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Basics: Twentieth Century Assumptions
When I said that we couldn’t assume that non-whites have the same “self” we do, I remembered that that exact point was reached thirty years ago in Public Choice theory, in which Nobel Prizes have been given out. Before Public Choice, a graduated income tax was justified on the basis on the higher marginal utility of money. It was agreed that the SAME PERSON needed his first dollar more than he need his billionth dollar.
A person needs his first dollars just to stay alive. He uses his first dollars for what he needs most, and his later dollars progressively less urgent purposes. So far, so good.
But with Public Choice, it was realized that, while this principle works fine for a rational individual, it does NOT work BETWEEN individuals. An old-style Trappist monk had no use at all for those extra dollars, though the first ones were essential. Some people literally LIVE for money. Others, once their basic needs are met, literally couldn’t care less.
Even leftists in the field agreed with this.
One critical thing about this decision that one could deal in interpersonal utility was that it was a conclusion reached on absolutely, purely twentieth-century assumptions. They knew nothing about the huge proportion of sociopaths in our society. Everybody assumed that under every skull, and not just human skulls, there was a self exactly like you and me.
And I didn’t say “under every HUMAN skull.” In the twentieth century, a bird had a self just like yours and mine, but without the frontal lobe:
1) All animals were equal except for IQ;
2) Among humans, IQ was not important AND was all the same, both.
Taken together, this reflects a mentality of exactly the same level that bled a patient to cure pneumonia.
You don’t COMPROMISE with a doctor who uses bleeding to cure pneumonia. You institutionalize him.
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