Episode 204 - Transcript

So we’ve given quite a BIT of time the last SEVERAL episodes of the show to anticapitalism, postcapitalism, it’s been fun. But let’s talk about some philosophers who think it's possible to move things into a better place…you know WITHOUT overthrowing the economic, political, RELIGIOUS dimension to most people’s lives in capitalism. Let’s talk about how to do something…from WITHIN. 

Now there’s one way to start talking about that…where this turns into a show where I just sit around talking about forward thinking economic policy…oh boy…do an episode on reforming the TAX code…do a couple on subsidies and COMMON sense regulations (serious). But there’s a sense in which that would be a bit too conservative. I’d have to change the name of the show to economize this, not philosophize this. 

But the GOOD news is: there’s another level of CHANGE that’s POSSIBLE, though, in capitalist economies…where it’s NOT just about reforming the EXISTING way that we’re doing things with all the same tools we have right now…the OTHER way to change things… is to RETHINK, the entire ORIENTATION of a capitalist society altogether. To think of capitalism…as the ENGINE. And what needs to CHANGE is the direction that it’s MOVING us in. 

See to OTHER thinkers out there… REGARDLESS of the economic system that UNDERLIES the western world right now…what’s GOING to CHANGE things for the better…is gonna be a fundamental change in people’s thinking. 

It’s gonna be a CHANGE in the ways people think about what it means to be a PART of a society…and how they see the social relations that MAKE their society what it is.

And for THAT…we don’t necessarily need to OVERTHROW capitalism in a way that’s no doubt going to lead to a lot of collateral damage for people, but for MANY of these thinkers…what we’re going to need for this change…is philosophy…or at least something that mirrors the VALUE you get from PRACTICING…philosophy.

And maybe a good place to start making a case for their point…is to talk about a common criticism of people… that like to get together with their friends…and talk about moral dilemmas…trolley car problems, axe murderers coming to your doorstep. We’ve all done this sort of stuff before in the 80s. 

There’s a type of person out there that says: who…REALLY…is sitting around THINKING about this stuff? I mean what are you even DOING? I know what you THINK you’re doing. YOU THINK…you’re running through these hypothetical scenarios where when you’re FORCED to EXPLAIN your criteria for what the right thing to DO is…and you THINK you’re becoming a more MORAL person. 

But what I think, this person might say…is that you’re JUST, wasting your time. Because in real life…there’s no trolley car hurtling down the track where you stand on the SIDE and have to choose to pull a lever or not. REAL LIFE…SADLY…is never as SIMPLE as these idealized moral dilemmas. 

In the REAL world things are MESSY. We have IMPERFECT LEVERS. IMPERFECT information ABOUT the trolleys. All you're DOING when you INDULGE in one of these philosophical dilemmas… at BEST it’s you and your friends patting yourself on the back for what’s essentially ethical cosplaying…and at WORST you are just reinforcing a set of ethical norms that you HAPPEN to live in, UNAWARE of the ideology that gives you a LOGIC where these moral conclusions of yours always SEEM to you like the correct moral decisions to be arriving at. But you’re not even fully AWARE of the game you’re PLAYING. 

And by the way these PEOPLE that QUESTION MORALITY FOR FUN…you know asking you questions like WHY…do you think murder is wrong? Hmm? Uh because I think it’s wrong to HURT people. 

Right right but WHY is it wrong to hurt people? Why not HURT people? As you imagine beating this person senseless with the little philosophy book they have in their hand.

Why is this NOT an example… of someone just being annoying? And by the way…if THESE are the kinds of GENIUS questions philosophers have to offer us…why is ANYBODY wasting their TIME on any of this nonsense? Why don’t we just talk about the REAL political issues that are affecting people…not wasting time talking about first principles?

Well there’s a lot of ANSWERS to give here. And at least with the FIRST part of it where they’re saying you’re not even REALLY practicing MORALITY when you consider hypothetical moral dilemmas because it’s not a REAL WORLD scenario…I THINK that criticism sometimes comes from people who are already well educated in philosophy…and I think they sometimes FORGET…what it’s LIKE, to be STARTING out… wanting to have a forum to THINK about these things more, and to LEARN some of the HISTORY of the theory in this area. 

You know it’s not exactly easy to WEAVE into a conversation with someone well what about consequentialism? Deontology? What about Egoism? Natural Law?

These hypotheticals can be a great place to SEE where all of these different approaches can bring moral clarity…AND at what points they start to come up short. 

Also, just in consideration of the OTHER point that the real world is messier than these hypotheticals. Yeah. Agreed. It IS messy. And to continue the metaphor…there’s a CLEANLINESS to HAVING these sorts of discussions in this hypothetical environment…where you’re never going to get held UP in one of these discussions with someone because you can’t agree on what the facts are. 

I mean you wanna talk about wasting time…you can spend most of your LIFE doing that. 

But anyway ALSO, ASIDE from people who are just starting out: I think someone that critiques this kind of stuff TOO hard… is just IGNORING the very REAL benefit…of PRACTICING philosophy like this in GENERAL. There are REAL SKILLS that you gain from BEING in conversations that push you to think, that ASK you to explain yourself…the philosopher Simon Blackburn once wrote that when he has to explain to kids, what he DOES as a philosopher…he calls it “conceptual engineering”. 

And what he meant by that is that the SAME way an engineer might know how to build a BRIDGE. And PART of the job of that engineer is to know all the materials the bridge is made out of, how the pieces connect together, what sections of the bridge bear weight, which sections are poorly designed and won't be able to HOLD weight or SURVIVE in different conditions…the same way an engineer can tell you everything about how a good bridge is put together…a philosopher does that with thinking, and concepts, to simon blackburn. 

IS this idea or this worldview…made up of quality materials that we should be BUILDING stuff out of in the first place. HOW do these ideas connect together? What PIECES of this structure are potentially WEAK and need a more solid foundation of argument? 

For the SAME reason you might want an engineer to test your BRIDGE because you don’t want it collapsing the second the wind blows when grandma beatrice is driving across it…sometimes you want to PUT your THOUGHTS THROUGH this kind of analysis as well. And it’s annoying, YES…when somebody asks you to get to the bottom of EXACTLY what is WRONG about something in your eyes, like murder. Something that seems OBVIOUS. 

But BASIC questions like that are only the very beginning, and they’re necessary…because for anybody that does that put themselves in the gym like this on a regular basis… you KNOW the results that come in the form of an ability to have BETTER conversations: better critical thinking, you’re better at arguing, you’re better at formulating questions, you’re better at spotting EXACTLY where the problem is in OTHER people’s arguments, you’re better in REAL TIME at coming up with examples that SHOW the weaknesses of where other people are making mistakes. There’s a sense in which: you would NEVER want to FORCE someone into having these sorts of conversations…THAT’S when you start being annoying. Same way it’d be annoying to force someone to run up the side of a sand dune or something. 

But to the people who are willing participants in all this…the benefits are obvious to them, and the fact is you’re LIVING in a culture where MOST PEOPLE…would SEE you talking about something like the limitations of utilitarianism, and you ask them to join in. And most people would be like, you know what? I actually can’t think of anything I’d like to do LESS than that right now. That sounds like actual torture to me. 

That IS the world we currently LIVE in and if that’s you then look: there’s many SIDES to philosophy. Most of this podcast is just an overview of philosophical theory…and you can spend your LIFE getting a TON of value out of just reading the end RESULT of all this work…and it will no doubt improve your THINKING just to be intaking more ideas from people that have really thought theirs through. 

But there’s an UNDENIABLE benefit…of being a practitioner of philosophy as well. To get UNCOMFORTABLE, and then to be pushed to explain yourself. To PRACTICE philosophy in these sorts of ETHICAL conversations we’ve been talking about, or STREET epistemology if you’re more interested in knowledge or ANY of these communities where people come together…and VOLUNTARILY PARTICIPATE…in getting BETTER at this conceptual engineering of philosophy. 

Now I get it Stephen West you’re the philosophical Tony Robbins over here, hooray for you. But what does ANY of this have to do…with fixing CAPITALISM? 

Well I want to introduce you to a book today written by the philosopher Michael Sandel. 

He’s alive and kicking, STILL doing his work today: world famous, generally regarded as a very KIND man…which is a rare find these days as an example for young people to look up to. 

But anyway: the book I want to turn you ON to is called Justice: What’s the right thing to do? It’s written in a COMPLETELY accessible way…it’s not gonna be like that time you tried to read Kant, and regretted it. This was WRITTEN in 2010…DESIGNED to get people THINKING…about Justice. 

With a covert, secret POINT to the book that’s very DIFFERENT than justice…which you’ll know about by the end of this episode. 

The book PRESENTS itself on the cover though… as a philosophical examination of the concept of Justice. Dozens of thought experiments. Dozens of REAL world examples from the realm of politics.

And the goal SEEMS to be… to get people THINKING about what we MEAN when we talk about protecting JUSTICE…and what CRITERIA we use for determining what the right thing to DO is. 

And what Sandel very quickly lays out is that there have been THREE, PRIMARY ways of thinking about justice throughout the history of philosophy…three different teams if you will: you have ONE: Team Utilitarianism, the greatest happiness for the greatest number, or more accurately UTILITY. TWO, you have Team Libertarianism. Where justice is seen as what maximizes people’s individual freedom. And THREE, you have Team virtue ethics. Where a JUST society is one where people recognize the type of society they want to live in, and then take steps to cultivate the kinds of virtues in the citizens that would produce that kind of society. 

Now he GOES through EACH of these and shows how they’re strong…the TYPES of situations each of these EXCEL at bringing moral clarity to…and then he shows examples of where they all start to run into issues. 

For example, for something like the TROLLEY car problem…Utilitarianism…can SEEM on the SURFACE to be pretty convincing. You’re on the side of the tracks, do you pull the lever and save the five people and kill the ONE person?

And BECAUSE utilitarianism is ESSENTIALLY…a CALCULATION that’s being made…where you’re WEIGHING the pros and cons, the suffering and pleasure of PEOPLE…BECAUSE of that, it can be EXTREMELY effective at showing how YEAH, in the TROLLEY problem, it seems OBVIOUS that the correct decision is to pull the lever and kill ONE person instead of FIVE. 

AND… it can seem SUPER attractive as an ethical theory overall…BECAUSE of how SIMPLE it seems to make ethical decisions. I mean IMAGINE that…morality is just a math problem, it’s a CALCULUS… where you’re weighing human suffering and differing levels of utility.

But then as Sandel and many OTHERS throughout history have pointed out… not the LEAST of which was Phillipa Foot who was the woman who originally FORMULATED the trolley car problem people know today: for her, Sandel and many OTHERS…Utilitarianism…starts to run into PROBLEMS…when it comes to the consideration of individual rights. 

For example, as an ALTERNATIVE Michael Sandel gives to the trolley problem…if it’s so right, that we should pull the lever to kill one person to save the five. Imagine INSTEAD, NEW situation…you’re a doctor. And you have five patients, ALL of them are in need of an organ transplant, and all of them are gonna DIE if they don’t get one soon. One needs a lung, another needs a heart, a kidney, a pancreas and a liver. FIVE PEOPLE are gonna DIE Sandel says…but then there’s a guy sitting in the other room that just came in for a routine physical. Good NEWS as it turns out…his organs are ALL working FINE…and as it just so happens…he’s ASLEEP right now! Should we… using the WISDOM of Utilitarianism…KILL this ONE guy and harvest his organs to save the other five? 

Now CLEARLY MOST people would say we shouldn’t. But WHY IS that?

What has CHANGED about the specifics of the situation that makes the outcome MOST in line with JUSTICE…NOT simply the one that produces the most happiness? 

Another example he gives for this is to ask: was it OKAY for the Romans to throw Christians into the center of the coliseum to get eaten by the lions? I mean sure it was pretty bad for one person, the Christian…but there were THOUSANDS of happy Romans! He says even if you SAY that that would LEAD to a lot of Christians feeling SCARED about their FUTURE, and thus it NOT being what provides the greatest happiness to the greatest number in the LONG run. Then okay, he says EVEN if that is TRUE…is that the REASON… that it’s NOT OKAY to THROW innocent people to the lions? Just that moral calculus that you’ve done there? Or is there OBVIOUSLY something MUCH more to morality…that just isn’t COVERED by utilitarian calculations like this?

And we’ll go into this in more detail, there’s so MUCH MORE TO Utilitarianism than this, I’ll talk about it at the end of the episode, but for the SAKE of making Michael Sandel’s point in the book just NOTICE here…that when it comes to generic Utilitarianism like this, PROBLEMS are OFTEN going to be arising the SECOND it starts to become NECESSARY in a situation…to consider people’s human rights. 

Because sometimes it doesn’t MATTER… if we can save 1000 people if we just have to kill one. No, as MODERN human beings…there’s a consideration we make of the individual RIGHTS of a person… that you’d just be massively overlooking if you went PURELY by Utilitarianism.

So in the BOOK, Sandel says, when people NOTICE these LIMITS…ANOTHER popular direction for them to go is the SECOND of these three teams he talks about…THIS one’s called Team Libertarianism, or team FREEDOM. The idea being: that it doesn’t MATTER if there’s some calculation that tells you something leads to MORE human flourishing than something ELSE…there are BASIC, FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS that people have where if you WANTED to have a just society, if that was really your goal…then the BEST strategy people on this team would say…is to just to RESPECT people’s ability to be free. 

As Sandel puts it: the GOAL of this society is to RESPECT the rights of people to CHOOSE for THEMSELVES…what ends to pursue, what lives to live. 

You know freedom really is a level playing field that we can AIM for that SEEMINGLY SOLVES a lot of the problems created by Utilitarianism. Where it doesn’t MATTER if what you DO with your life contributes to more or less HAPPINESS in the world…on team freedom as long as you don’t directly mess with anybody ELSE’S ability to be free…then what’s RIGHT for you to do with your life…is basically just your PREFERENCE. 

YOU decide how you’re going to live your OWN life…NOT SOCIETY. And this ALSO…as a strategy…sounds very good on the surface. 

You can SEE the BENEFITS of this kind of setup in a lot of modern western justice systems…where when you JUDGE a situation about what the right thing to DO is…and you BEGIN from a place where people have non-negotiable rights…then JUDGES and LAWYERS and PRISON systems don’t need to get bogged down in the minutiae of every single ethical consideration imaginable…no someone’s ability to be FREE and the RIGHTS that come OUT of that assumption…this becomes a GOAL post for judges to AIM for that SAVES us a lot of time– it’s not a MYSTERY why human rights are such a popular direction for people to GO in these days. 

Now as Sandel says: couple important DIFFERENCES from the utilitarian approach to justice. ONE important one is to recognize that this Libertarianism…is a step UP in terms of complexity and responsibility for the average person. Because now instead of just being able to run the numbers and CALCULATE what is good or bad…NOW there’s a responsibility on the individual… to COME UP with what they think is good or bad. Giving people this FREEDOM…places more of a BURDEN on people.

It ALSO needs to be said that in our modern WORLD, for Michael Sandel…there’s an important SPLIT…between two different CAMPS in this team freedom view of justice. It’s a split you’ll be familiar with: ONE side of this are people that think that freedom…is letting people be whoever they want to be within the parameters of laws and a free market…you know get the government OUT of my WAY, and let the MARKET decide who or what is valuable. 

That’s ONE side…but the OTHER side of this are those that think that people can’t actually be FREE…until there are certain, background conditions that are met…that ALLOW people to be free. 

One example he gives is somebody who works at a sweatshop. Like is somebody FREE…when they’re working at a sweatshop? 

Well in ONE sense you could say that…I mean technically…they can always choose to NOT work at the sweatshop. But the OTHER side of it would say that the fact this person is even WORKING in those conditions for such little pay…is an indication that they’re so desperate…they DON’T have much of a choice.

So the TENSION between these two CAMPS in team freedom OFTEN times becomes about determining how many of these background conditions need to be in place before we can CONSIDER people truly free. And this is an ongoing TENSION in the world we LIVE in. 

But LIKE all OTHER attempts to reduce morality down into a single ISM…this Libertarianism that Sandel talks about… starts to run into problems as well. And the PROBLEMS ARISE he says…because of something about this strategy… that WE might typically see as a very GOOD thing being liberal minded people living in a modern democracy. The PROBLEMS arise because of the systems APPEARANCE…of supposed neutrality. 

See if Utilitarianism can say look I’m pretty neutral…because there’s something IMPERSONAL about the moral calculus of weighing the pros and cons, happiness and suffering etc. And if team FREEDOM can say I’m neutral…because look…WE may disagree on what we want to DO with our freedoms or what sort of society we want to bring about…so let’s just AVOID all that and focus on individual FREEDOM. When BOTH of these popular approaches seem to be so NEUTRAL…then what sort of social effects are gonna come OUT of that being the way that we STRUCTURE things?

To SEE what CHANGES…we GOTTA compare THESE two approaches to justice…to the THIRD common view of justice that Michael Sandel lays out in the book, which is FAR FROM a neutral strategy. 

If you remember… it was the VIRTUE ethics approach to justice. And Michael Sandel is VERY quick to point out how this WAY of viewing justice…is not a NEW approach. It goes all the way back to the work of Aristotle. 

See ARISTOTLE believed…that the FIRST question of ANY political project is NOT how do we maximize utility or how to we respect people’s choices…the FIRST question…is how do we live WELL TOGETHER? 

That’s an important difference…again, the POINT of ANY political project is NOT just to LIVE, to SURVIVE, by ANY means necessary…the POINT is to live WELL. Why are we teaming up and pooling resources if we’re NOT trying to do something TOGETHER… that is GREATER than the sum of the parts? 

So on THAT note… to Michael Sandel: a JUST society by THIS standard…is GONNA be one that concerns itself with the preferences…that we BRING to public life in the FIRST place. A JUST society is one that CULTIVATES…the kind of SOCIETY…that we as PEOPLE…want to be LIVING in. And part of DOING that for Sandel…is gonna be CULTIVATING the kind of CITIZENS that bring that society about. 

See for somebody like aristotle…A JUST society…is not going to have justice for very long if it doesn’t have CITIZENS that are CAPABLE of civic involvement. People that are educated. People that are AWARE of the issues that are going on in their society, and are capable of HAVING the difficult conversations that get us CLOSER to what Aristotle called the Common Good. 

We aren’t generally DOING that…right now…right NOW we’re maximizing utility and individual PREFERENCE…and THAT’S what is MISSING for Michael Sandel. A just society is going to be one that CULTIVATES the civic involvement that is NECESSARY…for people to TRULY be aware of the common good… and then to DO the things that are NECESSARY to BRING it ABOUT.

Now, there’s SO many questions that immediately come to mind here…and Sandel’s aware of ALL of them by the way. 

First of all: isn’t this a bit judgmental of people, to be a policy in a democratic society? I mean whatever happened to one person one vote? Where it doesn’t matter WHAT your opinions are, YOUR opinion is worth the same as everybody ELSE’S opinion. Also isn’t this DEMANDING a LOT FROM the average person…to PRESSURE them into developing their worldview, even MORE than the Libertarian view on things does? 

More than that…who DETERMINES… what the common GOOD is that you’re even talking about? Doesn’t this start to sound like it could move into totalitarianism, VERY easily? I mean you can just imagine someone DEFINES a common good one day and then says HEY…we gotta CULTIVATE the citizens to bring about this common good of mine! Wonder how THAT could go wrong. 

POINT is: MANY western societies have moved AWAY from this kind of thinking in the past…because of the PROBLEMS that we think it’s INVITING… when you HAVE this kind of setup. 

But for Michael Sandel, while he ACKNOWLEDGES all of these as points…and CERTAINLY is not proclaiming that there’s some utopia that he’s uncovered where all political problems have been solved…he DEFINITELY would say that this engaged civic involvement of people and an understanding of the common good…is a BIG INGREDIENT for a just society…that is GLARINGLY MISSING… in a lot of modern western cultures. 

It’s an ingredient that FORMER societies have HAD…that WE…have LOST. And it COMES with a price tag that may be difficult to immediately SEE. 

Maybe the FIRST thing to CONSIDER though for Michael Sandel…is that if these OTHER two approaches seem like STRONG OPTIONS to you because they APPEAR to be more NEUTRAL than this third one…what HE would say is that when it comes to ANY, substantive political issue that one of these “neutral” societies are DEALING with…JUST BENEATH the SURFACE of the ISSUE…we’re making ALL SORTS of NON-NEUTRAL declarations in the positions we TAKE on the issues about who deserves what, what virtues are worthy of honor, what versions of the common GOOD should be RECOGNIZED and embodied in the law.

HIS examples in 2010 are gonna be things like same sex marriage, the bailouts of the banks back then, healthcare, reformation of the TAX code, but you can just SHIFT his POINT here to the issues that are going on TODAY with a little imagination.

Take his example of the bailouts though to illustrate this: he asks were the BAILOUTS of the BANKS back then…something you would say was unjust? And if your answer to that is YES then…why, were they unjust? Common answer he says is something like well because the people at the top of these companies that RECEIVED the bailouts…didn’t deserve to GET bailed out. And they CERTAINLY didn’t deserve to use taxpayer dollars to give giant bonuses to the people that CAUSED the situation in the FIRST place. 

Ok, understandable…but let’s dig a little deeper into the REASONS there…WHY don’t they deserve all of that? 

Well because they’re GREEDY when it comes down to it. Look everybody knows what happened: these people GAMBLED recklessly, they made a BUNCH of money on the upswing, they got us INTO this mess. And now WE have to pay the price for a bunch of GREEDY people? 

In other words: Greed… is a VICE… and now that’s gonna be something that we're REWARDING in our society? That’s WRONG. That’s not JUSTICE. 

Again to Michael Sandel… whether we’re paying attention to what’s going on here or NOT…REGARDLESS of how NEUTRAL our FREEDOM, let the MARKET decide approach to things may SEEM to be on the SURFACE…we are making, NORMATIVE considerations in our politics…about what kinds of VIRTUES should be rewarded. Which one’s should be punished. What kind of SOCIETY we want to LIVE in. 

It’s ALMOST like…similar to our morality example at the beginning of LAST episode when we talked about tolerant relativism…it’s almost like it’s IMPOSSIBLE… to NOT be supporting a common good or universals of SOME sort…it’s just POSSIBLE…for us to LIVE in societies that DON’T prioritize real civic engagement… to a level that the people living IN those societies…don’t REALIZE the version of the common GOOD that they’re endorsing by supporting the policies they do. 

We are CULTIVATING citizens…that are just NOT HAVING these deeper conversations about morality or policy or what the COMMON GOOD is that we’re aiming for. What we’re cultivating …are people that don’t see the POINT in having deeper conversations…or understanding where the strategies we use start to run into problems…THAT sounds like literal TORTURE to them.

So instead of having the TYPE of awareness that is REQUIRED for a just society if you’re Aristotle…civil discourse in OUR time…turns into people just screaming at each other about TikTok conspiracies…or making DEBATE videos where it’s about trying to publicly DUNK on each other for two hours for CONTENT… RATHER than trying to get to a better understand of the issues…or people that mistake civic engagement…with copying and pasting the same take over and over again on social media. 

And isn’t that the PROBLEM when it comes to where our standards have GOTTEN to these days…people will say things like Twitter is the public square of our time. 

And it’s like no…it’s not. Twitter is a company. It’s an online entertainment activity…and one that incentivizes things like visibility, surface level takes on MASSIVELY important issues, and not to mention RADICAL takes that often obscure so much of the complexity of the world that they’re the PERFECT kind of twitter posts that can be said in 300 characters or less. 

That’s not the public square. That’s not the Salons of Enlightenment France. And the fact someone could EVER think that it WAS…SHOWS the real LACK of education standards that we’re MISSING to Michael Sandel.  

To him, we simply JUST need to be RAISING the BAR when it comes to the TYPE of civil discourse that we’re INCENTIVIZING. An open society’s ability to maintain justice… is ONLY as powerful as the quality of conversations that are being HAD in it. 

Because in the moral VACUUM… that’s created by the supposed NEUTRALITY of these OTHER approaches to justice…what falls by the WAYSIDE to Michael Sandel...are social NORMS that set IMPORTANT expectations for people’s BEHAVIOR. 

And the reason that HAPPENS he says… is because in OUR world that is FAR too over indexed on markets…one CONSEQUENCE of that is that SOCIAL norms… become replaced by MARKET norms. 

You can understand the process he’s TALKING about here pretty easily because you SEE it all around you. Markets are GREAT at doing SOME things…to Sandel markets are effective instruments for organizing productive activity. For sure. But that doesn’t make a market…the moral ARBITER of humanity…and it certainly doesn’t make the DISTRIBUTIONS of markets…something that we should be BOWING to as the ultimate way to DETERMINE how VALUABLE something is. 

To SHOW how this can be a problem, he says just take the bailout example from before. When somebody says that people at the top of the banks didn’t deserve the bailouts because they were greedy…someone could say BACK to that look…REGARDLESS of how GREEDY any of them were…the FACT they got PAID as much as they DID, has NOTHING to do with GREED. It’s a supply and DEMAND issue. Fact is there’s not many people that are qualified to DO the jobs these people are doing…so they’re well compensated for it. In other words: this is the MARKET, DECIDING the NORMS for how VALUABLE an executive is to a company. 

We gotta trust the MARKET…it’s WISER than any of US!

But as Michael Sandel says consider the other side of this…in 2010…the average split between what a CEO made and what the low ranking worker made at their company was that the CEO made 344 times what they made. Now you MAY think that’s gonna be his whole point here, WHO SHOULD EVER MAKE 344 times what anybody ELSE makes, CLASS WARFARE, eat the rich.

No, Sandel’s POINT…is let’s SAY that REFLECTS the true VALUE that the CEO is providing to the company. Well in the year 1980 just 30 years before…the same split between CEO and worker…was only 42 times what they made. Sandel’s question is this: is a CEO in the year 2010…EIGHT TIMES more VALUABLE to a company than a CEO was in 1980? Or is there some aspect of the market or the people that manipulate those markets…that can EXPLAIN that eightfold INCREASE…where the market’s NOT in fact a perfect representation of the value of something. 

We’re thinking of MARKETS in the western world…as things that are WAY MORE than what they actually ARE. And what HAPPENS is: MARKETS… start to BLEED into areas of LIFE and determine the VALUE of things that USED to be decided by human beings: healthcare, education, prisons, security, reproduction, EVEN whether or not to go to WAR with another country and kill innocent people.

You know people will say that conscription or being drafted to join the military… how that NOT being as much of a thing anymore is a GOOD thing for people. But some have argued that really what you’re DOING there is giving governments the green light…to fund mercenary or rebel groups FINANCIALLY…that then go on to commit violence in the name of a country’s political interests…VIOLENCE is being committed…but in TODAY’S world: there’s no public outcry when a DRAFT happens. There’s no civil engagement about how NECESSARY the conflict is where people feel like they actually have to pay a price for it.

See because when it comes to complex political issues like this, the ones that DEFINE important pieces of our societies…you CAN’T just RELY on whether this policy is EFFICIENT from a utilitarian perspective…or whether the people that were INVOLVED in something were technically FREE to DO it or not. If you JUST relied on those, to Michael Sandel, you’re missing something IMPORTANT about what a just society is. We are people…that, ultimately, are WORKING together…to accomplish something that is ONLY possible when we WORK together…a common good. And allowing MARKET norms…to replace SOCIAL norms in this way…is CLEARLY, a deterioration of that process. 

TONS of issues he says can illustrate this further for example: should surrogacy… be legal in countries where people are obviously offering the service for way cheaper than in other countries? I mean why not? There’s two consenting people, both of them are benefitting from the transactions. In fact, governments are passing laws all over the world to facilitate that booming industry… of surrogacy. Why not let the MARKET decide?

How about those programs in the inner city…where schools will PAY kids money… to read books and write reports on them? Should THAT be seen as a problem? Again, why not let the MARKET drive people’s behavior? They’re ALWAYS free NOT to do it. These are all situations we should be reflecting on. 

As Michael Sandel says: the book is CALLED Justice…but it’s REALLY about democratic citizenship. Because a DEMOCRATIC society… that SHRINKS in the face of big moral questions…one that tries to keep these big questions OUT of the public sphere for the sake of remaining NEUTRAL…that will ALWAYS be a society… that doesn’t really answer to what it is to be a citizen. You have to ask yourself: does the COUNTRY you live in…LOOK like a country being RUN by citizens that are educated and engaged with the problems facing the country? 

Well the only way that HAPPENS in a democracy…is if you’re able to HAVE productive conversations, among citizens that understand the importance of HAVING those conversations. 

See that’s the thing: most people that are HAVING these conversations…and they’re not really focused on what one of the BIG takeaways should BE from them. 

To Michael Sandel these conversations should be getting us CLOSER… to an understanding of the common good. And that DOESN’T mean for him that everybody AGREES with each other. The POINT of a conversation about politics is NOT that at the end of it everybody’s gonna be AGREEING. You’ll no doubt DISAGREE…on a LOT of things. That’s part of the POINT. 

What you WILL get to though if you pay ATTENTION in these conversations and come with even a LITTLE bit of openness, patience, and a good faith attitude towards the other person…what you’ll GET to at the END of it… are the COMMON purposes or ENDS…that both of you are aiming for IN this political project you’re both a part of. 

You may DRASTICALLY disagree on how those ends should be implemented, but having a mutual understanding of the common good that we’re even AIMING for in this society…THAT becomes an INGREDIENT to all this…that is tragically MISSING in the modern world. 

And again the intentions you SET OUT with in these conversations matter…when the ENTIRE PURPOSE of the discussion is to DUNK on people that disagree with you…then it makes any HOPE of understanding each other or the issues better, almost impossible. I think that’s why a lot of people are turned OFF by debate culture or call out culture on social media. In contrast to tolerant relativism…maybe the GOAL here SHOULD be a type of INTOLERANCE towards certain positions…but maybe we need a better understanding of what RESPECTFUL intolerance should look like. 

There’s much more to TALK about with Michael Sandel…because when you HAVE these conversations…and you try to get to the bottom of WHICH social norms we want to protect from being replaced or eroded by MARKET norms…the PIECES of society that you need to start RETHINKING…start become ENORMOUS. 

Like for example: the entire social norm of SUCCESS being the ultimate thing that we HONOR in our societies. What are the CONSEQUENCES when people star t to do THAT? As he talks about in his more recent book The Tyranny of Merit: are the consequences of that…that we have a lot more successful people in the world rolling around in bugattis? Or do we just have a society… that ends up more divided. One where as he says… we FLATTER the successful in the world…and humiliate the UNSUCCESSFUL. 

I mean in a world where we sometimes think the BIGGEST obstacle we face is to try to find a way to make things TRULY EQUAL and get the BARRIERS out of the way of people to be able to SUCCEED. Here’s Michael Sandel asking: is that even a good strategy in the FIRST place? Is that the TYPE of society that we want to cultivate and LIVE in?

In terms of OTHER social norms he asks: Do we rethink what sort of jobs we honor in GENERAL? Are we past due as a culture to RETHINK what it means for someone to be college educated? And how much social recognition that should actually GET you?

Again there’s SO Much more to talk about in his work. I’ll leave it to you people that listen to vote as to whether you want more from him or not. Send me an email or a Patreon message and I’ll get back to you. 

But to wrap this up for right now…someone could come BACK to all this and say: oh goody, Michael Sandel…we just need to have more civic participation. Thank GOD you’re HERE…to SAVE us from our problems. 

In all seriousness…HOW can you even be SAYING that with a straight face…without having REAL, concrete POLICY proposals as to HOW our societies are supposed to GET there? 

I mean we LIVE in a digital panopticon. People are screaming at each other about tiktok conspiracies…because they’re locked in an echo chamber that they can’t get OUT of. If you don’t have a way to fix THAT situation…then with all due respect…you should just stay quiet on this.

But somebody could DEFEND Sandel and say look: we just did a series on Zizek and people often say MUCH of the same stuff about him. That he’s talking about all these things that are WRONG with the world…but doesn’t have ANYTHING to say when it comes to SOLUTIONS. What’s with THAT?

But if you’re Slavoj Zizek…there’s room in this world… for having areas of expertise. Alright it’s unreasonable to expect someone to be NOT ONLY the one that SPOTS the asteroid headed towards earth…but ALSO the one that builds the rocket ship and then engineers the thing that’s gonna change the trajectory of the asteroid, and then lands the thing ON the asteroid. Someone could say: Zizek is the one that can SEE the problems…it’s the job of an ENGINEER to fix things from here.

Well the SAME can be said about Michael Sandel. In a world where people might BLAME the digital panopticon for CAPTURING people’s subjectivity in a way where they’re hopelessly imprisoned…do you really have THAT little faith in the malleability of people’s psyche? Do you have THAT little faith that people…with the PROPER incentives set UP in a society…could change what they pay attention to enough where the quality of civil discourse and standards of education improve to a place, where society is better off than it is now?

If you DOUBT THAT…then MAYBE you doubt people’s ability to change at all. Which is certainly a very cynical, postmodern, frustrated point of view…but it’s still a point. 

Michael Sandel…is identifying what he thinks the problem is…and then is encouraging us to SEE ourselves WITHIN society in a DIFFERENT WAY. He’s calling on people to have a REVITALIZED RESPECT…of the responsibility that’s incumbent upon ALL of us as citizens. And he’s doing so in a way where ultimately…the PROBLEMS that we’re facing MAY NOT be SOLVED by merely overthrowing capitalism and putting something new in its place. Maybe it’s something ELSE that’s systemic…that needs to change instead.

Real quick: there’s something I gotta say about Utilitarianism. As I said EARLIER in the episode…there’s a lot more TO it than the time we spent today just setting up Sandel’s greater point about justice. There’s responses to all the criticisms we gave. 

In fact, we’re gonna be DOING a deeper dive on Utilitarianism coming up soon. Turns out in 204 episodes we’ve never ACTUALLY dedicated an episode to Utilitarianism and I just got news a couple days ago that I’m going to be interviewing Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek ABOUT utilitarianism…two of the absolute best living philosophers to have as representatives of the subject. Don’t worry, this show isn’t an interview show. I’m gonna be talking to them and doing an episode ABOUT the contents of it IN the Philosophize This! Format. I’ll just be posting the raw interview to Patreon for anybody that’s interested. Zizek is still in the works. You’ll know when I know. Anyway…I hope you enjoyed this one. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.