Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Deceptitron!
Andro Hsu has been deceived. His column claims self-interest precludes one from acting on principle. But no column would be complete without some rather pathetic attempts to explain the exceptions.
It is therefore helpful to examine people whose preference for a policy directly contradicts their self-interest. For example, poor white rural voters, often Republicans, supported tax cuts that, as implemented by the Bush administration, benefited people much wealthier than themselves. Either these voters were misled into thinking their tax cuts would be larger, or they clung to the American Dream—the hope that they would one day join the ranks of the wealthy. The former is misguided self-interest, the latter is anticipatory self-interest.
Interesting, but it raises the following questions:
1) What materials is Hsu's mind-reading device made of?
2) Is it at all possible that poor white rural voters just see a problem with having the government take money from people?
On the other hand, former President Bill Clinton noted at the Democratic National Convention that he is now in the highest tax bracket, the one that benefited most from the Bush tax cuts. Yet he still maintained that tax cuts for the wealthy were wrong—they should have been targeted toward people who needed the money more than he did. Clinton’s is the only position in the tax cut debate that can be said to derive from principle, not pure self-interest.
Well, I get the feeling that "pure" is misplaced in his last sentence (and it should read "derive from pure principle, not self-interest). If it isn't, then Hsu's article is even more wrong, in claiming that anyone who has anything to gain is acting from pure self-interest. But if you think Clinton is not acting out of self-interest at all, you're crazy. The following are possible motivations:
1) Helping poor people makes Clinton feel good about himself.
2) Helping poor people means more can afford his book.
3) Helping poor people keeps him employed as a speaker.
But no, Clinton is God, and such thoughts are beyond the realm of reasonable thought. Seriously.
I would caution Hsu when it comes to mind-reading. The fact that a self-interest may exist proves nothing about that self-interest as motivation. And the desire to "do right" is itself a selfish interest.
Also, that's two columns from people who've done columns before. There must be very little interest in columnwriting at The Daily Cal.
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