basquebromance
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- Nov 26, 2015
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New York Times ran a glowing profile of Shapiro a few years ago, calling him the “destroyer of bad arguments” and “the cool kids’ philosopher.” It’s interesting to contrast what Shapiro is doing here to the work of a philosopher who was actually serious about thinking through basic questions about how societies should be structured.
The late Marxist thinker G. A. Cohen, in his book Why Not Socialism?, talked about the twin values of equality and community. He didn’t try to come up with a mathematical formula to decide exactly how much of one was equivalent to how much of another — a la Shapiro — but he did say some interesting things about how they relate to each other.
Cohen thought the kind of equality that matters most is equality of access to advantage. A distribution of resources is objectionably unequal if some of us have less access to better outcomes because of factors outside of our control. We don’t get to decide whether we’re born into rich families or poor ones, for example, and we also don’t get to decide whether we’ll be born with the particular package of abilities that help some poor kids climb the ladder of class mobility. Cohen thought the more we reduce or eliminate such involuntary inequalities, the closer we’ve moved toward justice.
But what about bad outcomes that simply result from bad decisions? If someone had every chance to get ahead, but they were just irresponsible, or even if they made a reasonable choice to take a big risk that blew up in their face, then any resulting bad outcome doesn’t violate equality of access to advantage. But Cohen doesn’t think we should therefore be indifferent to such inequalities. That’s why the value of equality has to be supplemented by the value of community.
One way of understanding what Cohen is saying is that, if you see someone as a member of your community — as inside the circle of people you care about — you won’t let them sink to a standard of living many times lower than your own. This is a concept of “social solidarity” that plays a meaningful role in a well-thought-through theory of justice.
Thoughtful people can accept or reject Cohen’s ideas. But at least there’s a serious proposal there to debate. Shapiro is just loudly and confidently spouting whatever ideas pop into his head.
Given the sheer size of Shapiro’s platform, leftists in the persuasion business have to engage with what he’s saying. But doing so would be way more interesting if, every now and again, Shapiro at least skimmed a book.
The late Marxist thinker G. A. Cohen, in his book Why Not Socialism?, talked about the twin values of equality and community. He didn’t try to come up with a mathematical formula to decide exactly how much of one was equivalent to how much of another — a la Shapiro — but he did say some interesting things about how they relate to each other.
Cohen thought the kind of equality that matters most is equality of access to advantage. A distribution of resources is objectionably unequal if some of us have less access to better outcomes because of factors outside of our control. We don’t get to decide whether we’re born into rich families or poor ones, for example, and we also don’t get to decide whether we’ll be born with the particular package of abilities that help some poor kids climb the ladder of class mobility. Cohen thought the more we reduce or eliminate such involuntary inequalities, the closer we’ve moved toward justice.
But what about bad outcomes that simply result from bad decisions? If someone had every chance to get ahead, but they were just irresponsible, or even if they made a reasonable choice to take a big risk that blew up in their face, then any resulting bad outcome doesn’t violate equality of access to advantage. But Cohen doesn’t think we should therefore be indifferent to such inequalities. That’s why the value of equality has to be supplemented by the value of community.
One way of understanding what Cohen is saying is that, if you see someone as a member of your community — as inside the circle of people you care about — you won’t let them sink to a standard of living many times lower than your own. This is a concept of “social solidarity” that plays a meaningful role in a well-thought-through theory of justice.
Thoughtful people can accept or reject Cohen’s ideas. But at least there’s a serious proposal there to debate. Shapiro is just loudly and confidently spouting whatever ideas pop into his head.
Given the sheer size of Shapiro’s platform, leftists in the persuasion business have to engage with what he’s saying. But doing so would be way more interesting if, every now and again, Shapiro at least skimmed a book.
