Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Possibly

Why is Hollywood uber liberal - especially economically? Here is one theory.

Hollywood stars hence feel that there is something arbitrary about their success — that their personal merit does not warrant their revered status. While they may be pleased at this outcome, they can’t help but feel that the system is unjust because their status is undeserved. They watch people in the lower rungs of society struggle and become overcome by a deep sense of guilt for holding the winning ticket in the lottery of life. They distrust capitalism for the seemingly unfair inequality it produces and thus favor redistribution.

However, what Hollywood fails to realize is that markets allocate rewards not based on individual merit but on the value individuals produce for others. As Nozick said, “a capitalist society rewards people only insofar as they serve the market-expressed desires of others; it rewards in accordance with economic contribution, not in accordance with personal value.” This might seem counter-intuitive but, if you think about it, a system that rewards individuals for improving the lot of others is far fairer than one that rewards them for some arbitrary intrinsic quality.


Maybe.

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