From: darkladyothsith

2009-03-09 09:39 pm (UTC)

I think it worth clearing up a couple of misconceptions about conservative viewpoints. Speaking generally, of course. There will be exceptions.



1) Conservatives are not in favor of farm subsidies, and would rather see the excess food put to good use.



2) Conservatives are not opposed to charity, and it's a somewhat bizarre statistic that conservatives donate more money, goods, and time to charities than liberals do. They do distinguish between charity and welfare, however, and the latter is what they oppose.



The thing that I don't understand is why you seem to feel that getting paid to not work is considered a better ideal than getting paid to be productive. Yes, there's a technology to do the vending machine job, but there isn't technology for a lot of other low wage jobs-- say, being a cook at a restaurant. If all someone does is take resources from everyone else without producing anything in return, that person would fall under the definition of a parasite. Why do you consider that more desirable than doing something productive in your example above?



If, instead of working at the zoo, you sat around, ate food, and, oh, played WoW all day long, and got a wage for doing so, why is that a desirable outcome for society? I can see why it would be a desirable outcome for you, the individual, but not for the society.



That's the flaw of the communist economic model (socialism is a government model, communism is an economic one. I see them confused a lot, so I'm specifying for the sake of anyone reading who might be confused). "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a nice idea in theory, but if I get what I need whether I do any work or not, why should I put forth according to my ability? As an individual, I get the better end of the deal if I don't do anything. But then your society falls apart because you'll get a majority of people who don't do anything, but demand 'according to their need'. And there's not enough people left who are producing to support everyone. From: alicorn24

2009-03-10 03:25 am (UTC)

1) I'm not in favor of farm subsidies either, in case that was unclear. My point was that it was ironic that we'd pay people not to work when it made no sense but would not pay people who did not work under more sensible circumstances.



2) I would like to see those statistics. I will only be impressed if they are stratified for income, since conservatives are often in a position to *have* more money, goods, and time. It would be highly interesting if they also donated more blood or were more likely to have jobs working with the disadvantaged, which is something I would be very surprised to see.



We do not have any earthly use for all the production that could be produced by everyone being productive. Requiring that everyone either be productive or be impoverished, therefore, necessitates that we produce more than we need or want by requiring people to do things against their will by threatening them with poverty. Neither the ends nor the means are good. If I think about it, I'm not very comfortable living in a society that exists only because it threatens its population (much less with being so threatened myself). I don't like living in a society that celebrates consumption because we need to justify all this production we do, either.



We don't have the technology to do all of those jobs automatically yet. That's sort of the point of my post - we don't yet have the technology to free the people who do those jobs from that labor. When it was essential that everyone pull their weight as a subsistence farmer or people would die, it was appropriate to despise and harshly punish slacking off in every instance. That level of frenetic work is no longer necessary or even useful, but we retain the social model. We accept parasitism in some classes of people - children (a class the upper age of which gets higher all the time), certain types of the handicapped and chronically ill, the elderly, the prison population, and the dependents of the rich. We have concocted excuses for each of these exceptions to the "work or die" model, even though it wasn't that long ago that quite young children were considered indispensable labor. They still are in some countries. Yes, I recommend expanding our "parasite class", if you will. Why shouldn't we - besides the very principle that I'm attacking that parasites (except the special parasites we make exceptions for and support) deserve poverty - expand the parasite class to everyone's benefit?



Reply too long for one comment; continuation forthcoming. From: michaelkeenan

2010-05-10 08:17 am (UTC)





I recommend to you two articles about liberal and conservative charity: one NYT article by Nicholas Kristof (



"[I]f measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes."



"Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent."



I needn't explain to you that the feeling of surprise is your mind telling you that something in your model is seriously wrong.



But this is good news! It isn't the case that conservatives are evil mutants who hate the poor. They're good people, like you, who just have a different opinion of *how* to help the poor. They think it should be individual contributions, not government contributions. This could be the basis of a fruitful debate, rather than the usual shouting matches. > I would like to see those statistics. I will only be impressed if they are stratified for income, since conservatives are often in a position to *have* more money, goods, and time. It would be highly interesting if they also donated more blood or were more likely to have jobs working with the disadvantaged, which is something I would be very surprised to see.I recommend to you two articles about liberal and conservative charity: one NYT article by Nicholas Kristof ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=2 ) and one in the Boston Globe by Christopher Shea ( http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/12/10/who_gives/ )."[I]f measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.""Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent."I needn't explain to you that the feeling of surprise is your mind telling you that something in your model is seriously wrong.But this is good news! It isn't the case that conservatives are evil mutants who hate the poor. They're good people, like you, who just have a different opinion of *how* to help the poor. They think it should be individual contributions, not government contributions. This could be the basis of a fruitful debate, rather than the usual shouting matches. From: michaelkeenan

2010-05-25 07:50 am (UTC)





Wei Dai suggested these options:

* I don't understand this yet. Still trying.

* I don't understand this. I give up.

* I agree.

* I disagree, and will write up the reasons later.

* I disagree, but don't want to bother writing out why.

* I need to think about this more.

* I already addressed this before.

* Other May I invoke the LessWrong norm for stating your last position, just on the "how charitable are conservatives" question? I'm curious as to whether the information about conservative charitable efforts persuaded you that conservatives are unusually generous. But of course I don't want to pressure you into a lengthy or onerous reply.Wei Dai suggested these options:* I don't understand this yet. Still trying.* I don't understand this. I give up.* I agree.* I disagree, and will write up the reasons later.* I disagree, but don't want to bother writing out why.* I need to think about this more.* I already addressed this before.* Other From: alicorn24

2010-05-25 05:15 pm (UTC)

I was surprised by the statistics on conservative charitable giving. I now suspect that the charity-related differences between conservatives and liberals have more to do with whether they want the government involved centralizing everything or not. From: michaelkeenan

2010-05-26 01:46 am (UTC)

Thanks :) From: alicorn24

2009-03-10 03:26 am (UTC)

If I had spent that summer making the same amount of money for doing whatever I liked, I wouldn't have - and you know this - have "sat around, eaten food, and played WoW". I would have cooked (for you as well as me) and done dishes, gotten plenty of sleep every night, done artwork, written, read, learned, socialized, and generally gone about my life. It wasn't as though I was spending the summer in indefinite dissipation; I was spending the summer not being in school because school was not in session. If you were in a different situation, you might have paid me to cook for you (not that I wasn't perfectly happy to do it for free); if I were a more popular artist or writer, those activities might have garnered money; if my school was willing to extend me funding over the summer as it has been during the school year I could have lived off of that. These activities are not valueless, not even to society. They just weren't "worth" a living wage in my exact circumstances.



There is no good reason why I should have had to trade my valuable time to do a valueless activity in order to survive the summer. I did nobody any good.



I don't have such a dim view of human nature that I think that most people, presented with the choice, would literally eat and sleep and play World of Warcraft all the time. If some of them would, that's actually okay with me. We do not need those people. People with that little drive for personal fulfillment and social contribution are not going to be movers and shakers anyway; they're going to be flipping burgers, and they rightly should be replaced in that capacity by robots and allowed to play with their computers if that is really all they want from life.



There are plenty of examples of wealthy people, perfect leisure well within their grasp, who choose work and education rather than doing fuckall all day. Emperor Hirohito is the quintessential example; he learned marine biology and became respected in the (I'm presuming you agree with me that it's non-valueless) field. I don't know if he did it for the acclaim or the escape from boredom or because he was sexually attracted to cuttlefish or what, but I know he didn't do it for the money. He didn't do it because he was threatened with poverty. He didn't do it because he had to if he wanted to feed his kids.



As our technology gets better, eventually it will be possible for only people with independent desire to do so to work. When we've finished that shift - unless we're all still working our butts off like morons out of loyalty to an outdated ideal of industriousness - it will seem appalling that we used to make wage slaves out of ourselves rather than allowing people to "get away with" doing as they liked. From: ext_181471

2009-08-13 05:48 pm (UTC)

"Why shouldn't the government allow the farmers to grow the crops, and then buy them and do something nice with them - perhaps in another country, where the market is not in danger of a glut?"



One problem with this is, there are no markets not in danger of a glut. All world markets are interconnected. If we gave away food in Ethiopia, it would still reduce the price of food here, since people are buying food in Ethiopia (not to mention disrupting local markets there, which isn't presently our concern).



One reason that we subsidize farmers is so that we are always growing more food than we need, while still keeping them at a good enough wage to keep working. If we stopped subsidizing farmers, fewer people would be farmers as the market self-corrects. But then if there is an emergency and we need more food, it would take a long time for the market to correct itself due to the time it takes to grow food; our people could starve in the mean time (or, more realistically, there would be economic disruption / inflation / etc.). From: michaelkeenan

2010-05-10 06:32 pm (UTC)





What (if anything) does this imply about our obligations to create technological capacity?



> I think part of the conservative mindset comes of disconnecting morality from technology...They have taken the shortcut of valuing abstinence in and of itself, in spite of the fact that its rational purpose can now be displaced to much better net effect by prophylactics and, in a pinch, medical intervention.



I think conservative stances on sexual issues are much better explained by the normal human moral intuition about purity/repugnance[1]. Consider that most liberals oppose consensual adult incest, and yet technology can overcome the problem of genetic defects too.



> I have not seen any conservatives objecting to the fact that many people are paid to do work that is unnecessary



I've seen conservatives object to bureaucrats and green jobs on this basis.



> The irony is that the zoo could have installed a vending machine for less money than it cost to give me my uniform and pay my wage



Then it was a poorly run zoo, at least in that aspect. That's unfortunate for the zoo, for you, and for the world. A person as smart as you[2] could be more productive than being a human vending machine. It's unfortunate that you weren't doing something more productive that summer.



> they would have pocketed the difference and I would have had no money. This is because it rankles the conservative mindset to allow doing "nothing" to yield resources.



The availability heuristic might be failing me here, since I read far more objections to welfare from economists and libertarians than from conservatives, and maybe conservatives are different, but my impression of the conservative argument against welfare is very different from yours. I can't recall anyone railing against free stuff, and I personally enjoy my free Google, Facebook account, Wikipedia, operating system, and a lot of other free stuff I've never seen anyone attack (at least, not on the basis of being free). I think people aren't worried about people *getting* free stuff; people are much more concerned about the *taking* of the stuff from other people.



> As I've heard it explained, the government pays farmers not to grow crops that would, if sold, glut the market and make the economy BSOD. All well and good.



That's just the cover story. Farm subsidies are completely indefensible on economic grounds. It's an economic disaster, but people who haven't studied economics believe the cover story, and there's nothing economists can do about it because it's one of those issues that takes more than a soundbite to explain. Here's Nicholas Kristof writing about farm subsidies in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/05/opinion/05KRIS.html



More here, from an actual economist:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/the-illogic-of-farm-subsidies-and-other-agricultural-truths/



> Oh, because that would be charity, and charity is bad.



Not to belabor the point I made elsewhere in this comments section, but this is a *serious* misunderstanding of conservatives, who donate more money than liberals, even when you measure money to secular causes as a percentage of income, and they donate more blood, and they volunteer more. Conservatives are all about charity.



> We have made work efficient enough that not everyone needs to produce in order for everyone to live. We don't even need everyone to produce in order for everyone to live well.



My position on this is unusual, and definitely not the standard conservative one, but I don't think we should relax until death, suffering and stupidity are under control.





[1]



[2] Based on your writing here and on Less Wrong, and from what you've mentioned about the PhDs being impressed with you. > As we have more technological capability, we have the capacity to accomplish more good. This creates more obligations than we would have without this technological capability. For example, being able to treat a disease makes it wrong to withhold that treatment (under many conditions) from people afflicted with the disease. Before the existence of the cure, standing around and watching somebody die of the illness was not an unjust act.What (if anything) does this imply about our obligations to create technological capacity?> I think part of the conservative mindset comes of disconnecting morality from technology...They have taken the shortcut of valuing abstinence in and of itself, in spite of the fact that its rational purpose can now be displaced to much better net effect by prophylactics and, in a pinch, medical intervention.I think conservative stances on sexual issues are much better explained by the normal human moral intuition about purity/repugnance[1]. Consider that most liberals oppose consensual adult incest, and yet technology can overcome the problem of genetic defects too.> I have not seen any conservatives objecting to the fact that many people are paid to do work that is unnecessaryI've seen conservatives object to bureaucrats and green jobs on this basis.> The irony is that the zoo could have installed a vending machine for less money than it cost to give me my uniform and pay my wageThen it was a poorly run zoo, at least in that aspect. That's unfortunate for the zoo, for you, and for the world. A person as smart as you[2] could be more productive than being a human vending machine. It's unfortunate that you weren't doing something more productive that summer.> they would have pocketed the difference and I would have had no money. This is because it rankles the conservative mindset to allow doing "nothing" to yield resources.The availability heuristic might be failing me here, since I read far more objections to welfare from economists and libertarians than from conservatives, and maybe conservatives are different, but my impression of the conservative argument against welfare is very different from yours. I can't recall anyone railing against free stuff, and I personally enjoy my free Google, Facebook account, Wikipedia, operating system, and a lot of other free stuff I've never seen anyone attack (at least, not on the basis of being free). I think people aren't worried about people *getting* free stuff; people are much more concerned about the *taking* of the stuff from other people.> As I've heard it explained, the government pays farmers not to grow crops that would, if sold, glut the market and make the economy BSOD. All well and good.That's just the cover story. Farm subsidies are completely indefensible on economic grounds. It's an economic disaster, but people who haven't studied economics believe the cover story, and there's nothing economists can do about it because it's one of those issues that takes more than a soundbite to explain. Here's Nicholas Kristof writing about farm subsidies in the New York Times:More here, from an actual economist:> Oh, because that would be charity, and charity is bad.Not to belabor the point I made elsewhere in this comments section, but this is a *serious* misunderstanding of conservatives, who donate more money than liberals, even when you measure money to secular causes as a percentage of income, and they donate more blood, and they volunteer more. Conservatives are all about charity.> We have made work efficient enough that not everyone needs to produce in order for everyone to live. We don't even need everyone to produce in order for everyone to live well.My position on this is unusual, and definitely not the standard conservative one, but I don't think we should relax until death, suffering and stupidity are under control.[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20080316213803/http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/dscalepap.html [2] Based on your writing here and on Less Wrong, and from what you've mentioned about the PhDs being impressed with you. From: alicorn24

2010-05-10 07:01 pm (UTC)

>What (if anything) does this imply about our obligations to create technological capacity?



It is clearly an axiological good to obtain the power to help more and more effectively. Whether it's a moral obligation depends on one's ethical views. I'm not committed in my ethical views to saying we must create more tech; but I have no reason to object to it.



>I think conservative stances on sexual issues are much better explained by the normal human moral intuition about purity/repugnance[1]. Consider that most liberals oppose consensual adult incest, and yet technology can overcome the problem of genetic defects too.



The "purity/repugnance" thing doesn't make much sense to me, because it doesn't seem to apply to natural categories. There's a certain emotional reaction associated with certain moral judgments, but the subjects of those judgments don't bear enough similarity to each other that I consider it sensible to identify them as being matters of something like "purity". What makes a thing "impure"?



>Then it was a poorly run zoo, at least in that aspect. That's unfortunate for the zoo, for you, and for the world. A person as smart as you[2] could be more productive than being a human vending machine. It's unfortunate that you weren't doing something more productive that summer.



I had just a bachelor's degree in philosophy, no other special credentials, and had firm plans to go to grad school in the fall, so I was only available for the summer. I wanted to live in a specific city (because I was staying with a friend) and couldn't relocate to suit a possible opportunity. I couldn't afford to intern for free because I needed to hang on to my savings, accumulate more, and pay rent. It took me about a month to find the zoo job. It's not clear to me what else I could have been doing that would have met my needs. Ideas?



>My position on this is unusual, and definitely not the standard conservative one, but I don't think we should relax until death, suffering and stupidity are under control.



Not everyone is qualified to work on those problems, due to... uh... those problems. Even if everybody who could make progress on them applied themselves to them, I think there would be more than enough labor left for everything else to get done. From: michaelkeenan

2010-05-18 09:54 am (UTC)





Well, as a New York Times writer

"The emotion of disgust probably evolved when people became meat eaters and had to learn which foods might be contaminated with bacteria, a problem not presented by plant foods. Disgust was then extended to many other categories, he argues, to people who were unclean, to unacceptable sexual practices and to a wide class of bodily functions and behaviors that were seen as separating humans from animals."



Haidt has a paper on the specific subjects of disgust, but unfortunately that paper is gone from the free web...except



The (very readable) paper describes the process of coming up with seven domains of "disgust elicitors": food, animals, body products, sex, body envelope violations, death, and hygiene. (In case you question that, he describes the process clearly, from the initial creation of the categories and the merging of two initial categories into the one sex category. So you might like to read about that process and judge whether you agree that would be the right way to go.)



So I fully understand why impurity seems so random - it is largely to do with seven not-especially-well-linked domains thrown together. I am persuaded that this is a sensible way to think about repugnance though. It does, after all, reflect the kludgey way human brains evolved.



> I had just a bachelor's degree in philosophy, no other special credentials, and had firm plans to go to grad school in the fall, so I was only available for the summer. I wanted to live in a specific city (because I was staying with a friend) and couldn't relocate to suit a possible opportunity. I couldn't afford to intern for free because I needed to hang on to my savings, accumulate more, and pay rent. It took me about a month to find the zoo job. It's not clear to me what else I could have been doing that would have met my needs. Ideas?



Oh...well, with those restrictions, maybe it was your best opportunity, at least that could be found with limited information. (Though, it does occur to me that tutoring of high school students and proof-reading are skilled jobs things you'd have been capable of; they're things I wish I'd looked into instead of working at Subway one summer.)



> Not everyone is qualified to work on those problems, due to... uh... those problems.



But they need more money! Eliezer



Of course, there is a limit to how much money SIAI could usefully spend. But that's not the only organization - there's Methuselah, and every health research organization in the world, and there's



But...I'm losing track of my point here. It's not like most people are donating to Methuselah with their excess cash. They're spending an awful lot on status goods. Still, I don't want to slow down economic growth (which supporting unproductive people would do), because some of it (admittedly, a tiny trickle of it) is going to extremely good causes. And the rest is going to various things which, for whatever reason, people have decided they want, which is ok with me. > There's a certain emotional reaction associated with certain moral judgments, but the subjects of those judgments don't bear enough similarity to each other that I consider it sensible to identify them as being matters of something like "purity". What makes a thing "impure"?Well, as a New York Times writer summarized Haidt's theory on the origin of disgust "The emotion of disgust probably evolved when people became meat eaters and had to learn which foods might be contaminated with bacteria, a problem not presented by plant foods. Disgust was then extended to many other categories, he argues, to people who were unclean, to unacceptable sexual practices and to a wide class of bodily functions and behaviors that were seen as separating humans from animals."Haidt has a paper on the specific subjects of disgust, but unfortunately that paper is gone from the free web...except here at the Internet Wayback Machine.The (very readable) paper describes the process of coming up with seven domains of "disgust elicitors": food, animals, body products, sex, body envelope violations, death, and hygiene. (In case you question that, he describes the process clearly, from the initial creation of the categories and the merging of two initial categories into the one sex category. So you might like to read about that process and judge whether you agree that would be the right way to go.)So I fully understand why impurity seems so random - it is largely to do with seven not-especially-well-linked domains thrown together. I am persuaded that this is a sensible way to think about repugnance though. It does, after all, reflect the kludgey way human brains evolved.> I had just a bachelor's degree in philosophy, no other special credentials, and had firm plans to go to grad school in the fall, so I was only available for the summer. I wanted to live in a specific city (because I was staying with a friend) and couldn't relocate to suit a possible opportunity. I couldn't afford to intern for free because I needed to hang on to my savings, accumulate more, and pay rent. It took me about a month to find the zoo job. It's not clear to me what else I could have been doing that would have met my needs. Ideas?Oh...well, with those restrictions, maybe it was your best opportunity, at least that could be found with limited information. (Though, it does occur to me that tutoring of high school students and proof-reading are skilled jobs things you'd have been capable of; they're things I wish I'd looked into instead of working at Subway one summer.)> Not everyone is qualified to work on those problems, due to... uh... those problems.But they need more money! Eliezer has written about this Of course, there is a limit to how much money SIAI could usefully spend. But that's not the only organization - there's Methuselah, and every health research organization in the world, and there's autonomous cars (which would save 400,000 lives every year if they eliminated car accidents), and many other ways of saving lives.But...I'm losing track of my point here. It's not like most people are donating to Methuselah with their excess cash. They're spending an awful lot on status goods. Still, I don't want to slow down economic growth (which supporting unproductive people would do), because some of it (admittedly, a tiny trickle of it) is going to extremely good causes. And the rest is going to various things which, for whatever reason, people have decided they want, which is ok with me. From: michaelkeenan

2010-05-18 12:31 pm (UTC)

I should add, in case it's not obvious, that aid to important technology doesn't just come from donations; it comes from people buying stuff they want for normal selfish reasons too.



Also, improved economic growth decreases death, suffering and stupidity in mundane ways too. When people are wealthier, they can afford safety devices (like smoke alarms or cars with airbags), healthier food, gym memberships, and more education.