How solid are the concepts of 'fairness' and 'moral equality'?

 (This post was prompted by hearing Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "Rawls' Theory of Justice".) 

[1] Should laws be fair? What, then, is 'fairness'?

   It is clear that laws are useful, if only to regulate society. And it is clear that they are only useful if they are obeyed by a majority of citizens (a 'consensus'). We can believe, without extensive research,  that successful societies have laws that are obeyed. Further, that the enforcing of laws (i.e. the process of ensuring that they are obeyed) is most easily done when the laws are spontaneously accepted by a majority of the population as right, as just, as fair.

    Experiments on animals show that the concept of fairness is very basic. Thus, social animals like apes, dogs and rooks are very aware when one member of the group gets more, or less, than they themselves are getting. Justice requires fairness, but may not be exactly the same thing. Images of stern-but-just punishments come to mind. Perhaps Justice requires calculation, scaling a punishment up or down to match the 'crime'. 

    As for 'right' and 'wrong': it seems to me that in-justice and un-fairness must be 'wrong'; so cannot be 'right'. But there may be more to 'rightness' than the avoidance of injustice and unfairness. Perhaps a proactive element?

    Aristotle, in his "Ethics", famously (and ponderously) considered all uses of the word 'good', as when we praise a 'good' carpenter or harpist. We can admire – says Aristotle – a generous man but sneer at a showy vulgarian. What – he wonders – if a good man kills his mother? At one stage Aristotle equates 'goodness' with happiness; "to a good man, virtue is pleasurable in itself". But I get bored. I am more interested in the question of who will be the judge? Is it I, or you, or us, or God?

    From written sources we can see that, for thousands of years, priests in divers cultures have sought to tell their several tribes how to behave, claiming to know how things are; the good foods, the bad foods; how to pray for rain, how to ensure reproductive success.

In the three best known, most successful, arrogant and murderous of the monotheistic religions, the priests even claim to know the mind of God. 

    We also see, from the example of the Greeks, that there have long been philosophers who try to dispense with the authority of the priests, by attempting to derive from reason alone the rules of what they in any case find to be generally accepted as good behaviour. But that is hard work, and in many cases remains unconvincing. That lack of success is (perhaps) why many people still entertain the concept of God; an unknown to explain an unknown. And why the murderous monotheisms were, and remain, so successful.

    But perhaps we just like virtue and justice, as ants like sugar, and fruit-flies like alcohol. It is my thesis (here as elsewhere [1]) that morality is better seen as a question of biology than as one of philosophy, or (heaven forbid) religion.

[2] In what sense is each human being equally important? 

We are not equal in weight, or wealth; that is certain!  Yet it is frequently stated that all should be treated as equal. Is the universal equality that is being proposed an equality of moral worth? What, then, is moral worth?  

Is moral worth a concept we each invent to protect our own importance; to set a lower limit, a safety net. "I may not be a rich man, but I am a man." "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

Some speak of "equal in the eyes of God" hoping (perhaps) to give thereby the concept some external authority. Or perhaps they feel that the phrase, if accepted, signals some sort of inherent human truth; a fact of nature. 

[1] West, I.C. (2019) "God for Atheists", AuthorHouse UK, or available from Amazon, Blackwells, etc or from cawstein@gmail.com

The Importance of Other People's hard Work

 The Importance of Other People's hard Work

    I noticed an article in The Daily Telegraph (Miss Chang, 22 July 20230) pointing out that the USA is getting relatively richer while the UK is getting relatively poorer, dropping from the worlds richest country (GDP per head) to the 5th. I wondered if the British knew just as well as the Americans how hard they wanted to work, and how much leisure time they wanted. Perhaps we have got it right  – for us. 

    Who, exactly, wants the British nation to work harder. Not, I suspect the British workers. Perhaps it is the owners, the directors, the accountants, and the stock market speculators. All of whom would benefit, without themselves having to work harder.  

    There seems no longer any doubt that capitalism is more successful than communism at making a country rich, but it gets rich at some considerable cost in sweat and blood; cost to the workers, and their immediate bosses. For the owners, however, there is very little to do, other than watch their bank balances grow.

    Another economic statistic that bears thinking about, is GDP per capita. There are a number of fluky countries away out at the top of the list; like Monaco and Lichtenstein. But why are Norway, Ireland, and Denmark as high as (or higher than) the USA, and therefore much higher than Britain? 

    Better distribution, perhaps. so wealth more fairly spread. (The wealth of the very, very rich may do rather little for the benefit of mankind, in general). Or do we British spend too much of our money on guns, bombs and battleships?

Please address comment to cawstein@gmail.com

Raise Income Tax!

The Editor, The Times, London; 21 June 2023.

Dear Sir,

    It seems to me that considerable money was created and spent into the economy during the COVID emergency, for the benefit of all. Either we recall it, or we let inflation adjust the value of the pound. 

    Inflation is a sneaky and unfair 'tax'; it erodes the value of cash savings, and penalises those on controlled wages, while those holding assets are immune.

    It is hard to make people save. One can only tempt them, by raising interest rates. But that also is grossly unfair, imposing an impossible burden on poor people with mortgages while rewarding those with savings. Nor will it work while interest rates are lower than inflation, and there is still plenty of money around.  

    By far the fairest, and most direct way of recalling excess money would be by raising income tax. Yet that seem unthinkable in a democracy, so we all have to stand around wringing our hands and and pretending there is nothing that can be done. 

    (Is it not marvellous how tenaciously, and how sneakily, the better-off defend the interests of .... the better-off?)

Yours sincerely, Ian West

(Comments please, to <cawstein@gmail.com>)

TAX: good or bad

 TAX: GOOD OR BAD FOR THE AVERAGE TAXPAYER?

Of course taxes lower our take-home pay; no question. But, equally obviously, taxes fund the many services that central government provides.  Are taxes, then, a good thing or a bad thing? And why did all the candidates for the post of Tory party leader promise to degrade further our public services?

The better-off pay more tax than the less-well-off, and, because of the 'progressive' tax system in the UK, the tax-rate is higher for the rich than for the poor. 

There must be an annual salary above which the paying of due taxes will render a citizen poorer (in that the benefits he enjoys cost less than the tax he pays), while below that annual salary the due taxes will amount to less than the benefits (roads, education, police, health).  What is that pivotal annual salary? And why do so many people think they are net contributors, when at least half the population are likely to be net beneficiaries?

Imagine a see-saw pivoted at the 'median' annual income, with the rich to the right side and the poor to the left side. It will balance, as that is the definition of the median (There are as many individuals earning more than the median as there are earning less.)

Now let them sit on the see-saw with their money; it will clearly tip to the right, because the rich have more money than the poor. In fact, if the incomes alone are weighed, the see-saw will balance at the ‘arithmetic mean’ income.

 (See Figure 1; data from ONS, Average household gross income, UK: financial year ending 2021. The “equivalised median” is said to be £37,900; the “equivalised mean” £48,700)  

Some of those people earning more than £48,700 per annum gross (or £37,000 after tax) might rationally think they would benefit from lower taxes (not-withstanding the consequently deteriorating services: congested bumpy roads, decaying infrastructure, sick population, etc..)

But I cannot think why anyone whose gross annual income is less than £48,700. would vote for lower taxes.  We should logically vote for increased taxes and improved services.

=======++++++===============++++++=======

 “The ‘equivalised’ disposable income is calculated in three steps: all monetary incomes received from any source by each member of a household are added up; these include income from work, investment and social benefits, plus any other household income; taxes and social contributions that have been paid, are deducted from this sum; in order to reflect differences in a household's size and composition, the total (net) household income is divided by the number of 'equivalent adults’, using a standard (equivalence) scale: the modified OECD scale; this scale gives a weight to all members of the household (and then adds these up to arrive at the equivalised household size): 1.0 to the first adult; 0.5 to the second and each subsequent person aged 14 and over; 0.3 to each child aged under 14. Finally, the resulting figure is called the equivalised disposable income and is attributed equally to each member of the household.”

Comments, please, to: cawstein@gmail.com

Time to Think

Time to think

    Oh! How I love having time to think!  And how glad I am that I can still catch and entertain those ethereal, disembodied spirits that float into the mind, linger and vanish!   

    My time has largely run its course, and I am slowing down. Not only do I get less done in a day than once I did; but time grows more treasured as it becomes more scarce. There is no part of my day more treasured than my "thinking time".

    If I must make cuts I shall perhaps start with my "tidying time", or "dusting time". "Practice time" vanished a while ago, unnoticed, and perhaps wrapping presents will follow it. But I hope I shall always have time to think. 

    I like to pause at the top of the stairs, to admire my daughter's framed butterflies, so carefully cut from old maps; memories trapped on paper; Helmeth Hill in the shape of a Swallowtail, Haddon Hill on another; Ratlinghope, Bodinnick Ferry, Glynn House, Trebarwith Strand. 

    I love to stand on my terrace, straighten, by throwing back my shoulders, and look up beyond the roof tops, to see if I can spot any of swifts that have loyally returned to their  ancestral eaves. I fondly remember the screams of the returning swifts as they swooped in to their chattering young, nesting in the eaves some 3 feet from my boyhood bedroom in our generous old Shropshire house. 

    I wonder if it is a dearth of flies that has reduced the number of these astonishing aerobats that complete their absurd journey from from Sub-Saharan Africa to Middle England. Or if it is head winds en route? Or have my neighbours pulled down their old stone houses, or poked out the nests from their eaves? What are insects doing up there, 100 metres above any possible source of food? Does the swift fly with its mouth open, accepting what comes, or does it actively swerve left and right to catch a tempting morsel? Would I see anything if I trained my grandchildren's telescope on that patch of sky?

    The frequent glimpses of a tiny blue butterfly down at the bottom of my modest garden is less mysterious when I find that bird's foot trefoil is the food plant of the Common Blue, for I have a clump of it in flower down there. (Funny that nearly all of the dozen different Blues eat legumes; except for the Holly Blue (holly & ivy), and the Large Blue (thyme)). Ah! But I have masses of ivy in that corner, besides the trefoil, and I might have been over-hasty in assuming my butterflies were Common Blues. (It is easier to tell holly and ivy from bird's foot trefoil than to tell Holly Blue from Common Blue). I find [1] that I also have the food plant of the recently re-introduced Large Blue, for one of my herb boxes is over-flowing with Thymus serpyllum. The caterpillar of this intriguing butterfly has a trick of exuding 'honey' which tempts ants to carry it off to their nest, where it overwinters, feeding off ant grubs till it is ready to pupate and eventually emerge. That lifestyle is stunning in its improbability; but several related species do the same (Adonis Blue, Idas Blue, Alcon Blue).

    Why do we not gradually fill up with trivalent Aluminium; as it binds tightly to protein? Does a spider get appreciably lighter when it abseils to the floor? Easy enough, I suppose, to measure the speed of swifts in flight 'in terms of its own body length'. Pigs, they say, are more intelligent than 3 year old human children. I wonder how that was measured. 

Reference: [1] David Carter (1982) Butterflies and Moths in Britain and Europe 

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Auto-regulation and its breakdown

Auto-regulation and its breakdown(s)

Regarding auto-regulation of cerebral blood-flow, there are several aspects to consider. The ones that occur to me off the top of my had are: the nature of the signal (perhaps cerebral [CO2] or [O2]), detection of the signal, release of the messenger, detection of the messenger by a target tissue, effect of messenger on target tissue (perhaps vascular dilation).

 

Putin's Point of view

Putin's Point of View

I recently discovered, more-or-less by accident, Putin's recent (July 2021) essay, on Ukraine-Russian relations; lengthy but honest and personal; his view of the relations that he thinks should subsist between Russia and Ukraine. I realised (by extrapolation) that there must be a very large number of people in the English-speaking world who do not yet know of this important document and I consequently felt a duty to point to it, and attempt to evaluate it as fairly as I am able. The Kremlin's official ENGLISH TEXT CAN BE FOUND HERE [1].

It is Putin's amplification of an off-the-cuff response to a question raised at his annual question-and-answer session.  Dated 12th July 2021, it clearly represents the thoughts building in his mind, that led eventually to the invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022.

My precis 

Mr. Putin used 2000 words traversing the history of Ukraine/Russia from AD 800 to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, covering much the same ground as I covered in my recent posts [2-6], and I think Putin and I agree rather well. 

He uses another 2000 words to cover the Bolshevik period (1917-1990), and in this he is much better informed than I; but seems balanced and fair. In the Soviet Union  "borders between republics were never seen as state borders; they were nominal [borders] within a single country". He is not pro-Bolshevik; he admits the famines, and the social experimentation.

In the last 2000 words Mr. Putin covers developments since the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the formation of the present Ukrainian state. In 1990 Russia and Ukraine were "natural and complementary partners"; their trade was considerable and mutually beneficial. Even in 2013 the two countries were close allies, with: 

"hundreds of agreements and joint projects .... aimed at developing our economies, business and cultural ties, strengthening security, and solving common social and environmental problems. They brought tangible benefits to people – both in Russia and Ukraine. This is what we believed to be most important. And that is why we had a fruitful interaction with all, I emphasize, with all the leaders of Ukraine."[1] 

It all went wrong in February 2014, when it turned out that the people of northern Ukraine were far more enamoured of the European Union than was their more-pro-Russian government [7]. It seems (to  Putin) that 'the people' of Northern Ukraine have been seduced/fooled by the free-running, capitalist, West. 

"This is also a disguise for the takeover [by the West] of the rest of the Ukrainian economy and the exploitation of its natural resources. The sale of agricultural land is not far off, and it is obvious who will buy it up. From time to time, Ukraine is indeed given financial resources and loans, but under their [the capitalists] own conditions and pursuing their [the capitalists] own interests, with preferences and benefits for Western companies. By the way, who will pay these debts back? Apparently, it is assumed that this will have to be done not only by today's generation of Ukrainians but also by their children, grandchildren and probably great-grandchildren." 

In southern Ukraine, and along the border with Russia, there are (no doubt) more Russian-speakers, and more commercial links with Russia.  

"and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are coming to us to work, and they find a welcome reception and support" [1].

Mr. Putin objects to the  government-imposed  hostility to Russia and to the Russian language; 

"And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors, but also to believe that Russia is their enemy." 

Comment

It seems to me that any arguments that support the right of Ukraine to free itself from Moscow, must also support the right of the Donets Coal Basin (Donbas) to be independent from Ukraine. Whoever governs the Donbas should do so with that in mind.

The southern and eastern sections of present-day Ukraine contains a Black Sea coastline, Zaporizhzhia's nuclear power plant, and the Donbas coal fields (though at fearsome depth). There is a lot at stake. For Ukraine to loose ¾ of its coast and all of its coal might render the state non-viable. It may seem to Kyiv to be worth fighting for, even if that south eastern region is Russian-speaking and hostile to Kyiv. 

There were right-wing paramilitary elements in the February 2014 rising, and there were pro-Russian paramilitary elements in the Donetsk and Luhansk [7]. There has been a lot of assistance/interference from Russia in the form of heavy weapons and advice, and maybe also personnel; and now also a lot of assistance/interference from The West to the government in Kyiv.

The Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015 [8] were serious attempts by third parties to de-escalate the violence in the Donbas Region between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukraine state. Such a de-escalation would require both of the warring parties to see benefits. In the event,  neither party seem sufficiently to want peace. On that point Putin seems correct.  

        It is not at all clear how strong the indigenous pro-Russian sentiment is, in the disputed areas. Pre-emptive, illegal, and un-monitored referendums are unconvincing and unhelpful. 

I believe the world would like to see a Minsk-type cease-fire and some well-monitored referendums.

References

[1] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

[2] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/03/kyiv-1.html 

[3] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/03/kiev-2.html 

[4] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/04/alexei-razumovsky.html 

[5] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/03/kyiv3.html 

[6] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/04/kyiv4.html 

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity 

[8] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-minsk-agreements.html 

Please address comment to cawstein@gmail.com