September 6, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:In which I fall through the looking glass
Chris Dillow responds to my earlier post pointing out that natural endowments are not, in fact, fairly distributed thusly:
I think we're at cross purposes here. My point was that nature follows a fair(ish) process. It doesn't, for example, give people great talent simply because they are born into a rich family - more often, the opposite, in my experience.I was merely echoing a point that libertarians should accept - justice is an attribute of processes, not outcomes. If you draw low natural endowments, you've suffered bad luck, but no injustice.
As for whether natural endowments cluster, they don't do so often enough to worry my egalitarian instincts - correlations aren't that high. To adapt your analogy, the world's best tennis player, Roger Federer has a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle (as we say in England).
That said, there of course many people who are short, ugly and stupid - they become politicians.
I am genuinely surprised, not to say stonkered. I cannot in any way fathom how anyone could claim that beauty is more fairly distributed than wealth.
For one thing, beauty is at least somewhat correlated with wealth; poor mothers are much more likely to smoke and drink during their pregnancies, and their offspring are more likely to be obese and less likely to enjoy the benefits of orthodonture.
But beyond this, surely we can concede that at least some of the people who are wealthy deserve it, and none of them got their taxable earnings through robbing banks. A small fraction of them may have gotten their wealth in truly unsavoury ways, but surely that is not an argument for taxing all wealth, but an argument for more vigorous legal safeguards against their behaviour. Contra the belief I have encountered among my commenters, most rich people did not inherit most of their wealth, and most of their income comes from wages rather than capital. Some of my interlocutors seem to be working off an income distribution model they clipped out of the 1928 Catholic Worker.
No one on the other hand, has earned their beauty. (Though perhaps the women getting chemical peels down at Elizabeth Arden would disagree.) At the very worst, we can construct a moral universe in which wealth is entirely unearned, and therefore just as bad as beauty; I cannot fathom how we could say it is worse.
I find this all so strange because the inequality of birth endowments worries me, the heartless libertarian, but now they seem to be saying that it doesn't concern them at all. I mean, I have spent many an unhappy hour contemplating the possibility that the meritocracy, and women's liberation, and widespread wealth, is resulting in an increasing concentration of endowments at the top of the pyramid--and that such a system is self-legitimating, to the elite, in a way that the old aristocracy of birth never was. I assumed that everyone was concerned about these sort of non-monetary unfairnesses, but apparently many liberals are fine with unequal natural endowments, provided only that they are not sullied by pictures of Ben Franklin.
Posted by Jane Galt at September 6, 2006 7:22 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>No one on the other hand, has earned their beauty. The governor of the great state of California might disagree.
I think it's important to the left that endowments not cluster; if even a fraction of the propensity of one gender to enter the professoriate, or of one ethnic group to enter prison, is something heritable, then not everything is the fault of the white patriarchy, and then where are we? Better to believe that every human trait has no connection whatsoever to every other human trait.
Posted by: bgates on September 6, 2006 8:09 PMThe relationship between wealth and beauty is a pretty interesting one. Back when being fat was associated with wealth, a plumper figure was considered more attractive. Now that being thin is associated with leisure time to work at the gym and healthier foods, 'you can never be too fat or too thin.'
In light of this, I think that some people on the left are worried about beauty being a signifier for wealth. Alternately, they explicitly reject a certain body image as ideal through body modifications, etc.
I don't much care if differences in natural endowments lead to some people receiving much more from society because they contribute much more to society. I care about inequality resulting from people receiving more from society than they contribute because they have gamed the system in some way.
I have no problem with a beautiful woman being richly rewarded as a model or a movie star. On the other hand I do have a problem if a beautiful woman gets away with some crime because juries don't like to convict beautiful women.
I have no problem with a rich kid using family money to start a successful business and becoming even richer. I do have a problem with a rich kid bribing judges.
I have no problem with high IQ people being rewarded for using their intelligence for the benefit of society. I do have a problem with high IQ people rigging the system to obtain rewards disproportionate to their contributions.
Posted by: James B. Shearer on September 6, 2006 8:40 PMI assumed that everyone was concerned about these sort of non-monetary unfairnesses, but apparently many liberals are fine with unequal natural endowments, provided only that they are not sullied by pictures of Ben Franklin.
That's exactly right. They don't care about unequal natural endowments generally. In theory, any natural endowment can be taken away by the state. But wealth, either because one's parents already have money or because one has a superior talent for making money, is the only endowment that can be taken away by the state and also given to another.
Posted by: AT on September 6, 2006 8:47 PM"No one on the other hand, has earned their beauty."
" I assumed that everyone was concerned about these sort of non-monetary unfairnesses, but apparently many liberals are fine with unequal natural endowments, provided only that they are not sullied by pictures of Ben Franklin."
The problem is that the first statement is not true. Most people do, in fact, earn their beauty and it takes a fair amount of money to do it. You slightly mock the chemical peels at Elizabeth Arden, but in a larger sense, most people pay for their beauty. If beauty correlates with wealth, it is because of the wealth, not the natural endowment.
I think most people are fine with the distribution of "non-monetary unfairnesses" and don't think it unfair that they can't play cello like YoYo Ma, sing like Steisand or look like Heidi Klum. To the extent people are concerned, it is that the attributes for success are concentrating at the top of the pyramid, but it is due to wealth, not to natural endowments. Surely the greatest predictor of a baby's future prospects is the wealth of its parents. While true that most rich people didn't inherit the largest part of their wealth, they were born into their parent's wealth, which was able to make investments in their health, diet, appearance and education that are direct contributors to success. I'm not sure that this is more of a phenomenon today than at other points in history, so I'm not quite sure what all the angst is about.
I think most people are fine with the distribution of "non-monetary unfairnesses" and don't think it unfair that they can't play cello like YoYo Ma, sing like Steisand or look like Heidi Klum.
I think most people do think it's unfair, but they may not worry about it too much because there's nothing they can do about it. But money is fungible.
Posted by: AT on September 6, 2006 8:57 PM"Surely the greatest predictor of a baby's future prospects is the wealth of its parents."
I believe that this is false. Unless I am remembering the wrong studies, in the USA a child with low iq and rich parents is much more likely to end up poor than a poor child with high iq.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were related effects for great beauty or great athletic ability.
Posted by: ghost on September 6, 2006 9:22 PMI think this is pretty bad
Pakistan: We Will Capture Bin Laden If He's Found
Posted by: wef on September 6, 2006 9:44 PM"Surely the greatest predictor of a baby's future prospects is the wealth of its parents."
As a previous poster mentioned, IQ has a much stronger correlation than parental wealth. Moreover, the relationship between parental wealth and wealth goes away once IQ is controlled for. Also, from studying the data of adopted children (and the older twin studies), we know that the correlation between parental wealth and wealth is nearly zero if the child is randomized.
Posted by: dan on September 6, 2006 10:26 PMEvidence anyone?
Kanazawa and Kovar, "Why beautiful people are more intelligent"
www.lse.ac.uk/collections/methodologyInstitute/pdf/SKanazawa/I2004.pdf
Posted by: Will Wilkinson on September 6, 2006 10:35 PM"I find this all so strange because the inequality of birth endowments worries me, the heartless libertarian..."
...Except that such a circumstance is anathema to libertarianism. Given that libertarianism is about allowing the greatest range of personal, individual choices possible without disadvantaging society, a society in which wealth, power, and beauty are "locked in" actually limits choices for all but the well off. Logically, then, isn't that outcome counter to everything libertarianism stands for?
Posted by: ben on September 6, 2006 11:55 PMI assumed that everyone was concerned about these sort of non-monetary unfairnesses, but apparently many liberals are fine with unequal natural endowments, provided only that they are not sullied by pictures of Ben Franklin.
I think it is simple, really. There is nothing you can do about natural endowments. That is just how it is, and there is absolutely no use complaining about it. On the other hand you can do a whole lot about the distribution of wealth in society. If, in the future, some parents were somehow able to select features for their children to make them more beautiful, and this technology wasnt available to everyone, then I imagine it would become a much greater cause for concern.
Sentiment of fairness in general only applies to human action. For example, FEMA's inaction and incompetence are far more outrageous than hurricane Katrina itself. We see deaths resulting from the former as preventable while those from the latter - although tragic, merely an immutable fact of life.
Posted by: MS on September 6, 2006 11:57 PMJames,
Re;"I do have a problem with high IQ people rigging the system to obtain rewards disproportionate to their contributions."
That's an interesting thought. If I'm following you, a political party that arranges for income redistribution by gaming the democratic process would be bad, right?
"I have no problem with high IQ people being rewarded for using their intelligence for the benefit of society. I do have a problem with high IQ people rigging the system to obtain rewards disproportionate to their contributions. "
@James:
What is disproportionate in this context? A high IQ doesn't by itself generate anything for society!
I have a couple of probems with this statement, because this implies that a high IQ person that uses his IQ for himself and his purposes and not for some "betterment of the society" is undeserving of the rewards...
And what is rigging the system? They only get rewards for free, if they are paid by the state, be cause the state is doing something called "research of basic science", which elitist leftists proclaim is not possible in a free market society (due to not bein calculatable in its outcome).
So, the only high IQ people, who could extract rewards by not contributing anything useful, are most likely all state-sponsored scientists.
Regarding the correlation between parents' and children's income: interestingly, in my experience, people who earn substantially less than their parents tend to be the most ardent redistributionists.
Posted by: y81 on September 7, 2006 8:29 AM"I think it is simple, really. There is nothing you can do about natural endowments. That is just how it is, and there is absolutely no use complaining about it."
You still haven't read Harrison Bergeron, have you?
Yes, I know it's fiction, but consider the kid's games these days where everybody gets a trophy for attending, but nobody gets a trophy for winning. What happens when these kids or their kids grow up?
RGT
Posted by: RGT on September 7, 2006 8:57 AMAlex at Marginal Revolution gets it right...externalities are dual. A quote: "should gays be taxed because they make some people uncomfortable? Hell no. Tax the bigots for making gays feel unwelcome." Our legal system takes it a step further...when some bigot assaults a gay man, the bigot goes to jail, not the gay man who "caused" the attack through his sexual orientation. The rich don't "cause" envy, the "cause" is a character defect in the envious person.
Posted by: bristlecone on September 7, 2006 9:25 AMapparently many liberals are fine with unequal natural endowments, provided only that they are not sullied by pictures of Ben Franklin.
The point that money can be redistributed and these other things can't has already been made.
But perhaps another distinction is that the many liberals you speak of believe, deep down inside where eveyone can see it but themselves, that money is the only thing that really matters.
"For one thing, beauty is at least somewhat correlated with wealth; poor mothers are much more likely to smoke and drink during their pregnancies, and their offspring are more likely to be obese and less likely to enjoy the benefits of orthodonture."
Well, I'm sure that's not irrelevant, but hardly the most important factor. More important is that while men tend to objectify women on the basis of appearance, women similarly tend to objectify men on the basis of wealth and power. Thus does the wealthy man get the pretty woman, thus increasing the likelihood of attractive, wealthy children.
Posted by: alan on September 7, 2006 12:46 PMContra the belief I have encountered among my commenters, most rich people did not inherit most of their wealth, and most of their income comes from wages rather than capital.
I think that this claim may depend heavily on what is meant by "most" and "rich," and merits some explication.
Posted by: alkali on September 7, 2006 1:50 PMalkali,
My take on this is that we must assume that wealth is earned in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Its not up to the wealthy to prove that they have a right to keep what they have, its up to the progressives to prove that they don't.
Posted by: Randy on September 7, 2006 2:23 PMMy take on this is that we must assume that wealth is earned in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
[Philosophical question:] Why must I assume that? I assume you wouldn't accept "share and share alike, therefore the wealthy must be cheaters until proven otherwise" as an a priori assumption. Why should I accept your assumption instead?
[Practical question:] Why must I assume that? I know, as a matter of fact, that wealth can be inherited in America and that the wealthy often do leave their assets to family members who outlive them. I can see, plain as day, that there are lots of rich people who got that way by inheriting their money. (Kennedy, Bush, Hilton, Rockefeller, Walton, Ford, etc.) The question is how many rich people are of that type and how many are of the earned-it-myself type, not whether rich heirs and heiresses actually exist outside the fevered imagination of the left.
Posted by: alkali on September 7, 2006 2:48 PMalkali,
Re;"Why must I assume that?"
Because its the law. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?
Also, inherited wealth is still earned wealth. Not earned by the inheritor, certainly, but we already tax inheritance, so those who possess inherited wealth have every right to it - again, by law.
Posted by: Randy on September 7, 2006 3:02 PMRandy and alkali,
Of course, one must agree on what the meaning of "earned" is.
Possibilities:
(1)Labored at some job to acquire the wealth,
(2)Saved prior income and bought capital and earned the return on that capital,
(3)Was born to wealthy parents who endowed their descendents with that capital, and said descendents earn the return as income.
Which is it?
If all wealth save that obtained by fraud or illicit force is "earned," then the claim made by the proprietrix would be tautological and meaningless. (Actually, she sensibly avoids that result by not using the ambiguous term "earned," a word I did not introduce here.)
Posted by: alkali on September 7, 2006 3:48 PMYancey,
There are many ways in which wealth may be earned. And there will always be those who disagree with one definition or another. My favored definition would be that earned wealth is that which is created in a value for value transaction which is freely entered into.
But I really must fall back to my original position; that we must assume that wealth is earned in the absence of evidence to the contrary. I do believe the law supports me on this, and I believe that it should continue to do so. This is a practical matter.
Paris Hilton didn't earn Conrad Hilton's fortune, so I guess I must have.
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek on September 7, 2006 4:01 PMPaul,
Excellent example. The law assumes that Conrad did earn said fortune, and specifies the procedure for leaving it to Paris. We can chatter on forever about Paris (she won't mind, she's making money from it), but the practical matter has already been decided. Those who think she shouldn't have it are going to have to provide evidence as to why.
Posted by: Randy on September 7, 2006 4:26 PMExcellent example. The law assumes that Conrad did earn said fortune, and specifies the procedure for leaving it to Paris. We can chatter on forever about Paris (she won't mind, she's making money from it), but the practical matter has already been decided. Those who think she shouldn't have it are going to have to provide evidence as to why.
The larger point is this. We may or may not think Paris deserves her inhertence. Yet, her fortune does not extend from her right to inherit but Conrad Hilton's right to will.
He could have chosen to give her nothing. Instead he choose to leave trusts for his children and grandchildren. Stepping in the way of that would be denying him the right to will.
Posted by: Karl Smith on September 7, 2006 4:55 PMPlease allow me to refer those of you who continue to insist that the wealthy deserve their earnings to a little television program called "Growing up Gotti". I chalenge any of you to continue to hold such misguided beliefs after ten hours of that.
Posted by: Retief on September 7, 2006 5:41 PMGotti went to jail, didn't he? That required evidence. You want to take the money from Mrs. Gotti and the kids, prove that it came from illegal activity. You might want to keep an eye out for Mr. Gotti's "associates".
Posted by: Randy on September 7, 2006 5:45 PMThe redistributability of beauty is not zero. When my son discovered he could not maintain it while living on the road, he donated his long hair (lovely stuff combining the best of my thick and wavey and the wee wifey's baby fine) to Locks of Love. He looks worse now with his stubble head, and someone else has the opportunity to look better.
Posted by: triticale on September 7, 2006 6:46 PMChris Dillow responds .....:
"As for whether natural endowments cluster, they don't do so often enough to worry my egalitarian instincts - correlations aren't that high. To adapt your analogy, the world's best tennis player, Roger Federer has a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle (as we say in England)."
Then, of course, there is the counter example of Maria Sharipova.
Posted by: Chester White on September 8, 2006 7:29 AM
"I have spent many an unhappy hour contemplating the possibility that the meritocracy, and women's liberation, and widespread wealth, is resulting in an increasing concentration of endowments at the top of the pyramid--and that such a system is self-legitimating, to the elite, in a way that the old aristocracy of birth never was."
I have had this worry myself, and haven't seen the topic taken up by others.
There has to be some statistical correlation between the natural endowments of the parents and the natural endowments of the children. Endowed parents are more likely to have endowed children. Parents with negligible natural endowments will probably mostly have similar children. Mind you these are tendencies and probabilities, not rigid barriers.
But could tendencies and probabilities, through generations, create a deeply stratified, caste-like, society? If so, then I think that the people in each stratum would fully understand that they belong where they are, based upon their contributions to society.
Could the long-term effects of meritocracy be an Indian caste system?
Certainly the odd cases, the geniuses born in humble circumstances will always stir the pot. But I think that there is significant risk that there will eventually not be enough of those low-born geniuses to keep the convection running on their own. I fear for the day when they will not be able to rise.
I think that we have to do _something_ to ensure that the children at at all levels of the social strata, and especially at the lowest levels, always have the opportunity to rise. Fairness to those children at the bottom requires that they have some sort of ladder to climb, if they are able. And assuming our society has to compete with non-similarly-organized societies, we cannot afford to squander natural endowments that happen to be born to lower-caste parents.
I don't like the answers I have seen from non-libbies. And I haven't seen libbies take up the challenge. It is one of the Achilles heels of libertarianism.
I think that public education is part of the answer. Merit-based scholarships are probably part of the answer. Maybe a company (no analog of exists today) can scour the lower castes looking for gems they can polish and place in upper-caste jobs, on some long-term percentage commission. Certainly corporate competition and the thirst for real talent will help provide the ladder.
But I think that we have to discuss this and plan it out in order to sell our socio-economic agenda.
Posted by: Aristides on September 8, 2006 5:04 PMI'm going to make an argument here. I don't know if it's true or not but I'll put it forward;
Perhaps genetic extremism is not beneficial to some traits and hybrids are prefered.
People tend to prefer mates with different immune antigens from their own, for example. People who are excellent programmers and who marry other programers have a higher rate of children with autism. While some beneficial traits may be enhanced because both parents have that trait, other traits might suffer from what ammounts to inbreeding within a trait.
Perhaps a football player having children with a musician might be beneficial, but some genetic extremes might be dangerous.
One more thought ( I don't know the answer ) How would the degree of fidelity within a population affect it's genetic heratige. And would fidelity, in turn, be affected by extremes in wealth.
Posted by: Ryan on September 9, 2006 1:33 AMI have some thoughts on this, from observations:
Physical characteristics are usually hereditary, in at least a statistically significant way.
The wealthier a man is, the greater his advantage when it comes to selecting a mate...he has the power to choose the most beautiful women who will have him from a larger pool of willing women.
The offspring will have greater chance at inheriting these desired traits than a person chosen randomly from the full pool of humanity.
Sort-of-natural selection at work.
You know the rich guys have nice looking women.
"People who are excellent programmers and who marry other programers have a higher rate of children with autism. While some beneficial traits may be enhanced because both parents have that trait, other traits might suffer from what ammounts to inbreeding within a trait."
This is my own theory as to the rising rates of autism and autism-spectrum disorders seen over the last 30 years. The mercury/thimerosol stuff is a canard.
It is precisely the period over which intelligent people have had a greater chance of meeting intelligent mates, say at a distant college.
Fifty years ago, your choice of mate was much more limited, perhaps to those from a short radius around your home.
Now people travel from around the world to Ivys, Stanford, MIT, etc., and the negative traits, perhaps due to recessive genes, come to the fore in the offspring.
I have never seen nor heard of an academic study along these lines, but surely there should be.
Posted by: Chester White on September 9, 2006 1:40 PMYou know the rich guys have nice looking women.
True but there isn't nessicarily a gene for 'nice looking.' Metabolic rate is probably inherited. But a person can be too thin or metabolism can be too fast. And even in the recent past, 'beauties' like Marilyn Monroe would be considered pudgy today. A woman with a larger bust might be considered more attractive, but might also be a poorer athlete. Some traits might be purely advantageous. But most are trade-offs between one benefit and another. Some benefits might become negatives if the environment changes. In a harsher society a hefty muscular woman might be better able to defend herself than a waifishly thin one.
Those at 'the top of the pyramid' are, at best, adapting themselves to a very specific physical and social environment which can change.
Posted by: Shane McLaughlin on September 9, 2006 8:25 PMApologies, the above post is mine. I put Shane's name in by accident.
Posted by: Ryan on September 9, 2006 8:26 PMSomeone mentioned Paris Hilton. She didnt earn her wealth but she will have to work to maintain the Hilton fortune for her children. I suspect once La Skank inherits, the Hilton millions will be whittled down a bit. We like to see instant (or at least relitively quick) karma but destroying that amount of wealth might take a few generations. Go to take the long view.
Posted by: Lurker on September 9, 2006 10:17 PMNature red in tooth and claw could give two, em, cents about fairness. The only thing fair about the nature nurture crapshoot is that everyone has to play. We don't pick our genes or our parents.
Once the cards are dealt, there's lots of ways to win. And, of course, we can define winning, too. If Darwin is right, and I think he is, most of us will define winning as reproducing our genes as often and as comfortably as possible. Power and beauty are to be selected in that game.
Posted by: Old Dad on September 10, 2006 5:58 PMIt looks like one government is starting to regulate beauty.
Posted by: triticale on September 10, 2006 8:36 PM