Month: April 2011

Money, Power, and Equality

 J. R. Lucas, "Against Equality," in Justice and Equality, ed.  Hugo Bedau (Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 148-149:

Since men value power and prestige as much as the possession of wealth—indeed, these three `goods' cannot be completely separated—it is foolish to seek to establish an equality of wealth on egalitarian grounds. It is foolish first because it will not result in what egalitarians really want. It is foolish also because if we do not let men compete for money, they will compete all the more for power; and whereas the possession of wealth by another man does not hurt me, unless I am made vulnerable by envy, the possession of power by another is Inherently dangerous; and furthermore if we are to maintain a strict equality of wealth we need a much greater apparatus of state to secure it and therefore a much greater inequality of power. Better have bloated plutocrats than omnipotent bureaucrats.

This is a penetrating passage from a penetrating essay. Lucas is in effect pointing out a paradox at the heart of the egalitarian  position. If the egalitarian wants to equalize wealth, perhaps via a scheme of income redistribution, then he will need to make use of state power to do it: the wealthy will not voluntarily disembarrass themselves of their wealth. But state power is of necessity concentrated in the hands of a few, those who run the government,  whose power is vastly greater than, and hence unequal to, the power of  the governed.

The paradox, then, is that the enforcing of equality of wealth requires inequality of power. But, as Lucas points out, the powerful are much more dangerous to us than the wealthy. Your being wealthy takes away nothing from me, and indeed stimulates the economy from which I profit, whereas your being powerful poses a threat  to my liberty.

But I hear an objection coming: "Wealth is convertible into power since the wealthy can buy their way to political influence, whether legally or illegally." True, but the seriousness of this problem is a function of how intrusive and overreaching the government is. A government stripped down to essential functions offers fewer opportunities for the power-hungry. Note also that the wealthy may  feel it necessary to buy influence just to protect themselves from  regulatory zeal. 

Harley-Davidson: Stickin’ It to the Man

Check out this H-D promotional video.  A celebration of individuality by people who dress the same, ride the same make of motorcycle, and chant in unison.

"Some of us believe in the Man Upstairs, but all of us believe in stickin' it to the Man Down Here." 

But without the Man there would be no roads, no gasoline, no science, no technology, no motorcycles, no law and order, no orderly context in which aging lawyers and dentists could play at stickin' it to the Man on the weekends.  The Man is discipline, self-denial, repression, deferral of gratification, control of the instinctual.   The Man is civilization discontents and all. Without the Man there would be no one to stick it to, and nothing to stick it to him with.  Adolescents of all ages need the Man to have someone to rebel against.

Still and all, after watching this video, what red-blooded American boomer doesn't want to rush out and buy himself a hog?  Get your motor runnin', head out on the highway . . . .

Double Negatives, Intensifiers, and Double Affirmatives

If Mick Jagger can't get no satisfaction, then, from a logical point  of view, he can get some satisfaction. Logically, a double negative amounts to an affirmative.  But we all know what 'can't get no satisfaction' means. It means what 'can't get any satisfaction' means. So what reason do we have to classify the '___can't get no . . .'  construction as a double negative? Arguably, 'no' in this construction is not a logical particle signifying negation but an intensifier.

If that is right, then there is nothing illogical (contradictory) about 'I can't get no satisfaction' or 'I ain't got no money.'  It is bad English, no doubt, but not in point of illogicality.  What makes it ungrammatical is not its being logically contradictory, but its deviation from standard usage where this is the usage of the middle and upper classes.  If you say, without irony, 'I ain't got no money,' then you betray your low social status.  If you are extremely careful not to make grammatical mistakes then you are probably either low class aspiring to middle class status, middle class, or middle class anxious about class slippage. 

Furthermore, if what I am suggesting is right, then 'double negative' is a misnomer.  There are not two negation signs in 'I can't get no satisfaction,' only one: the first, the second being an intensifier.

Intensifiers are words like 'very,' 'really,' 'actually, 'extremely,' 'insanely,' and so on. They typically modify an adjective or adverb.  'That book is insanely expensive.' 'She talks extremely fast.' Some border on the oxymoronic: 'She is insanely intelligent.' In the three examples just given the adjective/adverb is genuinely modified by the intensifier. In some cases, however, the modification is wholly redundant. 'What she said is absolutely true' conveys no more than 'What she said is true.' Compare 'What she said is undoubtedly true.'  'Undoubtedly' is an intensifier that adds to the sense of 'true': 'undoubtedly true' convey a different content than 'true.' But 'absolutely true' and 'true' convey the same content.

Many different words can be used as intensifiers. On television a while back a pundit remarked, "John Kerry didn't respond to the Swift Boat ads and it literally sunk his campaign." 'Literally sunk' is   nonsense if 'literally' is being used as the antonym of 'figuratively.' Political campaigns, because they do not literally  float, cannot be literally sunk. If they are sunk, that is a figure of speech. So, being charitable, I will say that the pundit was using  'literally' as an intensifier. I will not accuse him of not knowing  what 'literally' means. Though I shrink from the Wittgensteinian exaggeration that meaning is use, meaning has  something to do, a lot to do, with use. Why can't a person use 'literally' as an intensifier? I don't recommend this nonstandard usage of course, being the linguistic prick that I am; but though  prickly I also try to be charitable and open-minded.

Catch my drift?  A teenage girl says of her mother "She literally had a cow when I told her I was dating Jack."  If you point out to the girl that a human being cannot literally have a cow, and she is very bright she might reasonably respond, 'I was using  'literally' as an intensifier, not as the antonym of 'figuratively'." 

I suggest that there are wholly redundant modifiers that appear to  entail, but do not entail, logical contradictions. I suggest that in  'I can't get no satisfaction' and 'I ain't got no money,' 'no'  functions as an intensifier and not as a sign for negation. If that is right, then these examples are not examples of double negatives. An  example of a double negative construction is 'It is not uncommon____.'  Here it is indeed the case that the two negation signs cancel with a  positive upshot. But this is not the case in the ungrammatical 'I don't know nothing,' 'I ain't got no money,' 'I can't get no satisfaction,' and the like.

The following, therefore, is just plain false: "A double negative is the nonstandard usage of two negatives used in the same sentence so that they cancel each other and create a positive." We are also told that 'I don't want nothing' means the same as 'I want something.' That is simply false. It means that same as 'I don't want anything.'

Now what about double affirmatives? Eddy Zemach once commented on a paper I read at the American Philosophical Association. A tough commenter, but a gentleman of the old school. Later he told me and some others a story about Sidney Morgenbesser and John Austin. Austin had claimed in a lecture that although many languages feature double  negatives that add up to an affirmative, no language features double affirmatives that amount to a negative. Morgenbesser's brilliant reply came quickly, "Yeah, yeah." To this we might add 'yeah, right,' and  'yeah, sure.' These are genuine double affirmatives that convey a  negative meaning.