Scrotie's single-question political compass test

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MBata wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

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MBata wrote:

If we did, then we would appropriate it, tax it, and redestribute it...

Well then, there’s your answer.

What I meant to say was: If this kids are dumb enough to empower us with the decision about their property, then they shouldn't be surprised if their flute is appropriated, regulated, legislated and taxed.

They're better off sorting the problem out amongst themselves than involving an absolute authority...

If you don't establish such anauthority yourself, one comes to fill the power vacuum. Anarchy doesn't work.

Curious now, actually. What is Sen's argument? I can't track down the original source at this point, but when stripped of crappy current-events political connotations it feels like there's a proper discussion to be had here somewhere. Any pointers/information from the book this came from would be appreciated.

i would give the flute to b) and second choice would be c)

reasons: people who create real stuff should receive the full returns of their work (not their bosses or people who lend them money) but may give some of it to guys doing the organising for them. and poor people deserve help because they're mostly poor because of circumstances out of their influence.

the kiddo who already learned the flute likely has one already, otherwise it couldn't play it.

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cronus wrote:

people who create real stuff should receive the full returns of their work (not their bosses or people who lend them money)

What if you possess the potential to create, but lack the resources to actualize that potential? What if cooperation within divisions of labor can actualize greater potential?

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CanHasPants wrote:

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cronus wrote:

people who create real stuff should receive the full returns of their work (not their bosses or people who lend them money)

What if you possess the potential to create, but lack the resources to actualize that potential? What if cooperation within divisions of labor can actualize greater potential?

that's what i mean, collaborations of labour sharing their efforts and the outcome.

You’re suggesting bosses and money lenders are not collaborators. What do you think bosses and money lenders do?

Having just rewatched the matrix I have just had a moment of enlightenment. ...


We can only really understand the truth if we can accept there is no flute.

Cheers,
Matt.

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鬼殺し wrote:

I don't feel like I've read enough yet to adequately answer this, but what I said to bump/res the thread covers what I have read so far, give or take Sen's direct engagement with Rawlsian moral thinking. He discusses two approaches to justice. One, called the Transcendental Theory of Justice, hinges on conceptualising the perfectly just scenario and how we can approach or achieve it (which stemmed largely from the western Enlightenment). The other, his own, accepts the world is never going to achieve that and instead considers the practical -- which I suppose means it accepts certain injustices will never be fixed or addressed. I like the realism of the latter, as I believe Sen does as well, and think the former is too fixated on perfection as a model.

Hmm. I'm not sure there is, or needs to be, a distinction between the two.

How does one measure 'more just' in any given practical situation without a model of Perfect Justice to draw upon? Everyone in a given society is raised with a given general model of what Justice is baked into them from their youngest days, all of our stories, parables, and myths bake it deep into the psyche. One can advance or fine-tune their sense of Justice, or warp it all out of true as in the case of many lawyers (though ironically, a number of lawyer-types I've spoken to have actually drawn a sharp distinction between what they believe is legal and what they believe is just and admit there's a distressingly low correlation between the two. Even lawyers know lawyers are scumbags :P), but the fact of the matter is that every person has their own conception of Ideal/Perfect Justice, and in any pertinent practical situation they find themselves in, their instinct is going to be to try and steer that situation closer to their ideal of what Justice should be.

One cannot improve the overall level of Justice in a situation without knowing what is or is not just, and one cannot know what is or is not just without a model of what Justice is. Whether one leans more towards quick, sloppy expediency - right-now Justice - or slow, sluggish True Justice is likely a better approximation, and something one can also see in the parable of the flute. Right-now Justice types will award the flute to one given child, cite their reasons, and state that any attempt to prolong a decision and make a stronger decision either pollutes the original question (as I stated back in the first few pages of the thread) or causes more issues than it solves. Slow Path Justice types would refuse to tolerate an expedient decision and instead try to force outside variables in the story to allow them to either force the children to share the flute or produce more flutes - in some way, approach a state of Justice wherein all three children's objectives can be achieved.

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鬼殺し wrote:

The most recent and probably important incarnation of these two views of justice can be found in how people react to the so-called gun crisis in the US. If you see someone make an argument along the lines of, 'there's no point in changing gun laws, people will find ways to kill each other regardless' or 'stricter gun laws won't stop people from shooting each other or mass shootings', then you're essentially talking to someone who has embraced the perfect world scenario -- that is to say, it's a waste of time taking these measures if the outcome isn't significantly closer to an ideal situation. But if you meet someone who argues that reduction in incident is good enough and worth the effort to change things, then that person has briefly embodied Sen's more piecemeal, do-what-we-can-when-we-can argument.

Hey now. I've been good about leaving that argument alone. You should know better than to poke me on that. A renewed debate on why I think that comparison itself is flawed/ignoring some key facts is wildly off-topic for this thread though, so I'm going to swallow my indignance and leave it be.

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鬼殺し wrote:

The key word to Sen's approach is 'comparative'. You can see it in his flute parable already: the three children are all comparatively justified in their desire for and right to the flute. Their stories make sense, and it's only when you have to consider all three, that is to say compare them, that the complexity of what is 'just' becomes apparent.

True enough. A shame that the tale was twisted into a crappy take-that against liberal policies, though I suppose that is the sad fate of parables - they either die unsung or live long enough to become misused for political bunk.

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鬼殺し wrote:

There's an open-mindedness and universality to Sen's argument that deeply appeals to me, and I figure it's because he has non-Western origins but is of course highly educated in Western thinking. The idea of justice must be flexible in any world where you have at least two civilised societies with distinctly different norms and practices. Neither is more right than the other, although one might have more advanced engagement with justice and the idea of fairness.

...And yeah, that's just from me reading the introduction and some of chapter 1. It's a monumental book. A tome, really.

There's a story I heard once, though I can't recall the exact specific wording, that struck me as it concerns the clash of differing ideals of justice between different societies. Going to paraphrase my ass off because the original story is offensive as hell, even if its core ideal is worth considering.

A group of soldiers finds a group of warriors from another nation on the border between the two. The warriors are preparing to murder a woman, which is a huge no-no for the soldiers so they step in and cut the preparations short. The warriors protest, saying "she's been soiled! She is no longer pure! Our culture demands that she be purged and her spirit allowed the purification of death! You must respect our ways!"

The leader of the soldiers looks the leader of the warriors in the eye and says "All right. You go ahead and follow your customs then and kill that woman. Just know that if you do that, we're going to follow the customs of our culture and hang the sick sunuvabitch who murdered a woman in cold blood in front of us. You must respect our ways, after all."

The idea, of course, being that if there is no right or wrong ideal of justice, how does one resolve that sort of situation? If justice is strictly, entirely localized and bound up 100% in one's culture of origin, then who's correct in a situation where two cultures each have equal claim on the outcome and who each have diametrically opposed views of what the Just Course is for that outcome?

One could argue that in a situation where Justice is cultural rather than philosophically absolute, i.e. there is no innate Justice that belongs to us as human beings, no absolute moral code we simply need to discover and follow, then the culture whose ideal of Justice promotes the best/strongest progress tend to win out. Ironically, this follows Scrotie's banging on about the free market and competition being the final arbiter of everything - societies whose conception of Justice weakens them will eventually fall off or be absorbed into stronger societies, while societies whose conception of Justice strengthens and/or empowers them progress. Conception-of-Justice being just one factor of course, but potentially a significant one.

All human cultures are at war at all times, especially in this era where advanced electronic communication has rendered physical borders and the barrier of distance increasingly meaningless. Whenever two cultures meet each other, they will fight. The end result of that contest can be merging, absorption, or outright defeat, but I believe quite strongly that multiple cultures cannot simultaneously exist in a given space. What you end up with is a gradually adsumed singular culture, dominated by the strongest culture of the ones that were fighting for dominance in a given space but influenced by the stronger or more enduring aspects of the cultures that lost the war.

The Internet has turned the entire world into a single space, and if people think we're not fighting a culture war with China and/or the East right now they're blind braindead idiots. The only means of coexisting, which is to say enough physical separation that two cultures cannot interact, has been destroyed. Justice is up for grabs, as is everything else.

I'd honestly love to see where the human species is at a thousand years from now, when we've had more than a bare century or two for our cumulative civilization to come to grips with the effects of our technology. Well, 'love'. I'd approach such a vision with equal parts anticipation and dread, because I'm willing to bet that no one alive today would really like where the evolution of the species takes us in the distant future.

...and that's enough ramble for now, I think. Nevertheless, I needed some of that after the week I've had so far. My God, fuck Murphy, I swear to all a'everything...

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鬼殺し wrote:

my bad, just an example.

sorry, i answered out of courtesy, not to engage deeply. my time would be better spent reading more of it than talking out my arse with what little I have read. ;)

well, personally i learned alot about the different cultural views of "justice" from this thread. thanks for taking it deeper.

Despite crappy Internet memes and my own stance that people who want a cost-effective education that gets them results take two-year technical school courses, not Standard College, I also maintain that a more general education is an excellent way to improve oneself. Even just basic courses in world cultures/religions, world history, and other similar subjects - no matter how much some folks scoff at the idea of 'namby-pamby sissyman Lib'ral Arts garbage" - can give one a much improved appreciation for the world at large and one's own place within it. I'm fortunate enough to've basically chop-shopped a four-year degree with a two-year Associate of Arts prior to figuring out the tech school thing and taking a two-year EE certificate course.

The EE got me a job. The general studies philosophy major AA degree made me a better human being. Heh, never be afraid to go deeper no matter how much some idiots sass ye for it.