this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Late Stage Capitalism

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I mean it is true if you’re doing it as a one-time event. This is one of the main critiques against Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

True. It would need to implemented alongside economic reform.

Trickle-down was an experiment. It was proven to be a failure based on the current wealth inequality. Now we just simply need to redistribute and try something else.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

False.

Trickle down was a REBRAND. It used to be called "Horse and Sparrow economics."

The literal idea being that horses get to eat whole grains, and sparrows peck their meals from horseshit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

It’s true that Reagan’s Trickle-Down was a revival of Harding’s Horse & Sparrow, but that doesn’t affect my point.

We’ve proven it doesn’t work. The correct solution is to redistribute and try a different method to check capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Oh for sure. I wasn't advocating for it!

But it does change the point in your messaging. To call it "an experiment" gives it a quality of transience, whereas establishing the actual history of the methodology allows people to understand the scope and magnitude of how long and deeply the masses have been bamboozled.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

That’s fair.

Regardless, Trump’s solution of bringing back Reagan’s first economic plan, Voodoo Economics, will drive inequality even faster than Trickle-Down.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Yep, Socialism is necessary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Oh really, would like to learn more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. So to start you may want to read up on Rawls’ theory of Justice as Fairness and how he uses the original position thought experiment (imagining society from behind the veil of ignorance).

Robert Nozick wrote a critique of Rawls’ theory: that it was a “patterned but not historical” principle (that it gives no moral weight to who produces what) and that “liberty upsets patterns.” That is to say, if you start with an equal society where everyone has the same resources you can’t expect it stay that way if everyone is free to exchange those resources with each other. Just like in the game of Monopoly, you’ll see winners and losers after enough time has passed.

This is all to say that the big problem for Rawls is that his theory is a “time slice theory.” It is very strong at describing how a society can be made to be just at a single moment in time but it fails to account for how that state of affairs can be preserved long-term without restricting people’s liberty. One can argue that the game of Monopoly is just according to Rawls’ theory because everyone starts with identical resources at the beginning!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Wow. That's super interesting. I'll have to check out these links. Thank you very much for the detailed reply!