RevolutionZ

Ep 4 - Vision: Defending Equity

June 03, 2019 Michael Albert Season 1
RevolutionZ
Ep 4 - Vision: Defending Equity
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode I discuss major criticisms of the equity approach to providing income. A case is made that if the rest of a future economy can operate compatibly, giving income only for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued work is an approach consistent with our values.

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Speaker 1:

My name is Michael Albert and this is episode four of our new podcast RevolutionZ, Life After Capitalism.

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So far, delivery is still a bit stiff. I think it's got good content already, maybe better than good, but it's got neophyte delivery. I'm learning. A friend of mine told me Seth Rogen the master podcaster, did dozens, perhaps a hundred or more episodes before he got good. I'm going to have to grow a lot quicker than he did I know, but you'll give me a little leeway I hope. Before the meat of episode four, I would like to acknowledge those of you who have already begun following the podcast and very importantly, begun using Patreon to provide some financial help. Stuff costs, and I really do need your support. So if you have just a little time for it, please visit my Patreon page at www.patrion.com/revolutionz. That's www.patrionpatreln.com/revolutionz and consider pledging some support. And while I am seeking your involvement, please also consider sending advice, suggestions, and or questions about specific episodes or the whole project to sysop@czmag.org. And now we proceed. Bob Dylan wrote,"money doesn't talk. It swears." Upton Sinclair wrote,"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In episode three, the last one, I suggested that activists concerned to attain a better world, fighting for an increase in the minimum wage, for example, ought to be able to answer the question"in your better economy, what would determine how much income we each receive?" While current activism rightly focuses on climate disasters, the green new deal, health, militarism, racism, and much else, we also need longer term vision to combat the widespread demobilizing belief that there is no alternative and all efforts atchange will dissolve back into the ills of the present.

Speaker 1:

Even beyond instilling hope. We also need longterm vision to provide positive direction and to provide goals for our current actions so they steadily enhance our prospects for comprehensive lasting gains. I offered a possible answer to the equity question of what should determine income, which is that income ought to be for how long we work, how hard we work, and for the onerousness of the conditions under which we work as long as we are producing socially valued product.

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In other words, we should get a larger income if we work for more hours or if we work harder or if we work under worse conditions while usefully contributing to the social product. That's a norm for how society or to determine how much income each person gets. On the other hand, we should get nothing for owning property. We should get nothing for owning equipment. We should get nothing for owning resources, and we should get nothing for having more power or for producing stuff that no one wants or even for the precise level or value of the desired output that we generate, because that depends on many factors outside our control.

Speaker 1:

Those are matters we discussed last time.We offered a view of how to determine income in a good economy, for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued work. But not everyone agrees with that. In fact, a whole lot of people disagree with it and before we can proceed into other aspects of economic vision we should acknowledge that many who hear our income formulation will strongly reject the approach and we ought to see what we think of their objections. So we need to list them and to then evaluate them.

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The first critic says, your equity approach punishes anyone who can't work. What if someone is too young or too old or too ill? If duration intensity and onerousness of socially valued work is all that earns income, then if Joe is too young, old or ill to work, he has no basis for getting an income. He starves, I reject that says the critic. The second critic says your equity approach doesn't materially incentivize people to use their inborn talents. The approach may share the social pie equitably, but if people aren't doing what they are best suited to do, output will suffer. And that is unacceptable with no incentives for talent. I will forego being a really excellent surgeon because I prefer to cook and I have no big surgeon income to get me out of the kitchen. Waste talent. That's dumb. The third critic says the equity approach doesn't reward acquired skills."Why should I go to school to become a doctor?," she asked,"if I can earn the same income per hour for doing jobs that require much less preparation. Why should I become an engineer or architect or artist when I can earn as much doing work that takes much less training."

Speaker 1:

She continues,"without rewarding acquired skills, people won't undergo great schooling or training. There won't be enough doctors or enough extended education or training for any complex purpose and what good is fairly sharingwhat's produced. If we have no doctors, engineers, architects, or architects, I reject that.

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Critic number four says, beyond all that, the equity approach doesn't provide enough sufficient incentives to elicit desired effort from each worker once or he or she is on the job. I get a job, I'm supposed to work. What's my incentive? There isn't enough. Giving equity. Incomes has insufficient carrot and it has no stick to spur people on.Society's product will shrink so severely that fairly sharing what pie there is won't matter. Who wants to share poverty. Not Me. The fifth's critic says it is worse still."The equity approach doesn't provide sufficient incentives to elicit innovation. Why should anyone develop new technologies and techniques if he doesn't benefit from doing so? By curtailing innovation in the present, getting your equity will undermine the future. Sellout my grandkids, no way. The sixth and last critic says even if the social product would not unduly shrink due to our equitably sharing it, my final criticism of the equity approach is that no one can actually measure duration, intensity and onerousness of work in the real world."Despite your pretty pipe dreams, your equity income approach is an unimplementable aim." So the six critics line up, look confident and even a bit smug and callwe who seek equity stupid. Are they right? A podcast episode is not a book, but nonetheless, let's at least briefly consider the six criticisms in turn. The first criticism is that equity income ignores those who can't work. This one is easy to address because it was only a misunderstanding due to incomplete exposition. In a worthy economy, if you are too young, too old, or otherwise unable to work, of course you would get a full income free. Likewise, all medical care would be free so no one will be left out of equity. We each and all would take care of each and all. Objection one is no objection at all. The second objection has in mind someone with great inborn talent. For example, a potential pianist, mathematician, architect, or athlete. The objection is that the equity approach doesn't give such a person a material reason to pursue their talent instead of some path they are less suited to. At first glance, this does seem pretty damning. Suppose you could be a great surgeon, but you could only be a good cook, but suppose you loved cooking. The equity approach would not give you an income related reason to forgo cooking and pursue surgery. You would cook, you wouldn't operate. Society loses a great surgeon. My reply is threefold. One, almost everyone with exceptional talents orients towards using those talents. Most with an exceptional talent would indeed have to be coercively prevented from using it even if their using their talent would yield them less income than not using it. Think artists, athletes, scientists and so on. They don't grow up wanting to be something other than artists, athletes, and scientists. They want to use their talents. You would do surgery not cook because you would need and desire to express your talent. Two, the equity approach, in fact, does include an incentive to utilize one's talent in the form of the admiration, respect, self satisfaction, and self fulfillment that accrues to superior rather than only competent actions. You would operate and not cook because being better at operating, you would enjoy more acclaim and thanks. And third, if you don't feel the drive to utilize your inborn talents, why not? If you don't want to be a doctor and would rather be a cook, and just a pretty good cook as compared to an excellent doctor, it is oresumably because you don't enjoy using your talents and you prefer some other pursuits so much that you would forego the accolades that superior activity would bring. In that case, isn't it actually appropriate and perhaps even more productive that you make the preferred choice. You would cook, not operate, but because you did, you would be all the happier and probably a more productive worker for it. Finally, at the risk of offending people who make the criticism we are here dismissing, our current society actually subverts and destroys and certainly does not utilize the special talents of over 80% of the population. People who do stultifying, boring, tedious, repetitive work- their talents are not utilized and that's 80%. As a result, anyone who claims to be worried about not eliciting creativity with the equity approach is not only wrong regarding the implications of seeking equity, because it does elicit talent, but ought to be completely outraged by the way current society crushes creativity.

Speaker 1:

The third objection critics offer of the equity approach has two parts. First, why would anyone pay to go to school to learn new skills instead of immediately earning an income out of school since continuing in school won't earn you more later. Why would I go to college, go to med school, go to this, that and the other thing to become more and more skillful when I'm not going to earn anymore for all that skill and I will have spent in the interim. And second, why would anyone want to become, say a doctor when you could do something requiring less training and earn just as much. In fact, maybe even more. The answer is that in the future, equitable economy and society schooling for example, to become a doctor, is not only free but you receive pay while in school because being in school is producing the learning and skills you will later utilize so you were thereby adding to the social product.

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But beyond the issue of time in school, which we just handled, the critic says if being a doctor doesn't give you a greater rate of income than other jobs. Why do it? The answer is you do it to heal, to contribute, to utilize your talents. We are more than financial beings. To see this, if you still have doubts, imagine even in our current society that you're in high school. You want to be a doctor and you know that it means you will have to go to college and then to medical school and then you will have to be an intern and only then will you be a full doctor. Or if you prefer, you may want to be an engineer, a lawyer, scientist, accountant, or whatever else takes lots of training. Now imagine you were suddenly told that there will no longer be massive income differentials in society.

Speaker 1:

You will not wind up earning$500,000 a year as a doctor while a coal miner earns 75,000. Instead, you will earn much less but you will start to get paid as soon as you begin your special training. Now think for your young self, how low do I have to set your doctor income for you to decide that you will forego four years of college? Forego three years of graduate work, forego some heavier than normal on the job training, and then for go doctoring, all of that paid at your new salary level, for you to instead choose lifetime employment in the coal mine. How low do I have to set your future doctor salary for you to forgo college to go into a mine, forgo grad school to go to be in a mine, forgo being an intern to be in a mine, forgo being a doctor to be in a mine? I have done this thought experiment with a great many premed students who at the outset were aggressively ridiculing the equitable income approach on grounds that with our approach, neither they nor anyone else would opt to become a doctor. Then however, these same premed students as I lowered their imagined salaries from 500,000 to 400,000 to 300,000 and so on, each step of the way asking if it was now so low that they were going to forgo doctor training and being a doctor to instead work in a coal mine at$75,000 a year, they kept saying, no, they wouldn't. And I would get to$75,000 and finally each would say something like how low an income can I live on and still survive as a doctor? You'd have to go below that for me to switch. The upshot is that people need and desires income for sacrifices but not for being their most fully and freely expressed selves. We don't see this without prodding ourselves like with our thought experiment because every bit of training and cultural messaging we receive says the opposite.

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The fourth objection critics offer is that an equity approach doesn't give people incentives to work well and hard. This is a confusion, again due to miseducation by indoctrination. In fact, the equity approach provides incentives correctly. Thinking otherwise is a product of our training and our cultural immersion, not of clear thought. Paying someone a high income cannot cause them to have a different genetic endowment. Paying more for an inborn talent has no personal incentive effect on our DNA and likewise for paying more individual income for having better tools or workmates. In fact, if you are working, the things you can yourself affect that impact the amount of product you can generate are how long and how hard you work and also your enduring harsh conditions if that is necessary for the work to get done.

Speaker 1:

And these are exactly what the equitable income approach incentivizes, and properly so, In contrast, paying for property incentivizes theft. Paying for power incentivizes bullying. Paying for luck in the genetic, tool, or workmate lottery incentivizes nothing, but paying for duration, intensity and onerousness incentivizes precisely what we have personal control of- how long we work, how hard we work and whether we accept onerous conditions ornot.

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The fifth objection critics raise is that society can benefit greatly from innovation. So pursuing innovations is very often highly desirable. But since equitable income means individuals don't get to take most of the gains from innovations, unlike owners taking it as immense personal profit, that kind of personal material pressure for innovation as well as for unlimited growth or endless accumulation disappears. To see fully why and how a new desirable economy pursues desirable innovations that benefit everyone and avoids undesirable innovations that may benefit a few, but that hurt the rest much more, has to largely wait further exploration of new relations in coming episodes. But one way to get a feel for it now is that a worthy innovation adds to people's productive potential. It increases how much of worth folks can produce with a given amount of work, or it improves the quality of work life, or the quality of the outputs of work. In other words, worthy innovation increases output per effort or improves the quality of output or makes jobs less onerous and more desirable and empowering in an equitable society. Therefore, everyone gets a share of the benefits of worthy innovations. Jobs being better means the average job quality, which we will talk about in coming episodes and the average income for a given amount of labor both rise. So society has every reason to pursue worthy innovations and workers tasked with pursuing innovation, to be socially useful, have to work on conceiving and pursuing them. At the same time as pursuing worthy innovations an equitable approach would reject unworthy innovations of the sort that now yield profit for those with power but do harm to others.

Speaker 1:

Indeed, beyond our equity approach to income, pursuing worthy innovation abd rejecting unworthy innovation needs to be an aspect of how we choose our division of labor in a good economy and of how we decide what is produced and what isn't, or the mode of allocation in a good economy. And these we will talk about in due time. For now, however,I hope ourbrief reactions to criticisms of giving income only for duration, intensity and onerousness of socially valued labor are enough to suggest that such an approach is plausible and can work supposing an effective division of labor and mode of allocation can operate compatibly.

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So finally, what about the practicality of measuring duration, intensity and onerousness of conditions to determine our incomes? After all,the approach's critics are correct that if we can't do that, then advocating the equitable income approach is irrelevant to future prospects and plans because we won't be able to implement it. Delightful but unimplementable options are a waste of time. My answer is that duration is of course easy to measure, just count hours working. Intensity of useful effort is revealed partly by output but is also known to and collectively agreed by workmates. It is like but far easier to measure than output of a single worker in a team or a group that works together. And as for onerousness the same holds. But the main thing to realize is that as we proceed and see new ways of organizing work and of making decisions, patternsof measuring will become much simpler and more collective. So again, to more fully address this concern, some patience is needed. Also, imagine a workplace. You work there. Do you want to measure to the nearest tiny amount, your or anyone else's effort? Or would you rather assume average effort as a baseline and only address significant deviations from average, with fellow workers getting some more or some less due to working harder or less hard by mutual agreement? Regarding patience in evaluation, because all parts of an economy affect each part's viability, a simple observation that bears on thinking about a better economy, or really a better instance of anything that's complex, is that a 10th of a bridge or even a half a bridge, can't get you across the river? Nonetheless, if it is part of the whole bridge, it can help. Partial features, partial aspects of a society don't deliver until we understand them in context of the society as a whole. So our real question should always be, is there a whole good society that our equitable income can be a workable and effective part of? And that is why this episode is part of a series of many episodes. And now you might say, sure, nice dodge, but that's asking for a lot of episode listening and for thinking about it all step by step but also ultimately in full.

Speaker 1:

And you're right, it is asking for a lot, but then again, we're talking about whether a new world is desirable, possible, workable, and attainable. Is there something more important to determine? Isn't significant effort warranted? Finally, one really last point. If you find some of what I have been talking about a bit far out, a bit odd, and a bit difficult, well, it's no wonder. You may never have heard anyone else say quite this, and you undoubtedly have heard the opposite incredibly often.

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Some things really are intrinsically quite difficult, doing higher math, learning a new language, writing a sonnet. But there are other things which are difficult, mainly, even overwhelmingly just because they are unfamiliar. Take them in, navigate them, become accustomed to them, and their fundamental simplicity becomes evident. People gaining income only for duration, intensity and onerousness of socially valued labor and not getting income for property, power, or genetic or social luck is not familiar, and nor is tracking the implications of that choice, but with a little attention, I promise it gets familiar and much simpler, For now, however, this is Michael Albert signing off until next time for RevolutionZ.