Leo's straw man arguments against JBP

[Preety_India]

 

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Why would I water down God's widsom with humans??

 

 

[captainamerica]

23 hours ago, DocWatts said:

Sure, and that's not to say that someone's Efforts don't also play a large role in how successful that person is.

But success in our society also depends on having access to social and financial capital so one can actually better themselves through thier efforts. And access to Social and Financial capital is in large part determined by the Birth Lottery (though well functioning redistributive mechanisms can mitigate at least some of this).

Working hard without having access to these things will more than likely result in someone ending up as an exploited Wage Slave.

@DocWatts You are not appreciating the full ramifications of this:

23 hours ago, captainamerica said:

A more balanced perspective is:

Most successful people underestimate the role of luck in their successes whereas most failures overestimate the role of bad luck in their lives.

Nobody is saying that there should not be universalized healthcare, public education, and food availability funded by the govt. based on tax collection.

Like conservatives underestimate the role of luck in creating successful people, progressives overestimate the role of luck in the life of successful people. A policy design would be from a balanced perspective.

75 percent of businesses that are well-funded fail completely. Of the remaining 25 percent, almost none give good returns consistently. 82 percent of first-time Entrepreneurs fail. Most entrepreneurs who are currently successful had their first success in their 3rd venture. On avg., the first 2 ventures are a failure. Typically the failures last for 7 years if not 10. Business and success are hard. Entrepreneurs know that you cannot buy your way into success. Self-actualization is not achieved by money. Progressives think that just redistribution will solve these problems. These require personal responsibility and innovation over a decade or more to solve at an individual level. And personal responsibility and innovation over many decades to solve at a collective level.

 

 

 

 

What are the specific policies that you are proposing? If not, then what is your (specific) approach?

Edited August 31, 2021 by captainamerica

[DocWatts]

55 minutes ago, captainamerica said:

@DocWatts You are not appreciating the full ramifications of this:

Nobody is saying that there should not be universalized healthcare, public education, and food availability funded by the govt. based on tax collection.

Like conservatives underestimate the role of luck in creating successful people, progressives overestimate the role of luck in the life of successful people. A policy design would be from a balanced perspective.

75 percent of businesses that are well-funded fail completely. Of the remaining 25 percent, almost none give good returns consistently. 82 percent of first-time Entrepreneurs fail. Most entrepreneurs who are currently successful had their first success in their 3rd venture. On avg., the first 2 ventures are a failure. Typically the failures last for 7 years if not 10. Business and success are hard. Entrepreneurs know that you cannot buy your way into success. Self-actualization is not achieved by money. Progressives think that just redistribution will solve these problems. These require personal responsibility and innovation over a decade or more to solve at an individual level. And personal responsibility and innovation over many decades to solve at a collective level.

 

 

What are the specific policies that you are proposing? If not, then what is your (specific) approach?

Consider the way you're Framing the problem, by way of focusing exclusively on entrepreneurship. The vast majority of people in society are not entrepreneurs and will never attempt to start a business. Nor could our current society function if everyone decided to quit thier jobs and become an entrepreneur. The vast majority of work done in our society is waged labor, and is likely to remain so for at least the foreseeable future.

Imagine someone with the potential to become just as intelligent and driven as Elon Musk, but who began life as an unwanted pregnancy and was born in to a family which is financially destitute, where perhaps one or both of his parents have serious substance abuse problems as a way of coping with thier stressful and depressing situation.

Not hard to imagine how growing up in a stressful and desperate situation can scar that person psychologically in ways that make good judgement more difficult, and thus damage that person's chances of succeeding compared to peers who grow up in more privileged circumstances. Also imagine that because of the difficult survival circumstances this person is faced with, they end up getting in to trouble as a young adult and end up with a criminal record that makes securing a job (let alone a loan to start a business) much more difficult.

While it's undeniably true that it's unrealistic to negate all inequity that comes with the Birth Lottery, much of the disadvantages from my earlier example has at its Root social causes (poverty in this case), which can be addressed by social institutions (ie the gov't) putting in place redistributive mechanisms such as universal health care, high quality universal education, labor rights, etc.

Just consider the fact that in a place the like the US public schools are funded by local property taxes, with the quality of one's education being tied to the income level of one's zip code, and how this structurally bakes in inequality. People are not being given anywhere close to an equal opportunity to succeed under this sort of system.

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by DocWatts

[Carl-Richard]

I just started reading this book which gives insight into the differences between collective and individual action and the shared importance of both approaches:

https://www.amazon.com/Community-Psychology-Pursuit-Liberation-Well-Being/dp/1137464097

Psychology has a collective component which may be emphasized or understated depending on your values, and treating individual responsibility as an isolated entity may increase the tendency towards victim blaming. Here is a quote talking about the Community Psychology approach to framing problems associated with immigration:

Quote

Community psychologists, such as Garcia-Ramirez et al. (2011), Sonn and Fisher (2010), and Prilleltensky (2008a), argue that it is important to view immigration from an ecological perspective. This means that one considers how different levels of analysis – such as the individual, the community, and the economy – interact in complex ways to create challenges for both the newcomers and the receiving community. For example, consider the political decision by a local government to settle war refugees from a predominantly Muslim country in an economically deprived neighborhood with a history of racial tensions. This decision, in combination with media portrayals of racial stereotypes of Muslims with brown skin color, can be the cause of settlement problems for the refugees rather than their psychological challenges in adapting to the new cuture. If one only considers the immigration process from the perspective of newcomers there is a danger of simplifying the situation and of seeing the external factors that influence the experience of the newcomers as overly deterministic. This often leads to victim blaming (Ryan, 1971); that is, the newcomers are seen as responsible for their failure to integrate within their new community. By using an ecological perspective, community psychologists try to avoid blaming the victim and instead focus on the people, structures, policies, and practices affecting immigrants and their new community.

(Riemer et. al., 2020, p. 11).

 

JBP is a clinical psychologist, so naturally he is biased towards the individualistic approach, and his conservative ideas about personal responsibility is complementary to that. Here is one more example of how a Community Psychologist approach contrasts with the strictly individual approach (where again, the example is about immigration):

Quote

Approach to Addressing Social Issues, Types of Intervention and the Role of the Professional

When social issues are framed in an individualistic way, then the ways these issues are being approached also tend to be individualistic, such as providing counseling services for newcomers. While these types of support can be of value to newcomers, a key value for community psychologists is to work with marginalized groups as allies in a process of empowerment that enables marginalized communities to shift power structures and transform their oppressive contexts into fair multicultural ones. Being an ally means to recognize your own relative privilege and to use your social power to support marginalized groups. In this role you work in partnership with the communities recognizing the important of the communities' agency in leading their own liberation and empowerment process.

(Riemer et. al., 2020, p. 12).

 

So essentially, what JBP has to work on is to become an ally for marginalized groups (any group that experiences lower status and power) and to actively participate in or at least recognize the importance of the collective, structural approach.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[captainamerica]

On 31/08/2021 at 9:15 PM, DocWatts said:

Consider the way you're Framing the problem, by way of focusing exclusively on entrepreneurship. The vast majority of people in society are not entrepreneurs and will never attempt to start a business. Nor could our current society function if everyone decided to quit thier jobs and become an entrepreneur. The vast majority of work done in our society is waged labor, and is likely to remain so for at least the foreseeable future.

@DocWatts

You are assuming that I am Framing the problem exclusively on Entrepreneurship. 

There is a deeper point that was made. It has life-changing implications if understood well, both at an individual and a collective level.

The constraints of Business are inherited by the Employees, as well as the population at large, in many counterintuitive ways. It requires a deeper look at it to understand this. A child's possibilities(looks, height, disease, raw brainpower, etc.) are limited by the parent's genes. He will not suddenly appear as some wild, or beautiful, creature from imagination. There are inherited constraints.

This can be seen in various industries or Business as a whole. Some industries are inherently more competitive, due to the very product or service it creates (Management Consultancy for e.g.). Both the employees and the executives in such companies have to work 80 hour weeks. Whereas other businesses are inherently more creative so employees have much greater leeway. It is not possible for the employees in the two industries to switch places. They have an inherent constraint due to the field itself, which they inherit. It cannot be not inherited, as long as money and products are created for the people.

Business as a whole has a very high failure rate as stated in the last post. This leads to high costs to run the whole economy effectively. It is not possible to skip those costs or inequalities. These constraints are inherited by the population. If 1 in 10 businesses succeeds there needs to be enough energy and resources for 10 businesses in the system. Energy and resources for just 1 business will not do. It seems obvious but these principles are largely ignored by the far-left. An avg. American person does not even recognize that innovation creates wealth. Which is to say they don't recognize that wealth creation creates wealth.

See the below picture for polarization in 1970 vs now. A main reason for this is because people have not been taught the fundamentals of Economics and Innovation. This leads to fantasies of socialism, extremism, violence(both-sides), etc. Literally, 99 percent of people in America do not understand the basics of the Economy. This leaves them vulnerable to being exploited by politicians and media. Having this knowledge and contemplation of the harshness of business environments (along with technicalities) creates a good foundation. Rather than being exclusive(to entrepreneurship or to whatever else), this is more like building a bridge between the two extremes.

It would be nice to have such a bridge in today's polarized spectrum. Contemplation on Survival and harsh Business realities is a good practice. Employees, workers, and population don’t skip it. But it can and should be minimized. Although that is far from the unfounded fantasies of the far-left. (I really like the Left's initiatives though)

 

 

 

 

We have an agreement on Health care, public education, etc. There are some nuances regarding high-quality public education though that I would like to discuss. Let me see if we can do that tomorrow.

Would you like to define when you consider public education as high-quality?

Edited September 3, 2021 by captainamerica

[DocWatts]

@captainamerica Sounds like we don't have a broad disagreement so much as a difference in emphasis.

Some amount of inequality is not only unavoidable but beneficial to a society (in this respect I'm in complete agreement with the political philosopher John Rawl's treatment of inequality in A Theory of Justice).

Where my emphasis lies is in the need for a socio-economic Floor, so that inequality doesn't leave people destitute to the point of being unable to participate in society and unable to enjoy a dignified life. 

As far as education, high quality education should at a minimum consist of (in no particular order):

(1) Civic education which allows people to participate in electoral democracy in an informed way. This would involve things like the economic factors you mentioned, but also things like Media Literacy, Epistemology, and History. Social awareness about race and gender relations would go here as well.

(2) Career training and education which helps people cultivate a passion for something that they can make a living off from. STEM, technical training in a Trade. This would also include how to navigate the job market, how to transition in to career. How to write a resume, negotiate a salary, etc. It should also cover basic entrepreneurship as well, with more extensive training as an option for those who are interested.

(3) Basic life skills such as comprehensive sex education, nutrition, emotional mastery including conflict resolution, and personal financial literacy. Also honest and comprehensive drug education based on Harm Reduction rather than abstinence (basically the opposite of the flagrantly dishonest D.A.R.E. program that many of us grew up with).

Edited September 3, 2021 by DocWatts

[captainamerica]

On 03/09/2021 at 11:10 PM, DocWatts said:

@captainamerica Sounds like we don't have a broad disagreement so much as a difference in emphasis.

 

Yup

On 03/09/2021 at 11:10 PM, DocWatts said:

Some amount of inequality is not only unavoidable but beneficial to a society (in this respect I'm in complete agreement with the political philosopher John Rawl's treatment of inequality in A Theory of Justice).

 

Have not read the book. Would you mind summarizing which part of it you like and are referring to here?

On 03/09/2021 at 11:10 PM, DocWatts said:

Where my emphasis lies is in the need for a socio-economic Floor, so that inequality doesn't leave people destitute to the point of being unable to participate in society and unable to enjoy a dignified life. 

 

Agree 100 percent. 

The usual difference that I have with people on this is sustainable technical implementation.

For eg. some want a wealth cap. That will not work in the current society and will reduce innovation overall thereby reducing total wealth itself. Not the approach I want to reduce inequality, where everyone become equally poorer instead of equally richer.

Or progressive taxation without cutting spending (including quantitative easing). This will create downward spirals in the economy, even a death spiral in the long term. Blaming everything on lack of taxation and not war spending, inflation, etc. It creates very poor policies.

On 03/09/2021 at 11:10 PM, DocWatts said:

As far as education, high quality education should at a minimum consist of (in no particular order):

(1) Civic education which allows people to participate in electoral democracy in an informed way. This would involve things like the economic factors you mentioned, but also things like Media Literacy, Epistemology, and History. Social awareness about race and gender relations would go here as well.

(2) Career training and education which helps people cultivate a passion for something that they can make a living off from. STEM, technical training in a Trade. This would also include how to navigate the job market, how to transition in to career. How to write a resume, negotiate a salary, etc. It should also cover basic entrepreneurship as well, with more extensive training as an option for those who are interested.

(3) Basic life skills such as comprehensive sex education, nutrition, emotional mastery including conflict resolution, and personal financial literacy. Also honest and comprehensive drug education based on Harm Reduction rather than abstinence (basically the opposite of the flagrantly dishonest D.A.R.E. program that many of us grew up with).

Good points. I agree. 

On top of that, I would like to add that the government is inherently incapable of innovation at the level that we are talking about. As much as water is inherently wet or fire is hot. This is a very counterintuitive problem requiring great innovation. We cannot have another Harvard by just funding. It is decades of innovation in creating the right culture that creates such output. The solution created by Harvard will not scale to a significant percent of the population as it is very niche-specific if we look at it closely. Harvard just takes the top 0.1 percent. The dynamics change significantly in the rest of the population. For eg., the dynamics for the top 5 percent of students in terms of productivity and habits create a vastly different scenario. The govt. can certainly scale to them. But to get to the rest 95 percent requires great innovation dealing with constraints similar to that of the Google search engine(100s of parameters). If we pull a string from one side then it gets entangled from some other side. Creating great course content requires iterations like creating an IPhone in 2007 with immeasurable iterations. If we create great course content, then the course completion rate falls to about 20 percent or so. There are various possibilities from thereon. Like Mindvalley implemented a 20 min. per day innovative idea for courses seeing as high as 80 percent course completion rates. But that will fail in the school system as well as the constraints change yet again. and on and on like any classic innovation problem. Nothing new but you can see the pattern and the dynamic it creates 

If we think about a negative compound effect that an avg. college student has to pay for thus creating the above reality the same innovation problem comes in high school education so we are back to square one.

I literally thought of 50 or so possibilities and all of them at the end of the day were either not scalable at all or required great innovation from companies or startups to work. This is true for at least how we like to define a high-quality education. 

What are your thoughts on this? I would be interested to know.

Edited September 11, 2021 by captainamerica

[DocWatts]

2 hours ago, captainamerica said:

Have not read the book. Would you mind summarizing which part of it you like and are referring to here?

The book I'm referring to is A Theory of Justice, which is a landmark work of 20th century political philosophy by John Rawls, that's concerned with the ethics of socio-economic inequality in democratic societies. In it he proposes what's come to be regarded as a famous thought experiment known as The Veil of Ignorance, which is designed to challenge the ways in which we use self-bias to justify societal inequalities.

In the thought experiment, we are asked to imagine that we are designing the socio-economic system for a society that we'll be living in, without knowing who or what we'll be in the society we're designing. We have no idea whether we'll be born rich or poor, whether we'll be a man or a woman, or whether or not we'll be part of an ethnic or religious minority, Furthermore, we won't know in advance what our moral compass and level of development will be, nor will we have any idea whether the skills and talents we develop throughout our life will be something that's valued by the rest of the society.

Removing self bias from the consideration, and you'll quickly notice that is becomes much harder to justify many of the forms of gross inequality that exist in the world. But at the same time Rawls does recognize that some level of inequality is in fact beneficial for everyone in the society, including its least well off members. So the conclusion he comes to is that some level of socio-economic inequality is ethically justifiable so long as the form of inequality in question benefits the least advantaged members of that society.

For example, it's to the advantage of the least well off to have competent doctors and teachers in the society, so it makes sense to pay doctors and teachers good salaries to attract people to those professions. On the flip side of that, it's much harder to justify a CEO of Walmart making thousands of times more than an average Walmart employee in this scenario. Nor is it justifiable for a tiny handful of billionaires to own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the society.
______________________________

To add to that and address the larger issue at hand, the existence of extreme wealth inequality is problematic for other reasons because in practice it tends to damage social solidarity and erode democratic institutions. When a handful of people own more wealth than entire segments of society, it gives those individuals plenty of opportunity to game the system for their benefit and isolate themselves from societal problems.

If inequality gets bad enough what tends to happen is that the rich and poor begin living in two completely different isolated realities, and when that happens the sense of social solidarity required for democracy to function beings to break down. 

2 hours ago, captainamerica said:

On top of that, I would like to add that the government is inherently incapable of innovation at the level that we are talking about. As much as water is inherently wet or fire is hot. This is a very counterintuitive problem requiring great innovation. We cannot have another Harvard by just funding. It is decades of innovation in creating the right culture that creates such output.

Think of the things that we take for granted today that exist due to public investments in innovation through agencies like DARPA and NASA; the Internet and GPS were both government funded DARPA projects, after all.

While I'll agree that profit motive from private Industry can be a powerful incentive for innovation for many things (such as consumer electronics), don't forget the ways that a Profit motive can also disincentive many kinds of important research. Think of something like the Large Hadron Collider or International Space Station, hard to see how either of those could exist if they had to make a quarterly return for an investor.

Public private partnerships hold a lot of promise in my eyes, and I'm all for public investitures in to private industry for things that are socially beneficial (such as renewable energy). 

Edited September 11, 2021 by DocWatts