Apologies if you were offended somehow. It just didn’t seem like you were truly absorbing what I’ve said. Multiple times you restated things I myself explicitly mentioned, as if it were refuting something I said. And you do seem to have an averseness to accepting the idea that man is flawed by nature, and I can’t understand that. It seems like a very simple, easily acceptable premise.
But to answer your question, I see that striving for an ideal or a “solution” means you operate under the assumption that perfection is attainable. “Ideal” is literally defined as “a conception of something in its perfection” and “a standard of perfection or excellence”. And in the same way, when you have “solved” something, there is nothing more to do. There is no more improvement that can take place. You have perfected that area which you have attempted to correct.
In contrast, striving for improvement is a much different thing. For one thing, it does not assume that perfection is attainable. That is a very important distinction…because it influences virtually every facet of how you go about attempting to achieving your objective. Second, striving for improvement is a constant process. There is no end goal…the practice is ongoing. When you strive for improvement (and not some “ideal”), you recognize that things will always be able to become better in some way…that there is no such thing as ideal…and that is due to the fact that scarcity exists, and man is fallible.
Leftist ideas do not pass those questions posed by Sowell (Compared to what?, What hard evidence do you have?, At what cost?) because they operate under this notion that heaven can exist on Earth. Again, as Friedman noted, they’ll never say that…but if you follow the logic of their arguments and prescriptions…all the logic of their arguments proceeds as if perfection were attainable. They completely ignore the fact that we live in a world of scarcity, and therefore it is a world of tradeoffs. They completely ignore the law of unintended consequences and they are completely oblivious to Hazlitt’s one lesson.
“The idea to the Left of tolerating any evil—they want to stamp out the last vestige of segregation…really, at what price? At what price?”
No apologies needed. If I seem to be obtuse, it is only because, as I sense, we are using different definitions for the words we’re using. The best way to get on the same page is to shift focus away from the person and toward the actual ideas.
As for the distinction you make between striving for an ideal, a solution, and improvement, I think we might have found the source of our misunderstanding. You said:
I don’t know how it is possible to strive for improvement when 1.) there is no goal and 2.) there is no belief that perfection is attainable. To begin, the mere notion of ‘improvement’ contains within itself a direction from bad to good and the implicit goal of reaching the good. If you say that there is no goal, then there cannot be movement and there cannot be improvement.
Similarly, the good that is aimed for is in a sense perfect in that it serves as the “standard of excellence” for one’s action (this phrase is from your definition of ‘ideal’). Only when that standard of excellence is believed to be attainable will anyone endeavor to improve. Otherwise, the action would be seen as futile and any rational person would abdicate.
Seen in this light, there is very little difference between striving for an ideal, a solution, and improvement. To improve at all is to move toward an ideal or a solution to a problem. If one believes improvement is possible at all, then one must believe that solutions are possible, and indeed that the ideal is possible.
So, I think this whole debate can be summed up by a difference of definition. If I defined these concepts the way you did, then we’d probably agree. As it is, I cannot use your definitions.
I did not say there was no goal at all. You put words in my mouth (or took them out, as it were). I said no end goal…meaning it is a constant, ongoing process…again, as I explicitly stated.
That is simply a false statement. And you keep coming back to it. And it is this that I cannot comprehend. Why does it have to be the case that someone has to believe that perfection is attainable for him to endeavor to improve? I have already proven this to be false. I told you this was not true for me personally, and I can provide you with countless examples to the contrary.
Again, that premise is just simply not true. I do not know why you have continued to insist that. Kinsella illustrates the exact opposite when commenting on the subject of anarcho-captialism:
"Is it logically possible that there could be no crime? Sure. Everyone could voluntarily choose to respect others’ rights. Then there would be no crime. It’s easy to imagine. But given our experience with human nature and interaction, it is safe to say that there will always be crime. Nevertheless, we still proclaim crime to be evil and unjustified, in the face of the inevitability of its recurrence.
So to my claim that crime is immoral, it would just be stupid and/or insincere to reply, “but that’s an impractical view” or “but that won’t work,” “since there will always be crime.” The fact that there will always be crime – that not everyone will voluntarily respect others’ rights – does not mean that it’s “impractical” to oppose it; nor does it mean that crime is justified. It does not mean there is some “flaw” in the proposition that crime is wrong."
To simply understand that there will always be suffering in the world, and there will always be crime, and there will always be bad things, and that perfection is not attainable, does not at all mean it is futile to strive for improvement. The very fact that improvement has been shown to be possible proves this. Why in the world does my ideal have to be feasible for me to want something better than I currently have?
If you lived in a box and ate worms all day, but your ideal would be to live in a mansion with Jessica Alba and eat bon bons all day and never get fat…and I told you that was impossible, but that if you worked hard and were diligent you could have a large house with air conditioning, 5 bedrooms and a lovely wife and great children and the ability to eat tasty meals every day…
…you’re telling me you’d just sit in your box, because your ideal was unobtainable? Forgive me, but I’d call you a liar.
I fear we’re bound to a debate on semantics. You said:
But, I never saw a distinction between “goal” and “end goal”. You can forgive me, given the definition of “goal”, which makes the term “end goal” rather redundant:
Again, if we were using the same definition of these terms, there would be no disagreement. If I believed that one could improve without having an end goal in mind, then we’d be talking the same language. As it is, I see having an end goal as the same thing as having a goal, and that improving at all includes having a goal. See, it’s not that I’m putting words in your mouth or taking them out. I’m just having trouble figuring out what your words mean.
As for the other main point in your post, I’m not sure how I got into the position of trying to defend eating worms in a box over eating bon bons with Jessica Alba, but suffice it to say that I don’t intend to defend that and never wanted to.
Are you serious? Do you honestly not get the point I was making?
How about this. Suppose you make $13,000/yr. Ideally you would like to make $20 billion/yr, starting within the next 2 years. Now suppose I informed you that was virtually impossible (barring some severe devaluation of the currency). You’re telling me you would stop trying to increase your income, just because your ideal was unattainable?
Huh? I asked if you didn’t get my point. But evidently you do get it…so…do you now agree? You don’t have to believe that a perfect ideal is attainable to be inclined to improve?
Yes, I agree with that statement. The reason I hesitated to answer directly is because I do not agree with that statement because of anything you’ve said or any argument you’ve made. I’ve intentionally avoided your line of reasoning with respect to the notion that “perfection is impossible” because I see the concept of perfection differently than you do–everyone sees it differently and to say that perfect is impossible is to say that others can’t possibly see something as perfect which is not attainable. As such the claim that “perfection is impossible” being susceptible to reductio ad absurdum.
For example, you said:
But what if my ideal was to make $13,000/yr.? Would you say that my ideal is impossible? But I’m already making that much money. So, in some instances the ideal–perfection–is possible and the blanket statement that it’s not carries with it too many stipulations.
Maybe it would be constructive for you to define perfection and the ideal more clearly. I would make a bet that it would be a different vision than mine. One person’s ideal might include bon bons and Jessica Alba; another’s might include macaroni casserole and a lovely lady beside him. To say that both of those ideals are impossible is not logically defensible.
Don’t you see? You’ve proven my point. Your ideal existence is going to have to include some take on other people, and the rest of the world. You might want everyone to get along, you might want everyone to be fighting, you might just want everyone to leave you alone or even disappear. But one way or the other your “ideal” world and/or existence is going to have to include a position for other people…And so is everyone else’s.
And as you just stated, “everyone sees ‘perfect’ differently”…and therefore it is impossible for everyone to experience their own version of perfect…which means, even if your version of perfect is to make that $13,000/yr and not have any contact with your family, your mother could want you to make $20 billion/yr and come to see her every week. It is impossible for you both to attain your perfection…and this of course means, therefore, the world will never be perfect. There will always be suffering, there will always be people who do not get what they want, what they feel they deserve, what they think is fair. You will never, ever, be able to eliminate this. It does not matter if you can simpify your "perfect world " down to the one that already exists, and claim: “Oh I have all that I could want. This is ideal. I am perfect. This imperfect world is my personal version of perfection” [which I still say is complete nonsense and personally do not believe anyone could honestly say].
But even supposing someone did say that and it were the truth for them, that doesn’t change the fact that the world is not perfect…that man is flawed and therefore the world that he makes up is flawed as well. Just because a single person can be under the asinine impression that imperfection is somehow perfection, it doesn’t in any way mean that everyone else sees it that way. So the world will always have unhappy people, and will never be a perfect world.
And that has been my point all along. Perfection is unattainable. We live in a world scarcity and tradeoffs. Whatever you do to deal with one of man’s flaws it creates another problem (meaning it may make you happier and a step closer to your “perfect world”, but it will necessarily take someone else farther away from his). You just acknowledge the law of unintended consequences and take heed of Hazlitt’s one lesson…tracing the effects of actions and policies and seeing how they affect everyone rather than just particular groups…And you try to get the best tradeoff you can get, and that’s all you can hope for. Perfection is not attainable. Nirvana is not for this world.
…But as I pointed out, leftist arguments don’t do that at all. They actually ignore unintended consequences, and do not even acknowledge how their prescriptions affect everyone…they solely focus on how they affect their concerned group. And you have actually illustrated the situation quite well: Perhaps they view perfection as narrowly as you have described it, and only think in terms of their perfect world…and that’s why they operate as if it were attainable. From the very beginning I have been saying that leftists/statists operate as if perfection were attainable, and the fact that they ignore how their “solutions” themselves ignore the affect to the entire human world. But you may have bridged those two, and illustrated the how and why…perhaps it is because they ignore the rest of the world that they believe and/or operate as if perfection is attainable. Perhaps they are able to believe perfection is attainble because they do not view “perfection” in terms of the world being perfect…but rather just their personal existence. And they only care about other people to the extent of how it aligns with their own personal view. In other words, they do not care about making the world a better place, meaning the most people being as close to their own idea of perfection as possible…rather leftists care about making the world a better place in terms of making the most people be as close to the leftist’s idea of perfection as possible.
Just as was stated in that interview with Sowell…they blame conservatives for not caring about people…when really it is they who care about their own vision rather than real life human beings.
I think Friedman summed it up best: “What most people are objecting to is that the market gives people what the people want, instead of what the person talking thinks the people ought to want.”
So, again, it still boils down to the original conjecture: the fundamental difference between the Right and the Left (or libertarians and statists as the case may be) is a conflict of visions. The left operates under this assumption that it is not man who is flawed, but rather just the current institutions that lead to suffering…that there is nothing in human nature that would make us unhappy, it is just that some people are too dumb or ignorant to know what’s best for themselves…and that is the source of our dismay. They believe that perfection is somehow attainable…That if you simply put the right people in charge and create the right institutions, then all the problems would go away. And they go about championing their solutions under the assumptions of that unconstrained vision…the idea that human nature itself is malleable…that man (and therefore the world he makes up) can be perfect. [And this is to a great extent the vision that you have illustrated in this thread here and throughout.]
Whereas conservatives tend to understand that the world is imperfect and man is imperfect, and that there will always be suffering of some kind and some measure. Man is constrained by his nature. He will always have greedy, self-interested tendencies. And while this in itself does not make him evil (and even those traits themselves are not inherently evil), it does mean that man is bound by his humanity. He is not a perfect being and his nature will sometimes lead him to do wicked things. And there is no exception. This changes everything about the way conservatives or libertarians view the world, and their ideas about the best way to operate within it. It changes their notions about what progress is, about the best ways to achieve it, and their expectations of the outcomes.
Conservatives/liberatarians don’t expect or even look for a reason for poverty, or war and conflict, or unhappiness…they simply look for the best ways to minimize those things. They don’t expect to be able to explain them or eliminate them. But in contrast that is exactly what those on the left aim to do. “We must remake the world…there are institutions causing this suffering and we can eliminate it if only we can pinpoint the misunderstandings and put the right people in charge.” They have an unconstrained vision of humanity and human nature, and therefore the world we live in…that nothing is impossible, that perfection is attainable and that even human nature itself can be made anew.
Those with the constrained vision understand that those things are simply a part of life…that this is not paradise…That the best thing we can do is work toward minimizing those things, and achieving the best tradeoff we can. This doesn’t mean things cannot be improved…that tradoffs cannot grow to be better and better (meaning more people closer to their own idea of perfection)…it just means that perfection will never be attained, no matter how close you may get to it. And I have proven multiple times, that despite what you claim, the simple fact that perfection is not attainable does not in any way mean striving for improvment is futile, or that anyone should or even would be disinclined to work for it.
Your entire idea that “if perfection is unattainable, then working for improvement is useless” is completely false.
The idea with striving for solutions is to bring us closer to some imagined utopia, even if that might lead to a worse situation in the short term. This view does not just consider attainable alternatives, but includes fanciful benefits in it’s trade-offs, that are far away in theory land. Obviously the benefits of some utopian theory will always outweigh short term downsides and destruction. Conversely, striving for improvement does not look at theoretical benefits that are predicted by some utopian theory. It only considers attainable alternatives in the real world. It is a way of deciding upon the best of the currently available options, as a means to gradually achieve better and better conditions.
Applying this to the aforementioned example of gun control. The vision seeking improvement wants people to have guns, this means sometimes accidents happen or good people get shot, but it is the least deadly alternative. The vision seeking solutions dreams of a perfect world where nobody gets shot, ever. Striving for this unattainable solution leads to a worse situation, which kills millions more people. But it is not the actual real world consequences that matter, but that this policy is closer to an envisioned utopia.
You seem to have a definite understanding of what perfection is and what the perfect world would look like. Perhaps you could describe that for me, and then we can go on to figure out whether that is attainable.
I thank you for your input, though I’m not sure I follow your logic. What is the difference between ‘ideal’, ‘solution’, and ‘improvement’ in your estimation?
Thanks for your inquiry. My hypothesis has been touched on throughout this thread, and can be summed up with the following:
The Right see the pursuit of wealth as a non-zero-sum game primarily because they are concerned with real wealth–food, electronics, cars, implements, etc–which has no definition and can grow even with limited resources. The Left see the pursuit of wealth as a zero-sum game primarily because they are concerned with money, which is limited and controllable.
As such, they’re both correct in their stances, they just define wealth differently. They define it differently, perhaps, because they typically come from different angles–the Right from usually more rural, self-sufficient angles and the Left from more urban, interdependent angles.
Perhaps you could first clarify if you still prescribe to your aforementioned notion which basically boils down to: “if perfection is unattainable, then working for improvement is futile.” Do you believe that is the case, or not?
Interesting, but I don’t find it particularly satisfactory. I don’t think money has anything to do with it. Both the Right and the Left are fully aware that, by definition, money is easily exchangeable with real wealth, so the distinction between the two (types of wealth) is irrelevant.
My hypothesis on this would be that the Right is primarily concerned about wealth creation (via positive-sum voluntary exchanges of labor and property which create wealth), whereas the Left is primarily concerned with distribution as it looks at “The Sum” as some permanent, objective, and immutable blob of (societal) wealth that only needs to be “fairly” distributed through the “society” that, obviously, created it. The Left simply assumes that “societies” come with objective “sums” of wealth to be divided, whereas the Right warns that without positive-sum voluntary exchanges of labor and property there would be no “sum” to divide.
Along the same lines, to a leftist, wealth, property, and value are objective (i.e. pieces of the immutable and permanent societal “sum”) so any profit earned from a trade (exchange) must have come at a loss to the other party. Hence, profit/wealth accumulation is seen by them as greedy, exploitative, and unsavory as it must have been built on the backs of all the losers on the opposing sides of the profit-generating chain of zero-sum exchanges. In this light, your desire to grow profits/wealth is seen as a greedy attempt to claim a larger piece of the immutable “sum” for yourself at the expense of everyone else who are thus left with a smaller piece of the “sum” for themselves.
EDIT: Perhaps it’s better to replace Right/Left above with capitalist/socialist.
I’m not sure where you found the quote “if perfection is unattainable, then working for improvement is futile”, so I’ll quote myself in response:
But since that didn’t solve anything earlier, I wanted to know what you saw as perfection. Could you please describe what you see as perfection and what the perfect world would look like?
Excellent analysis. I agree completely with your two main points (as I see them), 1.) the Right (capitalists) focus on wealth creation whereas the Left (socialists) focus on wealth distribution, and 2.) the Right see the pursuit of wealth as potentially mutually beneficial and the Left see it as necessarily greedy and exploitative.
My question to you, then, would be: Why is it that they see it this way? My answer is that the Right view wealth in terms of real wealth and the Left view it in terms of money. You begin by challenging this as a premise because, as you say, “Both the Right and the Left are fully aware that, by definition, money is easily exchangeable with real wealth, so the distinction between the two (types of wealth) is almost indistinguishable.”
Two things strike me: First, I realize that most people view money and wealth as indistinguishable, but the fact is that they are vastly different. Treating money as real wealth is a recipe for disaster (I’d be willing to expound on this if you are interested). Second, as I understand it, leftists tend to neglect real wealth when it comes to value in exchange. I know it sounds strange, but if you read Paul Krugman, for instance, you’ll see that he does not even think about the real goods that someone gains in an exchange. He has written that $40 billion in Bill Gates’ pocket is $40 billion less for the rest of us, completely disregarding the $40 billion worth of goods and services that we gain from the exchange. The only explanation I can think of for this “Kurgmanian arithmetic” is that he is only focused on money and has neglected real wealth.
Thoughts?
Note: Your recommendation on terminology is appreciated. I find that all these words are loaded, and none of them are quite adequate for level-headed discussion.