One thing I note when thinking along these lines is that one of my biggest lucky breaks was my innate mathematical talent. We tend not to characterise innate abilities as āprivilegeā, for reasons Iāve never fully understood, but if you understand privilege as āunearned advantageā as I do then it absolutely deserves a spot on many peopleās lists.
Edit: On that note, I strongly identify with a quote from Warren Buffet:
āI happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If Iād been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I canāt run very fast. Iām not particularly strong. Iād probably end up as some wild animalās dinner.
But I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing ā and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that. ā
Being born with the capacity to become highly intelligent, conscientious, physically attractive, resilient, and so on, is surely among the greatest privileges.
IMO saying that mathematical talent is an āunearned advantageā is running the risk of making the concept meaningless. What is an āearned advantageā? Each of us is the sum total of our genes and our formative experiences i.e. things that lie beyond our control. So, taking the idea to the extreme, people deserve neither positive nor negative credit for anything.
Iām not sure if you want to know why psychologically this happens, but as far as i can understand, itās 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 itās harder to pretend your intelligence is uncorrelated to your competence, itās harder to get jealous about.
the politically incorrect (Hansonian) answer itās 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.
(Itās not my ideaāIām sorry itās 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 canāt 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 āprivilegeā. If youāve 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 Iām fairly persuaded by claims like āYouāll never really understand what itās like to be (gay/āa woman/āblack)ā. In fact, there are lots of human experiences I will never really understand. And like Jeff says, that doesnāt make me a bad person.
It isnāt 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. āWhite privilegeā despite being born in a South African neighborhood where whites are ostracized, āMale privilegeā despite being in a female-dominated field, āFirst World Privilegeā 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 āaverageā 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. Thatās the contrast I struggle to get my head around.
If weāre 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).
One thing I note when thinking along these lines is that one of my biggest lucky breaks was my innate mathematical talent. We tend not to characterise innate abilities as āprivilegeā, for reasons Iāve never fully understood, but if you understand privilege as āunearned advantageā as I do then it absolutely deserves a spot on many peopleās lists.
Edit: On that note, I strongly identify with a quote from Warren Buffet:
āI happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If Iād been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I canāt run very fast. Iām not particularly strong. Iād probably end up as some wild animalās dinner.
But I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing ā and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that. ā
Being born with the capacity to become highly intelligent, conscientious, physically attractive, resilient, and so on, is surely among the greatest privileges.
Hi AGB.
IMO saying that mathematical talent is an āunearned advantageā is running the risk of making the concept meaningless. What is an āearned advantageā? Each of us is the sum total of our genes and our formative experiences i.e. things that lie beyond our control. So, taking the idea to the extreme, people deserve neither positive nor negative credit for anything.
Iām not sure if you want to know why psychologically this happens, but as far as i can understand, itās 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 itās harder to pretend your intelligence is uncorrelated to your competence, itās harder to get jealous about.
the politically incorrect (Hansonian) answer itās 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.
(Itās not my ideaāIām sorry itās 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 canāt 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://āādarp.lse.ac.uk/āāpapersdb/āāMankiw-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 āprivilegeā. If youāve 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 Iām fairly persuaded by claims like āYouāll never really understand what itās like to be (gay/āa woman/āblack)ā. In fact, there are lots of human experiences I will never really understand. And like Jeff says, that doesnāt make me a bad person.
It isnāt 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. āWhite privilegeā despite being born in a South African neighborhood where whites are ostracized, āMale privilegeā despite being in a female-dominated field, āFirst World Privilegeā 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 āaverageā 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. Thatās the contrast I struggle to get my head around.
If weāre 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).