Yves here. This humble blog, from its inception, has documented how highly unequal societies, in income and wealth terms, deliver worse outcome than ones with low disparities. Nations with highly concentrated wealth and income impose a lifespan cost even on the rich. They are unhappier. They score badly on other social indictors, from educational attainment to crime to teen births.
The authors below contend that humans have strong needs for fairness, which they translate into a preference of equality. It isn’t just humans:
But in this simple context, fairness and equality are the same. It is far from clear how fairness can be achieved in an acceptable and not unduly costly or bureaucratic manner in complex societies when there are existing large difference in their competence levels and their access to assistance. Just consider the criminal justice system. Just consider what happens when a poor person is charged with a crime. Do you think most public defenders, who are typically both badly underpaid and are assigned large case loads, can do anywhere near as good a job of representation as a top tier criminal defense attorney
By Mark Glick Professor, University of Utah, Gabriel Lozada, Professor of Economics, University of Utah, and Darren Bush, Professor, The University of Houston Law Center Faculty. Originally published at the Institute of New Economic Thinking website
Equality runs deeper than economics textbooks or policy fashions suggest. Across disciplines, evidence increasingly links more equal societies to stronger well-being, greater social trust, and healthier democracies, challenging the assumption that fairness must come at the expense of prosperity or economic dynamism.
Our new INET Working Paper argues that equality—particularly equality of opportunity—should serve as the primary goal of public policy. Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, moral philosophy, epidemiology, and economic history, we show that human beings are hardwired for fairness and that societies marked by high inequality generate measurably less well-being. We reject the long-standing economic claim that equality comes at the expense of efficiency, showing instead that more egalitarian societies often perform better than unequal ones.
We begin the article with evolutionary foundations. For most of human history, people lived in small, cooperative, and largely egalitarian groups. Anthropological evidence from hunter-gatherer societies suggests that these groups enforced norms of sharing, punished free riders (not everyone was or is egalitarian), and resisted hierarchy. Evolutionary biologists and psychologists characterize this social behavior as “strong reciprocity,” which is a predisposition to cooperate and to sanction those who violate cooperative norms, even at personal cost.
Experimental economics reinforces these findings. In ultimatum and public goods games, individuals routinely sacrifice material gain to punish unfairness. Neuroscientific research shows that fair treatment activates reward centers in the brain, while unfairness triggers regions associated with disgust and anger. Even infants display an early bias toward equal distribution.
These scientific findings directly challenge the narrow conception of human motivation embedded in Neoclassical economics, which treats individuals as purely self-interested maximizers. We argue that public policy aligned with our biologically-determined moral psychology—particularly aversion to inequality and exploitation—will both command democratic legitimacy and enhance social welfare.
We then situate equality at the center of modern moral philosophy. Although philosophers disagree on what should be equalized—welfare, resources, capabilities, or primary goods—most begin from the premise of equal moral worth. Thinkers such as John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Ronald Dworkin, and G. A. Cohen converge on the importance of equal respect and opportunity. Rawls’s difference principle permits inequality only if it benefits the least advantaged. Sen’s capability approach shifts focus from income to substantive freedom—the real opportunities individuals possess. Dworkin argues for distributions that are ambition-sensitive but endowment-insensitive, compensating luck while respecting effort.
We emphasize that even utilitarianism—economics’ historical ethical foundation—contains egalitarian roots, since diminishing marginal utility implies that redistribution increases total welfare. Yet modern economics abandoned these elements, replacing interpersonal welfare comparisons with Pareto optimality and the Kaldor-Hicks criteria (note, not “criterion”), all of which obscure distributional consequences.
The constituencies that applaud recent attempts to ground public policy on greater output or greater GNP per capita or greater “abundance” often base their arguments on the myth of a tradeoff between equality and efficiency. But there is no empirical evidence for that claim: to the contrary, more equal societies experience equal or greater economic performance. Alternatively, these arguments may be based on assuming that the benefits of output trickle down to the rest of the population; but that assumption is rarely acknowledged and cannot be supported by convincing empirical evidence.
Or these arguments may assume that distribution does not matter; but this paper shows that it very much does. Some of these arguments may rely on a defeatist assumption that it is impossible to change the distribution of income or wealth within our existing capitalist framework, because such distributions are dictated by economic laws that public policies are incapable of affecting. But we show, quite to the contrary, that such distributions have been strongly influenced, in both directions, by public policy. Finally, these arguments may assume, dubiously, that future growth of output will automatically be distributed more evenly than output has been distributed in recent decades.
Empirical evidence further supports equality as a policy goal. The Easterlin Paradox shows that in rich countries, rising GDP per capita does not reliably increase happiness. Specifically, Easterlin showed that happiness in the United States had basically a flat trend since 1946, while GDP per capita was growing quickly. More strikingly, epidemiological research demonstrates that income inequality correlates strongly with social pathologies: lower trust, higher homicide rates, worse health outcomes, reduced social mobility, increased obesity and mental illness, and shorter life expectancy.
Across wealthy countries and U.S. states alike, inequality is correlated with these harms more powerfully than average income. While critics argue correlation does not prove causation, we note plausible causal mechanisms explained in the epidemiological literature: inequality heightens status anxiety, stress, and social fragmentation, which in turn generate measurable health and behavioral effects.
A central pillar of our argument is dismantling the equity-efficiency tradeoff. Arthur Okun’s leaky bucket metaphor suggested redistribution inevitably wastes resources. Historical and cross-national data, however, tell a different story. Periods of lower inequality in the United States—particularly from the New Deal through the postwar decades—were marked by high productivity growth and robust innovation. OECD and IMF research similarly finds that lower inequality is associated with stronger and more durable growth.
We outline mechanisms by which equality may enhance efficiency: stronger aggregate demand, greater social trust, broader human capital investment, and innovation stimulated by higher wages. We also highlight empirical findings that tax cuts for the wealthy have little effect on growth but reliably increase inequality.
Rejecting the view that markets mechanically determine inequality, we demonstrate how legal and institutional frameworks shape distribution. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt, policies such as progressive taxation, strong labor protections, financial regulation, and vigorous antitrust enforcement reduced inequality and coincided with exceptional productivity growth. After 1980, deregulation, weakened unions, reduced top tax rates, expanded intellectual property protections, and lax antitrust enforcement reversed these trends. The result was sharply rising top income shares and slower productivity growth.
We also criticize the economics profession for marginalizing distributional concerns. Textbooks emphasize consumer surplus and GDP while ignoring evidence that relative status and inequality shape well-being. This intellectual position has facilitated policy changes that favored capital over labor. Nordic societies provide a contrasting model. With strong welfare states, high union density, and cultural norms discouraging status competition, these countries combine equality with high living standards and strong social indicators.
We advocate policies aimed at expanding capabilities and equal opportunity: universal healthcare, educational equity, stronger labor protections, progressive taxation, financial regulation, robust antitrust enforcement, campaign finance reform, and reforms to corporate governance and intellectual property law.
Human beings evolved in cooperative, egalitarian environments. Moral philosophy affirms equal respect. Epidemiology and social science demonstrate that inequality corrodes well-being. Historical experience shows that public policy can either reduce or amplify inequality—and that greater equality need not sacrifice economic performance. Equality, we conclude, should serve as the North Star of public policy in advanced societies.
“Human beings evolved in cooperative, egalitarian environments” – What???? 50% correct.
We all evolved in a TRIBAL environment. Humans did cooperate in some activities, like hunting, but “egalitarian”? Tribal situations are dictatorships with the tribal chief as dictator.
This has left a mark on our species in several ways. Tribal living has hard wired some behaviors making humans very easy to manipulate. “The herd is safety. Stay with the herd” is one evidenced by 80% of humans caving into peer pressure and 90% can’t question authority.
What happens when individuals, religions, businesses and governments learn to manipulate the herd instinct? Is it still “safety”?
Tribal chiefs would kill those who challenged their authority. That has left 90% of the species unable to do it and if you don’t question authority you become the victim of authority.
Yet to this day, despite knowing these facts, most humans can’t deal with it. 100,000+ years of tribal living have truly made pussies and posers out of the majority of our species.
https://i.postimg.cc/KzpyfJDm/VENN-3-Asch-Milgram-Stanford-Full.png
Agent99: You should do a little reading about how Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawotami) societies were organized. You’ll be disappointed that they were not dictatorships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anishinaabe#Clans
As well as the Iroquois confederation of 5 then 6 tribes. They allowed women to vote 500+ years before “civilized” countries allowed it. In fact a pregnant woman (showing) was allowed 2 votes. One for her and one for the unborn baby. Very interesting.
Tribes are capable of a lot of good ideas and behaviors but a lot are very draconian. Depends on the leader. “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” in roughly those percentages.
That has left a mark on the species psychologically.
They also regularly raided their neighbors and ate them.
You have things precisely backward. In small groups, better called “bands” than “tribes,” it is quite clear to everyone that the Ubuntu philosophy, “I am because we are,” is a central truth. There can be no individual flourishing unless the group is faring well, and the group would not fare well without the unique contribution of each member. Moreover, individuals with anti-social, Dark Triad traits were quickly identified by the group, and such individuals either had to reform or be expelled.
There are several traits that served humans quite well when they were living in these bands that become counter-productive, even dangerous, in groups larger than the Dunbar number. Nate Hagens explains how this happens and its implications for human societies.
On top of that, you might check Graeber’s and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything. Some humans tribes might have been as you describe, but many were not. Human groups chose a variety of ways to organize themselves, and some chose gift economies and potlaches to nurture equality.
One question about your Venn diagram: is the placement of “Covid 19 policy” meant to argue that attempts to restrict the spread of a deadly disease are some evil product of a “herd mentality?” If so, have you been reading this site for very long?
Personally I resist “noble savage” claims since, as always, circumstances shape behavior. Of course those living close to the edge of survival are more cooperative than in societies like the US where even the poor still get some social spending benefit.
But there’s no question that we are among the “social animals” and share both the cooperation impulse of those, but also the desire for dominance among the males. What makes us different from analogized species would be our intelligence and ability to act selflessly out of reason and not just emotion. That latter is in short supply at the moment.
Very much IMO and I’d say this is a complicated question, not easily answered.
For me, it’s less a matter of “noble savage” than creatures living in a way that’s consonant with their evolutionary history and with ecological harmony. There’s nothing noble about it; it’s just an application of the precautionary principle, because if you stray too far from either thing, you’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’, as we discover more each day.
I’m not so quick to distinguish human intelligence from that of other animals. In fact, I’m happy to attribute the truly exceptional intelligence, maybe wisdom is the better word, to the elephants, dolphins, whales and crows that have the good sense to live their lives raising families, playing their part in the herd, and enjoying the wonders and beauties of the Earth, rather than building skyscrapers, giant pickups and H-bombs.
Cat Stevens (Yusuf), “Where Do the Children Play?“
This is a great summary. I have spent time living with a healthy nation still living in a traditional way – there is no corruption, no greed, no discrimination. People share with each other as a normal way of life. It was breathtakingly beautiful. And I have consistently found this in dozens of societies from the past 200 years, both from stories from outside observers and stories from people of these societies themselves.
Every society with a ruling class has all the troubles we’re used – corruption, greed, a few rich and a lot of poor, discrimination, pollution, huge amounts of child abuse. “Having a ruling class” means having a certain way of life – for the vast majority of people, you can’t choose your laws (others do), you are forced to obey the laws you’re given, and you’re forbidden from enforcing the laws you’re given, meaning you’re forbidden from confronting injustice.
Think about that – in every nation with endless corruption, people attack the most brave servant-leaders who confront injustice. This includes the Romans murdering Jesus Christ and crucifying him to scare others away from being like Jesus, to the Americans assassinating MLK Jr to countless other examples from every other unhealthy nation.
Of course, humans evolved to live in nations without a ruling class, so there are many examples, and all show similar basics of their way of life – they have high standards of trustworthy behavior for each other, and take the nonhumans’ needs into account in their decisions.
Healthy nations show us, if we’re willing to look, what it would take to live in an actually-free society. A society with laws that work for everyone, where justice is normal because everyone takes responsibility for confronting injustice.
Some people still live this way right now, and many more lived this way even in the past 200 years. And many of those peoples’ descendents are still today’s bravest environmentalists. If you want to learn about this traditional way of life, how humans evolved to live, I collected many of these nations’ stories and lessons in a free book called “The Deepest Revolution“.
A deep revolution is one where, instead of swapping one ruling class for another, people embrace that traditional way of life without any ruling class at all.
If my memory is somewhat accurate, I grew up in such a society right here in the old Midwest. Yes, there were greedy people. The funny thing is, everybody knew they were greedy and made fun of them about it. They could never get away with much, because all the locals had their number.
Thanks for the link. I have it on the next tab, and look forward to checking it out.
A side note: it is so nice being able to participate in the conversation more easily here. The last few weeks have been nice, and I appreciate it.
This includes the Romans murdering Jesus Christ and crucifying him to scare others away from being like Jesus
This appears to have been an internal Jewish conflict that really of no serious interest to the Romans. They had better things to do than worry about some itinerant Jewish preacher in a backwater of the Empire.
In Rome, the murder of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (AKA the Gracchi brothers ) is more relevant. Both were plebeian tribunes and were killed about a decade apart for attempting to introduce land reforms that threatened the wealthy elite.
The problem is that the impulse to crave power and use it to gain food/resources/mates/territory is also deep seated in both humans and other animals that have a strong predilection for hierarchical social structures which are often enforced by aggression and violence by other group members. While I doubt that most people are consciously making a decision to be selfish when our more negative behavioral traits manifest themselves, our “inner ape” is often the one calling the shots with people then trying to rationalize said behavior later on.
Another thing to keep in mind is that many hunter/gatherer societies were and still are engaged in constant tribal warfare with casualties affecting a much higher percentage of the population compared to those of modern societies, and even in places that are not embroiled in wars with enemy tribes they often have very high rates of homicide.
Human history is basically one example after another of populations vying with each other to gain the upper hand and then being toppled by newer up-and-coming populations. I do not think that either Hobbes or Hans Morgenthau were that far off the mark when it comes to base human impulses and the limitations of humanity as a result even if I do not necessarily agree with the former’s prescription of the “Leviathan” to keep humanity under control.
It is not that humans are “evil” but our bodies and behavior have been shaped by evolution like every other organism on the planet and plenty of animals have evolved traits or survival strategies that would be horrifying to most people.
I guess my point is that we should not look to “nature” for our morality since nature is neither fair or “nice”. Also, by realizing just how much evolution has played a role in the roots of human violence and territoriality, we might also find ways to diffuse it. While I admit that I have a rather dark view of humanity, none of this is our fault as a species and by recognizing how “innate” this is to our behavior we can finally tackle the full scale of the problem.
I wonder what you’d think of Nate Hagens’s “phase shift” theory about some of our evolved traits, useful when we were living in bands, that have far different effects when we’re in larger groups. The link’s in a comment of mine above in this sub-thread.
Where does a “dark view” leave us. Was evolution so “foolish” as to create a species so flawed and yet so potentially powerful? We’ve wiped out species, created deserts and now we’re working on a Mass Extinction. Is Gaia asleep, like little Susie at the drive-in at 4 AM, or will she awake and save the rest of the life that depends on her from the human Godzilla?
Unless there’s something about us that can be fixed by the means reasonably available to us, then the future is indeed dark.
“your Venn diagram” – It is not mine. It is from a Substack blog called “bad cattitude” and I find it very interesting that all those behaviors were on display during covid. The numbers were pretty much what was predicted. 85% going along with the herd.
“a deadly disease” – In May of 2020 the CDC admitted the IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) was 0.3% which is similar to the Asian flu of the late 1950’s and the Hong Kong flu of the 1960’s. You call that “a deadly disease”? I don’t.
“restrict the spread” – The attempts were all futile and known not to work. The shutdowns, distancing, masks, etc. To do things just to show that they were doing something was just wrong and of course relied on “herd mentality” and “inability to question authority”. Both tribal based.
“some evil product of a “herd mentality”?” – Human nature was on full display during the covid years. Obviously humans followed a “herd mentality” and right on the numbers 85% world wide took the injections.
“have you been reading this site for very long?” – No. Just stumbled across it. The war coverage here is good but the writing on some other issues I disagree with. Not a problem for me.
The smorgasboard of types of “polities” humans organized themselves in is extremely varied and textured. Check “The Dawn of Everything: A new History for Humanity”, maybe you will learn something…
“Tribal situations are dictatorships with the tribal chief as dictator. “
Tribal communities were ruled by a thick set of rules, traditions, and taboos whose purposes were, among other things, to prevent hoarding of resources (and mates) by a single individual or family, to prevent overuse of common resources, to prevent consanguinity, to ensure everybody would contribute to hunting, farming, herding, and fighting, to ensure that communities would trade gifts (and mates) with each other and that those gifts and counter-gifts (symbolic and commodities alike) would be of equivalent value, etc.
Tribal chiefs had more power than other members of the tribe, at the margin: they could not just kill whomever they disliked, death penalty being a decision taken by the community — killing one member of a small community is a really big deal. There were pre-industrial societies in Asia, Africa, or America that had despots with the right of life and death over their subjects — however, those were not tribal communities, but genuine kingdoms and empires organized across many tribes.
Tribal chiefs as dictators became a thing when European colonizers imposed the widespread “indirect rule”: chiefs were designated (instead of chosen by traditional procedures), or had to be approved (when the communities chose them) by the colonial overlords; they were accountable not to their communities, but to the colonial administration, which could dismiss them at will; and they were given full power to impose colonial rules over their subjects.
Generally, it has been observed that the smaller the human community, the less unequal its social organization is. The large tribes of more recent human history were much less egalitarian than the tribes of earlier periods, or than those of small communities still existing today — but then they were themselves organized and subdivided into clans, bands, villages, etc, and tended to group into confederations or nations.
This kind of thing misses that these societies, while they may appear egalitarian to us, are not egalitarian to the people living in them, because they see themselves as parts of an immense society that includes the whole world under which they are subordinate and to which they owe allegiance. Peoples of Siberia are empirically eqalitarian to us, but in their world they are on the low end of a vast feudal system of deities to which they owe and give fealty. (Despite having no such social system themselves!)
Suggest the book by Graber and Wengrow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything
Origins of inequality
Rejecting the “origins of inequality” as a framework for understanding human history, the authors consider where this question originated, and suggest it occurred during encounters between European settlers and the Indigenous populations of North America. They argue that the latter provided a powerful counter-model to European civilisation and a sustained critique of its hierarchy, patriarchy, punitive law, and profit-motivated behaviour, which entered European thinking in the 18th century through travellers’ accounts and missionary relations. This was then imitated by the thinkers of the Enlightenment. They illustrate this process through the historical example of the Wendat leader Kondiaronk, and his depiction in the best-selling works of the Baron Lahontan, who had spent ten years in the colonies of New France.
The authors further argue that the standard narrative of social evolution, including the framing of history as modes of production and a progression from hunter-gatherer to farmer to commercial civilisation, originated partly as a way of silencing this Indigenous critique, and recasting human freedoms as naïve or primitive features of social development.
“Tribal situations are dictatorships with the tribal chief as dictator.”
This doesn’t accord with any serious anthropological analysis with which I am familiar.
I suppose you found footage of early hominids and early humans evolving in these tribal societies?
They’ll start at “equality of opportunity” but they’ll end up at “equality of outcome”.
It’s Marxism for slow learners.
You have definitely studied Marx and his opinions on the matter, eh? Maybe you should check this book “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx” by David Lay Williams to familiarize yourself with what Marx thought about inequality…
You must be a Paretto type of guy, eh?! I sense the presence of the pleonexia in your gut batceria…
Take a quick look at “Critique of the Gotha Programme” and you might amend this comment.
Or “From each according to their means and to each according to their needs” LOL. Like the China vs Russia in the late 1960’s:
China: Comrade Russia you have lots of means and we have lots of need so we should get the resources of Siberia.
Russia: Bang bang boom
China: Comrade why are you shooting me?
The talk is always good stuff like “help others” but the reality is “Keep your hands off of my stack”.
I’m guessing , and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you regard any concerns about the seven of nine planetary boundaries that we’re currently exceeding to be overblown, likely concocted to restrict your doin’ your thing.
The irony is that purported crusaders for “freedom,” who demanded the right to infect others so that they would never miss the baby back ribs special at Applebee’s, were doing the work for the billionaires, who always demand Business As Usual, or more accurately, Profits As Usual. Some of the same billionaires who successfully demanded that Trump dump any efforts to combat Covid other than vaccines, which were never going to do more than reduce hospitalization levels because of the nature of coronaviruses (something we knew at NC, thanks to Lambert), were among those who demanded and enjoyed the same restrictions they opposed for the plebes when they, the anointed, attended public events:
Funny how the billionaires didn’t lead a drive to put those “state-of -the-art ventilation systems and HEPA filters” into every public school. Instead, our children and grandchildren endure multiple cases of Covid with all of its adverse, long-term effects. (you can check the site’s Archives for those) What a great victory for human liberty.
The freedom lovers, who scream they’re oppressed any time someone mentions a carbon footprint or the impacts of our consumerist profligacy on our grandchildren, are doing the work of the billionaires again, especially those with ties to the fossil fuel industry, which has lied about the effects of its activities for decades.
So, Agent99, it’s time to get smart. You’re less a freedom fighter and more a dupe of billionaires who could care less about your health (while they spare no expense in protecting their own) or about how your grandchildren survive in a severely wounded biosphere (while they build bunkers for their own). These are the people who bought the paid liars who brought us the Great Barrington Declaration and fund dozens of “institutes” to create and disseminate lies meant to sow doubt about the reality of something we’re already experiencing.
American capitalist culture has created quite a cult of radical individualists who follow Thatcher’s absurd assertion that there is no such thing as society. You object even to a tribe. We’re social creatures. Each of us exists only because others gave us birth, cared for us when we were infants, educated us when we didn’t know how to read, ministered to us when we were ill, and others will bury, cremate or dissect us when we die. Those in isolation do not survive for long. We’re not built that way. The biosphere is not built that way. When we deny our social needs and responsibilities, we are doing the work of our true oppressors, those who treat us as mopes to be manipulated as much as it takes to keep them in power and obscene wealth.
Thank you HMP.
“We’re social creatures. Each of us exists only because others gave us birth, cared for us when we were infants…. When we deny our social needs and responsibilities, we are doing the work of our true oppressors….”
The way some Randians and ilk talk, you’d think they changed their own diapers when they were babies. Sociopathy is unfortunately a part of humanity as well.
F-ing Locke and his fetish for private proverty, providing “arguments” for the enclosure acts all over the world. The vast majority didn’t want the enclosures, were forced by beatings, imprisonment and death into acceptance.
How to get out of this circle of suffering? It is all political, baby.
Here is a recipie:
https://squirrelbrain77.substack.com/p/basic-law-of-the-commonwealth-cfc
https://squirrelbrain77.substack.com/p/playing-devils-advocate-arguments
I would kindly ask the NC commentariat to have a look at both of the links at provide a critique, as best one can on what is proposed there. They will be greately appreciated.
Wow! Octavia Butler saw that we are a society whose dominant worldview is losing its legitimacy, and she predicted, rightly I think, that once that worldview finally collapses, there will be intense competition to establish the new dominant worldview. Now is the time to be creating, critiquing and improving alternatives, because we can be sure that the powerful are hard at work to create another oppressive formula once they give up defending the status quo.
Here are some comments on what I read:
1) “The actual order of things”
But what is that actual order of things? Edward Goldsmith, the creator and editor of the periodical The Ecologist, wrote The Way: an ecological worldview, in which he proposed that the goal (remember Donella Meadows!) of a living system is the maintenance of stability. This is true of the cell, the organism and the ecosystem. What humans need, he says, is a governing system that seeks to do the same.
One thing I learned from the Basic Law is the extent to which Roman law had this as a goal with respect to the biosphere. Pulling the usufruct concept from Roman law was brilliant.
2) Religious support
I commend you on your characterization of the Hebrew bible’s attitude toward private property. The only problem is that those laws were probably never followed. Even the simple command to release an indentured servant in the 7th year was never followed according to Jeremiah. (Chapter 34). Nevertheless, the idea was in the text. I’d add the point that YHWH was supposed to be king, a point made by Samuel in arguing against the people’s plea to have a king like other nations. (1 Samuel 8).
The devil’s advocate objection, purportedly from the Christian perspective, that humans are sinners and can’t do right is off track, though. A “sinner,” in the Christian concept, is capable of civil righteousness, but that does not suffice to please God.
3) “collective well being”
I’d encourage you to expand “collective wellbeing” to include all life. What’s good for the Earth is good for us. The physicist Tom Murphy makes powerful arguments in this regard, in addition to Wendell Berry.
4) Cain and Abel
I first ran into this interpretation in Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, and I thought it was brilliant. He saw it as a remnant thread of an old battle between agriculturalists and pastoralists. The usual Christian exegesis is that there was a difference in spirit in how the sacrifices were submitted that explains YHWH’s reaction.
5) Technology
It wasn’t clear to me from what your wrote that technology presents as many dangers to human social health and individual psychology as it does to the biosphere.
6) I loved the analogy between sortition and sexual reproduction.
7) List of rights
I’ve become must less impressed about statements that we have this or that right after listening to Dems dance around a “right” to “universal healthcare” for decades. “Rights” stated in the abstract can become empty shibboleths.
8) Using AI in positive way
Daniel Schmachtenberger, a big critic of AI, does see ways to use AI as part of a democratic, policy-making process. I like Schmachtenberger’s ideas generally, but I’m skeptical of this one.
9) Re: usufruct in a more contemporary context
See riparian water rights, predominant in the East, with “prior appropriation” common in the Western US.
Most of these points are not criticisms really, just additional sources you might use to back up and refine your points. Kudos on the effort. It resonates with me.
Thank you very much Henry, very much appreciated. I’ll save the comments for when considering the next draft.
Provocative subject, it seems. Yves, I’ll bite on your thought: while public defenders are often underpaid and overworked, limiting the attention they can pay to particular cases, they are the most experienced criminal trial attorneys in our system. They know the judges, the prosecutors, and what they will and won’t likely do. A private attorney who doesn’t have this familiarity is at a disadvantage in this respect. Depending on the charge, I might rather have a public defender represent me than all but the best-resourced firms.
The comparison of criminal defendants represented by retained or court appointed legal counsel is apt but doesn’t apply everywhere.
When the county that later became Silicon Valley created its Public Defender’s Office after Gideon in the early 1960’s, the policy decision was made that its lawyers would be placed under the same job classification as prosecutors the District Attorney’s Office. I worked as a prosecutor but was elected to 12 consecutive terms as a representative of both the prosecutors and public defenders, who sat together in collective bargaining.
For over sixty years caseloads were kept equivalent between the prosecutor’s office and the indigent defense office (obviously staffing levels are different). Indigent defendants generally received better representation than those struggling to constrain the hourly billing of retained counsel.
Abolish inequality, well not then tax it, well not then at least talk about it. The spectrum, in a sane forum. Alas, what spectrum in the landscape at large? There’s the rub.
Right from the jump, there’s a problem. The authors are worried about equality of OPPORTUNITY, but we really need more equality of OUTCOMES.
Lotteries (in theory) give equality of opportunity, do we really need more of them?
We need to lower the risk of not being a huge winner, and to lower the rewards of winning.
The problem with this kind of thing is that it complete distorts the nature of archaic societies so as to make them into miniature versions of modern Western people, which are taken as the baseline for humanity. Archaic societies had (have) a completely different view of the world. Most importantly, what are regarded here as “social cohesion” and “equality”—alien concepts to archaic societies—are part of a belief in of what 95% of the readers here would regard as the “supernatural” (another alien concept) and do not function without it. Archaic societies do not destroy surplus to retain social cohesion and equality within a group of empirical people, but to give it to the society of gods and ancestors and spirits that is part of their world.
Progressive judgements are worded strongly against those with highest concentrated wealth – but the words are rather powerless in real impact there. What the intellectualisation of (in)equality affects most are those with modest or mid tier power – all potential competitors to the filthily rich. That is how you rule the world – disempower the inconvenient closest competition. (Ask Stalin… or Trump now). Emphatic emancipation of the more disadvantaged works actually well for that purpose. The progressive push for equality is fine for those in the immune power stratosphere. Those providing demonstrable equality are more equal than others, one way or other.
There are 8 million proposals for the reform of naked capitalism. Not one of them is going anywhere. There is no lack of solutions. However, there is way for any real change to occur under the present dictatorship of the capitalist class.. None whatsoever.