Elizabeth Warren

[psychoanaleesis]

I don't know who this woman is, but I wouldn't even think of getting someone as high as a senate seat anywhere in the world with what she said.

How can a contract, even a "social contract" at that, have "underlying" terms or implications? Contracts are supposed to be explicit, clear to all the invested parties and enforceable by the laws of the land.

The truth is, the businessman never asked for any of it if it came from society at large. They paid their dues to have what they want and invested based on the prevailing conditions. Neither did the "workers" whose parents made it a point that they go to school.

The phenomenon of "public property" that Ms. Warren points out came from a choice of each individual's selfish motivation that they are better off sharing the expenses of their neighbor. They were hedging their funds. The businesses - being entities that aim solely facilitate to create wealth - under such a system, took the brunt of it via the premise of, "the richer you are, the more you should pay" - but that is a deadly, abhorrent concept. I could sympathize if businesses found a way to exploit that system back then, in the industrial revolution and now since that is what its brain or owner does best - capitalize.

The businessmen would have found workers, hired them overseas or took their business elsewhere had there not been enough resources around. They capitalize and take advantage of what is around especially as you see now that they flee from the arbitrary, on the fence, control of your government to one that has absolute but clear controls like China. They'd rather end up in a system where they know they will be robbed and be left to die than somewhere where they are asked by society to give their riches to looters and act nicely about it as if it was all voluntary.

The businessmen or only a handful of individuals see the potential in things that most people cannot even fathom. They have the vision, plans and means to pursue it. They have the courage to initiate, take risks and, if needed, withstand the losses. They need fellows who can share that, appreciate those things with their individual judgment and selfish interest at heart. Back then, and even more so now.

They are men who created wealth on their own independent pursuit of happiness. They are self-made men. A self-made man is the true American.

--If Ms. Warren is personifying the concept of the businessmen or the capitalists, pioneers, individuals she must be talking to an absolute. That is, she is speaking to those that understand nature, have selfish goals and motivations and are self-formed by their vision of what man's life should be. She should be saying something equivalent to, "let's benefit from this endeavor mutually..." instead she played the guilt card or, "we're all in this together..." very un-American, a very sub-human response. She toyed with baser emotions rather than appealed to reason - it makes me sick.

Edited October 3, 2011 by David Lee

[studiodekadent]

She's quite stupid in her argument.

I mean, everyone pays taxes, so the person that built the factory already paid into the roads, schools, fire and police. They contributed to those factors just as much, if not moreso (probably the latter given how progressive some parts of the taxation system actually are) than "the rest of us."

In other words, the rich are already paying forward "for the next kid that comes along." Her argument thus doesn't justify increasing tax rates on "the rich."

Harvard intellectuals making such blatant and obvious logical fallacies.... a shame.

[psychoanaleesis]

I saw this on a friend's facebook wall. Perhaps I should have posted this under rants but I think under politics is where this belongs.

[anthony]

She's quite stupid in her argument. I mean, everyone pays taxes, so the person that built the factory already paid into the roads, schools, fire and police. They contributed to those factors just as much, if not moreso (probably the latter given how progressive some parts of the taxation system actually are) than "the rest of us." In other words, the rich are already paying forward "for the next kid that comes along." Her argument thus doesn't justify increasing tax rates on "the rich." Harvard intellectuals making such blatant and obvious logical fallacies.... a shame.

Yes, and one can see her 'mind' at work: what must be "paid forward" is proportional to what the business has made - and how was it "made"? - - no answer.

There is the "all property is theft" Stolen Concept fallacy at work.

"You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea..."

Turned into?...ie it was all luck and good fortune.

No mention of vision, ability and risk.

We are all born equal, and forever are forced to remain so, which is egalitarianism at its worst.

Nice points, SDK and David.

Tony

[BaalChatzaf]

We are all born equal, and forever are forced to remain so, which is egalitarianism at its worst.

That should win the John Rawl Award.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Reidy]

Building a factory is an odd choice of image, since the best-known of the great fortunes in recent decades have come from technological or financial innovations, not heavy industry. It suggests that, in more ways than one, Warren's thinking crysallized not later than 1935.

[Selene]

We are all born equal, and forever are forced to remain so, which is egalitarianism at its worst.

That should win the John Rawl Award.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Very nice pick up Bob...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls

Contractarianism

Rawls utilizes the social contract device, asking what principles of justice would individuals agree to when designing society. Justice as fairness offers an account of human nature beyond the traditions of saintly altruists or greedy egoists: human beings are to Rawls both rational and reasonable. Because we are rational we have ends we want to achieve, but we are reasonable insofar as we are happy to achieve these ends cooperatively if possible by adhering to mutually acceptable regulatory principles. Individuals hold, however, quite different needs and aspirations of individuals: the individual conception of the good.

[edit] Original Position

Rawls proposes a thought-experiment to overcome this, his famous argument from the original position which includes the veil of ignorance. Rawls proposes a set of Principles of Justice to be established through a thought-experiment, a kind of modern replacement for the philosophical state of nature. Basically, Rawls lets us imagine a situation where people are unaware of their own characteristics which may make given principles advantageous or disadvantageous to themselves: "...no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like." (Rawls, A Theory of Justice)

Through this veil of ignorance, people may then agree upon principles of justice independently of personal interests, meaning impartially and rationally. Those collectively decided principles should thus be socially fair.

[edit] Principles of Justice

The first of these principles is the Liberty Principle, establishing equal basic liberties for all citizens. 'Basic' liberty entails the (familiar in the liberal tradition) freedoms of conscience, association, and expression as well as democratic rights; Rawls also includes a personal property right, but this is defended in terms of moral capacities and self-respect,^[9] rather than an appeal to a natural right of self-ownership: this distinguishes Rawls' account from the classical liberalism of John Locke and the libertarianism of Robert Nozick).

Rawls argues that a second principle of equality would be agreed upon, to guarantee liberties represent meaningful options for all in society and ensure distributive justice. For example, formal guarantees of political voice and freedom of assembly are of little real worth to the desperately poor and marginalized in society. Demanding that everyone have exactly the same effective opportunities in life would almost certainly offend the very liberties that are supposedly being equalized. Nonetheless, we would want to ensure at least the "fair worth" of our liberties: wherever one ends up in society, one wants life to be worth living, with enough effective freedom to pursue personal goals. Thus participants would be moved to affirm a two-part second principle comprising Fair Equality of Opportunity and the famous (and controversial) difference principle. This second principle ensures that those with comparable talents and motivation face roughly similar life chances and that inequalities in society work to the benefit of the least advantaged.

Rawls held that these principles of justice apply to the "basic structure" of fundamental social institutions (such as the judiciary, the economic structure, the political constitution), a qualification that has been the source of some controversy and constructive debate (see, for instance, the important work of Gerald Cohen).

Rawls further argued that these principles were to be 'lexically ordered' to award priority to basic liberties over the more equality-oriented demands of the second principle. This has also been a topic of much debate among moral and political philosophers.

Finally, Rawls took his approach as applying in the first instance to what he called a "well-ordered society ... designed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a public conception of justice".^[10] In this respect, he understood justice as fairness as a contribution to "ideal theory", the determination of "principles that characterize a well-ordered society under favorable circumstances".^[11] Much recent work in political philosophy has asked what justice as fairness might dictate (or indeed, whether it is very useful at all) for problems of "partial compliance" under "nonideal theory."

[edit] Political Liberalism

Rawls' later work focused on the question of stability: could a society ordered by the two principles of justice endure? His answer to this question is contained in a collection of lectures titled Political Liberalism. In these lectures, Rawls introduced the idea of an overlapping consensus — or agreement on justice as fairness between citizens who hold different religious and philosophical views (or conceptions of the good). Political Liberalism also introduced the idea of public reason — the common reason of all citizens.

In Political Liberalism Rawls addressed the most common criticism levelled at A Theory of Justice — the criticism that the principles of justice were simply an alternative systematic conception of justice that was not superior to utilitarianism or any other comprehensive theory. Critics viewed "justice as fairness" as simply another reasonable, comprehensive doctrine that was incompatible with other reasonable doctrines. In their view it failed to distinguish between a comprehensive moral theory which addressed the problem of justice and a political conception of justice that was independent of any comprehensive theory.

In Political Liberalism Rawls introduces the political conception of justice that people with conflicting, but reasonable, metaphysical and/or religious views would accept to regulate the basic structure of society. What distinguishes Rawls' account from previous conceptions of liberalism is that it seeks to arrive at a consensus without appealing to any one metaphysical source - hence the idea of "political liberalism," contrary to John Locke or John Stuart Mill, who promote a more robust cultural and metaphysical liberal philosophy. Rawls' account is an attempt to secure the possibility of a liberal consensus regardless of the "deep" religious or metaphysical values that the parties endorse (so long as these remain open to compromise, i.e., are "reasonable"). The ideal result is therefore conceived as an "overlapping consensus" because different and often conflicting accounts of morality, nature, etc. are intended to "overlap" with each other on the question of governance.

Rawls also modified the principles of justice as follows (with the first principle having priority over the second, and the first half of the second having priority over the latter half):

1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.
   
2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.
   

These principles are subtly modified from the principles in Theory. The first principle now reads "equal claim" instead of "equal right," and he also replaces the phrase "system of basic liberties" with "a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties."

Political Liberalism also presents Rawls's account of political constructivism, the metaethical procedure whereby political theorists construct principles by reassembling materials from the public political culture.^[12]

^Reidy:

^{Excellent observation. I was wondering why her example of the "FACTORY" was sounding so "clanky" in my mind when I heard it.}

^{Yes. Those old 18th century robber barons with their polluting factories is her imaging.}

Reminds me of the pilot in Atlas who is flying back to NY City, and was always used to the Rearden Mills as his marker:

On the night of February 3, a young pilot was flying his usual route, weekly flight from Dallas to New York City. When he

reached the empty darkness beyond Philadelphia -- in the place where the flames of Rearden Steel had for years been

his favorite landmark, his greeting in the loneliness of night, the beacon of a living earth -- he saw a snow-covered spread,

dead-white and phosphorescent in the starlight, a spread of peaks and craters that looked like the service of the moon. He

quit his job, next morning. [page 997, 35th Anniversary Edition - pocket]

At another point in the book, after Rearden had joined the strike and the mills had collapsed and that glow on the horizon was out. Folks who used to complain about the smoke, shivered and shuddered in their cold, unheated homes.

Ms. Warren will be ecstatic when we are all commoners. Just like Dewey, who wished to create the "common child," she will have created the

"common citizen!"

Adam

Lou Rawls made much more sense...http://youtu.be/s6C64Ntjs1s <<<Dead End Street

^Adam

[George H. Smith]

David,

I case you missed it, Selene started a thread on this topic ("Elizabeth Warren and the Social Contract") on Sept. 22. Go here:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11207&view=findpost&p=143490

Ghs