{"id":4713,"date":"2018-03-07T13:07:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T13:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/03\/07\/relative-poverty-and-status\/"},"modified":"2018-03-07T13:07:58","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T13:07:58","slug":"relative-poverty-and-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/03\/07\/relative-poverty-and-status\/","title":{"rendered":"On Relative Poverty and Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a little disagreement going with the Dark Ostrich. He asserts, "Relative poverty is all about status."  In an earlier entry<\/a>, I quoted him as maintaining that <\/span><\/p>\n

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We are born with a natural<\/em> inequality which soon turns into economic inequality. The reason it turns into economic inequality, I believe, is that humans have a natural desire for status.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I replied,<\/span><\/p>\n

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Yes, we are naturally unequal, both as individuals and as groups, and this inequality results in economic inequality. But I wouldn't explain this in terms of the desire for status<\/em>.  Status is relative social standing<\/a>, and depends on how one appears in the eyes of others. But this is relatively unimportant and has little to do with money and property which are far more important. I can live very well indeed without name and fame, accolades and awards, high social position and the perquisites that come in its train.  But I cannot live well without a modicum of material wealth.  <\/span><\/p>\n

It is not desire for status that [primarily] explains economic inequality  but the desire for money and property and the sort of material security they provide.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I would guess that no one who reads this weblog is absolutely poor, i.e., bereft of life's necessities, and that every one who reads it is relatively poor, and significantly so. What do I mean by 'significantly so'? Suppose A has a net worth of four billion USD and B a net worth of 3.9 billion. Then B is  poor relative to A. I will call this insignificant relative poverty<\/em>.  But the Ostrich and I, though we have far more than we need, are significantly relatively poor as compared to, say, the late Fidel Castro, that man of the people and hero of the Left.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ostrich tells us that relative property is all<\/em> about status. I take that to mean that it is the drive for social status alone<\/em> that brings about economic inequality and with it relative poverty.  That is empirically false. I am the counterexample:  I live wisely and frugally and my net worth keeps going up. But I don't care  about status, which is relatively unreal, being mainly a matter of what's going on in the heads of others.  I carefully husband my resources because I want to be in a position to take care of myself and others when the inevitable disasters occur and not be a burden on others. What others think of me, though of some importance, is of less importance to me than my material well-being.<\/span><\/p>\n

But let's be charitable. Perhaps what the Ostrich means to say is that it is the lust for status that mainly<\/em> brings about economic inequality and relative poverty.  I concede that that might be so. It is an empirical question and cannot be answered from the arm chair.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there are a couple of normative questions in the vicinity and these are what really interest me. One is whether it is morally permissible<\/em> to pursue loot and lucre, property and pelf, for social standing. The other is whether it is rational<\/em> to pursue these things for social standing. I will leave the moral question for some other time.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for rationality, it can be understood in two different ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

An agent is instrumentally rational if he chooses means conducive to the achievement of his ends.  A rational agent in Phoenix who intends to travel to Los Angeles by car in eight hours or less will head West on Interstate 10. If he were to head East he would show himself to be irrational, at least in respect of this particular goal or type of goal.  This says nothing about the rationality or irrationality of driving to Los Angeles. Indeed, there are those who will say that it makes no sense to speak of ends as either rational or irrational, that such talk is meaningful only in respect of means.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a second way of thinking about rationality, one can coherently speak of ends themselves as rational or the opposite. Consider social status and material security. Which is a higher value? Which is more choice-worthy? Which would it be more rational for a being of our constitution to pursue? To me the answer is obvious. Material security, which includes wealth well beyond what one needs physically to survive, is a higher value that social status. Modifying slightly what I said above,<\/span><\/p>\n

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I can live very well indeed without name and fame, accolades and awards, high social position and the perquisites that come in its train.  But I cannot live well without  material wealth in excess of what is needed for necessities.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Given how benighted human beings are, it may well be instrumentally rational to pursue wealth for the sake of status. That's an empirical question. But no reasonable person prefers status to wealth, just as no reasonable person prefers transient sense pleasures to long-term physical health.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the Ostrich and I may be at cross-purposes.  I am making normative claims while he remains at the level of the merely factual. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now suppose someone asserts that the good is whatever satisfies desire, and that there is no way of ranking desires as objectively higher or lower, and their objects as more or less choice-worthy.  Could I refute such a person?  I don't think so.  Contradict yes, refute no. For it all comes down to whether one has correct value intuitions. Some of us do and some of us don't. Just as some of us are color-blind, some of us are value-blind, wertblind<\/em> in the terminology of Dietrich von Hildebrand. While color blindness is a defect in the eye of the head, value blindness is a defect in the 'eye' of the soul.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
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<\/a>Is Economic Inequality Morally Acceptable?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a little disagreement going with the Dark Ostrich. He asserts, "Relative poverty is all about status."  In an earlier entry, I quoted him as maintaining that  We are born with a natural inequality which soon turns into economic inequality. The reason it turns into economic inequality, I believe, is that humans have a natural desire … Continue reading “On Relative Poverty and Status”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,216,128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-money-matters","category-reason-and-rationality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}