Turning Social Justice into a Four-letter Word

Written on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 12:25 pm | by chuck

Of late, there has been an attempt here in FV to turn Social Justice into a four letter word and paint it as being part of a so-called ‘loser mentality’. I have no disagreement with encouraging a can do attitude or (in the words of Ding Gagelonia) getting people out of thought boxes that may imprison them, although i feel that given that majority of the poor who work do so as entrepreneurs, we give them too little credit. Where i disagree with Benign0 (and other FV bloggers) is on the principle of there being more fortunate and less fortunate individuals in Philippine society. Benign0 believes there is no such thing and that a persons standing in Philippine Society is a result of what he considers to be’sustainable efforts’. Such attitude is part of what i previously described as the Elitist Mindset prevalent among the Upper and Middle class of Philippine Society.

I believe, on the other hand, that the chances of an individual succeeding is also a function of the Society in which he or she lives in. There is such a thing as a Just and an Unjust Society (and varying degrees thereof) where wealth can be justly or unjustly acquired and where efforts at an honest living may not be commensurate with the outcome. As it is, in the Philippines, if you are born poor, the odds are you will live your entire life poor. Not so if you are born in Singapore where you would at least have subsidized housing and free primary and secondary education. Unfortunately, as i previously mentioned, the ideology of globalization erases this concept and replaces it with a blame the poor mindset.

The error in Benign0’s (and like-minded) thinking is to believe that just because there are some who succeed in the Philippines, it follows that anyone can succeed if he or she tries hard enough. By way of analogy, when Sulpicio’s Princess of the Stars capsized, there were fifty survivors who were able to swim to shore. Do we blame the ones who went down for failing to think outside the box or not trying hard enough? Isn’t their drowning attributable to the ship having capsized instead?

My other major point of disagreement with the libertarian-types is on the personal responsibility that each of us have in contributing or giving back to Society as a whole. (I wrote about this previously in my entry The Dark Side of Positive Thinking.) Benign0, Cocoy, Jon and other libertarian types emphasize individual responsibility. While i also believe that individual responsibility is essential (and no amount of social welfare can substitute for this), i also believe that cooperation at the national level is also necessary. That level of cooperation is precisely what Government and NGO’s should be an expression and realization of.

The economies around us that have prospered did not do so in the absence of government. In fact, the general pattern has been the greater the government intervention/participation, the more development took place, granted that the right kind of participation matters, one that allows for a mix of market forces and social welfare.

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About The Author: chuck is a veteran Information Technology professional with almost two decades experience in the Industry. He is currently based in Singapore. He blogs at The Placeholder.

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11 Responses to “Turning Social Justice into a Four-letter Word”

  1. Ding G. Gagelonia on August 27th, 2008 1:39 pm

    Chuck,

    I had wanted to avoid commenting first since ‘historically’, you and Benign00 have a tit-for-tat exchange first, but since I flit back and forth to FV, here’s my take:
    I don’t really warm up to any elitist paradigm as I have lived all my 50 years in this land of haves and have-nots, a curious mix of 1st and 3rd world stereotypes, not to mention regionalism at the most local of levels and extreme thinly-disguised ethnic biases.

    These ‘mind-boxes’ compound the divide that already exists between, and among economic classes, at times to the point that there could very well be a Pinoy caste system.

    Then you also have the political divisions, though among our incorrigible trad-pols where the revolving door of political loyalties swings faster than a carnival carousel.

    So one request, please don’t consider this writer as an advocate of elitism. :)Am strictly an ordinary guy.

    Your turn, banign00.

  2. benign0 on August 27th, 2008 2:45 pm

    Much obliged, Ding.

    I don’t really know how to comment on this little article as I can’t get past this bizarre comparison between Sulpicio survivors and Sulpicio victims that led to this bizarre leap of logic here…

    […] Do we blame the ones who went down for failing to think outside the box or not trying hard enough? Isn’t their drowning attributable to the ship having capsized instead?

    Furthermore we can also…

    also believe that cooperation at the national level is also necessary. That level of cooperation is precisely what Government and NGO’s should be an expression and realization of.

    … so to speak, ’til we turn blue. But unless the WIIFMs are built into and accounted for in the underlying framework out of which the aspired-for “cooperation at the national level” is more of an emergent outcome rather than an engineered outcome (i.e. the engineering should be in the building-into-the-framework level mentioned earlier), these shouts for “cooperation at the national level” will never happen naturally no matter how much a bunch of fools call them “necessary”.

    That’s not to say that “cooperation at the national level” is something that I do not wish for Pinoy society. I merely differ in the approach to achieveing this.

    That said, the lack of any further coherent structure around how the ideas are presented here kills any motivation on my part to continue mulling over this blog post further. :D

  3. chuck on August 27th, 2008 2:57 pm

    Ding, i did not figure you to be an elitist in the first place but thanks for making that clarification just the same. As it is, we have too many elitists in Philippine Society (and this blog, which i believe is a reflection of Philippine society).

  4. chuck on August 27th, 2008 3:18 pm

    Benign0, you won’t be able to understand my position, and the need for Social Justice, unless you understand how Philippine Society is similar to Sulpicio’s Princess of the Stars.

    What’s ‘WIIFMs’?

    Indeed cooperation at a national level is an emergent outcome and such an outcome has more chance of emerging if we eliminate the Oligarchs and their Elitist allies.

  5. cocoy on August 27th, 2008 8:10 pm

    i also believe that cooperation at the national level is also necessary. That level of cooperation is precisely what Government and NGO’s should be an expression and realization of.

    see… to me, the only absolute use for what government ought to be is to 1) keep the peace; 2) ensure fair play and a level playing field as in to act as a referee, and thus to intervene only when absolutely necessary; 3) build roads and ensure everyone’s right to travel and 4) deal with the international community. beyond those things— what good is government for?

    non government organizations is exactly that. non government. it is private enterprise. could they focus their attention on charity? sure. if they want.

    every Filipino family is a non government organization. if each family help put say their house help to school, isn’t that social justice? because you are helping them become better than they are? do we need government to tell us that *that* is a good thing?

    i’m not belittling the plight of many of our country men who are poor. they don’t need our pity, nor our tears and none of us have magic to simply wish their worries away. It is only through wealth creation can we lift them up from poverty. And wealth can only be created from commerce— free enterprise.

    The economies around us that have prospered did not do so in the absence of government. In fact, the general pattern has been the greater the government intervention/participation, the more development took place, granted that the right kind of participation matters, one that allows for a mix of market forces and social welfare.

    As i’ve mentioned in my own post on “Does House Bill 4580 Make us a Socialist State?”, it doesn’t matter what form we take whether it is democracy, monarchy— heck look at china, that communist regime is doing all right, wouldn’t you say? part of of the answer really boils down to their leaders are really focused on doing what’s good for their country. in otherwords, they’re doing their job.

    In the Philippines, i’ve mentioned this time and again: part of the answer lies in winning the insider’s game. If you can change the mindset that’s running/playing the background game that can do a lot in reducing the insanity that is the Philippine government.

    As i’ve mentioned in Decentralize Tomorrow, the American experiment in the last hundred years has been towards greater centralization, especially under Bush. I don’t think that would change a great deal under an Obama and certainly not under a McCain Presidency. But when America was younger, it wasn’t the case. Jefferson’s idea was that all the states are autonomous in everything except when dealing with foreign nations.

    The difference i think is that you trust government to be big brother. that government is the answer to all the problems of the philippines, and on the other hand— others like me don’t believe in the absolute saving power of government. To me that is like having faith in a power greater than us to descend from the sky to set things right.

    Superman, sadly is fictional.

    For one thing, i’ll start to believe in government when EDSA isn’t filled with potholes.

    Will young America be of use to us? Will the experiences of our neighbors do something then? I’m not fond of copying what works for others and applying it. They’re good roadmaps and barometers of how successful one thing or another is. If it were me, Articles of Republic highlights what i think should be done. Then again, I’m not driving this ship of state and as i’ve mentioned in The Folly of Good Intensions, it has to be the Filipino people who gets to decide what our future is— not one man or a few men no matter how noble their intensions are.

    Indeed cooperation at a national level is an emergent outcome and such an outcome has more chance of emerging if we eliminate the Oligarchs and their Elitist allies.

    China is communist but learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union. You need commerce and trade to grow.

  6. supersepoy on August 27th, 2008 11:16 pm

    chuck, you said: “the general pattern has been the greater the government intervention/participation, the more development took place”

    If I remember right, Marcos tried this already. I don’t remember any development happening then.

    GMA is trying to do the same now, does this mean we are set to become a first world country soon? Yipeee!

    When you say the “right kind of participation”, what do you mean? Are you saying you are ok with an authoritarian government?

    From where I stand, I see government meddling as precisely the reason why we are in the shithole that we’re in.

    The reasons for government, in my view, are few and simple: Create laws that will promote equality and make the country a conducive place to live and do business in, enforce the law, and punish the guilty. Other than these, let the people do as they wish, and we will live to see prosperity.

  7. The Jester-in-Exile on August 27th, 2008 11:22 pm

    will split hairs until i have time to take a closer look.

    …this blog, which i believe is a reflection of Philippine society.

    not yet. soon, i would hope, but not just yet.

    digital divide and all that.

  8. chuck on August 28th, 2008 1:04 am

    Cocoy (at 8:10 pm), in addition to those things you enumerated, in countries that still have to industrialize, government has the additional role of having to carry out a coherent industrial policy. In his paper Industrial Policy for the 21st Century Economist Dani Rodrik describes this role as (1) addressing information externalities i.e. helping uncover the ‘cost structure’ of the economy so that local firms can then take advantage this cost structure and (2) addressing coordination externalities by undertaking large scale investments that would make local firms profitable.

    Aside from government itself, the active participation of Non-government organizations (NGO’s) as well as concerned individuals is needed in order to guide the formal institution of government. They form part of the Public Sphere [aka People Power in its small and large manifestations]. I think one lesson that has been forgotten is that our role in making government accountable does not stop after elections. We need to reinvigorate this Public Sphere precisely because i do not trust government to act as big brother.

  9. chuck on August 28th, 2008 1:18 am

    supersepoy, Marcos was not able to do the essential first step which is to address the problem of inequality by dismantling the landed oligarchy. Other countries whether communist (like China or Vietnam) or capitalist (like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea) implemented decisive land reform programs. This had the effects of:

    (1) creating a domestic consumer base, because agricultural revenue now goes to farmers who can then support the local manufacturers by buying the latter’s products, and
    (2) diverting capital away from rent-seeking activities by Oligarchs and reallocating them to local industry (perhaps run by the same Oligarchs who can earn an honest living as industrialists).

    Marcos largely kept the rent-seeking oligarchy intact and nurtured his own set of oligarchs which is why his attempt at industrialization failed. Same holds true with GMA.

    ‘Right kind of participation’ has to do with how the government goes about industrial policy which is described in the link i provided to Cocoy above. I’m against authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian set-ups but in case we have one, as i blogged before, i prefer that the dictatorship uses its powers to dismantle the Oligarchy.

  10. chuck on August 28th, 2008 1:23 am

    jester, i’m with you on the digital divide but that’s not what i meant. whether online or offline, i think the diversity of the Filipino Voices bloggers’ viewpoints reflect the diversity of viewpoints that is in Philippine Society. As i was telling Benign0, even morons are represented in FV.

  11. cocoy on August 29th, 2008 8:08 am

    Chuck,

    We need to reinvigorate this Public Sphere precisely because i do not trust government to act as big brother.

    That’s exactly what you want. What most Filipinos want. Government as Big Brother. Government as the answer to every problem. That’s what most Filipinos believe. Heck, it is written in our constitution— subtly of course.

    Please excuse me, but i don’t believe in government as the all-seeing-superpower that descends from the sky to right every wrong.

    I love comic books, but I’m more Batman than Superman.

    I’m against authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian set-ups but in case we have one, as i blogged before, i prefer that the dictatorship uses its powers to dismantle the Oligarchy.

    i know you are. I know most Filipinos are. But it is SO rare to have a benevolent dictatorship.

    Even then, it doesn’t matter. As i’ve mentioned before the form and shape doesn’t matter. Plato spoke of the Philosopher King. I think that King can be one man, a monarch, a dictator or a Democracy.

    But don’t you see what’s happening? Unless you’ve played the insider’s game, unless you’ve been there and seen how things are run, how they think. I wonder if people can fully appreciate the notion that to really really change this country— it has to start from the inside.

    That’s just one aspect, I think.

    To borrow from Friedman, Milton and Rose in Free To Choose— A Personal Statement (1980), which on a side note everyone should get a chance to read:

    Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise. The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
    The combination of economic and political freedom produced a golden age in both Great Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century. The United States prospered even more than Britain. It started with a clean slate: fewer vestiges of class and status; fewer government restraints; a more fertile field for energy, drive, and innovation; and an empty continent to conquer.

    i think it can be done.

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