Christian duty to help others vs Grade Redistribution

[_asbestosman]

I think there is merit in the analogy, but like all analogies, it does not square on all four.

Actually I agree. I just wanted to point out some of the limitations through a bit of satire.

[_asbestosman]

Actually, we do have many "socialist" programs to help those with low grades. The government pours money into underperforming schools, teachers grade on curves, schools offer remedial math, students are socially promoted, special support is offered for the disabled. I mean, there are limits to all of this, because total grade equality would defeat the purpose of grades and eliminate incentives to perform in school. But we do try to give a helping hand to those not blessed by birth or upbringing with an abundance of intelligence and motivation. A pure capitalist might object that this rewards low performers, thereby creating dependence, and detracts from the teacher-hours spent on high-performing students who actually deserve it. But in his fixation on incentive, said capitalist would be forgetting the important variable of opportunity. If teachers spent all their time rewarding high-performers, the smart would get smarter and the dumb would get dumber, because the smart would have a disproportionate amount of the opportunity.

An excellent response--and I wasn't even being serious in the OP.

I was actually contemplating some of the ways we do help those with lower grades. Those with money often have access to tutors. Even without money, many will form study groups . However, in none of these cases is the commodity "grades" being transferred from the haves to the have-nots. Rather what is transferred is support. As you say, total grade equality defeats the purpose of grades. Grades are supposed to be a measure of achievement. As Sock points out, this might also be said of money, but the fundamental purpose of money is to trade for other goods and services whereas the measurement aspect is secondary. One can, as you hint, decrease the value of grades through grade inflation, but doing so eventually results in changing the fundamental meaning behind grades.

While total financial equality would change the incentive to work for many (but not all--some scientists love their job more than the money which they could earn more out of academia). However, money would still be able to represent the fact that resources are limited and in that sense keep track of whether you've already used your fair share. The meaning is somewhat different, but not widely so.

What I was getting at with the OP was that it's hard to transfer achievements to someone else. We can certainly transfer material goods if those are the achievements. We can also share knowledge if that's the achievement. However, some things can't be transferred so easily. No matter how much I run, I'm not going to be able to transfer my improved health to someone else. No matter how much I work on treating others with respect, I won't be able to transfer that to another person. To use a religious analogy, no matter how much oil the wise virgins buy, they can't give to the foolish virgins waiting for the Bridegroom (because faith is not transferable in such a manner).

But money? Sure. Besides, you can't take it with you. The kindness you develop by helping others is much more likely to be valuable for far longer. That's not to say that enabling a person to be lazy is compassionate. I think that's the big fear conservatives have. I think it's probably a bit over-blown. I mean, it's not like I hear them complain too much about all the free food and housing we give prisoners and that therefore we should work towards social programs to reduce crime. No, the cure they want seems to be to give them free food and housing for a long time.

[_Bond James Bond]

One young lady laid the merits of socialism in Marxist fashion and condemned the evils of capitalism.

Ajax would you please tell us what Marx actually said about capitalism in the Communist Manifesto?

[_CaliforniaKid]

Grades are supposed to be a measure of achievement. As Sock points out, this might also be said of money, but the fundamental purpose of money is to trade for other goods and services whereas the measurement aspect is secondary.

I was thinking about this, and actually I think the "measurement" concept applies more to money than you might think. The purpose of measuring merit through grades is to better allocate our educational and labor resources, thereby increasing economic efficiency. Similarly, rewarding high-producers with large paychecks facilitates better allocation of capital, because high-producers can be expected to reinvest the capital with which they're rewarded in a highly efficient way. So the "measurement" aspect of grades and capital is quite similar, and we wouldn't want to distort it too much.

But you put your finger on it when you said "what is transferred is support." In both school and the market, it's possible to provide some basic support for low-producers without distorting incentives or efficiency too terribly much. In the case of capital, some money that might otherwise have been allocated for investment by high-producers is redistributed to programs like food stamps, low-income housing, and college scholarships for the poor. In the case of education, some teacher-hours and school money that might otherwise have been allocated for career training of high-achievers is redistributed to kids whose grades are poor. (This could be construed as a hidden tax on the kids with good grades, which would ordinarily entitle them to extra school resources. It works a lot like printing money does in economics; "inflation" reduces the exchange value of the smart kids' grades without actually redistributing the grades themselves.) The logic of the redistribution is strikingly similar in both cases, and I think the analogy makes an interesting argument for social welfare. Because after all, how many Republicans would really say that we shouldn't be providing extra support and opportunities to kids who do poorly in school?

[_asbestosman]

Because after all, how many Republicans would really say that we shouldn't be providing extra support and opportunities to kids who do poorly in school?

Good point. Not too many would openly question that sacred cow. However, I do know a some people who think we should do more to allow high-performers to excel. It's not that they should monopolize school resources, but that they should be able to have programs that better meet their abilities. With low performers there are various ideas I've heard. Some may perform poorly due to lack of interest. Others may have a hard time with certain concepts. I've heard one problem with education is that it often emphasizes memorization over understanding. The way to help kids who do poorly then becomes a question of why they do poorly and how to best help them reach future goals. I love math and I think it provides great advantages in many careers, but maybe calculus isn't for everyone.

I think your approach is much more persuasive than mine is for making the case that welfare may not be such a bad thing. Even laying aside the religious obligation to help the poor, I think it is in the best interest of society. While one may or may not be obligated to help the less fortunate, doing so tends to make communities safer. The same is true of education.

Perhaps we could come up with more parallels. For example, we often have to invest capital to get more. No wealthy person truly started from scratch. He had investors. He had people who already built roads and infrastructure. He had labor even though he paid for it he did not create those who labored. Similarly knowledge is built upon existing knowledge. Newton invented calculus, but he had many mathematicians before him that made his work possible. Einstein discovered many things, but he too built upon the work of others. No man is an island whether in education or in wealth. We all depend on others and so we should appreciate the value of helping all.

The problem with the analogy in the video then may not be that grades are fundamentally different from money, but rather that the proper analogy to welfare was missed--the proper one being what you point out. The improper analogy is in simply trying to take away a grade from one person to give to another. That is unnatural, but there are more natural ways of doing something similar with some benefits--as well as some risks. Much like with money.


I was thinking a bit more about transferring achievements. While I still think that such a thing is impossible for several achievements, I was struck by the idea of something I would generally think is non-transferable: guilt and more interestingly innocence and purity. The Atonement is mystery to me as to how it's even possible, but all the same it is the core of Christianity.

[_Sophocles]

There isn't much difference between grades and money as Sock Puppet eloquently pointed out.

There is some difference. Grades are a signal, information, data. All redistribution of grades does is invalidate the signal. It doesn't create any value. Wealth on the other hand is concrete. Redistribution of wealth can save the lives of people who otherwise wouldn't eat or get medical care.

Also, GPA is distributed along a normal curve. The top GPA "earners" have twice the median. Wealth, on the other hand, is distributed along a power curve. The wealthiest Americans earn hundreds of times more than the median.

The story about taking the A from one student and redistributing it between herself and her classmate with the F so that they both end up with Cs isn't even close. It would be more like if a 4.0 GPA was needed to get into a good law school, and her classmate had a 2.0, and she had an 86.0, and we're asking her to give up two points that she doesn't need but will make all the difference to her classmate.

I'm not saying I'd be on board with grade distribution even in that scenario, but let's at least get the numbers in the right ballpark.