The Recovery is Real And Yet We Still Have Poor People. That's How Economies Have Always Worked

I'm seeing a fair bit about how the recovery isn't real or isn't really done because people are still poor. That's nonsense. We have had and always will have poor people. Markets simply don't lift up everyone. Markets are marvelous but they've never taken care of everyone.

The philosopher Karl Jaspers (who died in 1969) argued for an Axial Age. Within a few centuries the foundations for religions we still have today were laid. 

Confucius and Lao-Tse were living in China, all the schools of Chinese philosophy came into being, including those of Mo Ti, Chuang Tse, Lieh Tzu and a host of others; India produced the Upanishads and Buddha and, like China, ran the whole gamut of philosophical possibilities down to materialism, scepticism and nihilism; in Iran Zarathustra taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil; in Palestine the prophets made their appearance from Elijah by way of Isaiah and Jeremiah to Deutero-Isaiah; Greece witnessed the appearance of Homer, of the philosophers – Parmenides, Heraclitus and Plato, – of the tragedians, of Thucydides and Archimedes. Everything implied by these names developed during these few centuries almost simultaneously in China, India and the West.
— Karl Jaspers, Origin and Goal of History, p. 2

One theory (I don't think it is Jaspers') is that this happened at this point in history because of the emergence of the city which lead to wealth. Oh, and disparities in wealth. If you are living as a hunter gatherer, you can't accumulate much. If you settle down in a city, you can. And as more people live in proximity there is more opportunity for trade (of goods, ideas and services) and the prosperity that comes with it. This emergence of wealth raised the question of who we should be towards the poor; the major religions emerged - in part - as answers to that question.

There are certainly things we can do to make the poor more self-sufficient, to create opportunities for them and their children. I think that's hugely important. But once we've done that, we will still have poor people. And at that point how we treat them is not a question of economic policy; it's a question of morality, something humans were clear about roughly 3,000 years ago.

A Root of Evil

I wonder if one root of evil isn't as simple as believing that our own lives don't make a difference. Once you believe that, it doesn't really matter what you do, what battles you walk away from, what innocents you fail to stand up for, what effort you do or don't make.

By contrast, believing that your life makes a difference makes you responsible for making an effort, for doing good, for finding meaning. That may not be the fruit of all that is good but it could be a root.

[It's been rightfully pointed out to me that this assumes a measure of compassion or empathy for other people. That is, it assumes that you're not a Hitler or inspired to be like him, making a difference by extracting revenge, real or imagined, on the French or the Jews or Muslims or women ... It turns out that some people are quite convinced that their lives make a difference only the difference to which they're committed isn't exactly a positive one.]

How Many Foreigners Would You Kill to Save an American?

I'm proud to be American, kind of. I'm proud to be a Davison, kind of. I'm proud to be a Californian, kind of. But my being an American or a Davison doesn't make me feel like my own life is automatically worth more than an Armenian or a Gonzalez or Lee. I don't think that we ought to casually kill Pennsylvanians in order to ensure the life and property of Californians. I've no illusions about Americans or Californians or Davisons being superior to non-Americans, non-Californians, or non-Davisons.


All that to say that I'm convinced that one of the thing that separates the neocons like Cheney and Norman Poderhertz from us normal people is their willingness to use a "foreigner discount rate" equal to nearly 1. Cheney has talked about a 1% doctrine. Simply stated, if there is even a 1% chance that a country poses a threat to the US, we have the right to use preemptive force to stop them. This kind of patriotism seems to me more of a pathological condition than a noble sentiment. It seems more like a sign of mental illness than a sound basis for foreign policy. The foreigner discount rate of nearly 1 suggests that a foreigner's life is worth some fraction of an American's.


You might say that I'm biased. I am, afterall, married to a Canadian. But I've met a variety of people from other countries and have yet to be able to make generalities about them any more than I can about Americans. Some are fat, some are thin, some are generous, some are selfish, some are violent, some are passive ... people are people no matter where the international sperm lottery has placed them.


There is a chance that Iran will gain a nuclear weapon within the next three to five years. There is an even smaller chance that once they have this, they will use it against another country. And there is an even smaller chance yet that this country will be us. How many Iranians does that justify killing today? Cheney and Poderhertz would likely say, all of them. I just don't buy it.


I don't like the idea of killing, but I'd be glad to pull the trigger to stop one foreigner from killing 100 innocent Americans. I wouldn't even be very squeamish about sanctioning the murder of one foreigner to save the life of one American. But once you get to the point of killing 10 foreigners for one American, or 1,000 foreigners for one American - at that point the mathematics of morality seems to make patriotism seem like an excuse for discounting the lives of others rather than a healthy affinity for one's own.


This is one of the questions I would love to hear asked at these seemingly weekly candidate debates. How many foreigners would you sanction killing in order to save the lives of 100 Americans? At this point, we'd learn whether these politicians are more in touch with their patriotism or their humanity. It seems to me like a fairly important question.

Which Comes First? Bad Morality or Bad Thinking?

George Bush still maintains that he can win Iraq. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda has, at a minimum, returned to its original state.

So, this is the question about events that turn out poorly, events that have a moral dimension. Does the destruction of Iraq and the strengtening of a terrorist group reveal George's poor thinking skills or immoral behavior?

And more broadly, which better explains bad behavior? A lack of understanding of consequences or a lack of concern about consequences?