{"id":2478,"date":"2002-05-22T09:53:33","date_gmt":"2002-05-22T09:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=23"},"modified":"2002-05-22T09:53:33","modified_gmt":"2002-05-22T09:53:33","slug":"on-inequality-legitimacy-and-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2478","title":{"rendered":"ON INEQUALITY, LEGITIMACY, AND LIBERTY"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Bertram, who writes better than I do and appears to have a whole lot more time (hey, out in Blogland, how do you guys do it<\/u>?), discusses Sullivan\u0092s comments on social stratification and the consequences of the kind of insane inequality (which I am trying to label as SkyBox-ing) prevalent in America and Europe.
\nPart of his comments<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Andrew Sullivan is busy writing about the \u0091overclass\u0092, the super-rich. Of course, Sullivan being Sullivan he\u0092s moved to assert that the vast inequalities that obtain in the world are inevitable, good and deserved. Of course, not all of his fellow conservatives are as sure as he is, Kevin Phillips is worried that you can\u0092t sustain a genuine republic with the sort of inequality that obtains in America (and even in Britain today). And that\u0092s an old worry, one that Montesquieu and Rousseau both articulated. If the public power, that should belong to everyone, is in fact at the behest of those whose wealth allows them to escape the problems of their compatriots, then alienation and cynicism will increasingly erode commitment to the political order. In the absence of a sense that citizens share one another\u0092s fate then a republican or liberal polity will increasingly given way to a Hobbesian system where social peace is only maintained by changing the payoffs facing wrongdoers. (And my saying, yesterday, that retribution for crime in the UK should be swifter and more certain is a recognition that alienation here has become quite advanced.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you look at the \u0093must-read\u0094 section below, you\u0092ll see two books on legitimacy; you might guess that it\u0092s an important topic to me.
\nIt ought to be one to all of us. On a basic level, it implies that the allegiance and obedience the citizen offers to the state is earned<\/b> and freely given from a core belief that the demands made are \u0093legitimate\u0094; that they serve some common interest in which the individual participates.
\nLook, you can\u0092t have enough traffic police to enforce the laws everywhere. So obedience to traffic rules comes from two sources: First, a sense of \u0093correctness\u0094; a belief that the rules make sense, that we all benefit from the rule being followed, and that others will also follow the rule; Second, fear of punishment, either through direct consequences (an accident) or through the actions of other citizens or agents of the state (being threatened by someone you cut off, or being cited and fined by a police officer).
\nIt ought to be obvious that the first source works better than the second. It works all the time, regardless of the state of enforcement; it is internalized so that each driver can freely respond to current situations. I\u0092ll argue that it is morally better, as well, because it treats each driver as a responsible actor, rather than just a subject for enforcement.
\nBut the first source depends on something which is in ever-shorter supply; a sense of the legitimacy of the rules, and a sense that one is connected to the others who are also bound by those rules. So why not run red lights?
\nHabermas and Schaar each have a different vision of why legitimacy is in short supply; they are rich and difficult to summarize, so I won\u0092t right now. To those, I will add the simple fact of inequality as it exists today (and here I\u0092ll poach from Montesquieu as noted by Bertram, above).
\nI\u0092m talking about a level of \u0091Gilded Age\u0092 inequality that gives us Lizzie Grubman<\/a> and all she represents, a sense of separation, entitlement, and inheritance which is mirrored by the people who read about her and are convinced that modern American society is structured for people like her, and not people like them.
\nThe kind of separation between people in the SkyBoxes and the rest in the cheap seats.
\nAnd the consequence isn\u0092t just bad views or a mild sense of disengagement between classes. It is a profound corrosion of the relations that tie society together, as those in the SkyBox decide that they are above the law, and those in the nosebleed section see no reason to obey, as the law does nothing for them.
\nSo as the light turns yellow, they just gun it, and the rest of us just have to be very, very careful because we are the ones they hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Bertram, who writes better than I do and appears to have a whole lot more time (hey, out in Blogland, how do you guys do it?), discusses Sullivan\u0092s comments on social stratification and the consequences of the kind of insane inequality (which I am trying to label as SkyBox-ing) prevalent in America and Europe. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}