AES - Michael Sandel: Restributive Taxation and Progressive Taxation

Continuing from arguments of utilitarianism, Sandel moves to the antithesis in Libertarianism citing Robert Nozick (1) throughout.

The main arguments in part 1:

Libertarian Government:
No one harmed, no one's rights violated
1) No paternalistic legislation ex car seat belt
2) No morals legislation ex gay marriage
3) No redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, as this is a type of coercion which violates the fundamental Libertarian Principle of Self-Possession (2).

What does this government look like?
Can have limited govt for (per Nozick) "what everybody needs, natl defense, police, judicial to enforce contracts + prop rights, but that's it"

Self Possession chain of reasoning to slavery
Nozick's argument against taxation: "taking of earnings" any form of taxation essentially forced labor = slavery principle of self-possession therefore utilitarianism is false ipso facto.

part 2

Objections to Libertarianism

1) The poor need the money more

2) Taxation by consent of the governed is NOT coerced

3) The successful owe a debt to society

4) Luck is involved in success

The exotic-looking girl puts it well, "... because I live in a society I cannot [kill another as this would be a logic end of self-possession]... it's self possession to an extent because I have to take into account I live in a society and there are people around me."

Sandel obviously himself, while attempting to remain impartial, is for this kind of re-distributive taxation or at least against Libertarianism.

When listening to the arguments and assumptions for Libertarianism, I find the idea to be just as fantastical as socialism yet more appealing to the average idiot because it has a subtext of anti-government, anti-establishment and appeal to selfishness which in my experience works very well on the average person. It's difficult to make a set of two or three assumptions by which man is supposed to live and then have a society expand on those assumptions, but in this case clearly the assumption of self-possession as an absolutism is absurd. And I'm not sure if I'm mis-understanding it, but it would seem to treat commerce itself as something different than I see it. Let's not romanticize the average person; while certain rights should necessarily be maintained, no one in a stable state of mind would think that the lone ant is not part of a larger community in the ant colony and as unpalatable as it is to say, we are all slaves to that community to some extent but hopefully we benefit more than we lose by being a part of it.

1) Nozick wiki access 5/19/11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nozick

2) Self-ownership access 5/20/11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ownership

Podcast Review: Wall Street Journal This Morning

Title
Wall Street Journal This Morning

Publisher

wsj.com

Host

Gordon Deal

Publication Information
Daily Podcast 6x per week (not Sundays)

~35 minutes in length

Reason for Listening
I've started listening to podcasts regularly again since I have a home computer instead of using my work computer. Driving to Lansing for my internship on a daily basis, I'm getting plenty of opportunities to listen to a bunch of them, so I'm trying to get a good assortment of news. This seemed an obvious choice to try as I hoped it would give me a decent summary of business news.

Review

Overall I've been pretty disappointed with almost every aspect of this podcast. The presentation is much like any general morning show on a regular music radio station. The host Gordon Deal makes frequent stupid jokes and the topics covered vary from legitimate important news to total fluff (in my opinion). Granted, a lot of the fluff is stuff that's also covered on other news channels, but it seems like they stay on them longer than others.

Overall Opinion

Like I said, I haven't been very impressed with this podcast. I'll keep trying it for another week or two just to give it an honest shot. But if I find another source that's also good, I may replace it sooner.

Justice with Michael Sandel: How much is a life worth?

In this week’s lecture Michael Sandel asks the broad question to what extent is Bentham’s utilitarianism a good way for a society or an individual or a company to make decisions. The tool he uses is “cost-analysis”, or the process of weighing the benefits against the detriments for decision making. The cost-analysis for a company is primarily financial while the cost-analysis for an individual is weighing what action will deliver the greater pleasure. Here, Sandel asks the audience to consider what is most pleasurable; for instance, the instant gratification of a low-brow comedy, or the thought-provoking words of Shakespeare. He then suggests that education is essential to cultivating the higher human faculties which make such a distinction possible. In the end, the “cost of a life” remains unsettled.

To open the discussion I will pose the question, “what is a life worth” to this audience. Who has the right to decide what a life should be a worth (i.e., a company, a government)? What factors should be considered for putting a price on life: how much the person contributed or has left to contribute to society, how many dependents does this person have, how rich or poor is this person, is this person’s life at risk due to personal choices or circumstances outside his/her control?

I’m interested to hear a doctor/future doctor’s take on this, as it seems highly likely similar decisions are made daily in hospitals across the world.

Justice with Michael Sandel: The Morality of Murder

For reference - a link to to lecture and associated readings:
The Morality of Murder and Cannibalism

I'm not entirely sure how we should arrange these discussions, but I suspect as we go on, we'll come to some normal format for the initial posts, much like our book reviews. For now I'll just start by formulating my thoughts/responses to the lecture and readings. Feel free to respond to anything you think worth discussing or bringing up any other points you think are worthy of discussion.

In regards to the lecture, I guess I had a few main thoughts. First among these is that the initial scenario suggested is extremely simplistic. In terms of making a point or starting a discussion, I consider that a perfectly valid method. However, where I think it becomes problematic is in the transition to asking what is the right thing to do. Framing the initial problem as a simple scenario and asking what's right or wrong implies a simple answer. I don't think that's necessarily the case. An example of this is shown shortly thereafter in the second scenario Dr. Sandel presents. The question is asked, are the men in the lifeboat guilty of murder, and people are supposed to answer whether they consider these men guilty of murder or not, essentially as if they were on the jury for them. I'm having a difficult time articulating what I want to say, so I'll just roll with it as is. The thought I had while listening to that discussion is that I consider there to be a difference between saying what is the right and wrong thing to do, and convicting another person of commiting the wrong thing to do. In the situation described, I don't think it was necessarily right to kill the weakest member. However, I don't think I could convict another person to murder for that act. I think that's a moment of extreme duress of which no member of the jury could have the faintest knowledge unless they'd been in one just like it themselves. In that regard, was any member of the jury truly one of the defendant's peers? To me the scenario and consequential trial are much more complicated than the initial discussion point.

Another thought I had was that in all the discussions, the audience was essentially considered to be an observer rather than an active participant. No consideration was given in the train scenario with the fat man over the bridge that the person making the decision jump in front of the train themselves. But going back to the train scenario, I think the manner in which the questions were framed make it a little difficult. For the changing tracks part of the question, why is it framed as murdering the one at all? Essentially the person is faced with the choice of one dies or five die. Given the circumstances, it seems to me that turning toward the one is more a matter of minimizing an accident than it is killing one to save five. Whether or not that is just semantics, I can't really say.

Going on to the Bentham reading on utility, I thought the argument presented was also a little simplistic. It kind of needs to be, but at the same time, to categorize things into either pain or pleasure, along with a scale of how much they provide doesn't seem like an easy thing to do, along with who determines these things if making community level actions. The way the paper is written, it seems there is no value in pain, and always value in pleasure. Similarly, evil is framed as in the manner that it produces pain so it is to be avoided, but no consideration is given to the pleasure one might enjoy in certain kinds of evil.

Also, is utilitarianism then an argument against minority rights within a democracy? Hypothetically if five can gain at the expense of three, is that the just thing to do?

Sorry this post isn't very well organized, but I still had a busy week last week even after I was done with finals, and didn't want to delay any further in getting this initial post up.