While the stock market swoons (apparently because American consumers have curtailed spending with money they don’t have or can’t get), US corporations continue to show record profits. It turns out that a jobless recovery is really good for business. So why would there be any incentive to reverse the trend? This announcement foreshadows an even gloomier prospect. What entity is far and away the largest employer in the country? The Federal Government. Where will all these savings come from that the Congress is planning to put into place over the next decade? Less government workers. We have multiple waves of this to look forward to. You don’t have to be an economist to figure out that if fewer workers are willing to do more work for less money, you’re going to milk that cow as long as you can. And if the government would just get out of the way, this would all be so much easier.

Corporations don’t have consciences, and guess what, neither do their executives.

Is it fair? It’s a simple question any child would ask.

Fairness, as we have seen, is a primitive intuition available to the youngest of human children and higher primates. It undoubtedly was a beneficial adaptation for the species–sharing being necessary for the continued survival of the family group, clan or tribe.

What is the relationship between the primitive response, “That is not fair” to a concept of equality?

Equality, as a concept, is necessary for the universalizabity of fairness. There is no necessity that it follow from the initial fairness response. There must be a basis for the assertion that this or that state of affairs is fair or unfair. The concept of equality establishes that basis. (Equality, not being necessary to the basic concept of fairness, is derived after the fact).

The conferred status of equality that forms the basis for the judgment of fairness is construed in multitudinous ways.

Are the statements “that is not fair” and “that is wrong” equivalent?

Ethical statements can be defined in terms of fairness:

It is not fair to steal. (When you steal, you are taking something that belongs to someone else. It’s not fair to the other person when you do that.)

It is not fair to murder. (When you take someone else’s life, you are robbing them of their most valuable possession. It’s not fair to do that to someone.)

It is not fair to lie. (When you lie to someone, you are granting yourself an unfair advantage over that person by deliberately misleading them presumably to your own advantage. That’s not fair.)

But why do we care about [what's fair] so much? Would human beings be more well adapted if we didn’t? Would we accept our lot in life cheerfully if we weren’t obsessed about fairness?

Well, would we? What would the world look like if the impulse to enforce fairness was not a feature of human behavior? Would children born into poverty accept their lot in life with equanimity, find pleasure where they may and be grateful for what they have? Would workers gratefully submit to their masters knowing that something is better than nothing and one must be grateful for even the scraps that fall from the table? Would the masters sleep well at night knowing that their gain is but a feature of an inscrutable order of the universe that provides more to some and less to others?

“Fairness” is a child’s word. “Justice” is an adult’s word. Aren’t they really the same thing?

Except small children don’t know a damn thing about justice. But they certainly have strong feelings about fairness.

Are our ethical norms merely grown up versions of a childhood sentiment?

My mid-summer nervous breakdown taught me that physical pain is preferable to mental distress and that being critical of the world doesn’t mean we needs must leave the world.

Anyway, I am disappointed with the blog over the past few months, but I don’t want to quit. So I am going to try a soft re-boot here and get back online.

The things I used to care about, what I really tend to think are important are less interesting than political critiques. I believe I have found my political tribe, though, among the anarchists. Anarchism is a negative political philosophy. It points out what ought not to be very well, but is pretty confused about what ought to be. Part of the problem, I think, is that the anarchist agenda starts from a political frame of reference but, if successful, emerges onto a cultural tabula rasa. Culture is the problem. If you want to change the political system, change the culture.

Back to the positive agenda. As an amateur philosopher, I’m mostly interested in figuring out what makes for a good life.

What is it about human beings that makes us care about fairness? There’s no logical necessity for it. Children develop a sensitivity to fairness at a very young age. They’re rather single-minded about it. How much of our morality is based on this impulse? My dog doesn’t seem to care if he doesn’t have as nice a bed as the dog the next door. He doesn’t think it’s unfair that he’s smaller than some other dog. It’s a pretty strange thing when you think about it. We know life is unfair. It’s rather arbitrary and often brutally unfair (just look at Somalia right now). And it doesn’t matter if you’re coming from the left or the right, from privilege or poverty. The rich man thinks it’s really fucking unfair if you try to take his inheritance away and give it somebody else. The poor man thinks it’s really fucking unfair that the rich man won’t pay him enough to pay for health insurance. But why do we care about this so much? Would human beings be more well adapted if we didn’t? Would we accept our lot in life cheerfully if we weren’t obsessed about fairness?

Back when this thing got started about a year ago I had an ironic agenda: to start an online religion. I take LUCK or Tyche to be the only deity worthy of worship. I still like the idea and am open to anyone interested in playing around with this. It’s a pretty big sandbox with lots of cool toys…

I like my blogroll. In particular I am grateful to Prof. Sartwell for giving me a link a while back. I still read his stuff daily (although his anarchist cred seems to be greatly diminished lately after he revealed his support for American Imperialism). Mr. Oxtrot knows his shit and flings it around very well though he is not as intense as Mr. Crow who seems to be vying for the position of next IOZ. I also think Adam is a brilliant commenter (and his blog is very funny — though don’t open it up at work). JRB is at times brilliant. I envy his recent aphoristic style. I don’t visit Cogitamus much these days, but it’s a good place to go to get the party line from what’s left of the left (ugh) and I like their musical choices a lot. There are others that I lurk on now and then.

Time to blog. As the Buddhists say, I am a householder. Which means the majority of my energy at this stage of my life is supposed to be directed toward the care and feeding of my family. So I often experience a vague feeling of guilt while I am surfing around reading blogs instead of doing something more productive.