A very significant component of success – one that may even be more determinative than hard work – is luck. This is true, even if the advantaged have worked hard to maximize the benefits of that luck. By luck, I mostly mean circumstances of birth and natural talents and abilities (which might well include the propensity to work hard).
Why do the disadvantaged tolerate this situation? The American myth of self-reliance. No matter the vagaries of fortune, we consistently find that Americans at all levels believe in some variant of the Horatio Alger myth – the classic American rags to riches success story – despite strong empirical evidence that belies it.
Pointer from Mark Thoma.
On the other hand, James Otteson writes,
Human beings are capable of being worthy to be free. Human beings become noble, and, I would even suggest, beautiful, by the vigorous use of their faculties and they become dignified when their lives are their own…
This conception of moral agency allows one to be one’s own person, and to stand, or fall, on one’s own individual initiative, without having to beg for personal favors, without having to grovel at the knees of a king or flatter a lord or satisfy the pleasure of the Regulatory Czar. It grants people the freedom to go where their own abilities and initiative–not someone else’s mercy or condescension–can take them. Yet with that freedom comes responsibility for one’s actions. If you succeed, then you reap the benefits–and no one begrudges you your success because it means you have done well both for yourself and for others. If you fail, however, then you may pay the cost and (one hopes) learn from the experience.
…Contrary to widespread opinion, failure is not something that public policy should attempt to eliminate…failure, and experiencing the consequences attendant on having made decisions that led to failure, is an indispensible [sic] part of moral agency.
Those quotes are from Otteson’s recent book, The End of Socialism.
My sense is that these two authors talk past one another. Otteson’s rhetoric emphasizes personal decisions as the determinant of individual success. For Mitchell, it is the opposite–even a “propensity to work hard” is a matter of luck.
I find myself unwilling to accept either extreme. I am inclined to think that Otteson makes the scope of individual moral agency seem too large, and Mitchell makes that scope seem too small. However, I have yet to finish Otteson’s book or to start Mitchell’s.
Coincidentally, Charles Murray writes,
deeper personal qualities account for what we call political polarization, but that one specific dimension—our respective attitudes toward personal responsibility—accounts for a huge proportion of the polarization all by itself.
Read the whole piece.
Hypothetical: Regardless of the objective truth – groups made up mostly of people who believe in their own agency, and are rewarded for that, are more successful against the selection functions that all groups must filter through.
And of course, it may be that total predestination prevails, all the way to the level of individual atomic particles – and that some large group of us are pre-ordained to believe in agency in free will….
Its luck in the sense that a particular consciousness is assigned to a particular body, but its not random which bodies wind up with the right social circumstances and natural abilities necessary for success. And even then the randomness is more veneer then reality, as your mind is the product of your brain which in turn is a product of your genes. The distribution of possible minds is bounded by the parental inputs, which has more structure than mere luck.
On the flip side, it would be odd to argue, and indeed few do, that violent people shouldn’t bear the consequences of their behavior because they were unlucky to wind up with natural tendency towards violence.
“As any lawyer or economist can tell you, when you focus on structure or process, the result is typically the status quo.”
This is nonsense. False claim of unanimity, incoherent conclusion. The Mitchell article is a petulant mess.
And what is so bad about an improved stats quo?
“Equality” peddlers like Prof. Mitchell are no threat to the position and advantages of the wealthy (although the egalitarians might impose higher taxes on them). Nor do they propose anything likely to make a real difference in the lives of the underclass. Their goal is to degrade the position and wealth of the private-sector, productive middle class and working class, and transfer resources from them to a further enlarged bureaucracy devoted to “caring” for the underclass. I think this is what Prof. Gruber candidly admitted to doing when he thought only his technocratic friends would hear.
Incidentally, since Prof. Mitchell cares so much about “equality,” I assume he’s in favor of reducing immigration. /Sarcasm off
After a while paying attention it became obvious what they are doing is marketing. The inequality meme sells and the luck idea shores up when you can’t demonstrate that the poor are deserving or the wealthy ill-begotten.
And isn’t the whole philosophical question of whether a person can deserves “credit” or “blame” for the way he has conducted his life really a red herring here? However you come down on that question, isn’t it really imperative for any society to organize itself so that constructive, productive, socially beneficial behavior, at all levels of society (what used to be called virtue and prudence), is rewarded? If so, even in a justly organized society, won’t people less inclined to virtuous/prudent behavior (all other factors being equal) fall behind those more inclined in that direction?
I suppose it depends on how you define virtue. For the Left, it seems to mean supporting the Leftist political agenda, period.
This short article (about 25 pages), The Egalitarian Conceit, by the recently deceased Kenneth Minogue illuminates this discussion, and what worthies like Prof. Mitchell are up to:
http://www.cps.org.uk/publications/reports/the-egalitarian-conceit/
(The article can be downloaded in PDF for free at this site.)
Commenter DJF is on to something. A they-can’t-help-it determinist could just as easily be on the right than the left; though not the libertarian-ish right, which makes up the mainstream of American conservatism. Progressives can feel confident that undermining the Alger myth won’t usher in a conservative technocracy, though in theory it could.
A lefty who believes that denying agency is inherently a conservative thing however is John Horgan (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/06/24/defending-stephen-jay-goulds-crusade-against-biological-determinism/).
Isn’t Mitchell basically denying that? Surely, he would claim that the rewards aren’t needed for the lucky, and the unlucky wouldn’t strive to gain them.
Yes, that’s the constant refrain of the Left: incentives don’t matter. I don’t think anyone really believes that.
I should clarify that I’m not really focusing on the incentives for entrepreneurs and business, although the Left wants to shift the incentives for the entrepreneurial/business sector from satisfying a real societal demand (or creating a real societal demand) to satisfying whatever the political/bureaucratic agenda of the day happens to be. I have in mind the incentives for ordinary people to act prudently and constructively in organizing their own lives and careers. The Left wants to reduce the penalties for failing to run one’s life prudently and constructively and, concomitantly, to reduce the rewards for doing so.
One could believe like Mitchell and still be very pro freedom anti-welfare. (I feel agree with Mitchell and I think we should replace almost all welfare including SS with $200/week check to each adult citizen and super high deductible health insurance in which the deductible goes up with income. Pretty lean.)
It is theoretically possible that if you pushed everyone off welfare some would get lucky and get rich and others might find more fulfillment in working hard others might get adopted by a charity or church. Most could end up better off.
After all these people do not believe that sate lottery winnings above say $300,000 should be tax a 90% rate. So what some are lucky some are not, you still do not want to change things too much else you make most everyone worse off.
I’ll give you a third perspective. The Mitchell perspective is a direct challenge to personhood and self. It necessarily denies you any moral claim to your own genes, thoughts, labor, etc. All of those it seeks to characterize as accidents with no moral status. The only moral claim one is allowed to make is one of being “disadvantaged.” Such a perspective is insufferably arrogant and pompous. Mitchell holds himself as judging all the men and women who have succeeded and says, prove to me you deserve that. To that, I say, f u! I don’t accept that some second-tier professor at some third-rate law school has the prerogative to call on anyone to justify a damn thing. This is a republic and citizens don’t have to justify themselves to anyone in power if they don’t want to. For him, or anyone, to try to stake out such a position is a completely hegemonic power play, that could only be sustained by a totalitarian, pan-Opticon-like environment.
It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.
For example, we are hearing all these rumblings about the NCAA now that momentum is building behind sympathy for the oppressed class. Nothing else changed except that they are maybe now less oppressed than ever.
They’ll never actually get to parity and they wouldn’t want to if they could.