While I’m up on my soapbox, I might as well tell you what I believe.
I believe that economic inequality is fair, but only up to a point. I believe that everyone makes their fortune on the shoulders of everyone else, and that, while some wealth is deserved, there is no way the richest are morally entitled to all that they own. I believe that my father, who takes home a comfortable middle-to-upper-middle-class salary deserves it, because he has a lot of responsibility in his job, he got there through skill, and baked into that salary is a hell of a lot of overtime for which he reserves zero additional compensation. I also believe that my mother, who is educated in, and has tried working in three unrelated careers, but who must still depend on government welfare because of a physical illness that renders her unable to work anywhere near full-time, deserves all that she gets. In fact, I think she deserves more. I am under no delusions that one person’s good luck, be it genetic luck or economic luck, morally entitles them to be ten, a hundred, a thousand times wealthier than everyone else.
I do not believe the slob who doesn’t work deserves as much as the hard worker. I have yet to meet an actual slob who doesn’t work by choice and sits around collecting government subsidies all day while throwing darts at pictures of hard-working businessmen and laughing.
I believe that what is morally fair and what is practically viable will not always line up. I believe that there is a necessary disconnect between a morally fair wealth distribution and a wealth distribution that can actually exist in a free society and an efficient economy. I believe that this balance leans more towards the rich having more than what is fair rather than the other way around. I do not believe the wealthy, who are very concerned about getting their fair and proper share of the pie, would like it if they actually got their fair and proper share and nothing more.
I believe in social safety nets. I believe that people who only risked falling into the safety net should not be too satisfied about being rewarded for their risk-taking behavior and should absolutely not deride those who dare not take risks because they are a thousand feet in the air and there is no safety net anywhere to be seen.
I believe in freedom. I believe that “freedom” is not one thing, but many things hopelessly tangled together. I believe it is social suicide to declare oneself opposed to freedom, but that consequently, everyone’s “freedom” differs from everyone else’s.
I believe in social liberalism, which is like classical liberalism modified to add in some social responsibility. Neoliberalism, or libertarianism, is the modification of classical liberalism to remove what little social responsibility there was in it.
I believe that freedom is not a zero-sum game. I believe that it is a mistake to see freedom as something that only involves how much the government meddles with your shit. I believe that things like poverty and social oppression can meddle as much, or more than the government, and that such restrictions on free will make people less free. I believe that “hands off” capitalism is not freedom, because when the government keeps its hands off the economy, the economy’s invisible hands are going to do a whole lot of groping ordinary people, making them less free. I believe that social liberal economic policies, as a compromise between unchecked capitalism and totalitarian control, actually maximizes freedom. I believe that taking away a little freedom from the freest people there are, the super-wealthy, will make everyone else so much freer that it’s totally worth it.
I believe the individual exists for the individual, and not for the collective. I believe the collective exists only as the aggregate of individuals. I believe states are useful fictions that people get together and agree to believe in, because doing so gives them certain advantages. I believe said people are entitled to stop believing in the fiction the moment it stops upholding its end of the deal.
I do not believe that the world will descend into brutish unculture if the cultural model that dominated all of human history until roughly two hundred years ago, where people freely copied other people’s ideas, were to once again prevail. In fact I think anything that saves all the knowledge of antiquity from extinction and then triggers the renaissance, the age of enlightenment and all that came with it, must be a good thing. I feel that there is a significant moral difference between sharing and selling for profit, and I believe that our legal system should be based on this difference. You will not be surprised to learn that I believe copyright is broken. I believe these things as a person aspiring to live off creative works, fully knowing how hard it is to make a living off creative works.
I do not believe in discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, skin color, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Consequently, I do not believe in affirmative action.
I do not believe I live in a patriarchy or a rape culture. I reserve judgment on the existence or non-existence of patriarchies or rape cultures in societies I don’t live in. I do believe that women still face many challenges that men don’t, and that the same is also true for gays, muslims, and other minorities.
I believe that identity politics is the most contentious thing there is. I rarely discuss identity politics because I do not know how to discuss identity politics without getting angry, or getting other people angry, or else saying nothing at all so as to not anger or be angered. I have no solution for this.
I believe there are way too many I’s in this text.
These are some things that I believe. I’ll step off the soapbox now.
Oct 20, 2011