If it is wrong to force some individuals to give up
opportunities and wealth in order to benefit others;
is it not then also wrong for a child to be equally
or more deprived by the circumstances of their birth?
In the situation of the former, an individual has had something and then that has been taken away from them. In the situation of the latter, it is a case of the child having not had something given to them that you judge to be fundamental.
The word 'deprived' is interesting. "Lacking in advantage, opportunity or experience." The child is deprived because they have not been given one of those three things.
Thus, these scenarios do not correspond.
The two are not identical but they have enough in common
to make it a very valid question.
They're fundamentally different. The uncomfortable feeling you got that caused you to write the above sentence might have been used to better effect.
An irresponsible parent is stealing their child's
future away
You're deliberately being sloppy with the language to further a broken conclusion. Stealing implies property that has been taken away. That's not what's happening here.
The dancing is all yours, and this is the second post in a row where. Semantic tricks do not thrust an argument beyond logical barriers.
either deprivation due to circumstances of birth is
wrong or it is not -- regardless of whether the
possible solution of wealth distribution might be
itself wrong
I don't have a problem with debating these
solutions -- I find estate taxes an elegant
compromise
No. It is not your place to steal from people, nor to get the government to do it on your behalf and then pretend it's any different.
That is self-justifying sanctimonious BS of the first
order.
It's very easy to throw nasty names around.
Your frustration at seeing potential gain go to waste (the child) and consequential suffering on the part of that person is clear. Please - try to see where I'm coming from.
I want a situation where as many people get good education, health care and moral guidance. However, government is a mechanism that is both poor and dangerous when it is given charge of these things. Poor because it is not subject to the brutal honesty of market forces to keep it in check, and dangerous because it uses every bit of power that it is granted to (in some measure) line the pockets of the people involved in its running and self-perpetuate at the expense of our freedoms.
Government creates dependance on itself, steals our liberty, and poisons minds such that when good people identify a problem they wrong assume that it's the government's responsibility to fix it rather than their own. It's not.
If you want to improve the lot of a particular grouping of people, then there are things you can do like finding ways to sponsor people, finding charities that actually make a difference in things and supporting them, or getting involved in things that make a difference yourself.
But actually, in order to do good you don't even need to go that far. If we go out into the world, be effective in our careers, have a family and raise them well enough that we are improving on the contribution of ourselves and our spouses, that will actually make a positive difference because we'll be growing a better next generation and creating opportunities for others through our economic activity.
Powerful government is the enemy. It is wasteful, inherently corrupt and hampers the ability of honest people to do what I describe in the above paragraph.
In the situation of the former, an individual has had something
and then that has been taken away from them. In the situation of
the latter, it is a case of the child having not had something given
to them that you judge to be fundamental.
Let me see if I have your logic correct here by extending it a bit into hypothetical-land. Suppose you have blue eyes, and suppose further that the culture of the world is such that those with blue eyes are never chosen for white-collar jobs: only for lower paying blue-collar ones. There is nothing intrinsic about blue-eyed people that makes them poorer workers -- with the proper training and experience they would do equally as well as their hazel-eyed brothers and sisters; that they are never trained and chosen for the good jobs is just how the world happens to be.
This situation is morally acceptable because nothing has been forcibly taken away from them. If we were running around stealing food from the mouths of those with blue eyes, then it would be wrong because it would be violating their property. However, as they never had a good job in the first place, there is nothing wrong with a world that denies them the opportunity to aspire to one.
Do I have that right? (I'm pretty sure I do, as you can substitute "poor parents" for "blue eyes" above, and my second paragraph is a very close paraphrase of your counterargument.) If so it's an odd place for a line in the sand: Taking what you have now is morally wrong, yet arbitrarily* removing opportunities for what you may have in the future is perfectly acceptable. (* Arbitrarily as in: without regard to your capabilities or to your past choices.)
You have a very long and loud argument against government, largely on moral grounds... But I'm not talking about government, I'm talking about the morality of poverty itself, specifically in children who have no responsibility for their situation.
It is perfectly possible talk about whether their situation is just or not without invoking government: Suppose you had access to a magic button, and pressing it will -- at no cost to anyone -- give every child a fair start, where their life's success will solely be the product of the wisdom of their choices. Is there a moral imperative to press that button? Would it be wrong, in the way that theft is wrong, to turn your back on it?
If yes, then what we end up with is a debate along utilitarian lines: At what cost must we address the wrongs done to those born into poverty?
If no, well, that is where I throw the 'nasty names' around.
p.s. : A total side issue, but I don't see that taking stuff off a dead person is "stealing" from anyone. ;)
The original situation we're discussing is straight-forward and there's no need to delve into bizarre hypotheticals and risk confusing things further.
yet arbitrarily* removing opportunities for what you may
have in the future is perfectly acceptable
You talk about removing opportunities from people and this is mistaken. In the child situation, nobody has removed opportunity from the child. You have again tried to twist things so as to describe the natural order as being one where all charity options available to help a poor person realise all opportunities are exhausted. You then use the word 'stealing' to describe failure to reach that point. It's flawed and you don't win points for being original in trying it on. [1]
I'm not talking about government, I'm talking about
the morality of poverty itself, specifically in
children who have no responsibility for their situation.
But you are, because you're talking about rights, and the idea of a right that cannot be realised is invalid. There are some philosophers who are of the opinion that there is such a thing as a right but where there is no moral obligation upon anything else to guarantee that right. For example - the right to work. In contrast, my opinion is that if philosophers want to masturbate then they should do so in the privacy of their own home and avoid staining their work with it. If there is a right, then it is to be enforced, and if something should not be defended then it is not a right.
Suppose you had access to a magic button, and
pressing it will -- at no cost to anyone -- give
every child a fair start, where their life's success
will solely be the product of the wisdom of their
choices. Is there a moral imperative to press that
button? Would it be wrong, in the way that theft is
wrong, to turn your back on it?
What you're generally asking is an interesting question, but it's not pertinent to this discussion for these reasons:
* You've used the word 'fair' and I've already explained that as a worse-than-useless word in a conversation about public policy.
* You've mentioned "at no cost to anyone" and that's not what we're talking about here and it is a crucial part of the discussion.
If yes, then what we end up with is a debate along
utilitarian lines: At what cost must we address the
wrongs done to those born into poverty?
Sure enough - after having claimed that you're not talking about the bridge into coercion through government - you come clean and admit that actually that's exactly what you're doing.
If no, well, that is where I throw the 'nasty names'
around.
I suspect that this conversation will end in value incompatibility which is a shame, because I suspect if it does then at least one of us is not being entirely honest with self - we seem to both be broadly utilitarian. I think nasty names (which I fall to sometimes as well) are a temptation in two scenarios:
* Value clash with the other person, you make a last ditch effort to shame them into converting to your values.
* Situation in which you feel yourself having cause to abandon something you hold dearly due to internal incompatibility (e.g. someone who is a both religious and a white supremacist is having trouble reconciling parts of the bible's teaching with the fulfilling feelings they associate with Friday night ceremonies), and you want to pretend that there's a value clash to allow for an easy exit out of the conversation and being able to escape the need to reconcile the incompatibility.
p.s. : A total side issue, but I don't see that
taking stuff off a dead person is "stealing" from
anyone. ;)
The property belongs to them. They leave instructions on what is to be done with it. It is not unowned property, nor is there any doubt about the wishes of the owner in the presence of a will. Therefore doing other with it is stealing. In the absence of a will - well - that's up for debate, but it's not particularly significant in the grand scheme of this discussion.
[1] See Hayek's _The Road To Serfdom_. Chapter 2 is particularly useful for exploring this "characteristic confusion of freedom with power".
Comments
The word 'deprived' is interesting. "Lacking in advantage, opportunity or experience." The child is deprived because they have not been given one of those three things.
Thus, these scenarios do not correspond.
They're fundamentally different. The uncomfortable feeling you got that caused you to write the above sentence might have been used to better effect. You're deliberately being sloppy with the language to further a broken conclusion. Stealing implies property that has been taken away. That's not what's happening here.The dancing is all yours, and this is the second post in a row where. Semantic tricks do not thrust an argument beyond logical barriers.
No. It is not your place to steal from people, nor to get the government to do it on your behalf and then pretend it's any different. It's very easy to throw nasty names around.Your frustration at seeing potential gain go to waste (the child) and consequential suffering on the part of that person is clear. Please - try to see where I'm coming from.
I want a situation where as many people get good education, health care and moral guidance. However, government is a mechanism that is both poor and dangerous when it is given charge of these things. Poor because it is not subject to the brutal honesty of market forces to keep it in check, and dangerous because it uses every bit of power that it is granted to (in some measure) line the pockets of the people involved in its running and self-perpetuate at the expense of our freedoms.
Government creates dependance on itself, steals our liberty, and poisons minds such that when good people identify a problem they wrong assume that it's the government's responsibility to fix it rather than their own. It's not.
If you want to improve the lot of a particular grouping of people, then there are things you can do like finding ways to sponsor people, finding charities that actually make a difference in things and supporting them, or getting involved in things that make a difference yourself.
But actually, in order to do good you don't even need to go that far. If we go out into the world, be effective in our careers, have a family and raise them well enough that we are improving on the contribution of ourselves and our spouses, that will actually make a positive difference because we'll be growing a better next generation and creating opportunities for others through our economic activity.
Powerful government is the enemy. It is wasteful, inherently corrupt and hampers the ability of honest people to do what I describe in the above paragraph.
This situation is morally acceptable because nothing has been forcibly taken away from them. If we were running around stealing food from the mouths of those with blue eyes, then it would be wrong because it would be violating their property. However, as they never had a good job in the first place, there is nothing wrong with a world that denies them the opportunity to aspire to one.
Do I have that right? (I'm pretty sure I do, as you can substitute "poor parents" for "blue eyes" above, and my second paragraph is a very close paraphrase of your counterargument.) If so it's an odd place for a line in the sand: Taking what you have now is morally wrong, yet arbitrarily* removing opportunities for what you may have in the future is perfectly acceptable. (* Arbitrarily as in: without regard to your capabilities or to your past choices.)
You have a very long and loud argument against government, largely on moral grounds... But I'm not talking about government, I'm talking about the morality of poverty itself, specifically in children who have no responsibility for their situation.
It is perfectly possible talk about whether their situation is just or not without invoking government: Suppose you had access to a magic button, and pressing it will -- at no cost to anyone -- give every child a fair start, where their life's success will solely be the product of the wisdom of their choices. Is there a moral imperative to press that button? Would it be wrong, in the way that theft is wrong, to turn your back on it?
If yes, then what we end up with is a debate along utilitarian lines: At what cost must we address the wrongs done to those born into poverty?
If no, well, that is where I throw the 'nasty names' around.
p.s. : A total side issue, but I don't see that taking stuff off a dead person is "stealing" from anyone. ;)
The original situation we're discussing is straight-forward and there's no need to delve into bizarre hypotheticals and risk confusing things further.
You talk about removing opportunities from people and this is mistaken. In the child situation, nobody has removed opportunity from the child. You have again tried to twist things so as to describe the natural order as being one where all charity options available to help a poor person realise all opportunities are exhausted. You then use the word 'stealing' to describe failure to reach that point. It's flawed and you don't win points for being original in trying it on. [1] But you are, because you're talking about rights, and the idea of a right that cannot be realised is invalid. There are some philosophers who are of the opinion that there is such a thing as a right but where there is no moral obligation upon anything else to guarantee that right. For example - the right to work. In contrast, my opinion is that if philosophers want to masturbate then they should do so in the privacy of their own home and avoid staining their work with it. If there is a right, then it is to be enforced, and if something should not be defended then it is not a right. What you're generally asking is an interesting question, but it's not pertinent to this discussion for these reasons:* You've used the word 'fair' and I've already explained that as a worse-than-useless word in a conversation about public policy.
* You've mentioned "at no cost to anyone" and that's not what we're talking about here and it is a crucial part of the discussion.
Sure enough - after having claimed that you're not talking about the bridge into coercion through government - you come clean and admit that actually that's exactly what you're doing. I suspect that this conversation will end in value incompatibility which is a shame, because I suspect if it does then at least one of us is not being entirely honest with self - we seem to both be broadly utilitarian. I think nasty names (which I fall to sometimes as well) are a temptation in two scenarios:* Value clash with the other person, you make a last ditch effort to shame them into converting to your values.
* Situation in which you feel yourself having cause to abandon something you hold dearly due to internal incompatibility (e.g. someone who is a both religious and a white supremacist is having trouble reconciling parts of the bible's teaching with the fulfilling feelings they associate with Friday night ceremonies), and you want to pretend that there's a value clash to allow for an easy exit out of the conversation and being able to escape the need to reconcile the incompatibility.
The property belongs to them. They leave instructions on what is to be done with it. It is not unowned property, nor is there any doubt about the wishes of the owner in the presence of a will. Therefore doing other with it is stealing. In the absence of a will - well - that's up for debate, but it's not particularly significant in the grand scheme of this discussion.[1] See Hayek's _The Road To Serfdom_. Chapter 2 is particularly useful for exploring this "characteristic confusion of freedom with power".