre-woke days in London's park of that name, orators stood traditionally on "orange boxes" to draw crowds and be seen as well as heard. I guess I'd lend you my box anytime as i don't really need it.
You're a pal!
You brought back old memories -- I loved walking there as a child. Half the time, I didn't understand the ins and outs of their passions, but as a painfully shy youngster, I certainly admired their chutzpah.
I remember one day while wandering from group to group, seeing and hearing there the Anglican Bishop of London debating with the head of the Communist Party and a policeman. Putting their points of view and...laughing at each other's jokes.
Thanks for some useful thoughts, but I can't help going back again and again to Lincoln's words.
For the rest, how can human dignity be divisible? Even for those who disgrace it.
That's a new Lincoln quotation for me, Peter; I usually squeeze as much mileage as possible from the same few quotes. Thank you for expanding my repertoire.
I find your use of the term “Gentlemen” interesting since it shows how perplexing language can be. Who or what is a gentleman anyway? Our examples through history suggest that superlative behavior might be the proper definition: for instance knights, or the well-educated, or the “born with a silver spoon” person. But actually, it is just what it says: a “gentile man”. What is the core definition of that French adjective? How does it stand against our many definitions of the word?
The behavior of our current Republican flamethrowers, who dream of somehow finding themselves living the lives of “Downton Abbey” gentlefolk, certainly doesn’t begin to portray any semblance of what a gentleman might actually be in any of our definitions of that term. Perhaps I am just not in tune with contemporary usage, but your use of that term made me realize how desperately we need the “reality” and “oxygen” you call for.
Thank you.
When, in the past, the term was used to impose significant class division upon society the "Gentleman" was neither gentle nor a gentile. The term was used to impose, arrogantly, superiority of the person over the "hoi poloi" or rabble if you like...the agricultural or industrial peasants who were the gentiles..those not belonging to the favoured race". The said Gentleman used the expression mostly to affirm his connexion with the aristocracy even when he had no "title" as such...a member of what was called a "good family" and as such not quite worthy of the "top table" .
Thank you for that clarification. So I can assume that power (force), property (wealth, land, etc.), leaves only prestige (education, talent, personal ability) to become the “coin” of the rising middle class. Once they gained prestige, they gained wealth and could aspire to to property). Does this Weberian outline really work?
Where would the current mega-rich (who sometimes appear to have little positive education, talent, or personal ability) in this ladder? I am referring
, of course, to the various gangster or dictator creatures. Thank you for considering this question.
Firstly let me respond by saying that there is an interesting stream of thought now that the rise in the university educated population seeking their place in the controlling elite is leading to severe friction as there are not enough highly-paid jobs to go round; the graduates are nolonger guaranteed their share of the loot and will rebel.
Secondly. On the question of the "gangster/dictator" creatures. Either they are " frontmen" for the really rich à la Trump or they come from within the state machine and use its coils to capture its wealth in collaboration with organized external criminal elements as with Putin. Not many succeed in overhauling the state using uniquely exogenous force. Che Guevara was a romantic myth. Whichever way, it is control of the rules of the game which leads to this massive capital concentration...hence Koch etc's strategies and expenditures...and a "modicum" of brutish, official force generating fear throughout society certainly helps consolidate the gains and stops any competitors atempting to wrest away control.
I don't know yet exactly what I think, but you have given me a structure here to hang ideas on so I can view and consider them. I really appreciate what you've written here. More later.