Thinking "what could go wrong for you, Mitt, or for America?" and I just realized something unsettling.
Theory 1: The model of the Veil of Ignorance, by John Rawls, where the stability or desirability of a society is assessed by the averaged out probability of what social stratum you're born into at random.
Theory 2: Feudalism was not a system imposed and enforced from the top down. Nobles' loyalty to the king was not an eager subservience, but rather a loyalty to the system that they were relatively quite fortunate within. Likewise the knights, who were easily in the most affluent fourth of society. The First and Second Estates could never hope to hold their position on their own; they remained there not by their own action as a small minority, but by the action of a sizable minority who were granted the privilege of being slightly wealthier than average.
Theory 3: Capitalism emerged from feudalism retaining most of the overall structure of the latter, just with more social mobility and more parts that were up for exchange. The moneyed classes today are the landed classes of centuries past; executives and directors of large corporations sit atop the modern version of fiefdoms.
Postulate: There is a class of knights today, who know they have no chance of becoming kings or lords (large capitalists). They do not delude themselves about upward mobility, they see few people above them and many people below them, and are content to maintain this state of affairs. What's more, they have some conception of the Veil of Ignorance, and do not feel compelled by it; in fact they feel the opposite, that the best chance in life is to hog as many of the scraps as they can.
So they oppose anything that makes life better for the poor, and anything that makes the rich pay more. Not because they see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionnaires, but because they are fiercely loyal to an outcome of being slightly richer than average, and having leverage over a majority. For this relative status, they will kill and steal and hold ransom and block any sort of progress, rather than support outcomes that are materially in their best interests but socially would leave them on the same level as everyone else. They are all demonstrably bad people underneath.
And this is what the majority of Mitt Romney's base is like.
Thinking "what could go wrong for you, Mitt, or for America?" and I just realized something unsettling.
Theory 1: The model of the Veil of Ignorance, by John Rawls, where the stability or desirability of a society is assessed by the averaged out probability of what social stratum you're born into at random.
Theory 2: Feudalism was not a system imposed and enforced from the top down. Nobles' loyalty to the king was not an eager subservience, but rather a loyalty to the system that they were relatively quite fortunate within. Likewise the knights, who were easily in the most affluent fourth of society. The First and Second Estates could never hope to hold their position on their own; they remained there not by their own action as a small minority, but by the action of a sizable minority who were granted the privilege of being slightly wealthier than average.
Theory 3: Capitalism emerged from feudalism retaining most of the overall structure of the latter, just with more social mobility and more parts that were up for exchange. The moneyed classes today are the landed classes of centuries past; executives and directors of large corporations sit atop the modern version of fiefdoms.
Postulate: There is a class of knights today, who know they have no chance of becoming kings or lords (large capitalists). They do not delude themselves about upward mobility, they see few people above them and many people below them, and are content to maintain this state of affairs. What's more, they have some conception of the Veil of Ignorance, and do not feel compelled by it; in fact they feel the opposite, that the best chance in life is to hog as many of the scraps as they can.
So they oppose anything that makes life better for the poor, and anything that makes the rich pay more. Not because they see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionnaires, but because they are fiercely loyal to an outcome of being slightly richer than average, and having leverage over a majority. For this relative status, they will kill and steal and hold ransom and block any sort of progress, rather than support outcomes that are materially in their best interests but socially would leave them on the same level as everyone else. They are all demonstrably bad people underneath.
And this is what the majority of Mitt Romney's base is like.
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Neoliberals fuming
Wish Americans actually read Smith instead of pretending they did but actually just snorting Econ 101 ideology
This is essentially the concept behind "guard labor"