Random political philosophy (borrrrrrrrring!)

This is cross-posted from my myspace blog:

For those who are down with the lingo, and sufficiently nerdy as I am, I'm having some trouble with egalitarianism and the market. It seems as if in a market economy, there will tend to be a blurring of the distinction between option luck and brute luck. Option luck is, of course the kind of luck that results in inequality that is the result of a person's choice that went awry. It's been defined as a "gamble" that didn't turn out positive. Brute luck is the kind of luck resulting in inequality that is not the fault of a person. For instance, being born into a poor family or being handicapped are both instances of brute luck, and in most cases, so is being the victim of theft. Most egalitarian theories make a distinction betweent the two and say that agents should be responisble for the resulting inequalities of their option luck, but their brute luck should be taken care of, in some form, by the state.

This distinction is good prima facie, but when we try to make such a distinction in an already existing economy, the distinction is not so clear. What I'm getting at here is a claim that there would be much less inequality to chalk up to option luck if the mechanisms of the market were not the main source of distribution. The market comes from the idea of comparative advantage, which is, on its own basic terms, a fairly good idea. It makes sense to let those who enjoy and/or are especially skilled at certain tasks specialize and focus on said tasks when they provide important social goods. This way, there is more production and those who are not good at producing certain goods or services can get enough and concentrate on their own specialized areas. The idea behind the specialization of labor is to raise the overall quality of life for a people by expanding the amount of socially relevant goods faster and more easily. But capitalism often poisons the original intent of specialization by the mechanism of profit and surplus reinvestment. By reinvesting capital surplus back in production again, in an attempt to create more demand, the goal of specialization has already been thwarted. This may be okay if everyone had an amount of social goods that was adequate to live a comfortable life, but capitalism does not seem to allow for this. The goal from the outset is to use specialization in order to horde capital and create a larger market with more expensive resources, all with the goal of accumulating more surplus.

My rant there was to establish the idea that in a system like a capitalist market economy, where specialization creates many goods but bases their value on their scarcity will not produce enough goods for the consumers, for if it does, it will lose capital. The motivation behind this kind of economic system from the vantage-point of the firms in it, is to gain as much suprlus capital as possible, not to distribute necessary goods equally or fairly. Thus, "option" luck in this kind of market system is possible because the set of options by which inequalities can be created by agents "gambling" in the market are set up by the market's firms in order to produce profit. If the firms allowed people to purchase products for the price of production or even the price of production plus a margin for the upkeep of fixed capital (machines, facilities, employees, etc.), they would not sustain growth in their desired way. The point is, most option luck is only possible in a system that pits agents against one another with the goals of acquiring profit. But more basically, it requires an agent who is willing to benefit at the expense of another agent. To me, this seems morally unsound. I don't know of a political system that does not believe in a prima facie moral equality between all of its constituent agents. So if this is so, I see no reason why it is permissive that the production design of a society should be based on individual motivations that allow agents in the design to view each other as anything but equals, and in fact tends to work in favor of those who do not view the rest of the agents in it as equals.
Make no mistake, I am not arguing that option luck would not exist in an ideal or very well arranged theory of justice. But I do think that the current ideas about option luck's breadth and importance is skewed and it is largely a result of its being seen through the eyes of philosophers indoctrinated by the classical handling of the market economy.

Holy Damn!!!!

It has been almost a month since any words have graced our fair board, and I believe that this warrants me reviving the beast.

Now that school is over, I sense that most people have fallen into the laziness that often grips the four months that precede September. For this reason, I will now inject a little current debate into this board:

I was listening to NPR, which is the greatest thing that DeKalb has as far as media is concerned, and there was a debate raging about the European Union, and the rejections of the constitution by both France and the Netherlands. Simultaneously, there was a story about the new trade agreements that are taking place in Africa. While I am all for unification of peoples and nations into cohesive bodies of self-determination, I am not for what seems to be happening while that aspect is being touted; neo-liberalism. That's right, as if it weren't enough to tout self-ownership and dominance over land and animal, as well as autonomy from community, tradition and common values, now, we must unify everyone into a global framework of unrestricted market economies of such a mass proportion that the labor force can be separated from the capitalists by an ocean. Iraq is being turned into an outlet mall with absentee owners coming by to expatriate profits and fuel an ever-foreing reliant U.S. economy that is suffocating itself with its demands of hypergrowth.
It seems that this whole idea is making revolution that much harder to acheive. Marx's whole ideology has to compete with the fact that the proletariat neither lives on the same continent as nor speaks the same language as the bourgeoise. The world will soon be separated into North and South in a way that will make the current situation look like the state of nature. But again, I guess I am getting to angry for my own good. But believe me, this is not coming from a place of anger, it comes from a place of genuine compassion for my fellow humans and a worry that the vehicle they are about to step on to is going to careen off of a cliff while the driver jumps out to safety.
I heard a young woman yesterday, maybe 3 years older than myself, who was speaking against Oxfam and on behalf of the Worldbank. She was saying that debt forgiveness and charity will not help Africa, they need to be formed into the economic image of American New Lassez-Faire, neoliberal business markets. What went wrong? Did I really come from that different of a world than this young lady? I find that hard to believe. But somehow, she cannot see what has happened and what will happen if the current unrealistic and shortsighted model of business for profit continues. The people in Africa have the unique chance to be helped in a way that will allow them to be self-sufficient and retain their sense of history and community, but the Worldbank and Haliburton would much rather them all speak English as a first language and learn HTML or sew the seams on Nike Shoes.
There was a time where there was culture, community, and compassion. Apparently, profit has replaced all of them. This would normally not bother me, a transvaluation of values, but profit has no purpose as it is used now. It is not a thing to help people enjoy life, it is a motivation that keeps businessmen from honestly reporting earnings, from paying a fair wage to employees, from keeping a loyalty to workers and looking out for their interests. The whole model has fallen to shambles but the top floor is suspended and hanging above the foundation, which has been deemed unnecessary. I have been deemed unncecessary, so have you, how does that make you feel?

Enjoy the rest of your unnecessary existence.

Getting Back on Track

The last few weeks have been, it seems, pretty taxing on everyone. There has been some reflection of this on the board. I now, with only one final paper left to type, wish to change this. The way that I wish to do this is to re-start a debate through a simple question.

We've been around the political block a few times and have heard our share of ideological arguments. Taking them all into account, what political philosophy/ideology (you can use either one) do you support? No, Paul, you don't need to be technical, BUT you do need to SUPPORT ANY ANSWER YOU GIVE WITH AN ARGUMENT. That's all you need to do. Just write what you support and why you support it (reasons that could serve to convince others, not just "well, it makes me feel good, it's my opinion. I'd like to think that we're a bit more mature than that.). That's all I have to say, so let's see what four years of college (or 3 years, in some cases) have taught us about critical analysis and argumentation. And let's see what those years have taught us about political thinking.

Learning From the Experts

So I thought that my thirsty mind could only be quenched by the academians doing research and attending conferences, but boy, was I wrong. I've been in college for 4 years, I've read many books, and among them, a handful of the classics of the humanities. But until yesterday, I had not encountered the enterprise of "macking". I did some checking into this fine school and other universities nationwide. You know what I found? None of what U.S. News and World Report considers the "top schools" in the country have even undergraduate programs in Macking or even "tricking". As for pimpin? Forget about it. As a student of the liberal arts, I am appalled. I mean, what if, in my summer off, I decide to do my post-graduate work in Macking? What if I have a great idea for a dissertation on the new networking issues in modern macking? Where do I do my research? Who will supervise my dissertation? Apparenlty no one. Well, no one in the colleges. But there is one man who is a certified mack. Yes, that's right, certified by the American Macking Fellowship. And until he posted on our wonderful blog and I checked out his wonderfully insightfull jounal, I lacked the resources to get on the right path. Perhaps some, like the fair Fuser, saw Bossmack's presence and comment on our blog as a bad omen, as something to be avoided and prevented. But nay, dear friends, we have been visited by genius. And we should hold onto it, for it is a rare and beautiful thing that should be revered whilst it is fully revealed. Needless to say, I shall not let this opportunity pass me by. I am withdrawing my application from the graduate school, quitting the arcane and "Banal"(with a capital B) enterprise that is philosophy, and pursuing the tutilage of the master, Bossmack. One day soon, you will see me, macking, in all of my glory, having learned from the master. Oh friends, record this glorious day, as the day where a man discovered his true purpose and passion in life, MACKING!!!!!!!

Reflections on the nature of any fuck that belittles the convictions of any man.

"Is our time perhaps such a "firstcomer"? Its historical sense is so strong and has such universal and boundless expression that future times will commend it, if only for this, as a firstcomer-if there be any future time, in the sense of future culture. But here comes a grave doubt. Close to the modern man's pride ther stands his irony about himself, his consciousness that he must live in a historical, or twilit, atmosphere, the fear that he can retain none of his youthful hopes and powers. Here and there one goes further into cyniscism and justifies the course of history, nay, the whole evolution of the world, as simply leading up to the modern man, according to the cynical canon: "What you see now had to come, man had to be thus and not otherwise, no one can stand against this necessity." He who cannot remain in a state of irony flies for refuge in cynicism: he calls his way of living thoughtlessly and after the fashion of his time, "the full surrender of his personality to the world-process." THE PERSONALITY AND THE WORLD-PROCESS! THE WORLD-PROCESS AND THE PERSONALITY OF THE EARTHWORM! If only one did not eternally hear the word "world, world, world," that hyperbole of all hyperboles; when we should only speak, in a decent manner, of "man, man, man"! Heirs of the Greeks and Romans, of Christianity? All that seems nothing to the cynics. But "heirs of the world process," the final target of the world-process, the meaning and solution of all riddles of the universe, the ripest fruit on the tree of knowledge- that is what I call a right noble thought; by this token are the firstlings of every time to be known although they may have arrived last. The historical imagination has never flown so far, even in a dream; for now the history of man is merely the continuation of that of animals and plants; the universal historian finds traces of himself even in the utter depths of the sea, in the living slime. He stands astounded in face of the enormous way that man has to run, an his gaze quivers before the mightier wonder, the modern man who can see all this way! He stands proudly on the pyramid of the world-process; and while he lays the final stone of his knowledge, he seems to cry aloud to listening Nature: "WE ARE AT THE TOP, WE ARE THE TOP; WE ARE THE COMPLETION OF NATURE!""

~I respect this author too much to write his name… I am not his product…

Salvation is ours to steal. FUCK ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE! I REFUSE TO LET THE DEAD BURY THE FUCKING LIVING!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE ARE ALL VESSELS IN THE SEA OF JUSTICE!!!!!!!!! TAKE SOME FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY!!!!!!!! SOME OF US HAVE A PLAN… IT IS COMING…

~

I'm all sentimental....

Though our blog is in a bit of a dip as of late, I'd like to think that it has brought together some good discussion and provoked some thought, if only between its contributors. Because it's been a few months since this thing was started, I figured I'd give a little insight into the history of the blog through a primary source document. This is a rare interaction between two of the blog's forefathers that was retrieved by way of much peril and running on top of trains to escape Nazis. Enjoy....

http://www.students.niu.edu/~z043950/papers/XTECATOX.HTM

the floccinaucinihilipilification of the honorificabilitudinitatibus style of antidisestablishmentarianism

Due to Rick's postimaposmaripostulation of this issue, and Mike's comment that he believed it is very superduperultraenormouslyimportant, I suggest we open the subject to debate.

The absorbabilities of the interdigitating antidisestablishmentarianism can be directednessly projectified onto the inhomogeneability of the honorificabilitudinitatibus style itself, which is not to say it frindentesticastically prevents the existence of absolutantimanarialisticanism.

I don't have time to get into this now, but in summarizationalizement, the floccinaucinihilipilification of the honorificabilitudinitatibus style of antidisestablishmentarianism cannot be discussed without first considering said existance, and then applyificationalizing it to the remainder of the stochasticality variables. That said, I 'll leave the meat of the issue open to debate.

PS I don't have to remind you to keep the fragmentationalizationmentality of the pulsachrizaticaportancialard in mind.