The Case for Redistribution

Better Life Lab is a partnership of Slate and New America. For decades, it's been a mainstream political taboo to make a full-throated case for redistribution. Very suddenly, however, a few conservative commentators have begun to warm up to the idea--but not for the reasons you might suspect. Indeed, what's pushed these conservatives to reconsider the merits of transferring goods and services from the "haves" to the "have-nots" is the rise of the violent "incel"--that is, the involuntarily celibate man who scorns women for "denying" him the sexual gratification he feels is his right. In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, right-leaning columnist Ross Douthat takes seriously the discontent expressed by murderous "incels" (such as Elliot Rodger and, more recently, Toronto van-attack suspect Alek Minassian) and ruminates over the question of whether society ought to use redistributive measures to give these men their "due," the better to pacify them and stave off more violence. To make his case for the "inevitability" of state intervention to satisfy disgruntled incels, Douthat lumps together technocratic, dehumanizing ramblings from the fringes of the libertarian right, on the one hand, and genuinely rigorous and probing leftist philosophical reflections on the matter from Amia Srinivasan, on the other.