Think you’re liberal?
Try this.
On one side of a city there are people so wealthy that after big parties, they are throwing out meat. On the other side there are people so poor, they cannot afford to buy meat.
Is this a moral problem?
–This question is a litmus test. It is attributed to John Rawls, liberal theorist from the 1970s. Free market and laissez faire conservatives see no problem – they think it’s “in the nature of things” that some people have more than they know what to do with, while others live with scarcity. For them, the inequality is simply not an issue.
Next, there are people who say it’s a technical problem of not enough food being grown to keep everybody in abundance, not a moral problem.
But liberals see it differently. Liberals feel there is something wrong with a system (city, nation) which in total, contains enough food for everybody, but not everyone is able to get it. The situation is unjust.
Liberalism – the left – rests on moral judgments. A prime moral is justice.
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Ayn Rand is not a good example of the Right. She is indeed wrong.
Waste is offensive, as is want. Both can be satisfied by de-regulation. Allow the rich to pay the poor. Do not allow Big Govt. to interfere.
Comment by Jack | June 12, 2008
I live in a mid size town in west central Texas. The local economy is fairly strong and although I have seen it better, there is a shortage of workers. You can find help wanted signs everywhere. A customer of mine upon trying to open a new frozen yogurt place was stunned to have so much trouble hiring help. It is said here that everyone who wants a job has a job. Yet there is no shortage of people lined up at free food kitchens, and the like.
I believe it is immoral for you or anyone else to require via law that I be held responsible for the feeding of an individual who refuses to even try to help themselves. The churches in town are doing a a great job. It is not the governments job.
Any good parent will eventually tell their child about the many injustices in life, saying “Life is not always fair honey.”
There can be no real justice for the husband who loses his beloved wife in a natural disaster does that make the storm or earthquake immoral?
Comment by tim | June 12, 2008
Whether it is immoral or not to throw away property while people nearby may need or want it is a valid question – but an equally valid question is – what do you propose to do to people who dispose of their property in ways of which you do not approve? Will you shoot them? Rob them? How are these immoral actions any better?
Comment by David Taylor | June 13, 2008
not to nit-pick here but it seems like if you were really left you wouldn’t hang your hat over the flow of meat in a society. if people weren’t hungry but meat was a luxury, i’d be able to sleep at night.
also, i don’t really understand the point of your blog. are you lamenting progressivism, or the (alleged) death of progressivism? are you trying to say that because people aren’t as progressive as they used to be, they should be conservative? are you trying to convince people they don’t really feel how they feel? seems like it.
i linked here from your google ad, and i have to tell you – i’m just not seeing it.
Comment by David | June 13, 2008
You should not first ask why they are throwing out their food. Such a question allows for circular logic. Instead, ask: why are those morons buying food they are not using?
Unless I’m missing something, it seems that the system is Pareto inefficient. In a free market, such a situation is unrealistic. And if you don’t understand why, you should learn some economics.
And then maybe this blog will be worth reading. But for now, I’d rather stick to blogs like Krugman’s. Thanks anyway.
Comment by Daniel Reeves | June 13, 2008
Also, I’m not being fair; I should define my terms and explain everything with as little jargon as possible:
A Pareto inefficient distribution of a good is one where that good can be redistributed without any individuals being worse off, or seeing a drop in their total satisfaction, yet some people will still gain from having more of that good.
(A Pareto efficient distribution should not be confused with a fair distribution. If you gain ever-so-marginally per added unit of a good, then the good is Pareto efficient. For example, if receive one bagel even though I have 30,000 bagels at home, but I am gaining +0.00001 unit of happiness, then the distribution is still Pareto efficient.)
The reason why Pareto inefficient distributions seldom happen in the free market is because people almost never consume goods that have a higher cost than benefit.
Anyway, you didn’t define how much food was being thrown out. If we assume that it’s a substantial amount, then it’s an anomaly.
If it’s only a little… like maybe 2/3’s of a steak and some spinach, then that’s expectable. First of all, having more food than one “requires” for actual eating is a signal for people to eat more food. Due to benevolence (yes, the rich have it, too), people may consume less if they see less being served. So if you know beforehand that the party host was buying 100 units of meat, and only 90 would be consumed, taking 10 beforehand would not necessarily mean that he’d have 0 units being thrown into the trash. 88 units may be consumed because the excess food encouraged people to consume more, so he’d have 2 units being thrown out.
Comment by Daniel Reeves | June 13, 2008
It’s an artificial and unrealistic example, but still deserves an answer. It is a moral problem of the individuals that they are wasting the food. However, I don’t think that anyone has the right to eat meat, in the first place.So it’s definitely not a matter of justice. Giving meat to poor is not a matter of justice but a matter of charity.
Also, one more remark/question: How does “Liberalism – the left” define morality? Where is it anchored?
Comment by Martin | June 13, 2008
I agree with Martin the most. Giving meat to the poor is not justice, it’s charity.
I think both the rich people throwing out the meat and the people who cannot acquire meat on their own are equally stupid.
If I lived in the poor side of that hypothetical town, and I knew what the rich people were doing, I’d approach them and if I can’t appeal to their hearts, I’d try and appeal to their wallets by offering to buy their unused meat at a price I could afford.
Buying more resources (in this case, food) than is needed just because you can do so is a show of affluence which the rich are flaunting to their friends. But in reality, they did not become rich by wasting money, and would most likely accept my offer to buy meat they plan to throw away anyhow.
If anything, I’d probably try to get the lowest price for the rich peoples’ meat, transport it back to my side of town and sell whatever meat I did not plan to consume for a bit more than what I paid for it, make myself wealthier and save up for a deposit for a nice apartment in rich side of town.
Comment by I'm Not The Only One | June 13, 2008
All this talk about meat is ludicris.. If I was poor and wanted some meat, I would go hunt for it out in the woods like all humans used to do. We haven’t always lived in a society like today. Humans used to be hunters and gathers and some still are. My fathers family lived off of the land and used lard all of their lives and most of those people are 100 yrs old now. Any stinking meat you get now is pretty tainted with all kinds of man made toxins unless you get organic or grow your own. Any liberal ideals of leveling the playing field is socialism. America was created to get away from that. That’s why the Constitution is written the way it is.
Comment by George | June 15, 2008
David Taylor’s response is the best so far.
By basing your mindset on what you believe to be a commonly held morality, you are justifying the next necessary steps to correcting the situation, which is threatening the use of force against those on the rich side of town in an attempt to right the perceived wrong.
So here’s another moral question for you: Is it more wrong when people throw away their own property, or when others send men with guns to prevent it?
Comment by Scot MacTaggart | June 16, 2008
Re: I’m not the only one
One of my best friends sometimes has trouble feeding himself. He’s 19 years old with a one year old kid.
His poverty is not his fault. He grew up with an absent father and a mother who was rarely lucid. He lived in a gang-infested neighborhood, got shot at, got beat up in school (and returned the favor). He suffers from ADD and dropped out of highschool after two years with two credits. He has been a victim of apparent police racial profiling.
He is perhaps the most outstanding person that I know (and I know MacArthur Fellows and Nobel Laureates among others).
He is poor, and I feel strongly that society owes him what’s he requires to live. And so the government steps in, to coordinate an action that would be competitively unfeasible if individuals were acting autonomously. You can rail against big government all you want, but to do so requires that you posit that people and society are good enough to effect the appropriate action without governmental guidance. I agree with the above statement, but as I see it, the way that people and society effect said action is by creating governments. And governments are (OF COURSE) imperfect. But they are necessary to promote the public welfare in economic situations requiring coordinated sacrifices for a common good.
I don’t see government as an external force to which the people must bow down. I see it as an entity created by the people as a tool to accomplish complicated tasks and as a steward for the commons.
Comment by Anonymous | June 16, 2008
The problem is not in throwing out the extra meat.
The moral problem in the inequity of some people having more food than they know what to do with, while others don’t have enough.
In fact, this society has more than enough food for everybody. (So much that America is the biggest food-exporting nation.) Yet as the Department of Agriculture admits, many Americans are going hungry.
Equity is violated.
Justice is equity (fairness), so the situation is unjust.
Comment by leftblog | June 17, 2008
The people without enough money to buy meat have a problem.
You don’t make this problem go away by using economics jargon.
No amount of talk of marginal utilities, Pareto inefficiency, or a strong economy makes the hungry people less hungry.
To propose that an economics analysis makes the problem go away
is to trivialize human suffering.
Comment by leftblog | June 17, 2008
This makes me want to puke.
Comment by Anonymous | June 17, 2008
Wow. I can’t believe some of the comments on here. Sure, if you want to take the proposition offered in the scenario out of context, we can say all sorts of things. But people DO throw out their meat, while others go without. It’s not an unrealistic situation.
I think some of the comments are just trying to make it a different issue, or justify it somehow, so no one will feel guilty.
You could change it to “gas” if you wanted. The wealthy people “waste” gas by driving gas-guzzling vehicles that are in excess of their transportation needs, while the poor people can’t afford gas at all, and have to rely on public transit.
Both the original post and my version are definitely immoral.
I have heard a lot of references to people being “dumb”, but as far as I’m concerned, even the “dumb” people in society deserve a high standard of living just as much as anyone else. We could just throw all our mentally handicapped into a big oven, and not have to feed them at all! But that would definitely be immoral. The scenario proposed in the blog is only a few steps removed from that. (Not feeding someone sufficiently isn’t too far removed from murder — even criminals in the prison system eat better than many of the poor in this country.)
Comment by josh | June 17, 2008
Ah yes, the Liberals FEEL.
I think non-liberals THINK.
Big difference. You cannot FEEL your way out of problems.
Comment by Anonymous | June 17, 2008
This blog s-peaks of morality, how is it moral to utilize numbers to oppress those who worked hard to get what they deserve. Morality in your judgement relies on a redistribution of wealth. True morality relies on working hard to earn your own keep, then helping others.
Also just a little piece of knowledge for you about the food thing. We gave our farms over to the liberals recently. What did they do, they forced the farms to grow corn to be burned as fuel rather then feed the hungry, they choose to put a necessity into their special biofuel cars that could be alleviating hunger in the US and the world. We cant trust liberals to feed the world.
Also remember, liberals like government regulation because they are too apathetic and lack the skills to compete in a free market. So they twist the rulesa to benefit them.
If I were you I would go back and read the constitution and the federalist papers and remember that there is a clear protection from a tyrannical majority. From the sound of your post, you seem opposed to that. If you had a heart and morals, you would protect those rights and not vote to have the government use the redistribution of wealth as legalized theft.
Comment by Jake Gunter | June 17, 2008
Leftblog, you say justice is based on equity and fairness. your interpretation is that we should all get the same stuff (communism). I would interpret equity as the equality of opportunity to make something of yourself, and fairness as earning your own keep, not twisting the rules to jack someone elses food.
Comment by Jake Gunter | June 17, 2008
Jake, I don’t know where you get the stuff you say I said.
I’m talking about an injustice; you say I said we should all get the same stuff? I didn’t say that.
I’m talking about people not getting enough food; you’re saying that the people with the morality are a tyrannical majority?
Censuses show the poorest people in America are three groups: Appalachian whites, migrant workers, and inner city blacks.
Here’s a fact. Somewhere around 20%of American children live in poverty. Some of those kids live in families who are actually going hungry.
As I understand it, you don’t want to do anything about that, because it would “oppress” people?
You want charity to be the fix? Charity obviously doesn’t cut it.
If charity worked, there would be no hungry and no homeless people.
Doesn’t look like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is working, either. Otherwise everybody would be raised. Which is far from what we got.
Comment by leftblog | June 17, 2008
Economically successful (meaty) people pay most of the federal tax bill (top 5% bracket pays over half of it). Thankfully they were productive enough to be able to fund most of the goverment which can in turn help the meatless people. Nobody wants to see anybody go hungry while they struggle with things.
The left likes promoting all this victimhood mentality and class warfare stuff that doesn’t do anybody any good. It must get depressing to look at everything so negatively. We live in a great country full of challenges and opportunity. Cheer up. Your life doesn’t have to suck.
Comment by geraldo | June 19, 2008
The REAL problem here is that you see a wealthy person and a poor person and you decide that the wealthy person should give more to the poor person and then you choose to force the wealthy person to do what you think is right. If you truly believe this is the right thing to do, then give me your bank account number immediately – I think you should be helping me pay off my mortgage right now – after all, I think I know better what you should be doing with your money, right?
Forcing people to “share” is called “stealing” and it only increases the greed, resentment, and laziness of the people involved. If you think this is how it should be, you’re in the wrong country. do a Google search for:
David Crockett not yours to give
and read one of the copies of the story that comes up. Charity should be voluntary and done out of love, not forced through government. Forcing other people to do what you think is right is immoral and doesn’t work in the long run. In addition to the act itself being immoral, it also gives politicians one more way to buy votes by promising people other people’s money.
Comment by Anonymous | June 19, 2008
You will find my opinions and held premises in the post below. I have not audited them, and cannot claim that they will hold up in a protracted debate. But I hold them now, so I might as well put them forward.
First, some semantics about my response: I wouldn’t style the entire paragraph as a moral problem. I would, however, style the second sentence as a moral problem, when viewed in the context of the first. Quality of life – which seems to me the most important thing from a moral perspective – is diminished, when it might be less diminished if people knew what they could do.
Which brings me to my comment for those who mention the free market: in theory, you are correct. However, the theoretical free market includes perfect information as one of its premises. A free market with perfect information would solve the problem immediately – the rich man knows where he can make a few cents, and the poor man knows where he can get meat for a few cents. But perfect information isn’t arriving any time soon. Thus, excess. Thus, waste. Hence, starvation.
However, I feel I must answer in the other direction for those who bring up enforcement (e.g. David): I do not claim that I have any right to force another man to right a wrong. I would not force the rich man to donate his leftovers to the poor. I cannot do that. That said, I refuse to throw up my hands and declare the problem intractable. I still have my mouth to argue to him that he ought to right the wrong, and tenacious argument goes a long way.
I still hold to my naivete in believing that evil people are rare. And rare or not, good people only do wrongness because they are either unaware of the wrongness, or because they are unaware of a less-wrong thing. The moral problem can be solved by moral action of those who don’t know what they could be doing with their surplus. At least, I hope it can, because what else can we do about it? :/
Comment by Christopher | June 20, 2008
Your definition of morality is skewed. While nobody will argue that it is moral to feed the poor, clothe them, shelter them, etc., I am instead arguing the means by which you seem to believe in. The response that your beloved party has used to deal with the problem is throwing money at the problem and hoping it goes away. The poor should only be provided for if they are doing something to pay into the system that they benefit from. Unemployed alcoholics should not get welfare checks to continue to fund their problems. People who are not working should not get assistance unless they are Literally physically inept.
We should instead follow the old proverb.
“If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, if you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.”
Rather then feeding our country, we should focus on teaching the citizens to feed themselves.
What we need is a program that combines public service and private enterprise. Make areas that those who need assistance are allowed to go to. In those areas, there are job training programs co-sponsered by public support, and private business. If a widget factor is built in anytown USA, and they have poverty issues, and a need for employees, the impovershed people can go to these camps. As they train under the publi/private system, they will be taken care of. Shelter, food, water, clothes, etc. will be provided as temporary compesation for their work. After they have trained, they will be given a categorical grant to move to an area where they can use their new skills as a means to get on their own feet. THe public benefits because of less poverty and more revenue, and the private sector gets well-trained employees. This is an example of how free-market systems can combine with government and deal with these issues.
When I speak of a tyrannical majority, I speak of their means, not their ends. THe ends should always be self-improvement, and the improvement of those around you. THe issue is that the current system allows the poor to vote for the candidate that promises them the most public funds, which 50% comes frolm the top 5% of the wealth-owners in the US. It is a tyrannical means, though a noble end. In this case, the ends do not justify the means of trampling on the ideals that this nation was fostered upon.
On your next point, I dont have a problem with anti-poverty programs, I just have a problem with the current system. Nobody can say that the current system is effective, it just isnt. THe stats you showed are proof enough that things are bad from the relativity of the US.
You say charity doesnt take care of it. the average homeless shelter in the US and the average souphouse in the US only uses about 90% of its possible resourses. One of the problems is that many choose not to go to these places since they require people to be sober. Though it sounds like a dumb stereotype, its a real issue that we have to acknowledge. 20% of us children in poverty is an issue. But as I said earlier, simply throwing money at the problem doesnt work. The current system that liberals have so much faith in is one that tries to cure the symptoms, not the disease. It offers hand-outs, not leg-ups. A healthier aid system would lower that rate.
On a final note. The poor in America live like the rich in the majority of other countries. While we should always look to improving our standards, we need to look at how good our nation has it. Rather then say we have a 5% unemployment rate, look at it as a 95% employment rate. while we must look at both sides, the pessimistic one is the one most often viewed. there is nothing wrong with pride in ones nation.
Adam smiths invisible hand…
Granted, the rich poor gap is growing. People are getting smaller pieces of the pie, but the pie is growing faster then the proportions are shrinking. There is an invisible hand. More people have more things and better lives in America then every before. Everyone is getting more regardless of wealth proportions.
Democrats think our economy needs to be controlled.
Republicans think our society needs to be controlled.
Myself, a libertarian, I beg to differ. America needs to be unleashed.
Comment by Jake Gunter | June 21, 2008
Jesus. I’m dumbfounded by how many people didn’t get that the moral problem the author was highlighting is structural inequality, not whether people should be able to throw away food or not!
“This blog s-peaks of morality, how is it moral to utilize numbers to oppress those who worked hard to get what they deserve. Morality in your judgement relies on a redistribution of wealth. True morality relies on working hard to earn your own keep, then helping others.”
How Orwellian. Define oppression and exploitation as their opposite, make the rich look like the victims! Exploitative Keynsean economists are out to get you. Donald Trump, take your family and run through the woods, like fugitive slaves with frothing dogs at your heels! It’s an American tragedy.
Look, inequality is a structural implication of capitalism as such. There’s no way around it. It’s not about who works harder. The hardest workers I know are some of the poorest people I know; they slave away at minimum wage jobs, in meat-packing plants and the like. The wealthier professionals and intellectus do what amounts to clerical and administrative work (difficult in certain respects, but not even in the same league of “hard work” that you see in a meat-packing plant).
And this is just assuming a contradiction between classes; the picture becomes even more complicated when we figure in other forms of oppression. I work fairly hard. But how much harder would I have to work if I were not a white male born into a middle class family that has a successful business and is influential in the community? Do I deserve what I have? That’s a question we’ll leave up to Allah, the Mother Goddess, Brahman, whoever. But the fact is that the race itself is not fair. I have many advantages that I did not earn (skin color, reproductive organs that hang outside my body etc.), and this has helped me all along the way, and will continue to help me till the day that I die, probably. You right-wingers like to talk about invisible hands that supposedly guide capitalist markets. But I’ll tell you about another invisible hand. When I apply to a university, for job, a place on the board of an activist organization (even there!), take out a loan or try to rent an apartment, there are invisible hands pulling me up because I am white, middle class and male. Someone who works just as hard, or even harder, but who happens to be black, female and poor, would encounter those same invisible hands. But in her case, they would be pushing her back for ever step she takes forward. It’s like I’ve been given a rocket pack and other people have been given a ball and chain.
There is NO way to deny this.
No moralistic admonitions about hard work are going to change these facts.
“The poor in America live like the rich in the majority of other countries.”
This is only because we live in a world SYSTEM, meaning that our country is relatively well-off because of the immiseration of people on the periphery, the so-called Third World. I don’t think that this will last forever. Neoliberal globalization is resulting in an increasing race to the bottom. Workers here, who have had it relatively well thanks to the gains of the labor movement and post-war economic stability, are being pitted against workers in the poorest countries in the world. If we demand a living wage and the most basic benefits, companies can just outsource. Free trade and deregulation have one goal: “Thirdworldization” of the whole planet. Think about what the Third World looks like. Generally, you have a massive poor population and a small, super-rich elite. If current trends in the developed countries coninue, that’s what we’ll have. Profits in the U.S. are going up all the time, real wages (i.e. adjusted for inflation) steadily go down. Our credit/debt economy has helped keep the reality of the situation a secret, like heavy foundation obscuring an ugly face. But with the current recession, all that seems to be falling away like so much detritus.
Obviously, I’m far, far left of liberal, but I’m in general agreement with the author’s original post.
Comment by Gregory | June 21, 2008
Yes, It sure does suck that if you don’t produce, you don’t eat.
How many people “not eating” own a car? Carry a cell phone? Own a house?
How many households in the bottom quintile are supporting a family? How many of them have no savings? What is the average number of hours spent working in the bottom quintile? (10hrs week) Why is it so low? Did these people make bad choices (addicted to drugs, don’t show up to work, dropped out of high school) or are they down on their luck? Is the little Red hen an immoral story? Are ethics intened for Kindergarten still applicable to a society of adults?
Ever try to answer these questions? Of course not. Self-righteous Moralizaing is always preferable and glamorous than actually knowing any facts.
Comment by Weisshaupt | June 22, 2008
amen Jack. the classical liberal or libertarian could certainly see a moral injustice in this situation. The difference between the classical liberal and the modern liberal is that the modern liberal wants to use coersion with the guns of big government to redistribute wealth. To the extreme, this results in a system of socialism, which is unsustainable economically. The classical liberal knows that a limited government limits the power and influence of big corporations, thereby giving the poor a better chance of upward economic mobility.
Comment by Mike | June 24, 2008
Jack: Waste is offensive, as is want. But how does deregulation “allow” the rich to pay the poor? When has government ever said “you are rich, and you are paying that poor man too much?” Big or small, our government has never said that… what is has said is “You are not paying that poor man enough.” That is called regulation, and without it you’d probably be the poor man.
Comment by Joe | June 25, 2008
There could be another problem causing the inequality: Liberal policies like minimum wage, high taxes, regulation of the economy, exclude many of the poorest from participating in the market as fully as they could, so they are unable to earn the money to buy meat. This is, indeed, a moral problem. Those who seem to want the most to help the poor actually cause more problems for them. To understand why, read Henry Hazlitt’s “Economic in One Lesson”. You are never going to have equality, but it doesn’t have to be as bad as government intervention makes it.
Comment by SaulOhio | June 26, 2008