Guys...if I get time today, I'll work up a thread topic to help us define and refine our notions about redistribution, as it is a very interesting subject, and a very important one I think. But I'll add a few comments here as clarification, then, so much as we can anyway, I'd like this thread to steer back to its original subject area.
perc
Tart is worth listening to, she's a smart lady. You get a lot wrong in your post to me about government and redistribution. And the main reason you do is that, as she says, you put the argument into an either/or structure, and then ladle on the cliches to both sides.
Timber made a similar sort of claim several weeks ago. He said "socialism and democracy sit in opposition to each other, they exclude each other" (not exact words, but that was the claim). Clearly, that's false, as all 'democratic' nations have some set of arrangements for taxation and/or safeguards for the less fortunate, including the US. A democracy can vote for whatever set of such arrangements its population desires. The two are not in opposition at all - except if one just flatout claims that 'socialism' means just one thing, or can appear in only one guise - total control by the state.
When I said, in answer to your question earlier, that I had never defined myself as a socialist, I meant that I have never been a socialist of the Marxist sort. Frankly, I just don't know enough about economics to properly weigh Marxist (or alternate) economic theories. But, if you want to put a label on me (and I know you do), then you might be more accurate to say I'm some version of a social democrat. Below, george brings up the Soviet experiment with socialism. We often see or hear allusions to the USSR when folks get on about this issue, and commonly the explicit or implicit notion is - 'the collapse of the USSR clearly shows that socialist ideas are now all proven wrong'. But what about China? What about Norway? Or Canada or the US for that matter?
Quote:Perhaps the trick is in determining just what is a "just distribution of wealth", and in identifying who or what will govern the "state mechanism for balancing and redistribution". The Soviet experiment with socialism yielded only more or less uniform poverty for all except the political elites, and a government apparatus with unbounded power, beyond the control of the people. The socialist expiriments in developing countries yielded only government corruption, low productivity, mismanaged resources, and poverty. I don't know of any good examples, except perhaps the Swedish model, and even they are having some difficulties with it.
george
Yes. The question 'what is JUST redistribution' is the key question. I think it is a very tough question too. But folks like Amartya Sen and John Rawls (another area where I am under-educated, but I've read some of these two) have dug in and tried to get some distance in answering it.
Because the question is so tough, we can be tempted to go with the simplistic formula of 'government must keep hands off this stuff', but that's really just a cop out (and tends to be supported by those who are already benefiting from the status quo).
Norway (or perhaps it is Finland, please correct me where I get any of this wrong) have a system where everyone pays about half of their income into the communal pot. That communal pot then allows a host of benefits and protections for the individuals in the community. The thing is, that this is the way the community members want it...they insist on such an arrangement and vote for parties and politicians who will maintain it. What they lose (stuff or services they might buy, ascention up some perceived ladder of differential success - 'I'm richer, thus better, than my neighbors') is for them less important than the benefits that accrue from security and communal identity. Arguments that they are less happy people than, say, Americans, are not supported by what research has been done on the question.
And this tells us the 'who' question you raise...'who establishes what is just?' The community itself can do that. But not if the subject is framed as Perc (he's got lots of company in this) frames it above.
I'll try to set up a thread for this that will be a bit fresh and perhaps we can have a fruitful discussion unencumbered by boxed-in ideas. I'll start with a wonderful notion from Rawls.
