Dear Roger, Elliot and Platt,
Time to return to the less recent past.
You all objected (1/6 7:25 -0400, 30/5 23:40 +0000 and 30/5 10:50 -0700
respectively) to my 'equal reward for equal effort model'.
Wealth creation is a collective activity. Nowadays, with a global division
of labor, it is even a global activity.
If we want more or if we want to save on the effort spent on creating what
we need, we have to stimulate people to spend their effort more effectively
or more efficiently. To the extent that people can be motivated to spend
their efforts in line with collective needs (effectiveness/efficiency) by
'rewarding' them with a bigger or smaller piece of the pie, pragmatist
morality (and thus the MoQ) tells us to do so.
'Effort' is short for 'all factors needed to create wealth that can be
influenced by individuals or by groups smaller than the group of people that
co-operates in it'. I don't mean 'useless effort' of course. Individual
rewards for factors that can't be influenced (e.g. hereditary intelligence)
or that can best be influenced collectively (e.g. most types of risk)
decrease the possibility to reward and thus stimulate influencable factors.
To motivate people to use this influence in line with collective needs, it
is not necessary to measure proportionality of effort and reward
objectively, but only to agree on it intersubjectively. E.g. responsibility
for decision-making should be rewarded to the extent that people agree that
taking decisions is a burden (that takes 'effort' to bear) rather than
something that gives satisfaction. Risks should be (collectively) minimized
where it is not needed to be dynamic, should be shared were they are
(collectively) deemed necessary and their burden should lie heaviest on
those that can individually limit it (a sort of negative reward for
negligence) and on those that are least burdened by it (e.g. because of a
hereditary optimistic or risk seeking inclination).
Even if proportionality of (useful) effort and reward can't be measured,
even intersubjectively, at all, its effect CAN be measured: effective and
efficient use of effort leading to maximum global wealth creation. (Because
of the global division of labor, that is the relevant scale.)
Central command can't realize equal reward for equal (useful) effort. 'We'
and 'collectively' are short for a decentralized, distributed control
system.
The problem to be solved is, that some factors can be used to influence the
distribution of wealth (rewards) without proportionally contributing in the
creation of it. E.g. you can use intelligence to contribute to wealth
creation, but also to sell 'fried air' and get a reward without (useful)
effort. And a factor like deceitfulness can be used only in inconstructive
ways.
Some sort of 'central command' or government is necessary to counteract such
inconstructive processes by setting rules and -where necessary- enforcing
compliance. On the other hand any form of 'central command' or government
can be (and is being) abused to influence wealth distribution in ways that
do not motivate effectiveness/efficiency.
The best available solution is a (global) system of democratic governments
on different levels of aggregation
and with different roles (e.g. setting rules and enforcing compliance) that
act as countervailing powers: a global set of checks and balances.
It might appear to a lot of people outside the USA (and some within) that
USA government has accumulated too much power in the global arena at the
moment ... The USA is consistently frustrating the building of
countervailing powers at the global level (e.g. supranational institutions
like an international court of justice and agreements to limit global
warming) partly to preserve its own relative power and its large share of
(globally created) wealth.
I started this posting with two ifs and a restriction: Equal reward for
equal effort is moral only IF we want more wealth or IF we want to save on
the effort needed for creating it and TO THE EXTENT THAT people can thus be
motivated to spend their efforts in line with collective needs.
These answer Elliot's concerns (I hope).
Globally speaking we shouldn't want more wealth, I think, not more material
wealth at least. The global ecosystem and global resources are burdened
enough already. Until 'we' have organized wealth creation everywhere in the
most advanced ways (e.g. with the least pollution etc. per unit of material
wealth created), redistribution of material wealth created seems to me a
safer way of alleviating the remaining poverty, health problems etc. in most
of the world than creating even more. The present inequality in global
wealth distribution is so much more than needed to motivate effective and
efficient wealth creation in poorer places, that the resulting international
migration is creating too much problems. It is motivating too much people
NOT to spend their effort better locally, BUT to spend it getting to those
places where the same effort seems to be better rewarded.
Especially in rich countries we should want less wealth in order to be able
to spend more effort on the pursuit of other kinds of Quality. We have much
more material wealth than we need already. We wouldn't be less happy with
half of the cars driving half the amount of kilometers per year, with half
of the square meters of housing per person etc. if we would direct our
pursuit of happiness in less material directions (like we did a century
ago). That would have the additional advantage of attracting less migration
from those parts of the world where wealth creation is still at our level of
a century ago...
I don't think people should be motivated to spend their effort in line with
ONLY collective needs.They should spend it also in line with individual
needs. But I think they need less external motivation to do that. They need
creativity (and open exchange of ideas to learn creative solutions from
others) to find win-win solutions in which they can spend their effort in
ways that serve BOTH collective AND individual needs.
People should not even spend their effort exclusively on serving (any)
needs. Beyond serving their needs (and besides serving their needs, because
their needs should not be forgotten on pain of damaging the basis for
further development), even beyond self-actualization and realizing the full
potential of one's intellectual values (and besides such ego-strengthening,
because that should not be forgotten on pain of damaging the basis for
further development), people should strive for (or rather strive to let go
of impediments for) enlightenment and other spiritual achievements.
We will all agree about the undesirability of the present global situation,
in which relatively few people (maybe 15%) have a high quality live, that
enables them to develop beyond spending almost all their efforts on serving
their (individual and collective) needs.
For a solution Platt and Roger concentrate on making the 85% more productive
by making them adopt the ways of creating wealth of the 15% (while the 15%
go on becoming even more productive).
Elliot seems to concentrate on the limited world of the 15% which may seem
to be on the verge of 'technology [making] human effort to provide for needs
such as food and electricity almost nil'. There less 'quest for pie' is
needed. He also suggests that the 85% (e.g. the majority of the Indian
population) would also be better off NOT striving for 'Britain's standard of
living', BUT for 'the freedom for individuals to pursue Quality both in work
and in free time'.
Contrary to what you seem to think, I am not primarily concerned with fairer
distribution of wealth after it has been created. My main concern is waste
of effort of those 85% to attain a higher quality life AND of most of those
15% because they mistakenly assume that they can get even more quality in
their life by still spending most of their effort on creating wealth. Both
are not able to spare enough effort for self-actualization, enlightenment
etc.. This IS a problem of lack of productivity (inefficient use of effort)
and of unbalanced composition of created wealth (concentration on material
wealth, which leaves some needs unsatisfied) BUT on a global scale.
For a solution of the present undesirable global situation I concentrate on
a better global system of stimulating people to spend their effort
constructively, NOT by imposing social structures, BUT by spreading the idea
that equal (useful) effort should be rewarded equally, hoping that people
take this idea into account wherever they exercise 'decentralized,
distributed control'.
Alleviating the plight of those 85% (which my studies in development
economics prepared me for) requires first of all abandoning the messages
that now incite them to spend their efforts inefficiently:
- Even the poorest of the poor get the message via billboards, radio,
television and pictures on products that getting wealthy is NOT primarily
the result of wisely spent effort, BUT of having the right color of skin and
being born in the right place.
- Selling heavily subsidized agricultural products on the world market (in
order to support the income of our farmers) gives agricultural producers in
the South the message that they won't ever be productive enough to compete
and can better quit trying and move to an overpopulated city or -if
possible- to a rich country.
- Even if the 'say' of the advice to Southern governments about how to
achieve 'good governance' is to create a 'decentralized, distributed control
system', to make trade free, to make government 'lean and mean' etc., the
'show' of the governments of wealthy countries usually points in another
direction. Market protection, regulation of production to protect consumers
and shareholders, departmentalization of government, departments competing
to produce ever more policies (not only for their own country, but for the
whole world) ... We don't do as we preach.
It also requires supranational institutions (based on open-discussion- and
best-argumentation-rules-democracy rather than majority-rules-democracy)
that can act as checks-and-balances on powerful states looking primarily
after their own narrow national interests. It requires a global legal order
that is strong (and independent) enough to prevent even the strongest actors
on the global stage from backing out.
By the way, Platt, Dutch government is not socialist and even if I promote
more global governance (not a global government that monopolizes certain
kinds of power), it should not dominate national (and regional and local)
self-governance. The Dutch social-democratic party has lost ideological
'feathers' like nationalization of means of production and drastic
redistribution of income and property more than half a century ago. (Our
present social-democratic prime minister Kok is even on record saying that
Dutch social-democracy has lost 'all ideological feathers'.) It has been
part of the governing party coalitions less than half of the time in that
period. The 'more subtle ways of central command' which you mistook for
'Dutch socialism' are actually agreed upon by left and right alike among the
Dutch (except for some small extremist parties that are never part of
governing coalitions).
I don't think that 'individual lives are largely determined by accidents of
birth, family, country'. They should be more guided by own intention and by
voluntary association with collective goals. To the extent that they are
not, they are part of lower quality, less intellectually guided, social
patterns of values. SOM-analysis of these social patterns of values could
find both 'accident' and 'exploitation by others' and 'a pretty mess people
have collectively landed themselves in without it being anyone's fault in
particular'.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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