The American declaration of independence, the French Declaration of Rights of Man, the U.N's Universal Declaration of Rights of Man like us to believe that all men are equal all want us to believe all men are equal. The problem is all of those in the United States congress when the DOI was written had slaves and did not, after that paper work, go home to free them all. Neither did the writers of the other two documents mentioned.
The idea that all men are equal is a great one but it couldn't be further from the truth. Whether physically, mentally, socially or anythinally, it is just impractical. There are certain things i can most certainly do better than most folks, and there are others they can most certainly do better than me. When it's time or studying, i have the "unalienable right" of being able to sit down and study for 19 or more hours straight taking only a few fatigue breaks every now and then, but when it comes to playing sports- any kind of sports, a fourth grader can probably beat me to any team(don't count on it). This inability of humans to do everything best- or well enough, even if we could we wouldn't have the time, underscores the need for trade and most importantly division of labor.
Now to get others to divide labor with you, you must treat them with respect, in some cases as equals. You don't let your dumb mother-in-law know you think she's dumb (unless you're connected to a lie detector.) Or as P.J O'Rourke put it "we must treat others with the respect due to equals not because we are filled with fraternal affections but because we're pathetic and useless." Or in the case of others Adam Smith wrote "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer or baker that we get our diner, but from regard to their own interest."
If not for the self interest and unique abilities of those people dinner would be impossible. So, maybe it isn't always a bad thing to be selfish after all, maybe all men not being created equally isn't as bad it sounds. - Just a thought
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I think they meant equal in a different sense then the way you are using it to describe equal capabilities. The people who wrote that document were very smart people and they were undoubtedly aware that people had different physical and mental capabilities.
I believe they meant equal in terms of the rights that they were born with and the way they should be treated by the law. Here is the full quote.
If you read the entire document you find references to their grievences about their treatment by English Law in every paragraph. The sentence above needs to be understood in its full context.
You are of course right that they many of them were complete hypocrits when it came to the issue of slavery. And I think a lot of them were well aware of that fact. Slavery was an economic institution that dates back before the dawn of history and those are not erased overnight. In our case it took almost 100 years. But momentum was building all over the Christian world to end the practice and even in Revolutionary America at the time of our founding there were plenty that were opposed.
I enjoyed your blog and agree with your comments about division of labor and treating people with respect.
I am not overly endowed with compassion. With some exceptions, I feel most people who are poor have brought that condition upon themselves. They failed to take school seriously and they started having babies to young. I feel little pity for them.
Despite feeling little compassion, I am very concerned about the poor out of a sense of enlightened self-interest. If the poor get too miserable they are going to start voting themselves a heaping serving of socialism and I am going to get taxed heavily to pay for it. I would much prefer that any poor person who works 2000 hours per year earns enough not only to live modestly but decently but also to pay at least a tiny bit of income tax. They should have some skin in the game so they understand that when the government spends money that it comes from hard working people.
My concern reflects itself in my fight against illegal immigration. I want the unskilled labor market tight so that unskilled Americans can command decent wages so that they won't vote for more socialism. When we import millions of unskilled workers, the economic plight of the poor moves in a direction that can only work against my interests.
... sqarely on the head in regards to equality. It is more about equal protection of the law than equality of achievement.
However, this, "I am not overly endowed with compassion. With some exceptions, I feel most people who are poor have brought that condition upon themselves. They failed to take school seriously and they started having babies to young. I feel little pity for them," made me laugh. This is such typical, willful ignorance among conservatives.
If this were true than the poor wouldn't come largely from poor families. Being poor perpetuates along family lines, just as rich tends to. Rich white girls who drop out of school and live on their parents money, Paris Hilton say, get showered with money and opportunities, while poor Black girls, or White girls, who drop out of school end up in dead end service jobs or try to find a decent husband, or any husband as fast as possible.
You see, the rich can do almost anything they want and remain rich, while the poor will probably stay poor. I am by no means poor and college is still putting me in a good deal of debt. College gets more expensive and the business markets gets more uncertain, so without money to start with it is incredibly difficult to even get a serious education.
The rest of the world isn't painted in the simple tones of the middle class filter. We, I am assuming you are reasonably middle class, have only one real venue open for us, go to college, get a job and so on. It is a basic assumption that we are brought up with. It's pounded into our heads and supported by everything and everyone around us. We constantly see the benefits of an education and so on. Poor kids don't, because those who get an education don't stick around. Their environment doesn't support the basic principles of self-worth and advancement that you take for granted.
If you were to become poor, you would have failed and you would feel it. When the poor remain poor it is just the maintenance of the status quo. The rich are brought up to be rich and the poor are brought up to be poor. Certainly there are those that overcome this, but they have to overcome it, it isn't handed to them, or sometimes even presented. It isn't just ignorant drop outs and baby mamas.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memento mori, mahalo.
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real-estate above principles."
Economic mobility is not what it should be and as you note, it is particularly sticky at both ends. The rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.
But the reason for this stickyness is largely explained by behavior. Rich parents tend to push their children extremely hard to do things that will keep them rich. The elite prep schools and colleges are for example very difficult to get into. They don't automatically accept rich kids. The parents demand that their children perform in school and pursue extracurricular activities that make them stand out and therefore gain access to the best educations and make the best contacts.
Asian immigrants are another example. They are often very poor in the first generation but they have great behaviors that almost ensure that they don't stay poor. They are family oriented and they work extremely hard, save, invest and they push their kids brutally hard in school. The top universities need affirmative action for white people because otherwise they would be nearly 100% Asian.
And then there are the parents of the chronically poor. They are often single parent homes which usually means the household is probably going to stay poor and the kids are not going to be pushed to succeed or even be supervised to avoid the worst choices like drugs, gangs, triuancy, crime. Most of these people have bought into the culture of poverty and they make decisions that keep them poor like dressing like gangsters and refusing to speak proper English. And then they start popping out kids without being married and they cycle of poverty continues.
These kids have a further disadvantage in that they tend to live in areas where the schools are terrible. But that is only a partial excuse. Kids who make good choices and whose parents behave like decent parents manage to overcome that disadvantage with regular (but not enough) frequency.
Reading your post, I don't think there is much disagreement between us. You may have more compassion for the poor than I do but our concern is equal and we probably share the same goals. You want the poor to climb out of poverty because you care about them. I want the poor to climb out of poverty so I won't be taxed to support them. Either way, if it happens they will no longer be poor and it will be a good thing.
I think your attitude of compassion is more likely to lead to programs that allow people to remain comfortable in their continued poverty like welfare and my attitide of holding them responsible for their poverty is more likely to lead to programs that will cause them to change the behaviors that are making them poor with things like the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) which gives assistance to the workling poor. That is my opinion.
A clearer response I could not have hoped for, thank you. While I do support a certain amount of welfare and EITC type programs, I think that there are quite a few things that need to be, or could be changed that would help the poor.
Number one is to legalize drugs. When the drug dealer on the block is the richest, most powerful dude around it encourages kids to see that as an avenue to success. They will just accept that they'll have to spend some time in jail at some point to be on top for a little while. Even in my decidedly middle class High School some of the kids went on Senior road trips or spent a few weeks in Europe, and our local drug dealer spent almost an entire summer in India living off of his drug profits.
IF the drugs are legal then dealing them is no more appealing than owning a liquor store. Not to mention you would need an ID to get the drugs in the first place.
The benefits of an education need to be larger, and the cost smaller. This would be some kind of headache package of reforms, but as things are even a good degree puts you in a job market where you will have many job changes and a handful of career changes. Increasingly a college degree in ANYTHING is what's needed since it is probable that you won't be staying in your chosen field. After $50,000 of schooling it seems like a greater reward should be had, or school should be cheaper.
Anyway, just my ideas.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memento mori, mahalo.
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real-estate above principles."
I totally agree about ending the prohibition on drugs. It is a waste and there has to be something wrong with a law whose biggest proponents are the people breaking it.
The way to fix the cost of college education is to get the government out of the college aid business. Colleges are raising tuition because they can. They know everytime they raise the tuition, the governmental aid goes up corresponding. It is just a scam to shift money from the government treasury to the college treasury but the outlay by students never goes down. If you ended the aid they would lower tuition dramatically or close their doors because very few students could afford to pay what they are charging and it certainly does not cost that much for what they are providing.
Modest success in America to the bottom of the middleclass at least is easy and is available to anybody who will make the right choices: finish highschool, get a job and work hard, dress decently, speak proper English and try to move upwards to higher pay, get married, delay children until you both have jobs, avoid credit cards, save money for a downpayment, buy a modest house, and have one or two kids. As soon as two people are working two full time jobs even if they are minimum wage, poverty is almost by definition a non-issue. Few people stay at minimum wage for long. Almost nobody who follow this formula ends up poor. I think all of our social policies should be aimed at getting poor people to embrace this behavior.
anythinally. Fucking brilliant!
Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion
I would agree with Nicholas, but I think I would just go with "brilliant" instead of tagging the other language on....=)
"If imperfections are what make us beautiful, then I must be a total babe!"
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/missionsminded-maiden