Jordan: People aren't taught that comparing what we have to their hypothetical
politically - politically, ideologically motivated
Utopia is actually a bad idea.
You know, because it's - it just isn't difficult to take a look at a system like our system and say
'Well, look at all the problems it has compared to a hypothetical system that doesn't have any problems at all'
It's like well, yeah, man problems. There's you know, we've - we've taken like
99% of the fish out of the ocean and - and,
you know the degree to which our current level of economic activity is truly sustainable without alteration is at least debatable.
Even though I don't think it's nearly as terrible as people make out - make it out to be.
But, I don't think it's disputable that our
current
socio-economic structures are the most productive and the most free structures that have ever been produced by people
anywhere in the world. And one of the things you can say about
capitalism and free enterprise and - and
the Western stress on individuality
is that even though it does produce
inequality. A) All systems produce inequality.
And without any real distinction between the right and the left by the way, because it's a new book called
Uh...
The Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel, who I'm going to be talking to later this month.
He did an analysis, empirical analysis trying to figure out if you - if you
grouped
Government's by right-wing
philosophy say, or by left-wing philosophy, and then you calculated inequality coefficient. Would the left-wing...
organizations be characterized by reduced
inequality? And the answer was no. There's no evidence that they are, and what that points to, and this is something very fundamental,
it's even it's far more fundamental than than political, is that
inequality is the rule in
cooperative/competitive organizations.
You can't posit a value without producing a hierarchy, right?
Because you posit a value, say: ''This is worth doing!'' Everyone says yeah, this is worth doing. Well then what happens
automatically is that it turns out that some people are better at doing it than other people. No matter what it is.
Interviewer: I'm gonna get better and better at it like the *unintelligable* principle that we talked about -
Jordan: Well there's that, too. And then they start getting better at it. So the problem is is that without
you with - if you're gonna posit a value -which you have to do if you're gonna act -then immediately you create a hierarchy and
you also build into the value claim - the claim that A is better than B.
You also build into that the idea that if A is better than B, then people who are doing better at A should be
differentially rewarded compared to people who - who aren't.
There's no way around that if you're gonna play the game. And so in it you're stuck with inequality.
But there isn't any evidence that - that
social engineering policies are really very good at dispensing with inequality.
Which is a fundamental political problem, and no one really knows what to do about it.
But criticizing the entire society is - I mean, the thing about the West,
and this is increasingly true all over the world is that it's generating - our approach generates a tremendous amount of wealth.
I mean it even happened in China, you know? Despite their
exceptionally totalitarian leanings. And so...
You - what happens with the lefties is that they say well inequality is a consequence of the West and the consequence of capitalism
which is a palpably false claim.
And say, well, because it produces inequality then it's a corrupt system. It's like no, every system produces inequality, but hardly any also produce wealth.
