Insincerity versus instinct

In his Normblog profile the mighty Paul quotes Flannery O'Connor: "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."
The thing is, I don't know what I think even after I've read what I've written. For example, I don't know if I believe this post, arguing that universities should discriminate in favour of the rich.
I guess I'm making a few points here:
1. The argument that universities should seek out poor but talented students is primarily one of efficiency. Talent is a scarce resource - very scarce indeed - and we shouldn't waste it (though we do). But there's no reason to suppose that efficiency and justice coincide.
2. Mere formal equality of opportunity is a feeble and fake egalitarianism, which conflicts with several other values. The best we can do for the poor is not to offer a few of them an escape route, but rather lift them out of poverty.
3. Our political beliefs often come not from our brain, but from our gut, and from what our tribe happens to think. A moment's thought shows that equal opportunity is a dubious value. But people rarely put in the moment's thought.
4. For this reason, sincerity is over-rated. It's not important what you believe. There's no point writing from the heart as the heart can be wrong. There's much to be said for insincerity, though it's hard to fake.

Comments

[Peter Risdon]

Mere formal equality of opportunity is a feeble and fake egalitarianism, which conflicts with several other values.

Equality of opportunity isn't egalitarianism at all. It's dawning on me: you really don't understand this, these posts aren't just provocative brainsmanship. Wow.

The best we can do for the poor is not to offer a few of them an escape route, but rather lift them out of poverty.

The poor have been lifted out of poverty - to the point where people need to invent relative definitions to keep their pots boiling. It's capitalism, technology and enterprise that have done this.

[Peter Risdon]

Bah. Formatting removed annoyingly. Paras one and three above are quotes.

[Scratch]

"The poor have been lifted out of poverty - to the point where people need to invent relative definitions to keep their pots boiling. It's capitalism, technology and enterprise that have done this."

Actually, the ruling classes fear of socialism did that.

And their current non-fear of socialism is busy undoing it bit by bit.

[Peter Risdon]

The ruling classes' fear of socialism led to the development of the production line? To the invention of the jet engine, semiconductors and digital computers? To the discovery of penicillin?

How can someone so brain damaged still manage to type?

[Scratch]

No, fear of socialism encouraged them to, uh, share the benefits.

Compare living standards/ relative equality c1910 with those c1970, you chinless freak.

[Paulie]

Yeah Scratch, you brainless gibbon. Didn't you realise that there was absolutely no state funding, large-scale govermental underwriters and customers or state educated personnel involved at any point during the development of the jet engine, semiconductors and digital computers, and that they were entirely the product of investment from the marketplace that arrived *in spite of* the dead hands of the keynesian bureaucracies that ... er ... funded most of the R&D and paid for the education of most of the creators of those products?

Duh!!?!?

[Peter Risdon]

We don't disagree about the relative statistics, but rather about why they are as they are. That should be obvious.

It's dumb to assume anyone who doesn't buy your line is a toff.

So I have to stand by my earlier intemperate remark.

[Peter Risdon]

Paulie's argument can just be rehashed with capitalist words substituted for the socialistic ones:

"... absolutely no private funding, large-scale insurance market underwriters and private customers or privately educated personnel involved..."

So what?

[Paulie]

Oh, and Chris, your arguments on (paraphrasing) 'Universities not doing anything to promote less well-off demographics because doing so is likely to achieve some socially beneficial outcome' seems uncomfortably close to George Monbiot's idea that a recession will make us all behave more responsibly.

Thanks for calling me 'mighty' btw. Theres a first time for everything I suppose.

[Paulie]

You were the one that claimed sole credit for '..capitalism, technology and enterprise' while entirely discounting any positive impact from Unions, social democrats, keynesianism or democratic structures.

If I were *that* blinkered by a half-witted ahistorical libertarianism, I'd be more careful about describing others as stupid - it could boomerang on you in a way that sticks.

[Scratch]

Innovation didn't lift people out of poverty, redistribution of wealth lifted people out of poverty.

If you are living in a crowded hovel on a subsistence income as, guess what? The vast majority of the (much smaller) population did before the possibility of socialism put the shits up our betters, the existence of jet engines or new techniques in production or dazzling advances in refrigerator technology don't mean a thing .

Do you see?

[Scratch]

Uh, the above post was intended for Mr Risdon, of course.

[Matt Munro]

How do you "lift people out of poverty" when it is measured relatively ? Every time you lift one, another will fall to take their place.

[Katherine]

Matt, please start to understand the difference between "median" and "mean" when looking at the definition of and statistics relating to poverty.

[Matt Munro]

I understand the difference well, and it's irrelevant to my point which is that if poverty is measured *relatively*, there will always be a bottom 10% of the population. Even if everyone was on a minimum wage of a million a year, the bottom 10% would still be classified as "in poverty".
Poverty should be an absolute measure, of somewhere to live, heat and light, food and water, healthcare, education etc.

[Paulie]

Yes Katherine, if everyone earned a £million a year, we'd still be doing nothing but whining about poverty.

Really, it's very distressing when people introduce concepts that appear to be concrete into the healthy relativism that libertarianism needs to survive.

[Matt Munro]

Obviously there's an element of reductio ad absurdum in my previous post, but the point is the living standards of the bottom 10% have risen significantly since the 1950s, more than some of the groups above them. No one need be homeless, no one need starve, no kids should go without basic education, or die of curable disease ? From a global perspective those are huge advantages.
If "the poor" continue to be defined in terms of their proximity to an an arbitary measure of income/standard of living, then poverty will never be eradicated - and who benefits from that I wonder ?

[Paulie]

It was the concept of 'lifting people out of poverty' that you found absurd. I don't suppose that the idea that people aren't actually starving in the streets = there is no poverty to speak of is new to anyone who reads this blog.

But the glib way that relative arguments are used by large sections of the blogosphere's commentariat (we don't hear much of it anywhere else thankfully) to argue against *any* measures that are intended to stop people being financially insecure is getting tedious.

Most people are financially insecure in this country, and that needn't be the case.

[Katherine]

Matt, alas, you don't seem to have understood the point. Currently, the measure for "poverty" is that someone is below 60 per cent of contemporary median net disposable income. It is perfectly possible, using this definition, for no one to be in poverty.