Thoughts on Threats and Distribution

Megan McArdle writes:

If you need to support your preferred wealth distribution model with a threat that, unless we give them money, the beneficiaries will riot and kill the people you want to tax, you are not making a good case for the moral worthiness of the recipients, or the justice of your scheme. Just saying.

I’m not sure that follows. The people of Palestine have a legitimate moral claim to not be condemned perpetually to stateless existence under Israeli military jurisdiction. But if you’re trying to make that case to an Israeli or Diaspora audience, it might well make sense to link this claim to a pragmatic argument about Israel’s long-term security. The practical case doesn’t undermine the the moral one.

Somewhat similarly, loose talk of rioting and killing can serve as a shorthand for concerns about the legitimacy of a political and social system. As we’ve been seeing over the past several months, the political and social elite in the United States is extremely responsive to the idea that, when faced with emergency, the government needs to come to the rescue of financiers. And there are some good reasons for being responsive in this regard. But for a posture of such responsiveness to be stable over the long run, the system needs to be responsive — through social insurance and the like — to adverse circumstances in normal people’s lives. The legitimacy of the ethical claim is bound up with the concern about legitimacy and stability. The government’s role in guaranteeing the integrity of the financial system can be seen, among other things, as an illustration of Rawls’ principle that a liberal society is a cooperative scheme for mutual benefit. Or, at a minimum, such a concept of our society would help explain and justify the need to guarantee the integrity and functioning of the financial system but it would also make larger claims on general public and social responsibility.

Obviously, these are big issues that people write long books about so probably this post won’t convince anyone who feels otherwise. But that’s how I see it.