Justice in the World?

There are two concepts of justice: 1. equality of outcomes: everyone gets the same things, regardless of ability, skills, perseverance, needs and preferences; 2. equality of opportunity and preference: everyone gets what they can achieve and prefer to have to the extent mathematically feasible. (For example, you may prefer to have two wives and to share neither of them with other men, but this preference is mathematically unfeasible in a just world. There are roughly as many men as women, and they each prefer to have a partner, so the math is simple: no-one can be entitled to two. Which means your preference is unjust and won't be granted. Find other preferences that are mathematically feasible, and you won't be disappointed. Prefer to have two houses, work hard and earn them.)

The first kind of justice is formal and may apply within homogenous categories, such as an employer. People doing the same job with similar experience and performance should be paid the same wage – despite the fact that you could always argue that they are different in some way. Everyone is different, but the same company should pay the same wage for the same work, because in this case individual differences are not relevant. This requirement doesn't apply across employers though, because they each have a different market position, productivity, competitiveness, etc. The problem is that it's hard to decide when differences do matter and when they don't. It's a rather intuitive decision and is thus open to debate. An open public dialogue is required and even so, the perception of justice is a moving target.

Justice in the world is dynamic, there is no formula that would lead to a lasting perception of justice. Worse, every relatively just solution can be challenged easily and must be defended with arguments. But since that's the best available approach, it should be appreciated.

Progress vs. progressives - a leap in the dark?

After writing the previous post on the causal relationship between fascism and communism, I began to look for pages on the subject to post my comments. I was surprised to find that none of the pages verbally fighting fascism accepts comments. In other words, the authors of antifascist posts won't listen to what anyone may have to say.

That's sad and insightful at the same time.

It means (anti-fascist) progressives advocate the sort of 'progress' the public won't buy, and they know that from experience, so they prevent the public from responding.

I think genuine progress is not something the public won't buy, it's not something people aren't supposed to comment on. Genuine progress makes life better, easier, happier, more prosperous, etc., i.e. it offers you genuine benefits you would be ill-advised to reject. Consequently, genuine progress can't feel threatened by potential disagreement, it should welcome disagreement as an opportunity to put two and two together. That's because genuine progress makes common sense.

This site advocates genuine progress toward meritocracy where authority is based on merit and the public is not gagged. You are welcome to comment.

The Logic of Fascism and Communism

Fascism could not have arisen without communism. The term is derived from the Italian word fascia (i.e. bundle of twigs as a symbol of power), meaning civic cooperation.

Against what? Against communism. Large numbers of people became poor in the aftermath of the 1st World War, revolution was in the air. The revolutionaries took power in Russia. This is what fascists sought to prevent in Europe.

Support for fascism came from the lower middle class that had lost its livelihood to the war (1914-1918) and to the great depression (1928-1936, caused by the financial aristocracy) and was scared by the heinous crimes of communism (the Holocaust of at least 5 million Ukrainians by Stalin, 1932-1933, which communist intellectuals complicitly played down).

Had these circumstances not coincided, fascism would have been dead in the water, it could not have come to power anywhere. Which makes the fight against fascism per se totally groundless. If similar circumstances (war, poverty, great depression, heinous communist crimes) combine again, there will be no stopping fascism, don't even try. So long as similar circumstances don't combine, fascism will be toothless, don't fret superfluously. If you want no fascism, don't fight it, fight the root causes (war, poverty, financial wrongdoing, intellectuals' Jedi mind tricks, heinous communism).

In terms of social groups, fascism is the lower middle class's response to the lower class seizing power. Since the lower class was helped to power by communist intellectuals, the lower middle class naturally hated intellectuals. Communist intellectuals turned the lower class against society and in response, the lower middle class sought to eliminate communist intellectuals. The rest is history. In order to prevent its repetition, the middle class should not wait for a crisis but raise the lower class in due time, and also put checks on communist intellectuals and the financial aristocracy to prevent the root causes from ever arising again.

Agree or disagree? Drop a comment.

The Role of the State and Solidarity

States are established by the weak against the strong. This isn't always obvious on the surface, but it's easy to realise. The first states were established because of agriculture: cereals in the granary had to be guarded, which required a security service and a chain of command with someone at the top. A register of stocks had to be kept, and rules had to be put in place to regulate who could access their grain stored in the granary and how. This defined the basic structure and functions of the state and continues to define them to this very day.

The strong have never needed states. They have enough assets and soldiers to fend for themselves. The weaker, on the other hand, need a state partly to promote their common interests and partly to defend them from the private armies of powerful predatory individuals. This need is what creates states, followed the insight that it is better to accept a state administration based on more or less shared values than to suffer the tyranny of warlords. Around 1600, Thomas Hobbes listed the 10 rules of civic cooperation establishing a state and added 10 rules for state administration. He called them natural laws, since it is easy to realise that if all states collaped tonight, we'd have to reestablish them using Hobbes' rules tomorrow morning or face extinction. Using modern terminology, we could call Hobbes' rules inescapable rules of evolution, as they are, well, inescapable. You might want to take a good look at them.

A state is established not by the weakest, but by those who are relatively weak and autonomous at the same time. In other words: by the middle class. A well-functioning state is a vested interest for the middle class, which is why every state favours the middle class at the expense of the upper and lower classes. If it fails to do so, it loses part or all of its legitimacy.

This is bad news for the upper class: the role of the state is to repress it somewhat and compel it to pay its taxes. Consequently, the upper class cannot veto taxes or checks on its power, because if it succeeded in getting rid of these restrictions, the state would lose the support of its voter base, i.e. the middle class, and collapse. This would lead to anarchy, then a dictatorship, and then the middle class - the dominant force in sheer numbers and in cooperation - would take over the rein again to reestablish the state in conformity with Hobbes' rules.

This is bad news for the lower class as well, since solidarity with it is not mandatory. The middle class owes the lower class nothing at all. (Please note that the upper class doesn't owe the middle class anything either, but the middle class is powerful enough to vindicate and get what it deems due via legislation and law enforcement.) The lower class is distinct from the middle class in lacking power, cooperation, consciousness and ambition. Whoever is ready to cooperate and has consciousness and ambition, albeit, on a low income, is automatically middle class. Those lacking cooperation, consciousness and ambition live on the charitable donations of the middle class.

The middle class is interested in keeping the lower class above the poverty line for two reasons: if large numbers of people live in abject poverty, they will start a revolution, which will cause the state to collapse, only to be reestablished in a new form that includes the ambitious members of the lower class turned middle class through cooperation/consciousness/ambition. Which can be achieved more easily and at less expense without a revolution, so it makes sense for the middle class to strive to raise the masses above the poverty line. The other consideration is humanitarian: there should not be a lower class at all. Those at the bottom of the social ladder should climb upwards through cooperation, consciesness and ambition and become middle class. The middle class saves itself a lot of trouble and tension by urging, even prodding the lower class to study, work hard and get ahead. None of that is mandatory, it's just common sense. The lower class will never be at the helm for long, as it lacks cooperation, consciousness and ambition. Communism might seem an exception, but it eventually proved to be short-lived, and led to states favouring the middle class in comformity with Hobbes' rules. Solidarity exists only in the middle class, anyone else is confined to charity, i.e. there is such a thing as lunch, but you'll have to work hard to earn it.

What this means specifically for Hungarians at this stage is that the middle class has the power to vindicate and get via legislation and law enforcement any ill-gotten/unmerited gains of the upper class, and it makes sense for the middle class to strive to raise the lower class above the poverty line. Much as the latter may be unwilling to study and work hard, and much as it may vindicate solidarity in the form of handouts with no strings attached, it won't have its way and will have to climb the social ladder to become middle class.

Agree or disagree? Drop a comment.

Produce and Prosper

Let me first define prosperity. You are prosperous when you feel you essentially have all you currently wish to have. The path to prosperity is fairly straightforward:

1. you individually produce all that makes you feel prosperous or

2. your community produces all that makes its members feel prosperous or

3. your community produces all that its members can exchange for the things that make them feel prosperous.

In principle, prosperity is not hard to achieve. You wish to own Mercedes cars? Make Mercedes cars. Or make something you can trade for Mercedes. You need iPads or iPhones to make you feel prosperous? Make them. Or make something you can trade for them. That's the only way. This capability is not measured by GDP, as it only stands for the combined value of all financially quantifiable transactions.

If I mow your lawn and you, in turn, repair my friend's electricity network who, in turn, cleans my flat, we've produced high GDP but low prosperity, because all we've done is provide services to each other in a closed loop. None of us produced anything we could trade for a Mercedes or an iPhone. (I'm using these goods merely as examples, I'm not suggesting that we actually need Mercs or iPhones to feel prosperous. It's up to the individual to decide what they need to make them feel prosperous, but producing the things to trade for them requires an organised effort, i.e. a decision by, and cooperation in, the community.)

The use of money doesn't improve the prosperity status at all, because money lubricates barter trade, but does not grant you goods you don't have anything to give for. (I.e. you'll only have a Merc if you have something to sell for the money to buy it. Much as we may pay each other for services provided in a closed loop, that will never get any of us the money to buy a Merc.)

Hungarians have yet to get to grips with this fundamental logic, which explains why they are not yet prosperous. We need to make a community decision and join forces to produce the goods that will get us the things that make us feel prosperous.*

*This is a translation of my original post in Hungarian, hence the reference to my country, but the economic model is applicable to any region whose inhabitants want to prosper.

You agree, or have a better idea? Have your say.