Piketty Notes and Quotes 2: The Envy Objection



This is a question that requires some rather careful attention, and I have no intention of trying to sift through it thoroughly here.  But I wanted to think out loud, as it were, about some often-overlooked aspects of this question.  This question assumes that the biggest problem facing poor people is sheer material lack.  I should note in passing that this is a somewhat odd assumption for conservatives to make, given that in many other contexts, they can be seen complaining that it is progressives who make this assumption, and that simple government transfer payments to the poor, while improving their material situation, don’t really help them.  In any case, leaving aside the inconsistency, is this a valid assumption?  Well, certainly at the very lowest levels of poverty, it is.  If you and your village are facing starvation, and suddenly someone comes along and gives you all meals and jobs, but gives some villagers jobs paying ten times as much, well then (abstracting from consideration the problems this might create later on) you have obviously addressed the biggest problem, and everyone will be happier than they were when they were starving.

But once we get above the bare material subsistence level, the picture begins to change, I think.  If there’s one thing I learned from Polanyi (and in fact, I learned quite a few, but this is the biggest one), it’s that human beings are above all social creatures, not economic ones.  I suppose I shouldn’t have needed Polanyi for this, but should’ve paid attention to Aristotle.  But in any case, the point is, we’re not animals, concerned just with material provision, but are above all concerned with relationships and what they mean for our place in the world (in fact, come to think of that, neither are animals—if you watch something like Planet Earth, you’ll find that about half the struggle in the animal kingdom is for food, and the other half is for “social status” in the group, usually to secure mating privileges).   Again, when the chips are down and we’re desperate for survival, these social concerns are usually thrown to the winds and it’s every man for himself trying to stay alive; but that’s not the way most of life operates.  This much most people will probably concede pretty quickly when you point it out, but more has to be said.  Not only is the material side of life not all there is, but even it isn’t primarily about the material, or at least, increasingly ceases to be the more there is to go around.  Rather, material wealth does have an objective functional value, relating to its function in providing food, shelter, transportation, comfort, convenience, etc., but it also has a subjective, largely socially-constructed, symbolic value, signifying what kind of person I am, what sorts of things are important to me, what social circles I walk in, and which ones I very much do *not* walk in.  I buy nice furniture for my house not because it’s necessarily any more comfortable or functional than that shabby old couch from my bachelor days, but because to have that shabby couch in my living room would send the wrong social signals.  The wealthy lawyer in New York City buys a BMW convertible not because he plans to drive on the Autobahn, or because he expects to be rolling the roof down very often, but because it signifies his membership in a particular elite sphere.

Now, some of this social valuation is obviously sinful, and is exactly the sort of obsession with status that we are called upon as Christians to forsake.  And yet, it is not obvious to me that all of it is automatically so—i.e., that I should keep on carting around that shabby couch as long as it’s functional.  Because we are social beings, and we value friends and relationships, we should value the kinds of material signifiers that communicate our participation in those social groups, and that make it easier for us to pursue common activities with others.  We should always beware of drawing our social circles too narrowly, so that we only associate with those like us, or of putting too much value on these signifiers, forgetting just how ephemeral they can be.  But an interest in, say, the social value of a good wine collection, in due moderation, is no more sinful than an interest in the taste of fine wine, in due moderation.  

Now, all that said, what are we to say about the poor?  Well, let’s start with an extreme example to make a point.  Let’s say you took a “middle-class” American tradesman from the early 18th century (say a blacksmith or a carpenter who made a decent living), and transplanted him into modern-day America, and gave him a good supply of food, including an array of fruits, vegetables, and meats not available to him before, and even gave him a toilet and running water (albeit unreliable and of poor quality), but did not give him a car, electricity or any electronic devices, a phone, etc., etc.  Would he be better off or worse off?  Happier or less happy?  (Leaving aside the general difficulty of cultural transition involved in time travel)  I think we could pretty reliably answer “worse off” and “less happy.”  Why?  Because he would suddenly have been demoted from a respectable middle-class tradesman to the poorest of the poor, socially cut off from almost everyone else and unable to participate in the sorts of activities that most everyone else participated in.  To pick a less extreme example, consider the technological changes over the last 50 years, which mean that even today’s poor often enjoy things like a color TV, a microwave, and a mobile phone, which the wealthy wouldn’t have enjoyed fifty years ago.  If someone today only had a small black-and-white TV, it would be the signifier of extreme poverty, and thus, despite the fact that materially he might be no worse off in this respect than someone fifty years ago, he would have the stigma of being considered very poor.  Or, to pick another example that has plenty of real-world analogues, consider that primitive village I mentioned above, only this time, they’re not starving.  They’re doing ok. They’re primitive, to be sure, and they don’t have much surplus, but everyone has a hut and a small plot of land.  If you came along and gave 10% of the villagers ten times as much wealth, and gave the other 90% twice as much wealth, I suspect the 90% would be less happy.  Because all of a sudden they would have been made socially inferior, a much greater loss than their extra spending power.  Is this envy, in a sinful sense?  It could be, but I don’t see that it necessarily is.

Now, the solution to all this is of course not complete equality.  After all, the very notion of social signifiers implies different social levels which are defined in part by differential wealth.  We’re generally fine with a decent hierarchy of different wealth levels, so long as they’re not so different that the rich and the poor (or even the rich and the middle class, as we find today) are in totally different worlds.  It is out-of-control inequality (in which the top 1% own 350X as much per capita as the bottom 50%) that threatens to disrupt the social fabric and result in people feeling increasingly degraded, even if they are, from a purely material standpoint, better off.  Likewise, we don’t view all inequalities as equally problematic.  To the extent that they are obviously connected with merit, we’re fine with them.  If some guy comes up with a great invention that makes us all better off, we recognize that it makes sense for him to profit richly from it, at least within reason.  This is because his wealth does not threaten to disrupt our world of social signification.  We see his wealth as a signifier of the benefits he has brought us, and if he uses his wealth well, we’re not bothered by it.  But to the extent that inequalities are arbitrary (i.e., in the thought experiment intended to illustrate envy—I arbitrarily double your wealth while increasing the other guy’s tenfold), wealth simply signifies, “This person is now better than you” and thus hurts the person at the lower end.  (As well, I should add, as hurting the person at the top, because we all need one another, and to be walled off in the company only of your elitist friends is to leave a socially and morally impoverished life.)  To be sure, if none of us were sinners, this wouldn’t matter, because the beneficiary of extra wealth would take no pride in his higher position, would not use it for selfish purposes, and would continue to treat the folks lower down as deserving completely equal respect, while they, in turn, would rejoice in his good fortune.  But just because something wouldn’t be a problem in a perfect world doesn’t mean that, to the extent it is a problem, that’s a sign of personal sin.


Again, none of this is to say that envy doesn’t exist, or isn’t a real problem.  But we routinely make distinctions between selfishness and legitimate self-esteem or concern for personal well-being, between neediness and a legitimate desire to be loved, between pride and a legitimate satisfaction in having one’s work appreciated.  In all of these areas, we recognize that we are creatures defined by our social affections, and while these affections can very well be inordinate, they are also proper and irrepressible features of our human nature.  Why then can’t we do this for inequality and envy as well?  Why do we assume that our social affections here are completely out of line?

5 thoughts on “Piketty Notes and Quotes 2: The Envy Objection

  1. Matthew N. Petersen

    A couple quick comments:

    If you haven’t read it already, I think you would really get a lot out of <i>Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life</i> (http://amzn.to/1pe8ajz), perhaps even more than out of Piketty. Here’s the review that turned me on to the book: http://bit.ly/1tlZOcc.

    The other other point concerns a quick parenthetical comment you made about animals and food (and this is a very minor point): "In fact, come to think of that, neither are animals—if you watch something like Planet Earth, you’ll find that about half the struggle in the animal kingdom is for food, and the other half is for "social status" in the group, usually to secure mating privileges."

    I’m not sure we even have to look so far as that to see that animals aren’t just concerned with food. Anyone who has ever owned a dog or a cat knows how important the physical social interaction with the animal is for both the owner, <i>and the animal</i>.


  2. Jeremy VanGelder

    Hi Brad, I’m just poking holes here in regards to your theoretical time-travelling tradesman. To the best I could tell, this tradesman is not bringing his tools, stock, or whatever else he uses in his trade. At this point, the distributist in me is jumping up and down yelling, "Of course he is worse off, he has been deprived of the means of production." If we allowed him to bring his productive property with him, in addition to providing the things you listed, then I think he would be better off. Economically, because he has access to a larger market, and, later, socially as well. Remember, we are providing his food and shelter for an unlimited amount of time, so he just needs to worry about adapting his goods, services and skills to modern needs. In other words, your original hypothetical is not much different from a hypothetical where a modern middle-class person is separated from his property and given lesser property. In either case, we have separated a man from what is rightfully his, making him worse off.

    So, that’s my picking, I don’t think you gave us the best possible example.


    • Brad Littlejohn

      Yeah, I realized as I got into it that it was kinda a strained example—best to stay away from time-travel hypotheticals altogether when trying to make a point.

      But do you grant that the basic point I was making, and trying to illustrate there, still stands? I.e., that since one’s happiness depends above all on one’s relationships within a community, a higher level of absolute wealth that is nonetheless a much lower level of relative wealth, that weakens one’s place in the community, is likely to spell greater unhappiness?


  3. Alexander Garden

    I think this argument would make sense if one were increasing the wealth of the 99% tenfold and the 1% just twofold. In that case, the 1% would be crippled socially, which would be a horrible burden to bear. But if the 99% only see their income double and the 1% has it increase tenfold, the 99% are not being excluded from society — they get more of it than the 1%. If they then think it an injustice that they did not get into the 1%, I cannot think of a better word for that then "envy".

    It’s the girl who didn’t get on the cheer-leading squad, the guy who didn’t get into Harvard, the athlete who wasn’t drafted in the first round, the candidate who did not get the top job. Sure, they are missing out on society they badly wanted. But they have lots and lots of company.


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