12. Right is right, Left is wrong 2

The primary issue dividing the contemporary political Right and Left centers on what should be the function of government. Up to this point the standard view of the Right has been reviewed, along with some reasons in its favor, along with an objection to that view. On the other side, consider in detail what the Left can say and what reasons there may be behind its views.

For the Left there is this:

Recall the statement made earlier about the function of government: The function of government is to provide for the needs of the people, to assure that the needs of the people are met. But then consider what commitments are actually necessary for government to be tasked with assuring that needs are met. Assuring that needs are met does not necessarily mean that there is control of or even attention to all people’s needs, just that there is a provision for a minimum level of needs coverage. Another way of saying this is that what government is to do is to make sure that the least well-off are at a basic minimum, or that the least well-off are at a level adequate to basic needs fulfillment.

Now it is certainly regrettable that many times when this view is expressed, the reasons or the motivations proposed to favor it are just bad or flimsy. Some of the reasons that have been put forward are these:

(a) It has to be so because justice requires it, and that’s all there is to it.

(b) It has to be so because compassion requires it, and that’s all there is to it.

(c) It has to be so because (and this is the sort of thing that even U.S. politicians have said), anyone who disagrees with it is selfish, evil, and/or psychotic.

The reason why this is regrettable is because none of these are clear, automatic, decisive reasons why government should have the function of assuring minimum needs coverage, and in addition, these proposed reasons make the whole idea look shallow. There has to be more to the idea of this being the proper function of government than just the vague idea that we must adopt it to avoid being evil. A much better method of advancing this view is to first show that it can be executed in such a way as to solve the problems in the Right’s interpretation of what is required, and then bring forward positive reasons in its favor.

(A) First, to respond to the objections of the Right as they were stated in the previous discussion, there is at least one good reason to think that these objections can be overcome. That reason is this: Carrying out the function of assurance of minimum needs will require some economic redistribution, but the degree of it will be light and thus should not require extensive controls over an economy. And by not requiring a high degree of control, the whole program can avoid the major objections of the Right.

A review of a mechanism for achieving the assurance of minimum needs should make it clear that it is a very simple procedure to establish and maintain. All that is required is that we be able to map out how it is that wealth (or income, it should work out to be the same) is distributed within an economy and use that map to make adjustments to some people’s positions within that distribution. This distribution can be expressed, for example, by making a chart of wealth held per person, or income received per person, with the amount held or received by each shown declining from highest to lowest.

Now yes, of course, there is always an objection that can be made to the very idea of a distribution of wealth or income in that it seems to presuppose that such distribution is intentional and controlled or is the result of an intentional allocation, this by the very idea that it is a distribution. So in order not to stack the deck in favor of anything, or confuse the issues involved, let’s use here instead the idea of the location of wealth instead of distribution. The location of wealth or income is just that held or received per person however that status has come about, with no presumption as to how it comes about.

So supposing we have a chart that shows the location of wealth or income on a per person basis from highest to lowest, we then determine somehow the level that is required for a basic minimum of needs coverage. This level could be represented as a horizontal line, which line most people represented on the chart would be above, but some would be below. Once the mapping of the location of wealth is accomplished, the steps from there are simple. There is just the necessity for some redistribution from those above that line, in some fairly determined fashion, to boost those below that line up to the line. Such boosting of some is simple in fact and will not require extensive controls. Government does not have to have direct controls over all of the assets and processes of production in order to accomplish the boosting of some up to a determined minimum economic level.

(B) Second, there are two positive reasons in favor of this view on the function of government.

(1) Looking at it from the standpoint of economic insurance.

Surely you can say that you do not know what the future holds for you. There have been many stories told of people going from conditions of rags-to-riches, but there are also stories of riches-to-rags, and such a story could be yours. There are things that could happen to you that could devastate you financially, so much so that you may not be able to recover. Though the chance of falling from riches-to-rags or even just comfortable-to-rags may be low, the outcome of being in rags is really bad, so much so that it is a good idea to insure against it.

To say that it is a good idea to insure against a possible bad outcome is to say that it is rational to do so. And to say that something is rational means something very specific. Rational decision-making has to do with how it is that the probability of something happening interacts with the value of that something happening. To be rational means that you are gauging the chance of things happening and the value of them in such a way that you are aiming for the maximum of their product, their multiplication together. So when you are faced with a choice of alternatives, the rational choice is the one that has the highest number gotten by multiplying the probability of it by its value.

That idea about what is rational has application here in the following way: If you should aim for the best outcome in terms of its chance multiplied by its value, you also should avoid those things that have a really bad outcome in terms of chance multiplied by their value. So if you are really rational in the sense that you are making decisions on the basis of probabilities and the good and bad things that could happen to you by chance events, you would agree to some kind of system where a minimum of basic needs are covered, as a means for economic insurance. To fall down into an economic situation well below where your basic needs are covered is an extremely bad outcome, and so should be insured against. Having government provide a basic minimum of needs coverage is a good way of getting insurance for the provision of a minimum of needs. In the end, it is entirely rational to agree with some economic redistribution for this purpose, and it is actually irrational not to agree with it.

(2) Looking at it from the standpoint of rational fairness.

For a long time, social and political philosophy has made use of the concept of what’s called a “state of nature” to make points about government and what government should be like. The idea of a state of nature is this: Consider what things would be like if there were no government, or, something which will be the equivalent, imagine how people and society were like in the time in past history when there was no government. The concept of a state of nature has been used both for explaining why we have governments, in the sense of what brought them about, and also justifying having a government, giving us reason to have them.

For an example of “state of nature” thinking: Thomas Hobbes (this was the mid-1600’s) thought that in a scenario where there was no government, things would be really bad. Things would be so bad that life would be pretty intolerable. And so he came to the conclusion that we really need government, and need it badly, and furthermore, needed government that would take over pretty much all responsibilities, because that seemed to be what was needed to keep us from being in an intolerable state of nature.

Now suppose you are in a state of nature situation, but with one major twist: You are looking at putting together a future structure of government and making decisions about its composition, yet that state of nature situation you are in is one that is “fair” in the sense that you, and everyone else in it, do not know about any special knowledge and abilities and position that you have in the eventual outcome. In others words: Suppose that you are in a situation that is truly fair, and fairness is when you don’t know what your own strengths and abilities and advantages are, and what you do and don’t have. So that means: Imagine that you were choosing an eventual social and economic structure, but while doing so, you did not know where you would land in it when it became operative.

The idea is that in such a fair situation, to be rational and truly looking out for your interests, you would choose an economic structure that had the highest value attached to the least-well-off person. In other words, you would choose an outcome that would maximize the minimum economic position within society. And the reason why you would do this is because, for all you know, the person in that position could be you when the mist cleared and you saw where you were in that social and economic structure.

For an example of this: Suppose you needed to decide between two options, A or B. Outcome option A has a map of the location of wealth where most people are very well off but a few are really bad off, whereas outcome option B has a map of location of wealth where only a few people are really well off but even the least well-off still does relatively well. Which one, A or B, would you choose? Not knowing where you were going to land on the scales within these options, you would choose B.

The end result of this line of thinking goes much farther than the economic insurance argument above. In the end here, the idea is that it is entirely rational to agree to maximizing the minimum position of wealth within your society, and this minimum position could be much higher or better-off than any economic insurance would get you. But the end result is similar in this sense: Since economic redistribution is required to maximize the minimum economic position within a society, it is rational to agree to such redistribution, and irrational not to agree to it.

[An important note: This discussion above uses an over-simplification of the concepts and argument from another book which should also be famous called A Theory of Justice, John Rawls, Harvard Univ. Press 1971. Not only is this an over-simplification of the Rawlsian position, it casts that position more in terms of a decision-theory argument than what it really is. You will find a lot more content and informative detail in this book, especially since it has 607 pages.]

Side Note:

Its obvious that the most famous line of thinking in favor of the view that the function of government is that of providing for needs, that of Karl Marx, is not reviewed here. And its obvious why: That line of thinking is not intended to establish that the function of government should that of assuring an economic minimum; its aim is to show that a government of the people should and will eventually control all of an economy. This line will be reviewed in future issues, but can be summarized here for comparison.

(M) Looking at it from the standpoint of economic stability.

The economic system as we know it, which is called capitalism, has these three characteristics:

(a) The private ownership of the assets and processes of the production of goods,

(b) The presence of wage labor,

The problem with this economic system is that it is will eventually “shoot itself in the foot” and pass away, and this because of at least these reasons:

(1) It is inherently unstable in the sense that it will create economic crises of depressions and recessions and panics just by its own over-production.

(2) It is inherently unstable in the sense that it will spark wars over resources and markets, which wars will come back to bite it.

(3) The workers involved in production will become “alienated” from their work, separated from any real, natural commitment to it, and will never be truly effective at it because of that.

(4) The workers involved in production will always be exploited, and so will eventually rebel against it.