Andy
Supreme High Commander
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2009
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- 1,211
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- INTJ
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- 5w6
Questions such as this one are salient in any society most of the time but the fact that they were more salient in the past in some nations and only in others presently is key.
Smith's Wealth of Nations, other literary economic works like it were all part of a discourse and discussion about how to work all this out.
Smith's basic idea was that it was not a question of distribution but of production, max out production and even the least will have enough, when the least has enough who cares what the uber-rich have right? So goes the idea. Rawls et al only produced a variation on this theme, comparing an unequal and egalitarian society they concluded that if the least well off in an unequal society were doing better than the least well off in an egalitarian one then the unequal society is the better one.
However, Smith's ideas have got to fall down in an era when maxing out production is unstainable and no solution. I think he was a humanist and was sincere and was trying to devise a way in which people could be helped without disturbing property rights and interests, not because he didnt care to but because his whole idea is about how to harness the selfish, not because it is a virtue, but because it is a fact for the common good. Its a kind of social alchemy which is at work.
Smith did say that any nation in which the greater part were in want could not be said to be prospering, that and a lot of other lines from his works read like a lot of other political-literary books but socialist, communist and utopian ones, even some of the conservatives got in on the act.
I tend to think if people had full possession of the information they may feel differently about the distributive idea, the true nature of inequality and plutonomy pretty much escapes people. They dont like the idea of redistribution because to date it has been pretty much horizontal, the least pay for other parts of the least, the really, really uber rich are not disturbed in the least by taxation or redistribution because like povery its something that happens to other people.
The idea of maximising production rather reminds me of how in the modern age we are so concerned with economic growth. We need it to pay the national debt, because we keep taking out more and more of it. It's insane when you think about it. If you heard someone living of loans and credit assuring their friends everything was ok so long as they continued to get a pay rise every year you'd think they were dumb, to put it mildly. Yet that is fundamentally how we run our economy. It's no wonder we have huge recessions every so often.
The other problem with the idea of maximising production is that our ideas of wealth and poverty are relative. Compared to the 19th century, most of us in the western world live like lords, with hot water on demand and electric lighting. The more we can produe, the more we consume, and the more we expect to be able to consume.
It's like the old predictions that one day we'd only have to work two or three days a week. I suspect that if we kept modern production methods, but were prepared to live like the victorians any way, that level of reduced labour would be enough to meet our needs. Yet here we are, manufacuring god knows how many times more than Adam Smith ever dreams of, and still the homeless are on the streets because those with the ability to take feel entitled to take so much more. And those that don't have the ability to take find themselves scratching at the leftovers, which have increased only a little.