From this series of posts on “progressives” the less generous may come to the conclusion that I blame all the world’s problems on liberals. This would be an outrageous slander as well as deeply hurtful, suggesting as it does that I am a swivel-eyed, monomaniacal loon.
In fact, I only blame most of our ills on these well-meaning coves.
Logically though, how can this be so? The right doesn’t have a monopoly on the truth!
Consider how the Nobel prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, from his perch at the New York Times, constantly advises the bankrupting of America. Then there’s every lefty student’s favorite, Noam Chomsky, identifying America as the world’s biggest terrorist. From the social science professors to the network anchors, how is it that so many highly educated and erudite spokespeople of the left talk such cack?
The key to this seemingly unfathomable puzzle of some of the brightest lights in the intellectual firmament believing the weirdest stuff is that their liberalism always trumps their smarts. And the essential problem is their religious-like attachment to the principle of equality.
Now, I can sense that I’m losing you with this. You’re probably thinking that you too like the idea of equality. Well, so do I. So stay with me on this.
Equality under the law. Yes. Great. Wonderful.
Equality of opportunity. Yes. Wow. Bring it on!
Equality of outcomes. No.
The subject of my previous post, social mobility, will show what I mean.
All the data tell us that those from lower income classes have worse life prospects than those from higher income groups. This is true and no sensible person would deny it.
But it has been estimated that IQ measured at 10 is three times more important as a determinant of life success than class origin. Or in other words being born less intelligent is what holds somebody back 75% of the time.
This is certainly a hard and unpleasant truth.
If you find the idea offensive that smart people tend to have smart kids, then you are more attached to the idea of equality than truth, or in other words you are a liberal.
All British government policies for 50 years have been based on the idea that there should be equality of outcomes from all social classes. The harmful method employed to achieve this has been to undermine good people’s efforts to help their children. All those attempts to socially engineer the population have utterly failed leaving social mobility rates unchanged.
They have utterly failed, but not without consequences.
There is a trade-off between freedom and equality. Every time you attempt to make one group more equal in outcomes, it is usually at the expense of the freedom of others to succeed.
“Positive discrimination” illustrates this most clearly. Should the privileged children of the Obamas be accepted into universities with lower SAT scores than children from a working class white family?
Regressives think so, because they think in terms of groups and obsess over equality of outcomes from them.
We righties are concerned with individuals. Our approach to inequality of opportunity is to assist the able underprivileged to better themselves through scholarships and grants. But at the same time we remember that in an imperfect human world lots of the inequality of opportunity is not wrong. It is simply good parents, family and friends helping those they love.
We don’t want to beat good people over the head for helping their loved ones even if it does lead to inequality. We recognize that they are helping to make the world a better place one kid at a time. And we then as individuals concentrate our charitable efforts on less privileged individuals as decent people have always done.
Equality under the law. Yes. The basis of a free society.
Equality of opportunity. Yes. The future of a free society.
Equality of outcome. No. Pure injustice which penalizes the deserving and promotes people beyond their capability or deserts.
Just like “the one” himself, the first president who owes his position to positive discrimination.
Obama: The dumbest smartest guy ever to inhabit the Oval Office.
It reminds me introduction to every Milton Friedman series "Free to choose". Every episode starts like that:
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It simply isn’t fair that there should be any losers. Life is unfair, there is nothing fair about one man being born blind and another man being born with sight.
There is nothing fair about one man being born of a wealthy parent and one of an indigenous parent.
There is nothing fair about Mohammed Ali having been born with a skill that enables him to make millions of dollars one night.
There is nothing fair about Marleena Detrich having great legs that we all want to watch.
There is nothing fair about any of that.
But on the other hand, don’t you think a lot of people who like to look at Marleena Detrich’s legs benefited from nature’s unfairness in producing a Marleena Detrich?
What kind of a world would it be if everybody was an absolute identical duplicate of anybody else?
You might as well destroy the whole world and just keep one specimen left for a museum.
In the same way, it’s unfair that Muhammed Ali should be a great fighter and should be able to earn millions. But would it not be even more unfair to the people who like to watch him if you said that in the pursuit of some abstract idea of equality we’re not going to let Muhammed Ali get more for one nights fight than the lowest man on the totem pole can get for a days unskilled work on the docks. You can do that but the result of that would be to deny people the opportunity to watch Mohammad Ali. I doubt very much he would be willing to subject himself to the kind of fights he’s gone through if he were to get the pay of an unskilled docker.
You say:
ReplyDelete**But it has been estimated that IQ measured at 10 is three times more important as a determinant of life success than class origin. Or in other words being born less intelligent is what holds somebody back 75% of the time.**
In theory - yes but you could say the same for other qualities like Ruthlessness. E.g. Stalin was not very smart but he was ruthless and thus became *successul*
Or you can say that people who inherit money are more successful. E.g. George Bush Jr.
Is Obama mentally defective?
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