Results tagged “justice” from Eccentric Eclectica

Why are libertarians so afraid of governmental interference in personal freedoms but seemingly so blase about business or management interference in worker’s liberty?

Two recent essays and posts by Timothy B. Lee and at Reason magazine reminded me of this conundrum.

It seems obvious to me that a worker surrenders plenty of freedoms as soon as he or she enters the workplace. In some cases it is a surrender of political opinions in workplaces where having a different political point of view from your boss can get you fired.

But at a most basic level it is the routine of the workplace that is a loss of freedom. How many times have you gone into a meeting with a brilliant idea and been shot down by the boss for some reason? The decision wasn’t made by you - it was made by a bureaucrat in the home office who just happens to work at the same company that you do. How is that less of an infringement on your freedom than some bureaucrat in Washington D.C. telling you to pay more taxes or requiring you to pass a background check before you can purchase a gun?

For many people working in blue-collar jobs freedom is curtailed by the schedule, which determines when you can eat, when you can rest, when you can go to the bathroom. See Robin Hanson on borg at work, but not home

Robert Charles Wilson, in his most recent novel Julian Comstock, describes a future American society in which indentured servitude has returned after economic decline. In one conversation the landed gentry describe the justness of indenture by saying that people can only own their selves if they have the right to sell themselves. If someone has the right to inherit the estate of their parents then they should also inherit the debt or indenture.

I’m just as susceptible to the siren song of freedom as the next person but I see the limits on my freedom around me all the time, not just at the state capital or in the White House. We are all subject to limits on our freedom. The problem with libertarianism is that it sees only a single obstacle to freedom - the government.

I just finished rereading A Theory of Justice by John Rawls for a philosophy reading group. One of the themes I noticed is the attempt to deal with contingency in politics.

Rawls acknowledges that everyone approaches political decisions from their own point of view, with unique biases and ideas. The original position is designed to overcome these biases by acknowledging them and then rationally agreeing to make decisions while ignoring individual personal biases. For Rawls it is possible for people to use reason to overcome their prejudices. Once those prejudices are slaked then the real work of political justice can begin by the four-stage process of building just institutions based on the two principles of justice agreed upon behind the veil of ignorance.

A few days ago James Kwak at the Baseline Scenario wrote a post on whether hard working people deserve to make more money. Kwak acknowledges that contingency is as important to financial success as hard work. Sometimes people just get lucky and get very rich as a result. Is Bill Gates really work so much harder than any other software CEO that he deserves a financial result that is orders of magnitude greater than other CEOs?

A few weeks ago I wrote a bit about the immense amount of talent that gets wasted or ignored in the world today. I claimed that the problem was based on a winner-take-all morality that has infused Western society. CEO salaries are just the most recent example. I think any argument that can be made against oversize CEO salaries can also be made against celebrity salaries in sports or entertainment.

A few days ago I came across this news item on employers squandering the talents of workers at the Work Foundation.

So far in this recession employers have been reluctant to lose the skills, talents and experience of their workforces. Yet at the same time they seem to be failing to make the most of them. Many people could be doing more, but are denied the chance to do so.

It’s nice to have some data and surveys to back up my intuition.

But it’s not just a matter of squandering talent. There’s also a matter of justice. Income disparities are not only a result of a winner-take-all society they also feedback into the system and cause further problems. Over the last 40 years the rich have gotten richer and have been on the hunt for a place to invest their money. They put it into the financial sector and that sector of the economy was overwhelmed and forced to chase after too many bad investments just to keep up. A point Helena Cobban makes at Just World News.

But the richest people and the hundreds of thousands somewhat less rich, could not invest the money themselves. They needed intermediaries, the financial sector. Overwhelmed with such an amount of funds, and short of good opportunities to invest the capital, as well as enticed by large fees attending each transaction, the financial sector became more and more reckless, basically throwing money at anyone who would take it. Eventually, as we know, the bubble exploded.

Recent research about stress and poverty reaffirms the link between opportunity and wasting talent. Money may not be the only way to intervene but it is important.

So what do we do about all this?

There are a lot of imbalances that we need to work out and they cover a lot of different scales.

1. At a world level we need to work on the distribution of resources between countries. America cannot be the consumer of last resort. Other countries need to take up the slack.
2. But replicating Western consumer culture will hurt as much as help. So at the national level we need to prioritize differently. Perhaps a consumption tax or a carbon tax will help America move forward.
3. At a community level we need to rethink work and corporations. The Work Foundation hints at this when it calls for greater flexibility for knowledge workers. Coworking could also help with this.
4. At an individual level we need to live humbly. For me this is easy, perhaps too easy, because of my family and my attitude. For now I’ll declare my solidarity with my friends over at Not An Employee

Sources for this post: Jack Vinson and Jon Husband