I’m not sure if you want to know why psychologically this happens, but as far as i can understand, it’s because
justice is rewarding people for what they do, not what they are, e.g. the equality of opportunity narrative, tit for tat, etc. and since it’s harder to pretend your intelligence is uncorrelated to your competence, it’s harder to get jealous about.
the politically incorrect (Hansonian) answer it’s harder to plot to bring about redistribution of wealth from the intelligent or mathematically competent compared to highly visible traits like nerdiness, skin color, gender, etc, which makes the latter better fodder for political justice movements.
(It’s not my idea—I’m sorry it’s politically incorrect but the key is to try to engage it rationally rather than emotionally)
Certainly it makes pragmatic sense to reward and punish people in cases where it will have an effect on their behaviour (say on how hard they work), rather than for things they can’t change at all (who their parents were). Most life outcomes are an unclear mixture of the two, which makes it hard to know what to do.
I wrote an essay expanding on this idea if anyone is interested.
Mark Twain wrote:
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
This is my steelman of the idea of “privilege”. If you’ve never seen the color red before, and I try to describe it to you, no amount of description will teach you as much as seeing a red object would. So I’m fairly persuaded by claims like “You’ll never really understand what it’s like to be (gay/a woman/black)”. In fact, there are lots of human experiences I will never really understand. And like Jeff says, that doesn’t make me a bad person.
It isn’t apparent to me that under your definition of privilege, [demographic] privilege is nearly as significant as many other unique experiences. And also, [demographic] privilege is often used as if everyone in the demographic has the same experience as the average. “White privilege” despite being born in a South African neighborhood where whites are ostracized, “Male privilege” despite being in a female-dominated field, “First World Privilege” despite being born into a situation devoid of growth opportunities, etc.
I understand that far, but then most people would certainly accept that my suffering is morally equivalent to the suffering of someone of ‘average’ intelligence, and not privilege me in access to universally rationed public goods like, say, medical care. Yet somehow my disproportionate access to non-rationed market-allocated goods like food is ok. That’s the contrast I struggle to get my head around.
If we’re talking about redistribution, then we get into incentives issues and this all gets complicated fast. But actual policy is somewhat distinct to the conceptual framework I described above (though having that framework will certainly influence your policy prescription).
I’m not sure if you want to know why psychologically this happens, but as far as i can understand, it’s because
justice is rewarding people for what they do, not what they are, e.g. the equality of opportunity narrative, tit for tat, etc. and since it’s harder to pretend your intelligence is uncorrelated to your competence, it’s harder to get jealous about.
the politically incorrect (Hansonian) answer it’s harder to plot to bring about redistribution of wealth from the intelligent or mathematically competent compared to highly visible traits like nerdiness, skin color, gender, etc, which makes the latter better fodder for political justice movements.
(It’s not my idea—I’m sorry it’s politically incorrect but the key is to try to engage it rationally rather than emotionally)
Certainly it makes pragmatic sense to reward and punish people in cases where it will have an effect on their behaviour (say on how hard they work), rather than for things they can’t change at all (who their parents were). Most life outcomes are an unclear mixture of the two, which makes it hard to know what to do.
On this general topic, I agree with the argument for an extra tax on tall people described here, even though I would lose out: http://darp.lse.ac.uk/papersdb/Mankiw-Weinzierl_%28AEJ10%29.pdf.
I wrote an essay expanding on this idea if anyone is interested.
Mark Twain wrote:
This is my steelman of the idea of “privilege”. If you’ve never seen the color red before, and I try to describe it to you, no amount of description will teach you as much as seeing a red object would. So I’m fairly persuaded by claims like “You’ll never really understand what it’s like to be (gay/a woman/black)”. In fact, there are lots of human experiences I will never really understand. And like Jeff says, that doesn’t make me a bad person.
It isn’t apparent to me that under your definition of privilege, [demographic] privilege is nearly as significant as many other unique experiences. And also, [demographic] privilege is often used as if everyone in the demographic has the same experience as the average. “White privilege” despite being born in a South African neighborhood where whites are ostracized, “Male privilege” despite being in a female-dominated field, “First World Privilege” despite being born into a situation devoid of growth opportunities, etc.
I understand that far, but then most people would certainly accept that my suffering is morally equivalent to the suffering of someone of ‘average’ intelligence, and not privilege me in access to universally rationed public goods like, say, medical care. Yet somehow my disproportionate access to non-rationed market-allocated goods like food is ok. That’s the contrast I struggle to get my head around.
If we’re talking about redistribution, then we get into incentives issues and this all gets complicated fast. But actual policy is somewhat distinct to the conceptual framework I described above (though having that framework will certainly influence your policy prescription).