One final thought about the Battle of Ideas
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
There was a constant theme at the recent Battle of Ideas event that disturbed me greatly, but which I didn't address in my previous long accounts. Time and again I heard people say that equality was justice because those who had more or less success owed it all to chance. Not only did they see the City of London (wrongly) as a "casino", but the whole world.
Luck plays its part in life. Bill Bryson expressed the notion that we are all, whatever our circumstances, just lucky to be alive;
Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.
I don't have the relevant book to hand but I seem to recall he said we had won a 1 in 400 million lottery just by being born. I also get it that chance affects talent, strength, skill, beauty and other factors that can affect our journey through life.
My wife took great care of her health and well-being. She ate the right foods, exercised regularly, drank (mostly) in moderation and would not even try one single drag of a cigarette to understand what the fuss was about. She never even saw an illegal drug. Yet cancer took her from me. So of course I don't deny that luck, good and bad, has a role to play. In fact it infuriates me that the very same egalitarians who deny her credit for what she achieved in her life seek to blame her for her death by prattling about scientifically-dubious (and often contradictory) carcinogenic lifestyle choices or by praising survivors for winning their "fight" against the disease, as if she chose to surrender. They can't have it both ways.
For all that I recognise the role of luck, good and bad, in life I am convinced that it's what you do with your luck that determines who you are. That every boy and girl, however crap their circumstances, however bad the hand life has dealt them, can move off towards the light or the dark by choice and have a good chance of achieving some or all of their goals. If there is no free will, life is just a worthless joke that is simply not worth having. This is so central to my world-view that I don't think I could live if convinced it is wrong.
I could have succumbed to peer pressure at my crap comprehensive school. I could have been deflected by my relatives who thought I must be "queer" to read so much or want to act in plays or take part in debates or play chess or watch films with subtitles. My beloved grandfather told me on his death bed that I had disappointed him by never following in his footsteps as a cricketer, but that he was at least glad I had not turned out, as he feared, to be homosexual. These were not circumstances conducive to academic success. The path was hard, but I decided to take it and to hell with what people said. Was that decision pure chance? Were the days and nights spent studying and reading widely chance? It infuriates me that these bloody people think so.
I wanted to learn and I wanted to "get on" and I did. If it was all chance, then I can take no pride in it. I can have no self-respect and I couldn't bear that. Even allowing for 20 years paying personal taxes elsewhere, I have more than paid my way in the UK, repaying the costs of attendance at my crap state school and university as well as covering my contribution to infrastructure. I have remitted profits to the UK to be taxed in the hands of my former partners and I have helped to build businesses that are still producing taxable income.
Furthermore, I took not one single benefit (not even child-benefit) for my own children from the British State, because I wanted them to be free range; to look their would-be farmers in the eye, owing them nothing. They were privately educated from kindergarten onwards, mainly because after our experiences as pupils (and in my wife's case as a teacher) in state schools we had decided we would not have children unless we could avoid exposing them to the nastiness, class-hatred and leftist propaganda there. Was this chance; that our brains were configured thus? Was there no morality to our choice?
The event was studded with insults to the British people. Our public intellectuals regard us, at various times, as vulnerable fools to be protected or lab rats to be experimented upon. They are as condescending and self-righteous as any feudal baron ever was. But none of their insults are worse than to compare our lives to a mere throw of the dice - and a throw that can never been remade.
"Absolutely I am egalitarian. Why ever would you imagine differently? "
I don't know who you are, and thus I don't imagine anything about you.
"Equal civil rights for all, real equality before the law..."
I don't think anyone here is against this, including Mises.
"But in all this excitement ^_^ I kinda lost track of if you class yourself as one of "those" intellectuals or not. Youv'e got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel intellectual? Well do ya?"
Of course I do not consider myself as an anti-capitalist intellectual. If I did, I would never have even read Ludwig von Mises.
I'm still not really sure what you are arguing about. You seem to believe in meritocracy (equality of opportunity), in which case you agree with Mises.
Posted by: Richard Carey | Friday, October 26, 2012 at 02:20 PM
LOL. Not a smoker, sadly. After events where others smoke, I argue.
Posted by: Tom | Friday, October 26, 2012 at 09:05 AM
Absolutely I am egalitarian. Why ever would you imagine differently?
Equal civil rights for all, real equality before the law, no limitations equality of opportunity does not, and proably should not, guarantee equality of outcome.
And I really don't see it as equal or fair if someone else's equality of outcome gets to abridge my equality of opportunity or take from what I have earned/achieved.
But in all this excitement ^_^ I kinda lost track of if you class yourself as one of "those" intellectuals or not. Youv'e got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel intellectual? Well do ya?
Tom I can just imagine you relaxing with a post argument ciggarette.
Posted by: Moggsy | Friday, October 26, 2012 at 08:15 AM
Sorry, my comments were not directed at you but at what I did understand to be a quote.
My badly expressed point was that success and failure mean different things to different people. Becoming immensely wealthy is success (triumph) to many, but of no great concern to others, to whom it is an "imposter".
I should certainly like to have great wealth-but probably only for the liberty it would bring. Most people probably just want to be "comfortably off". The fact that I am not wealthy does not make me consider myself a failure. Others may do so-but that is not a concern to me.
The von Mises quote therefore seems far too narrow in its definitions-but probably fine for the explanation he was giving.
And no I most certainly am not an egalitarian-because people are not equal in their attributes, thank God.
Posted by: MickC | Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 02:28 PM
Hijack away dear boy. I am spent. B^)
Posted by: Tom | Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 12:31 PM
To Moggsy & MickC,
I posted a quote, where Mises is discussing why intellectuals hate capitalism, and I think it contains more than a grain of truth.
I don't want to hijack Tom's thread. I just thought it appropriate, but your comments directed at me makes me think something's being lost in translation.
You're not egalitarians, are you?
Posted by: Richard Carey | Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 12:24 PM
The world of Richard Carey does seem to be a hopeless place.
Of course, the envy and jealousy arising from seeing people who have "succeeded" where one has "failed" just has to be in the subconscious, because otherwise we'd be able to see it, measure it and expose this nonsense for what it is.
Equality of opportunity is what is paramount, not equality of outcome. Precisely because life is a lottery. How many people of Bill Gates' talents were running software companies that didn't happen to get that crucial invitation from IBM to write an operating system?
Actually, that lottery stuff gives me an idea. Since we want equality, perhaps we should take the lottery jackpot, and instead of giving it to just one "winner", spread it out amongst all those who play? Hell, no, give it everybody in England! Hang on....
Life isn't fair. Deal with it.
Posted by: Mark in Mayenne | Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 11:08 AM
Are triumph and disaster not, then, imposters to be treated just the same?
Do the poor therefore somehow "deserve" to be poor?
Bob Diamond "deserves" to be wealthy?
That cannot be correct surely or we are just animals fighting in the jungle. How would that be a meaningful existence in any way?
Posted by: MickC | Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 09:13 AM
Richard, "What makes many feel unhappy under capitalism is the fact that capitalism grants to each the opportunity to attain the most desirable positions which, of course, can only be attained by a few. Whatever a man may have gained for himself, it is mostly a mere fraction of what his ambition has impelled him to win. There are always before his eyes people who have succeeded where he failed. There are fellows who have outstripped him and against whom he nurtures, in his subconsciousness, inferiority complexes"
What a dark world and limited horrible soul destroying existence you imagine. If you really imagine the "most desirable positions" is such a limited list you are wrong.One persons desirable position can be another's hell on earth.
And just imagine how horrible it would really be if this constant souring of jealousy for all were really true.
I think people do collude to make their own hell sometimes.
You keep your inferiority complex in your own subconcious and don't let it out to do me harm by forcing your idea of "fairness" (that must most often be limiting to me or take away what I have earned) on me.
Tom, I think I see your point and if I see true then I agree. It is like the recent example of the para-olympics and why it seemed at least to me, and I think many, so life affirming.
Some of those athletes had been given a poor hand in the game of life, some had suddenly found the carpet pulled from under them. They chose to make the best of things, no matter how unpromising. To strive, to not cave in or never try. They are an example to us all.
"Everybody is aware of.." his? "...own defeat and insufficiency" - Ha! NOT! Puh-leeease. How totally bogus is that?
Posted by: Moggsy | Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 09:10 AM
Ouch!
Posted by: Richard Carey | Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 05:39 AM
I think Ludwig von Mises hit the nail on the head in 'The Anti-Capitalist Mentality':
In a society based on caste and status, the individual can ascribe adverse fate to conditions beyond his own control. He is a slave because the superhuman powers that determine all becoming had assigned him this rank. It is not his doing, and there is no reason for him to be ashamed of his humbleness. His wife cannot find fault with his station. If she were to tell him: “Why are you not a duke? If you were a duke, I would be a duchess,” he would reply: “If I had been born the son of a duke, I would not have married you, a slave girl, but the daughter of another duke; that you are not a duchess is exclusively your own fault; why were you not more clever in the choice of your parents?”
It is quite another thing under capitalism. Here everybody’s station in life depends on his own doing. Everybody whose ambitions have not been fully gratified knows very well that he has missed chances, that he has been tried and found wanting by his fellowman. If his wife upbraids him: “Why do you make only eighty dollars a week? If you were as smart as your former pal, Paul, you would be a foreman and I would enjoy a better life,” he becomes conscious of his own inferiority and feels humiliated.
The much talked about sternness of capitalism consists in the fact that it handles everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellowmen. The sway of the principle, to each according to his accomplishments, does not allow of any excuse for personal shortcomings. Everybody knows very well that there are people like himself who succeeded where he himself failed. Everybody knows that many of those whom he envies are self-made men who started from the same point from which he himself started. And, much worse, he knows that all other people know it too. He reads in the eyes of his wife and his children the silent reproach: “Why have you not been smarter?” He sees how people admire those who have been more successful than he and look with contempt or with pity on his failure.
What makes many feel unhappy under capitalism is the fact that capitalism grants to each the opportunity to attain the most desirable positions which, of course, can only be attained by a few. Whatever a man may have gained for himself, it is mostly a mere fraction of what his ambition has impelled him to win. There are always before his eyes people who have succeeded where he failed. There are fellows who have outstripped him and against whom he nurtures, in his subconsciousness, inferiority complexes. Such is the attitude of the tramp against the man with a regular job, the factory hand against the foreman, the executive against the vice-president, the vice-president against the company’s president, the man who is worth three hundred thousand dollars against the millionaire and so on. Everybody’s self-reliance and moral equilibrium are undermined by the spectacle of those who have given proof of greater abilities and capacities. Everybody is aware of his own defeat and insufficiency.
http://mises.org/etexts/mises/anticap/section1.asp
Posted by: Richard Carey | Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 05:36 AM