While people often discuss billionaires in the context of being self made, we could really apply these objections to anyone with any form of success, modicum of upward mobility, or who rests a hair above the 50th percentile in any endeavor. I've noticed, however, that those attacking the wealthy tend to be rather well off themselves, or have some genuine talents that have not (yet?) realized a billion dollar net worth. This can include intelligent people in fields that are not high paying or who didn't have as much follow through as others, or politicians who criticize "millionaires and billionaires" until becoming a millionaire at which the target shifts to just "billionaires".
Yet I feel even then we are not taking this standard argument to its fullest conclusion. After all, if every bit of our temperament, abilities and resources are due to some sort of chance and hence out of our control...so would the attitude of wanting to keep one's gains, deserved or not. The "my birth and life circumstances made me do it" sword cuts both ways: its not a billionaire's fault he wants to keep his money due to unwilled satisfaction from applying talents he was born with, pass it on to the family and friends he can't help but love, or the causes he can't help but care about. Even the suggestion that he adopt an attitude of non-attachment to his wealth or a radical egalitarianism is predicated on him having a temperament or natural receptivity to such philosophies through constitutive luck.
Perhaps we need to go deeper. The American dream didn't specifically state that everyone would get rich, only that they had more opportunity for such. This was especially true in the 1800s with people coming from circumstances of less resources or where upward mobility was stifled by a more rigid class system or social/legal pressures to adopt the same role and trade as one's parents. Jefferson may have advocated the "natural aristoi of merit and virtue" but also admitted that not everyone has the same levels of such. Maybe we should instead reexamine the assumption that that everyone deserves material success or a middle class lifestyle in the first place, especially as the main or sole metric of human flourishing within a society.
The alternative to "meritocracy" is "aristocracy."
1. In either system, people need to be born right
2. In either system, the majority of people are not at the top
3. In meritocracy alone can people of different races, social classes, education, and parentage outside of the "already elite" ever attain success
You really think "meritocracy" is the WORSE way to do things?
Also of note - only in "meritocracy" are people awarded for actions they undertake in their own lifetimes, under their own free will, and from their ongoing efforts.
Obviously, the best solution is every being born fully capable of outstanding success, with maximum physical and mental capabilities. Then everyone's station in life will have started from an equal basis, and meritocracy would no longer rely on an accident of birth as well as a lifetime of work.
But if you want that future, you'd better become pro-gengineering and advocate for voluntary genetic modification being legal for parents everywhere, because that's pretty much the only road there.
>There are solid incentive-/consequentialist-related motivations for pairing labor with earnings,
But that can be done without inequality. Rather than a percentage of income, you could tax people a fixed sum, assessed based on predicted earnings potential. That way everyone has 0 marginal tax rate, but how close you can get to total equality of outcome is only limited by the accuracy of your predictions (though you would have to err towards the "natural" compensation, because forcing someone into bankruptcy breaks things).
>Accusations that someone isn’t self-made typically stem from obvious circumstantial luck rather than constitutive luck, but is constitutive luck any less lucky?... If, however, the socially beneficial temptation to prosper is equally driven by the potential to bequest those monies
This moral ideal is significantly based on a model in which birth and death dont exist. Where they have noticable effects, they create a different picture than the model, and people object to these effects because theyre "not supposed to be there". But it only is noticable if you actually know the causal pathway, the general knowledge that everything has a cause does not trigger the alarm. (This is also why the line of reasoning you advance became prominent out of genetics discourse, though formally theres no need.)
While people often discuss billionaires in the context of being self made, we could really apply these objections to anyone with any form of success, modicum of upward mobility, or who rests a hair above the 50th percentile in any endeavor. I've noticed, however, that those attacking the wealthy tend to be rather well off themselves, or have some genuine talents that have not (yet?) realized a billion dollar net worth. This can include intelligent people in fields that are not high paying or who didn't have as much follow through as others, or politicians who criticize "millionaires and billionaires" until becoming a millionaire at which the target shifts to just "billionaires".
Yet I feel even then we are not taking this standard argument to its fullest conclusion. After all, if every bit of our temperament, abilities and resources are due to some sort of chance and hence out of our control...so would the attitude of wanting to keep one's gains, deserved or not. The "my birth and life circumstances made me do it" sword cuts both ways: its not a billionaire's fault he wants to keep his money due to unwilled satisfaction from applying talents he was born with, pass it on to the family and friends he can't help but love, or the causes he can't help but care about. Even the suggestion that he adopt an attitude of non-attachment to his wealth or a radical egalitarianism is predicated on him having a temperament or natural receptivity to such philosophies through constitutive luck.
Perhaps we need to go deeper. The American dream didn't specifically state that everyone would get rich, only that they had more opportunity for such. This was especially true in the 1800s with people coming from circumstances of less resources or where upward mobility was stifled by a more rigid class system or social/legal pressures to adopt the same role and trade as one's parents. Jefferson may have advocated the "natural aristoi of merit and virtue" but also admitted that not everyone has the same levels of such. Maybe we should instead reexamine the assumption that that everyone deserves material success or a middle class lifestyle in the first place, especially as the main or sole metric of human flourishing within a society.
The alternative to "meritocracy" is "aristocracy."
1. In either system, people need to be born right
2. In either system, the majority of people are not at the top
3. In meritocracy alone can people of different races, social classes, education, and parentage outside of the "already elite" ever attain success
You really think "meritocracy" is the WORSE way to do things?
Also of note - only in "meritocracy" are people awarded for actions they undertake in their own lifetimes, under their own free will, and from their ongoing efforts.
Obviously, the best solution is every being born fully capable of outstanding success, with maximum physical and mental capabilities. Then everyone's station in life will have started from an equal basis, and meritocracy would no longer rely on an accident of birth as well as a lifetime of work.
But if you want that future, you'd better become pro-gengineering and advocate for voluntary genetic modification being legal for parents everywhere, because that's pretty much the only road there.
>There are solid incentive-/consequentialist-related motivations for pairing labor with earnings,
But that can be done without inequality. Rather than a percentage of income, you could tax people a fixed sum, assessed based on predicted earnings potential. That way everyone has 0 marginal tax rate, but how close you can get to total equality of outcome is only limited by the accuracy of your predictions (though you would have to err towards the "natural" compensation, because forcing someone into bankruptcy breaks things).
>Accusations that someone isn’t self-made typically stem from obvious circumstantial luck rather than constitutive luck, but is constitutive luck any less lucky?... If, however, the socially beneficial temptation to prosper is equally driven by the potential to bequest those monies
This moral ideal is significantly based on a model in which birth and death dont exist. Where they have noticable effects, they create a different picture than the model, and people object to these effects because theyre "not supposed to be there". But it only is noticable if you actually know the causal pathway, the general knowledge that everything has a cause does not trigger the alarm. (This is also why the line of reasoning you advance became prominent out of genetics discourse, though formally theres no need.)