"to write about the similarities between between equity-based progressivism and communism, and between equity-based progressivism and classical liberalism."
Did you ever get around to explaining what is similar between equity-based progressivism and classical liberalism (which I think of too devoted to principles of liberty to fall into a Woke frame)?
I don't think equality of opportunity must be taken to the absurd extreme of equity any more than law and order must be taken to the the absurd extreme of fascism. The problem is not the inherent tendency in the extremes of both, but rather that the left's extreme has been so influential. It hasn't been resisted by the normal left, nor successfully opposed by the right (outside of Rufo recently). Why?
Equality of opportunity has a concrete meaning (equalizing opportunity), whereas law and order is vague. If it were instead “zeroism” as in a policy of zero crime, then it’d similarly be a motte and Bailey with fascism.
I'll try to answer the "why* myself. Unless one allows for different group distributions of abilities correlated with outcomes, equality of opportunity = equality of outcome.
This topic however is the greatest taboo in our society. Therefore equality = equity prevails, and we march towards the far left's vision of justice -- equity, or communism.
Yeah, this bit makes me think Erik doesn't have any intelligent friends with left-wing politics (or even left-wing sympathies).
"You're either a radical egalitarian or you're not. If you are, you have to sign up for the whole package, including both the social and the economic package. Otherwise your position is actually philosophically incoherent and you will have no allies and you will get destroyed from both sides."
That statement is imo profoundly stupid. It takes 5 minutes talking to a real person to notice that their beliefs need not conform to your expectations. And sure, aspects of their belief system will be in tension - but so are yours. Everyone's world view has tensions and seeming contradictions, some of which go unnoticed by the believer, but others are resolved in surprising ways.
As you say, it's exactly the same mistake as thinking all right-wing ideology is either hardcore fascism, or incoherent.
Nearly all of my intelligent friends have left-wing politics and certainly left-wing sympathies, as do I.
Ad-hominem aside, If we're not going to take equality of opportunity literally (*equal* opportunity) then it should be called something else, like sufficient opportunity. Otherwise it becomes a motte & bailey.
Yeah, sorry. My comment came out a little colder than I meant for it to.
Yes, if we're going to take equality of opportunity literally, it is the same thing as equality of outcome. But this "we want equality of opportunity, not of outcome" thing is a slogan, a rhetorical device. And just like any slogan, it shouldn't be taken to represent what people actually think, but as a neat, succinct way to make a point.
Lefties generally want more equal outcomes than those that currently exist. That doesn't mean they'd be committed to continue to want more equal outcomes no matter how equal society becomes.
In much the same way, right-wingers tend to want lower taxes. That doesn't mean they're obliged to always want lower taxes, no matter how low taxes become - it just means they want them to be lower than they are now.
Maybe absolutely equality of outcome is the point at which "equity-based progressivism" would have accomplished its goal. But that's like personifying "tough on crime conservatism" and saying it won't be done until any minor violation of any rule leads to a death sentence.
The personified idea might stop at nothing until then, but the people that sign up to the idea are people with moral intuitions and competing preferences, and they are mostly not the simpleton caricatures that you describe.
FWIW, I totally agree that 'equity-based progressivism' falls naturally out of liberal ideas taken to their logical conclusions. I just don't agree that people that describe themselves as liberals (or socialists, or progressives, or any other label) are required to reason in the way you describe.
And that's both a logical claim (because describing yourself as a liberal doesn't have to mean you believe wholeheartedly in all of the ideas that make up liberalism, only that you think it's a useful shorthand that approximates your beliefs to some degree), and an empirical claim (because very few intelligent people I've known make the leaps you're saying are obligatory)
No offense taken! Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
"Tough on crime" is vague, unlike "equal opportunity" so it's tougher to say the people who want to be tough on crime are willing to prioritize zero crime above other civil liberties. By contrast, equal opportunity means something specific, so the people who advocate for it thinking it just means more opportunity end up enabling the people who mean something different, since there's no room to push back ("you just said you want equal opportunity!")
This would all be moot if a vague term like "more opportunity" or "sufficient opportunity" was used instead of a specific and measurable term like "equal opportunity"
That way, the motte and bailey wouldn't exist and the people who truly want "more opportunity" would be in conflict with those who want equal opportunity, as opposed to enabling them.
Yeah that's a reasonable way to think about it, in the event that you talk to people and they say "we just want equality of opportunity, not outcome" but then deny that one collapses into the other on closer inspection.
But I've never actually heard people say that, except maybe teenagers or youtubers or something. It's perfectly coherent to think the world should have less inequality of outcome than it does currently, and so to adopt left political priorities, without thinking more quality of outcome is always better. And this is the position that the vast majority of left-leaning people are in, it seems to me.
communism and socialism are both failure modes for wealth/health creation because they destroy /impair the means of error correction provided by free markets and nature.
Creating a state apparatus, hierarchy, armed force, and professional class to coerce free citizens to redistribute their wealth according to the state's definition of fair, equitable, correct, etc. should be odious to anyone who understands human nature and isn't a naive child, gullible fool, or venal power-grabber dressed up as a caring pity-humper. If you're none of the above and still favor "progressive" politics than you are just a boiling frog repeating shibboleths.
The professional class of money redistributors will never be done with their "work" because that would mean they would be out of a job.
A much better definition of morality and virtue in a market context is the one provided by David Deutsch. Recommend this podcast from Naval: https://nav.al/david-deutsch-2
Morality is a system committed to error correction.
Not authority, not niceness, not pieties, not bullshit, not empathy, not redistribution of wealth, not pity-humping, error-correction.
I teach my sons to embody and never shirk from their duty to speak up when they view there is an error. And that's also why I'm commenting here.
Last point-- related concept is Taleb-- If you see fraud and don't say fraud then you are a fraud. Expand that to anything that fucks up error correction, like stupid pieties by folks who have never in their lives lived among the generationally poor to understand the impacts of top-down liberal/progressive policies on their families, their opportunities, and their motivations. If you see bullshit and don't call bullshit you are bullshit.
Grown up in East Germany, a Soviet branch, I am always astonished about the misunderstanding how the system actually has worked: the party-line was for 85% of the population 'lip service' (your 1970 commie groups would fall into the "eager 15%"). The East collapsed purely out of economical reasons: the capital allocation was inefficient, productivity was low, and money could not buy stuff. And there was no accountability for most things. Not because of the existence of a better alternative (the West). Sounds familiar? History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes pretty much... 2023 feels to me very much like 1988 in East Germany... we saw something big coming (the bs couldn't further sustain), we just did not knew what... and then the system collapsed on Nov 11th, 1989.
“What’s fascinating is that most intellectuals were in fact communist back in the day. There’s something about the fantasy of equality and a centrally organized society controlled by technocrats that appeals to academics. I wonder what it is. :)”
Is there any data on this? The rift between the anti-Stalinist Left and the Stalinist Left opened up pretty quickly and the Stalinist Left was routed.
"to write about the similarities between between equity-based progressivism and communism, and between equity-based progressivism and classical liberalism."
Did you ever get around to explaining what is similar between equity-based progressivism and classical liberalism (which I think of too devoted to principles of liberty to fall into a Woke frame)?
I don't think equality of opportunity must be taken to the absurd extreme of equity any more than law and order must be taken to the the absurd extreme of fascism. The problem is not the inherent tendency in the extremes of both, but rather that the left's extreme has been so influential. It hasn't been resisted by the normal left, nor successfully opposed by the right (outside of Rufo recently). Why?
Equality of opportunity has a concrete meaning (equalizing opportunity), whereas law and order is vague. If it were instead “zeroism” as in a policy of zero crime, then it’d similarly be a motte and Bailey with fascism.
I'll try to answer the "why* myself. Unless one allows for different group distributions of abilities correlated with outcomes, equality of opportunity = equality of outcome.
This topic however is the greatest taboo in our society. Therefore equality = equity prevails, and we march towards the far left's vision of justice -- equity, or communism.
Yeah, this bit makes me think Erik doesn't have any intelligent friends with left-wing politics (or even left-wing sympathies).
"You're either a radical egalitarian or you're not. If you are, you have to sign up for the whole package, including both the social and the economic package. Otherwise your position is actually philosophically incoherent and you will have no allies and you will get destroyed from both sides."
That statement is imo profoundly stupid. It takes 5 minutes talking to a real person to notice that their beliefs need not conform to your expectations. And sure, aspects of their belief system will be in tension - but so are yours. Everyone's world view has tensions and seeming contradictions, some of which go unnoticed by the believer, but others are resolved in surprising ways.
As you say, it's exactly the same mistake as thinking all right-wing ideology is either hardcore fascism, or incoherent.
Nearly all of my intelligent friends have left-wing politics and certainly left-wing sympathies, as do I.
Ad-hominem aside, If we're not going to take equality of opportunity literally (*equal* opportunity) then it should be called something else, like sufficient opportunity. Otherwise it becomes a motte & bailey.
Yeah, sorry. My comment came out a little colder than I meant for it to.
Yes, if we're going to take equality of opportunity literally, it is the same thing as equality of outcome. But this "we want equality of opportunity, not of outcome" thing is a slogan, a rhetorical device. And just like any slogan, it shouldn't be taken to represent what people actually think, but as a neat, succinct way to make a point.
Lefties generally want more equal outcomes than those that currently exist. That doesn't mean they'd be committed to continue to want more equal outcomes no matter how equal society becomes.
In much the same way, right-wingers tend to want lower taxes. That doesn't mean they're obliged to always want lower taxes, no matter how low taxes become - it just means they want them to be lower than they are now.
Maybe absolutely equality of outcome is the point at which "equity-based progressivism" would have accomplished its goal. But that's like personifying "tough on crime conservatism" and saying it won't be done until any minor violation of any rule leads to a death sentence.
The personified idea might stop at nothing until then, but the people that sign up to the idea are people with moral intuitions and competing preferences, and they are mostly not the simpleton caricatures that you describe.
FWIW, I totally agree that 'equity-based progressivism' falls naturally out of liberal ideas taken to their logical conclusions. I just don't agree that people that describe themselves as liberals (or socialists, or progressives, or any other label) are required to reason in the way you describe.
And that's both a logical claim (because describing yourself as a liberal doesn't have to mean you believe wholeheartedly in all of the ideas that make up liberalism, only that you think it's a useful shorthand that approximates your beliefs to some degree), and an empirical claim (because very few intelligent people I've known make the leaps you're saying are obligatory)
No offense taken! Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
"Tough on crime" is vague, unlike "equal opportunity" so it's tougher to say the people who want to be tough on crime are willing to prioritize zero crime above other civil liberties. By contrast, equal opportunity means something specific, so the people who advocate for it thinking it just means more opportunity end up enabling the people who mean something different, since there's no room to push back ("you just said you want equal opportunity!")
This would all be moot if a vague term like "more opportunity" or "sufficient opportunity" was used instead of a specific and measurable term like "equal opportunity"
That way, the motte and bailey wouldn't exist and the people who truly want "more opportunity" would be in conflict with those who want equal opportunity, as opposed to enabling them.
Yeah that's a reasonable way to think about it, in the event that you talk to people and they say "we just want equality of opportunity, not outcome" but then deny that one collapses into the other on closer inspection.
But I've never actually heard people say that, except maybe teenagers or youtubers or something. It's perfectly coherent to think the world should have less inequality of outcome than it does currently, and so to adopt left political priorities, without thinking more quality of outcome is always better. And this is the position that the vast majority of left-leaning people are in, it seems to me.
communism and socialism are both failure modes for wealth/health creation because they destroy /impair the means of error correction provided by free markets and nature.
Creating a state apparatus, hierarchy, armed force, and professional class to coerce free citizens to redistribute their wealth according to the state's definition of fair, equitable, correct, etc. should be odious to anyone who understands human nature and isn't a naive child, gullible fool, or venal power-grabber dressed up as a caring pity-humper. If you're none of the above and still favor "progressive" politics than you are just a boiling frog repeating shibboleths.
The professional class of money redistributors will never be done with their "work" because that would mean they would be out of a job.
A much better definition of morality and virtue in a market context is the one provided by David Deutsch. Recommend this podcast from Naval: https://nav.al/david-deutsch-2
Morality is a system committed to error correction.
Not authority, not niceness, not pieties, not bullshit, not empathy, not redistribution of wealth, not pity-humping, error-correction.
I teach my sons to embody and never shirk from their duty to speak up when they view there is an error. And that's also why I'm commenting here.
Last point-- related concept is Taleb-- If you see fraud and don't say fraud then you are a fraud. Expand that to anything that fucks up error correction, like stupid pieties by folks who have never in their lives lived among the generationally poor to understand the impacts of top-down liberal/progressive policies on their families, their opportunities, and their motivations. If you see bullshit and don't call bullshit you are bullshit.
Grown up in East Germany, a Soviet branch, I am always astonished about the misunderstanding how the system actually has worked: the party-line was for 85% of the population 'lip service' (your 1970 commie groups would fall into the "eager 15%"). The East collapsed purely out of economical reasons: the capital allocation was inefficient, productivity was low, and money could not buy stuff. And there was no accountability for most things. Not because of the existence of a better alternative (the West). Sounds familiar? History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes pretty much... 2023 feels to me very much like 1988 in East Germany... we saw something big coming (the bs couldn't further sustain), we just did not knew what... and then the system collapsed on Nov 11th, 1989.
“What’s fascinating is that most intellectuals were in fact communist back in the day. There’s something about the fantasy of equality and a centrally organized society controlled by technocrats that appeals to academics. I wonder what it is. :)”
Is there any data on this? The rift between the anti-Stalinist Left and the Stalinist Left opened up pretty quickly and the Stalinist Left was routed.
Equity based progressivism is also known as Bioleninism.
Leftism, not liberalism. (Sorry to be a hall monitor.)