Comment on Privileging the Question

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:44:29 GMT

Your alternative would be to think an aristocratic or meritocratic principle is true. (It's either equal or unequal, right?)

I wouldn't use those terms, since they bring in all kinds of unnecessary connotations. I would say the opposite of the egalitarian principle is the non-egalitarian principle. I was thinking less along the lines of nobles/commoners and more along the lines of my children/other people's children. I find the idea (that I think the egalitarian principle entails) that I have as much obligation to perfect strangers as to my wife to be extremely counter-intuitive.

I think we can assume aristocracy is a dead duck along with the Divine Right of Kings and other theological relics.

I don't consider the Divine Right of Crowds ('human rights', or whatever the cool kids are calling it these days) to be any less silly than those 'theological relics'.

Meritocracy in some form I believe has been advocated by some utilitarians. People with Oxford degrees get 10 votes. Cambridge 9. Down to the LSE with 2 votes and the common ignorant unlettered herd 1 vote...

This is kind of an epistemocratic voting regime which some think might lead to better outcomes. Alas, no one has been game to try get such laws up. There is little evidence that an electorate of PhDs is any less daft/ignorant/clueless/idle/indifferent on matters outside their specialty than the general public.

This part isn't really relevant to what I'm talking about, since I'm not discussing equal weight in decision-making, but equal weight in a social welfare function. My infant son's interests are one of my greatest concerns, but he currently has about zero say in family decision-making.

From a legal rights perspective, egalitarianism is surely correct. Equal treatment before the law seems a lot easier to defend than unequal treatment.

Equal treatment before the law does not necessarily mean that individuals interests are weighted equally. When was the last time you heard of jurors on a rape trial trying to figure out exactly how much utility the rapist got so they could properly combine that with the disutility of the victim?

Discuss