"You are owed a safe, comfortable, fulfilling life. You don’t deserve it." So true and so well said. Reminds me Chesterton's "charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it". But Chesterton's error is assuming a deserving/undeserving divide that does not (or should not anyway) exist.
Such jealousy. I am not in the writing world so all this infighting by thought makers has been fascinating to me and has caused me to reflect on who I actually trust to go to the trouble of reading their thinking. JeAlousy, peer pressure, group think, bullying, tattling, sabotaging, it indeed seems like a playground.
"The basic point of being a leftist is precisely to argue that financial security, material comfort, and the potential for human flourishing are not deserved at all."
I think the insight here is that "leftists" are not basing their perspective on this bedrock concept. Instead, somewhere in their schooling they are attracted to tangential issues that are often identified as "leftist" and join the tribe without ever picking up on the fundamentals. Their worldview seems incoherent... because they have never bothered to connect the dots.
Maybe this is why we get violent idpol devoid of any class consciousness.
It's very funny to me that Substack is basically Tiny Letter but with some venture capital behind it. Everyone calm down. Also funny to me that the Times may now get into the emailed newsletter game! Yikes.
I don't think the idea of substack being a bubble is that far fetched. Hopefully it's not true but I can easily see it being the case. They just received 65 million dollars in funding at a 650 million dollar company valuation. That could put an increasing pressure on the company to not just make a profit but to greatly increase profits. We've seen a lot of profitable companies gutted over the last decade because VC people weren't interested in small to decent but reliable profits.
Question: Where does the idea that people are owed a safe, comfortable, fulfilling life come from if you are an atheist? (Not a knock on atheists, just trying to understand. It's something I've always been fascinated by).
Also, how have you determined this is even possible to provide? Maybe it is, I'm just not sure how someone can come to the conclusion it's possible to provide, but I'm open to being proven wrong.
The article, as well as many written here, cries out for focusing on three concepts: the envy toward leverage(why some people make more than others), the value of a soul , and the real monetary inflation rate.
Envy of Leverage: FdB discusses with great lucidity that more subscribers means more money for everyone in the revenue chain. But then he concludes there's a relevant range for this; because, well, he's just as envious of Bezos as other writers are of him. One presumes you-deserve-what-you-produce ends at several times what he himself makes. It include anyone operating above some level of income - like perhaps Oncologists making $750,000/year while poisoning to death the majority of their patients. But the 'leverage', defined as a little movement causes a big result, of an Oncologist's decisions is why the big bucks. Bezos transformed the entire goods purchase paradigm, and did it over 20 years, and affected the entire country - not to mention making life livable for the population sequestered over the last year in virtual concentration camps made up by their own extreme and unwarranted fears. The motto appears to be not "If you're going to be a ninny you deserve what you get.", but "If they can't spend it over their lifetime, then government should take it away from them." There is also the assumption Bezos disappears as cash taken out of the economy - well, 1/2 of it did..in divorce [joke] - when in fact it goes somewhere to get lent out to governments and people who can presumably use it for a productive purpose. The effect on the money supply is NOT negative. If it is invested well there is actually a multiplier effect.
2.) The value of a soul. Every soul may be thought by God to be equal, or for a non-believer, by themselves as a god. However, the economic value of souls is not equal. Making the distinction between 'deserves' and 'should be provided' is a distinction without a difference. It's the same thing except the 'provided' part is taken under threat of force from someone else. Judging by the result of giving people stuff taken by force is, and this is important, the money given is cursed. People given things ride the productivity toboggan downhill. How many past Nobel prize winners lived within 500 miles of the equator? There most of the food you need grows or climbs in trees. This is why redistribution inevitably fails not only in it's goals but in it's unintended consequences.
3.) The real inflation rate: is right now and has been for the last 10 years running at 10% per year. (See shadowstats.com, which calculates it the same way it was done in 1980. Last month's government CPI numbers included items that were admitted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be 50% estimates.) This means the $100,000 salary buys what 50,000 bought 4.5 years ago, and what $25,000 bought 9 years ago. This has resulted in the almost total destruction of the middle class. 40 years ago a blue-collar mill worker could support a family of 6, with only himself working. Now? It isn't just the journalism business that is sinking; almost every income paying business in the country is going down the tubes. And redistribution, already happening big-time, is the root cause.
I'm sure the number of people rooting for you to succeed is far greater than the number of people rooting for you to fail. And chin up Freddie, any minor world that falls apart comes together again :-)
Freddie, I would really appreciate a deep dive on Marxism. You always bring up Marxist concepts in posts like this one where the main point of the post is something else, but you reference your Marxist ideas almost as an afterthought. You think everyone deserves a certain amount of material comfort, labor is inherently alienating, etc. But you never really explain details or what your ideal society would look like.
For instance, everyone deserves housing, ok. But what if someone in your Marxist utopia is given a free house and then destroys it? Should they just be given a new house? Or is there some point where we say, no, you've had enough free houses, you now have to be homeless for a while. So some people, in a sense, really don't "deserve" housing.
Or another Marxist concept you frequently reference is that people deserve material comfort regardless of how much they work. So clearly at least some percentage of society can never work and be supported by the rest of society. But what if too many people simply decide to not work, despite having the ability to do so? There's got to be some tipping point there. Is it then ok under Marxism to force people to work for material comfort? Unfortunately we don't have free food just laying around everywhere, there is still always going to be some amount of work required by at least some of the population to grow food.
I am pretty sure that I am a Marxist like you are, but I just can't wrap my brain around how a real Marxist society would look in the real world without betraying any principles. If anyone has the writing chops to explain this kind of stuff, it's you.
It's a bit odd to hear these pro-market arguments from a Marxist, but sure, I'm nodding along. I look forward to reading the stuff you have planned about Marxism.
I'm wondering, though, if the distinction between "deserves" language and "rights" language is all that great? They are both on the "ought" side of the is-ought distinction. Also, we can point to specific examples to show how extreme inequality can get.
I'm wondering if there's a word for something that's not really a strawman argument (because I believe that nearly all bad takes exist somewhere) but is also not really a live argument for me, because I haven't read anyone making these bad arguments. Maybe it would be better to debate with people whose arguments you respect?
A fun one in the same vein of bizarre Substack criticisms I ran across today: someone saying that Substack seems uniquely bad because the desire for subscriptions will cause writers to prefer particular opinions. Seemed entirely serious, as far as I could tell.
Separately: the people who go after Liz Bruenig so incessantly have always been uniquely deranged.
I love that you just write about what you want. It's why I pay for the extra post however often. It's worth it.
"You are owed a safe, comfortable, fulfilling life. You don’t deserve it." So true and so well said. Reminds me Chesterton's "charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it". But Chesterton's error is assuming a deserving/undeserving divide that does not (or should not anyway) exist.
Such jealousy. I am not in the writing world so all this infighting by thought makers has been fascinating to me and has caused me to reflect on who I actually trust to go to the trouble of reading their thinking. JeAlousy, peer pressure, group think, bullying, tattling, sabotaging, it indeed seems like a playground.
"The basic point of being a leftist is precisely to argue that financial security, material comfort, and the potential for human flourishing are not deserved at all."
I think the insight here is that "leftists" are not basing their perspective on this bedrock concept. Instead, somewhere in their schooling they are attracted to tangential issues that are often identified as "leftist" and join the tribe without ever picking up on the fundamentals. Their worldview seems incoherent... because they have never bothered to connect the dots.
Maybe this is why we get violent idpol devoid of any class consciousness.
It's very funny to me that Substack is basically Tiny Letter but with some venture capital behind it. Everyone calm down. Also funny to me that the Times may now get into the emailed newsletter game! Yikes.
I don't think the idea of substack being a bubble is that far fetched. Hopefully it's not true but I can easily see it being the case. They just received 65 million dollars in funding at a 650 million dollar company valuation. That could put an increasing pressure on the company to not just make a profit but to greatly increase profits. We've seen a lot of profitable companies gutted over the last decade because VC people weren't interested in small to decent but reliable profits.
Columns like this are why you inhabit a very small circle of Marxists I admire...
Question: Where does the idea that people are owed a safe, comfortable, fulfilling life come from if you are an atheist? (Not a knock on atheists, just trying to understand. It's something I've always been fascinated by).
Also, how have you determined this is even possible to provide? Maybe it is, I'm just not sure how someone can come to the conclusion it's possible to provide, but I'm open to being proven wrong.
The issue with the New York Times competing against substack is one of reader trust and the Times's own speech parameters.
Will those Times newsletter writer feel as free to write what they think as writers at substack?
The article, as well as many written here, cries out for focusing on three concepts: the envy toward leverage(why some people make more than others), the value of a soul , and the real monetary inflation rate.
Envy of Leverage: FdB discusses with great lucidity that more subscribers means more money for everyone in the revenue chain. But then he concludes there's a relevant range for this; because, well, he's just as envious of Bezos as other writers are of him. One presumes you-deserve-what-you-produce ends at several times what he himself makes. It include anyone operating above some level of income - like perhaps Oncologists making $750,000/year while poisoning to death the majority of their patients. But the 'leverage', defined as a little movement causes a big result, of an Oncologist's decisions is why the big bucks. Bezos transformed the entire goods purchase paradigm, and did it over 20 years, and affected the entire country - not to mention making life livable for the population sequestered over the last year in virtual concentration camps made up by their own extreme and unwarranted fears. The motto appears to be not "If you're going to be a ninny you deserve what you get.", but "If they can't spend it over their lifetime, then government should take it away from them." There is also the assumption Bezos disappears as cash taken out of the economy - well, 1/2 of it did..in divorce [joke] - when in fact it goes somewhere to get lent out to governments and people who can presumably use it for a productive purpose. The effect on the money supply is NOT negative. If it is invested well there is actually a multiplier effect.
2.) The value of a soul. Every soul may be thought by God to be equal, or for a non-believer, by themselves as a god. However, the economic value of souls is not equal. Making the distinction between 'deserves' and 'should be provided' is a distinction without a difference. It's the same thing except the 'provided' part is taken under threat of force from someone else. Judging by the result of giving people stuff taken by force is, and this is important, the money given is cursed. People given things ride the productivity toboggan downhill. How many past Nobel prize winners lived within 500 miles of the equator? There most of the food you need grows or climbs in trees. This is why redistribution inevitably fails not only in it's goals but in it's unintended consequences.
3.) The real inflation rate: is right now and has been for the last 10 years running at 10% per year. (See shadowstats.com, which calculates it the same way it was done in 1980. Last month's government CPI numbers included items that were admitted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be 50% estimates.) This means the $100,000 salary buys what 50,000 bought 4.5 years ago, and what $25,000 bought 9 years ago. This has resulted in the almost total destruction of the middle class. 40 years ago a blue-collar mill worker could support a family of 6, with only himself working. Now? It isn't just the journalism business that is sinking; almost every income paying business in the country is going down the tubes. And redistribution, already happening big-time, is the root cause.
I don’t think the Mets make anyone’s life easier.
I'm sure the number of people rooting for you to succeed is far greater than the number of people rooting for you to fail. And chin up Freddie, any minor world that falls apart comes together again :-)
Freddie, I would really appreciate a deep dive on Marxism. You always bring up Marxist concepts in posts like this one where the main point of the post is something else, but you reference your Marxist ideas almost as an afterthought. You think everyone deserves a certain amount of material comfort, labor is inherently alienating, etc. But you never really explain details or what your ideal society would look like.
For instance, everyone deserves housing, ok. But what if someone in your Marxist utopia is given a free house and then destroys it? Should they just be given a new house? Or is there some point where we say, no, you've had enough free houses, you now have to be homeless for a while. So some people, in a sense, really don't "deserve" housing.
Or another Marxist concept you frequently reference is that people deserve material comfort regardless of how much they work. So clearly at least some percentage of society can never work and be supported by the rest of society. But what if too many people simply decide to not work, despite having the ability to do so? There's got to be some tipping point there. Is it then ok under Marxism to force people to work for material comfort? Unfortunately we don't have free food just laying around everywhere, there is still always going to be some amount of work required by at least some of the population to grow food.
I am pretty sure that I am a Marxist like you are, but I just can't wrap my brain around how a real Marxist society would look in the real world without betraying any principles. If anyone has the writing chops to explain this kind of stuff, it's you.
It's a bit odd to hear these pro-market arguments from a Marxist, but sure, I'm nodding along. I look forward to reading the stuff you have planned about Marxism.
I'm wondering, though, if the distinction between "deserves" language and "rights" language is all that great? They are both on the "ought" side of the is-ought distinction. Also, we can point to specific examples to show how extreme inequality can get.
I'm wondering if there's a word for something that's not really a strawman argument (because I believe that nearly all bad takes exist somewhere) but is also not really a live argument for me, because I haven't read anyone making these bad arguments. Maybe it would be better to debate with people whose arguments you respect?
A fun one in the same vein of bizarre Substack criticisms I ran across today: someone saying that Substack seems uniquely bad because the desire for subscriptions will cause writers to prefer particular opinions. Seemed entirely serious, as far as I could tell.
Separately: the people who go after Liz Bruenig so incessantly have always been uniquely deranged.