The cost and shame of downward mobility dramatically outmatches the potential benefit of upward mobility. If that sounds abstruse and theoretical, it shouldn’t. For example, I don’t think you can understand the United States response to the financial crisis without taking into account the genuine sympathy of policymakers and other influencers for the plight of people within their social communities who faced banishment to dramatically lower stations under theoretically superior policy alternatives. A functional polity values rising fortunes across the wealth spectrum, but it fears and resists falling fortunes much more strenuously. I would go so far as to claim this is a universal social fact, a characteristic of all polities that endure. Capitalism is always crony capitalism — and socialism tends towards crony socialism! — not because of corrupt bad actors but because human lifestyles are sticky-downward. Large social divergences can in practice be remedied smoothly only by convergence upward from the bottom. The wise course is to prevent extreme divergence from emerging in the first place. Once it has, the only way out is to hope for growth, and to direct the fruits of growth towards the bottom of the distribution.Interfluidity
Mobility is no answer to dispersion
Steve Randy Waldman
The nitty gritty of the dilemma of the conservative principle that some are better than other and meritocracy is the optimal ordering principle and the liberal principle that all are created equal and deserve equal standing involving no privilege and equal opportunity to succeed.
5 comments:
Isn't this just Rawls veil of ignorance revisited?
The problem with the veil of ignorance, Kant's categorical imperative, the Golden Rule, walking in others' shoes etc,, or noblesse oblige, is that they require abstracting from embedded difference such as class and gender, which are very difficult for most people to do if not impossible due to cognitive-affective bias and interest.
Also relates to liberalism-utilitarianism and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_paradox.
There is no satisfactory practical solution to this so far.
I don't know I use deontology, teleology and Kant's categorical imperative collectively.
Not saying they are wrong or useless, but in practice, cultural and institutional effects are deeply affected by bias and interest. Philosophy, the humanities and arts are what civilize and culture us, as well as the codes of all normative religions, but they are ideals so far.
Humanity has not lived up to its potential. such ideas were enunciated thousands of years ago by the sages of all wisdom traditions worldwide. The question is how to bring that about by raising the level of collective consciousness.
My conclusion, reached over forty years ago in my master's thesis on social change, is raising the general level of education, especially liberal education, and promulgating knowledge of the core spirituality that lies at the basis of all religions and wisdom traditions.
I have spent almost my entire adult life working on this theoretically and practically in that I see it as the bottom line for individual and social development.
For example, the categorical imperative and Golden Rule are idealizations of the reality of unconditional universal love Without development of that as a lived reality, the words are fine sounding but don't count for much in actual reality, especially where the rubber hits the road.
This is why I say that I am to the left of communism. Marx based his own ideas of personal freedom and social harmony on these ancient ideas but he mistakenly thought that the the inner life of individuals could be changed by altering external conditions. The reality is that the inner and outer stand in close relationship, in that subject and object are the opposite and complementary poles of consciousness.
Consciousness must be shifted not only from the objective outer pole but also from the inner subjective pole, and the subjective pole is the more important one in this relationship. Yet, as the ancients observed, it is difficult to be a good person in a bad society, and it is difficult to be a bad person in a good society. There is a resonance effect that links inner and outer reality as one.
The nitty gritty of the dilemma of the conservative principle that some are better than other and meritocracy is the optimal ordering principle Tom Hickey
How can one even determine merit when some, the so-called creditworthy and the banks, are allowed to steal from and oppress everyone else?
and the liberal principle that all are created equal and deserve equal standing involving no privilege and equal opportunity to succeed. Tom Hickey
Then why do liberals and Progressives support a money system that favors the rich? Why should the rich be allowed to steal the purchasing power of the poor simply because they are likely able to return that stolen purchasing power to those who stole it (plus usury, of course.
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