8 Fairness II: The Symmetry Principle - Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values and the Meaning of Life by Steven E. Landsburg

 8 Fairness II: The Symmetry Principle - Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values and the Meaning of Life by Steven E. Landsburg - #discriminazioneasimmetrica #tolleraregliintolleranti #nuovidirittimenodiritti

8 Fairness II: The Symmetry PrincipleRead more at location 1127

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Mary owns a vacant apartment; Joe is looking for a place to live. If Joe disapproves of Mary’s race or religion or lifestyle, he is free to shop elsewhere. But if Mary disapproves of Joe’s race or religion or certain aspects of his lifestyle, the law requires her to swallow her misgivings and rent the apartment to Joe. Or: Bert wants to hire an office manager and Ernie wants to manage an office. The law allows Ernie to refuse any job for any reason. If he doesn’t like Albanians, he doesn’t have to work for one. Bert is held to a higher standard: If he lets it be known that no Albanians need apply, he’d better have a damned good lawyer. These asymmetries grate against the most fundamental requirement of fairness—that people should be treated equally, in the sense that their rights and responsibilities should not change because of irrelevant external circumstances. Mary and Joe—or Bert and Ernie—are looking to enter two sides of one business relationship. Why should they have asymmetric duties under the antidiscrimination laws? When the law is so glaringly asymmetric, one has to suspect that the legislature’s true agenda is not to combat discrimination on the basis of race, but to foster discrimination on the basis of social status.Read more at location 1154

Note: DISCRIMINAZIONE ASIMMETRICA Edit

Pastor Martin Niemoller, after eight and a half years in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote these words: They came first for the Communists, but I did not speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, but I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did not speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by then there was nobody left to speak up.Read more at location 1193

Note: NON SORVOLARE SULLE INGIUSTIZIE Edit

Why do we recoil from imposing the burdens of affirmative action on Joe and his fellow apartment hunters or Ernie and his fellow job seekers? I think it’s because we recognize that Joe and Ernie have a right to live according to their values, and that we cannot respect that right without allowing them to exercise it in ways we don’t like—even when they are motivated by intolerance or bigotry.Read more at location 1201

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The idea of tolerating intolerance sounds suspiciously paradoxical, but so do a lot of other good ideas—like freedom of speech for advocates of censorship. In fact, freedom of speech has a lot in common with tolerance: Neither of them means a thing unless it applies equally to those we applaud and those who offend us most viscerally.Read more at location 1212

Note: TOLLERARE GLI INTOLLERANTI E LIBERTÀ D EASPRESSIONE Edit

“gay civil rights” is a euphemism for restricting the civil liberties of those who, for whatever reasons, would prefer not to do business with gays.Read more at location 1229

Note: I NUOVI DIRITTI SONO UN MODO PER RISTRINGERE I VECCHI Edit

Along the same lines, suppose you’re wheelchair-bound and therefore unable to reach the third story of your favorite shopping mall. Under the law, the mall owner can be required to install an elevator to accommodate you. But there can be no moral sense to such a law, because it requires the owner (a total stranger) to help you overcome your handicap, while allowing me (another total stranger) to ignore your plight completely.Read more at location 1241

Note: BARRIERE ARCHITETTONICHE... A CARICO DI CHI? Edit

The mall owner and I are equally indifferent to your problems; why should he be singled out to bear the entire cost of solving those problems while I go on my merry way?Read more at location 1244

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You might want to counter-argue that the mall’s appearance did make you worse off by creating a new attraction that your neighbors can enjoy and from which you are excluded. But that counter-argument is based on the position that you actively dislike having good things happen to other people unless you can share in them. That’s a pretty crabbed view of what constitutes an improvement in the world—and taken to its logical extreme, it would require that you be compensated every time anybody does anything that benefits anyone.

7 Fairness I: The Grandfather Fallacy - Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values and the Meaning of Life by Steven E. Landsburg

7 Fairness I: The Grandfather Fallacy - Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values and the Meaning of Life by Steven E. Landsburg - #statusquobias

7 Fairness I: The Grandfather FallacyRead more at location 1010

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There is nothing intrinsically fair about the status quo, and nothing intrinsically unfair about change. Call it the “Grandfather Fallacy”:Read more at location 1056

Note: STATUS QUO BIAS Edit

Rhetoric about fairness tends (quite mistakenly) to “grandfather in” special privileges like my low assessment—or a union worker’s protection from foreign competition. Even when those privileges are unfair to begin with, they get treated like moral entitlements just because they’ve been around a long time. That’s a recipe for inertia, because it means that any attempt to correct an ongoing source of unfairness ends up getting assailed as unfair in its own right. According to the Grandfather Fallacy, my assessment can never rise and the union worker’s wages can never fall. Issues of morality are always clearest on the playground. When a schoolyard bully is caught extorting his classmates’ lunch money and ordered to reform, we don’t worry that it is unfair to deprive him of his traditional income source. Nobody—not even the bully’s own grandfather—would defend that schoolyard version of the Grandfather Fallacy.Read more at location 1058

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We may disagree about what that moral standard should be, but attempts to resolve our disagreement should be a lot more enlightening than “I have a right to my agricultural subsidy because it’s been there for as long as I can remember.”Read more at location 1075

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Is it fair to reform the welfare system at the expense of its neediest beneficiaries? That’s the wrong question. The concept of “fairness” properly applies not to a change in benefits, but to a level of benefits. The traditional approach invites us to ask whether welfare benefits should go up or down. The zero-based approach demands that we go directly to the question: What is the right level of welfare benefits? The answer to that question should be a number, not a word like “less” or “more.”

6 Cultural Biases - Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values and the Meaning of Life by Steven E. Landsburg

6 Cultural Biases - Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values and the Meaning of Life by Steven E. Landsburg - #fedeovunque #furtosingoloedimassa #abortoepenadimorte #schiavitùetassaprogressiva #ilbatteriodellapeste #safesexsafecrime #dirittolavorodirittofidanzate 

6 Cultural BiasesRead more at location 781

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We flip a switch and confidently expect light to flood the room, never stopping to wonder why or how. We fly through the air, cook in microwave ovens, and surf the Web, all with little understanding—and often with even less interest—in the technology that makes it all possible.Read more at location 783

Note: UN MONDO MIRACOLOSO Edit

Take a twig. Break it in half. Now put the pieces back together. Now let go. Why isn’t the twig back in one piece? All the parts are still there, just as they were before you came along. Now that you’ve put the pieces back together, it appears that all the parts are in the same relative positions they were in before you came along. They had no problem sticking together then. Why won’t they stick together now? What held them together before and why has it stopped working? Either you can answer those questions or you can’t. If you can’t, then your confidence in the basic properties of twigs is a pure act of faith.Read more at location 797

Note: ATTI DI FEDE OVUNQUE Edit

Every age is the age of faith; every life is a series of unexamined assumptions. The sum of our unexamined assumptions is roughly what we call our culture. An unwillingness to question those assumptions is called cultural bias.Read more at location 804

Note: OGNI CULTURA HA DEGLI ASSUNTI. CULTURAL BIAS: ASSUNTI NN ESAMINATI Edit

Cultural beliefs are passed to the next generation through education. My daughter learns in school that one-on-one stealing is wrong, but she doesn’t learn that confiscatory taxation is wrong. The lingering effect of that indoctrination is powerful; I am certain that Cayley will never vote to legalize direct theft, but I can’t be certain that she will never vote to raise other people’s taxes.1Read more at location 816

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Reforming the tax system is an ambitious and honorable undertaking;Read more at location 820

Note: PERCHÈ IL FURTO INDIVIDUALE È ACCETTATO MENTRE IL FURTO DI MASSA NO? CULTURAL BIAS Edit

Success in that endeavor would require a revolution in cultural beliefs, ultimately sustaining itself through the elementary school curriculum. That’s what happened with slavery, which was abolished through the force of arms in the short run, but rendered unthinkable through the force of moral argument in the long run.Read more at location 821

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The battle against progressive taxation will never be won by timorous politicians who argue—no matter how correctly—that high marginal tax rates retard economic growth and limit opportunities for the poor and the middle class. It will be won, if at all, as the long-run battle against slavery was won—by men and women with the insight and the courage to declare in public that progressive taxation is wrong.Read more at location 823

Note: SCHIAVITÙ: SRADICATA CON LE ARMI., OGGI IMPENSABILE. ALIQUOTE PROGR.: FORSE OCCORRONO LE ARMI ANCHE LÌ Edit

It is therefore a matter of concern to me when my daughter is taught on Monday that it is a vice to “take the law into your own hands” and then on Tuesday that it is a virtue to pick up trash from the schoolyard. Isn’t picking up trash an instance of taking the law into your own hands? We have laws against litter and proper authorities to enforce them. But at my daughter’s school, fourth grade vigilantes usurp those authorities, arm themselves with litter bags, and summarily police the playground.Read more at location 831

Note: FARSI GIUSTIZIA DA SÈ Edit

Of course, the vigilantes are a force for good, Monday’s lesson notwithstanding. In fact, taking the law into your own hands is almost always admirable, provided the law in question is a good one. If there’s a law you want enforced, why would you object to people gratuitously enforcing it for you?Read more at location 835

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Cayley has been taught that all endangered species should be preserved, but she’s also been taught that the AIDS virus should be eradicated. When Cayley’s third grade teacher required her to write a report on the endangered species of her choice, I encouraged her to choose the AIDS virus. (I was unsuccessful.) The AIDS virus is probably only one of many species that are not yet as endangered as they ought to be.Read more at location 845

Note: GIUSTO PROTEGGERE DALL ESTINZIONE IL BATTERIO DELLA PESTE Edit

Next year, Cayley will be admonished that adolescent sex is a bad thing, but she will also be trained in how to avoid its consequences by practicing “safe sex.” She is also admonished that adolescent crime is a bad thing, but her school does not offer training in “safe crime.”Read more at location 857

Note: SAFE SEX E SAFE CRIME Edit

(“Of course, crime is a bad idea—but if you do choose to rob people, be sure to wear a mask, and never use unnecessary violence that might escalate a misdemeanor to a felony”)Read more at location 859

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Most people have instinctive sympathy for the man who says “I tried for months to get a job and nobody would hire me. Only in desperation did I turn to theft.” The same people have only scorn for the man who says “I tried for months to get a date and nobody would go out with me. Only in desperation did I turn to rape.”Read more at location 869

Note: IL LAVORO È UN DIRITTO. E LA FIDANZATA? Edit

I have frequently heard it said that those who oppose legalized abortion thereby become obligated to adopt and support unwanted children. I have never heard it said that those who oppose capital punishment thereby become obligated to house convicted murderers for the duration of their life sentences. Why is the double standard not only accepted, but so complacently accepted that it’s not even remarked upon?Read more at location 874

Note: ANTIABORTISTI E BIMBI ABBANDONATI. ANTI PENA DI MORTE E CRIMINALI SOPRAVVISSUTI Edit

I’ve read that we should subsidize colleges on the grounds that college graduates earn higher incomes than high school graduates, and higher incomes mean more tax revenue. Of course it’s also true that employed people earn higher incomes than unemployed people, so I guess the same logic requires us to subsidize every business that has at least one employee. But the logic never seems to get carried that far.Read more at location 883

Note: PERCHÈ SUSSIDIARE I COLLEGE CHE GARANTISCONO ALTI REDDITI E NN LE AZIENDE CHE FANNO ALTRETTANTO?