Smaller pie, fairer slices was originally posted to the Art of the Possible blog by Angelica aka Battlepanda.
Sorry for the lack of posting, all. I’ve been on holiday in Japan and then started a new job the day after I got back to Taipei. But one of the good things going on holiday is good for is reading books, which I never seem to get around to in my normal life anymore. From my vacation reading (Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen) comes this fascinating nugget about life expectancy in Britain.
Interdecade comparisons, based on decadal censuses, show that by a very wide margin the most speedy expansion of life expectancy occurred precisely during the two “war decades” [that is, 1911-21 and 1940-51]. While in the other decades life expectancy rose rather moderately (between one and four years), in each of the two war decades it jumped up by nearly seven years.
Britain had to undergo food rationing during the wars, especially during WWII. But what food there was, people were willing to share in a time of national crisis, posits Sen, and that accounts for the counterintuitive increase in life expectancy during the two decades containing the world wars.
Each war situation produced much greater sharing of means of survival, including sharing of health care and the limited food supply (through rationing and subsidized nutrition)…It is in fact, confirmed by detailed nutritional studies that during the Second World War, even though the per capita availability of food fell significantly in Britain, cases of undernourishment also declined sharply, and extreme undernourishment almost entirely disappeared. Mortality rates also went down sharply (except of course for war mortality itself). A similar thing had happened during the First World War.
To me, the fact that such an important measurement of welfare as an expansion of life expectancy can go up during such times of deprivation because of greater sharing of what’s available is a compelling reason to adopt a liberal rather than a libertarian point of view. Some sharing in the form of government sponsored healthcare and social safety nets to take the edge off inequality is humane and increases total welfare. I therefore find those programs desirable even though they mean I would have to pay taxes I’d rather not and at a cost to total economic efficiency.
Inequality is a scourge that is not going to go away. As technology advances, multiplying the productivity of the most skilled workers and rendering the services of less skilled workers increasingly worthless, we are entering a time where even healthy economic growth on a macro level do not translate into higher household incomes for the bulk of us.
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008.
Be sure to check out the comment section on the original post, thanks to the Way Back Machine.
> the fact that such an important measurement of welfare as an expansion of life expectancy can go up during such times of deprivation because of greater sharing of what’s available is a compelling reason to adopt a liberal rather than a libertarian point of view.
This implicitly says that life is a greater good than freedom.
Every person who has ever risked their life to achieve or defend freedom disagrees with this. As do I.
For a number of people who struggle to attain the basic necessities, this is simply true. Unfortunate, but still true. It's one reason why Adolf Hitler was able to come to power.
I do not begrudge this fact. When people feel less precarious, they are more open to radical ideas. So, collapse is not something to hope for.
Life is a prerequisite for freedom. You have to have life in the first place, before you can risk it in a venture. There is no conflict between this and risking one's life for freedom.
That said, I disagree with the original poster for different reasons. It seems perfectly rational in an anarchist society that people would pool these risks voluntarily, and probably more efficiently than a monopolistic state solution.
The comment section to the original post is very interesting. I am sorry that I did not include it when I scheduled this article – now corrected.
My recent post Photo
Sharing, charity and an increased sense of community, regardless of income level or social station is a counter-intuitive yet common occurrence in times of crisis. One of the things that this article doesn't take into consideration is that sharing, giving and charity have been growing in this country over the past few decades, maybe this explains why the average life expectancy has been growing in the past few decades as well?
It was written years ago, and it tends to be invisible in times of prosperity.
1) Equality arises out of a freed market, where workers, not the state, own the means of production and contract freely. Disparities in wealth and windfall profits occur as a result of state-enforced patents, preferential legal and tax treatment, and systematic emasculation and pauperization of labor.
2) In a freed market, the pie does not shrink, it grows. No tradeoff need be made. Under the state, many resources are squandered. The military-industrial complex is pure waste. Tax accountants wouldn't exist. Vast state bureaucracies would not exist. The military would not exist. No tradeoff need be made.
Only increased freedom can arrange and regulate a free market. Being a "liberal" is silly, because you're asking the state to attenuate the very problem that it created: structural inequality. Liberals have fallen for a centuries old trap, which Otto von Bismarck pioneered:
"My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare.” – Otto von Bismarck, it should be said, rather than an entity that leeches and murders under the auspices of a social contract.
Without the state, there is no capitalism and no capitalist.