…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
I missed the part where evidence was supplied to support the concept of evidence has meaning inn your worldview.
Please link to it
thanks again
peace
Me? Right now? Enjoying a glass of milk.
If what you say you know matches up with what I know I know, then I know you are correct. 🙂
Look up “making predictions”, and be informed. If, based on observation, you derive an explanation, the value (accuracy) of that explanation is a function of how well it makes predictions.
And sure enough, based on such evidence, I have predicted that you can not and will not make a case for your illusions, and this prediction has proved correct without fail. The best you’ve ever been able to do is play word games, another prediction that never fails.
Hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas break – even though, judging by some comments above – some of you have a different way of enjoying the holiday from me!
Alan Fox,
You photograph distinguished looking men with wet feet? Everyone needs a hobby….
Enjoy the holiday!
fmm (on Christmas Eve):
Mercifully, I have been spared by Christmas duties from following this discussion closely, but if I see that stupid ‘bot line once more, I’ll start chucking stuff.
For those who are wondering, my own New Year’s resolution is to stop sucking on government services by not using any roads or taking any vaccines. Of course, the main goal is to move to Somalia, but that still seems like it’s a couple years off. In the meantime I’m going to try to get as much of a taste of what that heaven on earth will be like as I can, right here in Gov’t-infested Massachusetts. It’s hard but, e.g. we don’t HAVE to consider advisories on health or building code violations if we don’t want to.
Just keep my eyes closed best I can until my ship sails to the promised land!
New Years’ Resolutions are for the imperfect. I eschew such things.
I myself am much worse than imperfect, as patrick has patiently explained recently in response to my suggestion that he get off his high horse.
He really told me!–so I know I have some real work to do prior to my Somalia migration.
Works for me. My new year’s resolution is to take your place at the government teat.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
If you really want to take walto’s place, you’ll need to work on being smugly priggish while lacking the moral standing to criticize others.
I can do it!
Yes, I can!
Glen Davidson
I could coach you…but of course you’ll have to pay me (more than it’s worth). Priggishness at my level doesn’t come cheap.
But that’s not fair. You were born that way.
I can teach you how to gain the moral standing to criticize others.
You post the same thing a few times. Then you climb up on that. Then you post the same thing some more. Then you climb up on that. Repeat until you’re able to climb up on your high horse.
The main problem with Libertarianism—the US strain thereof, at least—can be summed up in six words: All the freedom you can afford. If you’re wealthy, US-Libertarianism works out great for you; if you’re on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale… well, sucks to be poor, don’t it? The US-Libertarian verbiage about “force” sounds good at first blush, but if one digs down under the attractive generalities to discover the details of how it would play out in actual use, it turns out that “force”, in US-Libertarian cant, generally works out to being more-or-less synonymous with “Government action of any sort at all”. As well, US-Libertarians tend to go out of their way to define actions taken by wealthy people as not qualifying as “force”, regardless of what sort of harmful consequences said actions might have on other, not-so-wealthy, people.
US-Libertarian thought tends to ignore/minimize/deny the notion of economic force; if John Doe happens to be the only employer in town, and Doe doesn’t feel like hiring any of those damn dirty niggers, US-Libertarians think that Government should in no way interfere with Doe’s absolute right to be a bigoted employer. In such a case, US-Libertarians tend to propose that the proper sort of reaction to Doe involves the affected (black) people forming their own businesses, or moving to a different town which has non-bigoted employers who might choose to hire them.
Well said. On another site I frequent
I use this as my signature:
E.W. Hall is a kook. Someone once convinced me to buy a book by E.W. Hall. I should have spent the money on crack.
Look at the bright side, you don’t have to break into houses to buy more books.
You could say that about anything, though.
Glen Davidson
Well, walto was the one who introduced me to Hall, and I hope walto knows I was just kidding.
🙂
Shorter Libertarian:
Fuck you, Jack, I’ve got mine.
In the Boston Globe today we find that in the U.S. the twenty (20) richest people have more combined wealth than do the bottom one hundred fifty million (150,000,000) people combined. This suggests that government intervention through taxes and transfer payments have done little to curb incredible inequality in distribution of the goods of the earth. For the libertarian, that’s a good thing and our government should stop trying, because any move toward equality of wealth is a step toward a dystopian nightmare of “property rights” violations, a world where, perhaps it would take 50 (or even 100!) of the richest people to equal the wealth of the 150 million poorest.
I suppose the libertarian solution of having all the poor simply die on the streets would probably produce a less horrifying ratio….but think how smelly the streets would be.
cubist,
Tempting though it is to open up that can of worms, I will not have the time to devote to that topic over the next couple of months. If have more free time around the election and it looks like people are interested in discussing politics here, I’ll chime in.
That’s far more broad than my position here at the moment. My personal morality is that other people are their own ends, not means to my ends. I don’t care if you call yourself the Crips, the Cosa Nostra, or the government, once you start using force against people who aren’t harming you, you’re on the wrong side.
An authoritarian who supports that initiation of force, who thinks that it is acceptable to have a career using government coercion to interfere with otherwise peaceful people, and who was paid in tax dollars has the ethics of a thief. Such a person should be spending his time figuring out how to atone for living at the expense of others, not providing unsolicited advice to people who value integrity and honor.
Patrick has disgorged a load of bog-standard US-Libertarian cant, nicely adorned with attractive generalities which gloss over the realities of how the hell US-Libertarian policies would actually play out in real life.
If Patrick does indeed wish to discuss US-Libertarianism at some later date, I have some suggestions for topics he might wish to address:
Company stores: Proof of employers’ benevolence towards their workers.
How US-Libertarianism could have prevented the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire from ever happening.
Why externalities don’t matter, or at least don’t matter enough to justify the use of ‘force’ of ‘coercion’ to address them.
cubist,
Those are reasonable topics. I’d go for tougher questions like whether or not limited liability corporations are moral constructs.
I genuinely wish I had time to dig into this in detail. I see a lot of people with knee-jerk reactions to libertarianism, but for me it comes down to the idea that interactions between people should be mutually consensual. Live and let live, treat others as you’d wish to be treated, an’ it harm none do as ye will — however you want to phrase it, it’s a matter of working together voluntarily rather than at the point of a gun.
Anyway, perhaps later.
Patrick is an asshole stirring up cheap emotions with his “rather than at the point of a gun” propaganda. It’s not reality.
Of course people – in general – do voluntarily consent to be taxed in order to pay for the mutual government with which they – generally – agree. Paying taxes is a form of working together to acquire a snowplow and a trained snowplow operator for the village, and it’s considered by everyone to be preferable to having to “work together” to shovel out the streets the hard way. It’s not theft at all, and anyone who thinks so is bizarrely out of touch with humanity’s – general – desire to share responsibility, risk, and benefit.
Yes, it’s quite reasonable to experience sadness or anger at paying taxes (or providing one’s labor) to support programs which are opposite of one’s personal desires — whether those programs be foreign wars or free public education or whatever — but every single successful human relationship is built on the recognition of reality that we don’t get our own way all the time, that we sometimes give to get what we want later.
Expecting government to provide only what you want, nothing more nothing less, and to call it theft when it takes taxes or gives tax-paid support to anyone you don’t approve of, is as childish as believing in white hats good, black hats bad. Expecting all your neighbors, all your community, to have the ability to take care of every complicated detail of modern life themselves (much less the interest to do so) rather than hand over some of the responsibility and trust to city managers, police, code department, teachers, street sweepers, sewer repair workers, etc — in exchange for tax payments for their salaries, natch — is as ridiculous as believing in the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
I’ll keep supporting our mutual government, happy in the knowledge that our agencies protect Patrick from the consequences of his own stupid preference not to “force” any polluters to clean up, not to “force” any mill owner to hire adults instead of cheaper child labor, not to “force” any court into paying for at least a minimum defense for the accused before they’re railroaded into private prison …
Our agencies protect the ignorant as well as me and my smart family and that is, in fact, exactly the “treat others as you’d wish to be treated” which Patrick claims it should be. Too bad he can’t see that.
In Libertarian imagination, is there some other way to magically stop the polluting business from killing our children? What happens when they don’t act in accordance with “an’ it harm none do as ye will”? What happens when “do as ye will” clause from the owner’s point of view is: make maximum profit from polluting the river, and to hell with whoever it harms?
Oh, Libertarian magic stops them! Don’t ask for a pathetic level of detail. We don’t have time to go into that.
Ugh.
hotshoe:
Somewhere in there, I think you are making a couple of assumptions. First, you seem to be assuming that there are explicit limits on what a majority might decide. Second, you assume that the majority is capable of making informed decisions, should they choose to do so.
Sure, governments and taxes are a fact of life, and sure, it will never happen that everyone agrees on all (or even some) of the decisions government makes. But we have witnessed plenty of “free elections” that were anything but (Stalin said it doesn’t matter who the people vote for, it matters who counts the votes). And we have witnessed elections in nations populated by two warring tribes, and whoever controls the outcome attempts to exterminate the other tribe altogether.
Governments dedicated to enriching the powerful and impoverishing everyone else are more the rule than the exception. Government is essential, but GOOD government is not, nor is it common. Without good people dedicated to the best interests of the polity, no government structure will prevail (and conversely, with good people no government structure is sure to fail).
What does any of that have to do with the stupidity and selfishness of Libertarianism as a philosophy? Why do you think that is even tangentially a reply to my comment?
Libertarianism says, Fuck you, Jack, I’ve got mine. That’s not even an imaginary solution, much less a real solution, to your problem of two warring tribes.
Interestingly enough, government action (by some other governments, obviously, not the two tribes) can actually solve such problems, or at least force them into some kind of mutual demilitarization.
But of course, government action is forbidden by Libertarianism. Because it’s “force” donchaknow, and force is never legitimate, and as Patrick says, anyone who accepts government pay “has the ethics of a thief”. So much for any UN peacekeeper who accepts pay to keep his own children from starving while he risks his own life to separate two warring tribes, both of whom currently hate but might, in some human future, come to be glad that they were prevented from killing or being killed. But no, can’t praise the peacekeepers, they’re no better than thieves!
Fuck that bullshit.
Patrick,
So if people wish to continue to use all of the services that a country provides, but does not wish to mutually agree to contribute any taxes to pay that service, what does the Libertarian propose? Is the person kicked out of the country, by force?
Perhaps we need an international space for Libertarians that isn’t a country, has no rules, and no one has to contribute anything if they don’t want to? Where do you recommend Patrick?
phoodoo,
In all your posts you’ve never once accurately conveyed anyone’s position. What should we conclude ?
Because terrible government can arise from many philosophies besides “pure” libertarianism. I’d argue that libertarianism, with a suitable dose of pragmatism mixed in, generally can work very well.
In the real world, the main problem with libertarianism is that no two libertarians can agree on lunch.
Richardthughes,
I don’t think I can be blamed for some individuals not knowing what their poorly thought-out philosophies logically entail.
You’re probably right about that. 🙂
Flint,
Flint,
Take just one of the examples mentioned here-corporate responsibility. How can a Libertarian government, with some pragmatism thrown in prevent companies from doing things that are good for their own bank accounts, but are detrimental to societies goals of harmony and equality?
I propose that Libertarianism has no solution for how to deal with these two diametrically opposed goals. After all there is a reason that Libertarianism lies at the opposite ends of the political spectrum from socialism. You have two completely different goals, and you are suggesting that just with a little pragmatism, you can accomplish both. I suggest that the two is worlds apart.
If a company wants to rape the land, withdraw all their profits from the greater population, allow risk and danger to the populace in order to sell their products, employ as few people as possible, and ignore any long term benefits for the good of short term profits for a few, a little pragmatism isn’t going to magically stop Phillipe Morris from killing as many kids as they can afford to.
phoodoo,
No, people not buying their products and shareholders being upset will. You only partly see one side of the equation. That being said this was one of your more thoughtful posts.
I am confident that your stated interest in the morality of a particular Government-recognized form of corporation is rooted in a desire to explore and elucidate the general question of morality as it relates to Libertarian policies, as opposed to… say… said stated interest being rooted in a desire to do more bashing on the obvious, unalloyed evils of Government and thereby divert attention from the existing topic of the perhaps-not-as-obvious possible flaws of US-Libertarianism. Accordingly, I have some more suggestions for topics you might wish to discuss:
Under what circumstances is it moral for John Doe to perform actions which have the effect of causing misfortune to befall Richard Roe?
What should be given greater weight when judging the morality of a given action: That all the actors who took part in said action did so purely voluntarily, or that said action caused misfortune to befall persons outside the restricted circle of those who took part in said action?
Under what circumstances is it moral for John Doe to profit from Richard Roe’s misfortunes?
If there are indeed circumstances under which it is moral for John Doe to profit from Richard Roe’s misfortunes, is Richard Roe’s misfortunes were consequences of actions taken by John Doe among the circumstances in which it is moral for Doe to profit from Roe’s misfortunes?
In your experience with presenting US-Libertarian concepts to persons who are not already US-Libertarians, do you find that the reception of said concepts is helped or hindered by the presence of palpable contempt for persons outside the US-Libertarian ‘choir’? (i.e., “ethics of a thief”, “living at the expense of others”, asserting that those who disagree with US-Libertarianism “{do not value] honesty, integrity, and honor”, etc)?
Richardthughes,
Under Libertarianism you can’t stop monopolies, so people don’t have a choice to not buy their products if they are essential items.
Furthermore, if a company uses deceptive medical means to compel people to buy their products (you know like Phillip Morris), they are essentially trapping people into buying their goods.
And what if the only company you can get your electricity from if destroying the environment? What if the only company you can get your tv and internet from is squeezing the price up as high as possible, so that people who run businesses have no choice to pay their extortion rates? And what if the food companies are putting fillers into food which is worthless crap that makes people fat and gives them ulcers, but because its cheaper, low income families have no choice? What if the only major employee in a small town only wants to pay its employees 2 dollars an hour, but because there are no other jobs in Bismark North Dakota, people just go without much food to survive. And what if Martin Shkreli owned the patent for the only cancer medications in America? And what if Monsanto acted like, well, Monsanto.
Everything about Libertarianism is anti-people and pro corporate heartlessness. Pragmatism can’t change that primary aspect of the political ideology.
I absolutely agree that majorities can be wrong, and voting rules can be bad. The moral that libertarians glean from those is that voting doesn’t matter and majorities should be given no say in anything. They create a system of “natural rights” where all that matters is buying power.
I don’t think those are the correct morals to draw myself. I think phoodoo and hotshoe are right; libertarianism, even if it were to be corrected by some sort of Georgism (i.e., forbid private ownership of land), will always benefit the rich and strong at the expense of the poor and weak. And because of that, will do all it can to ensure that the rich get richer and poor get poorer.
So, what ARE the correct morals to draw from those defects? First, that education is important and should be distributed as widely and deeply as possible. Libertarians claim to believe that there are truths and they may be known–I agree with that. Second, the goals of democracy should be understood and the methods of obtaining them should be constantly improved. E.g., in the U.S. there is almost no minority representation anywhere (via, perhaps, the single non-transferable ballot, or multiple transferable ballot, or ranking of candidates, etc.) In addition the ‘state’s rights’ required by such original colonies as Rhode Island have made the U.S. the least democratic country in the first world. That sort of stuff should be fixed, but libertarians and other “strict constructionalists” don’t like democracy and so treat “constitutions” as if they were written by Jesus Christ Himself instead of by a batch of 18th Century landed property-holders.
Ok, I’m ranting now, but I’m sick of libertarian know-nothings calling people who disagree with them thieves. Sorry, numbskulls, but dollars really aren’t more important than people and there are really no such things as “natural rights.”
Flint,
Well put. As P. J. O’Rourke noted, “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
phoodoo,
As I told cubist, I’d very much like to have the time to discuss this in detail, but I simply don’t. Work may ease up by mid February, but it may just get more intense. I know from experience that these discussions can expand to take unlimited amounts of time, so I’m going to have to refrain.
If you are genuinely interested in the answers to your questions, you could start with the Libertarian Party site. If you’d like to know what kinds of changes libertarians would make first, check out Downsizing the Federal Government.
The morality underlying the libertarian political movement is the non-coercion principle. Frederic Bastiat summarized the consequences nicely:
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.”
Finally, libertarians make a point of investigating the actual costs of government programs, including unintended consequences. Statists look only at the intended (not even actual) benefits.
Now I’m done with the topic. Enjoy the hate fest that happens whenever the ‘l’ word is dropped into an online discussion.
cubist,
As I said earlier, I don’t have time for a full discussion of libertarianism and anarchism. I will simply note that my characterizations of walto are based on his own statements. Most people, in my experience, never actually think too deeply about the nature of government so they don’t deserve the same opprobrium.
Patrick,
Yes, better to let corporations control buying and selling. They are much more trustworthy.
walto:
I think you’re putting your finger on some sine qua non elements of good government. Public participation is essential, though there are many ways for this to happen (even feudalism had it – there were mutual sets of obligations). An educated public is important, because participants (usually voters) need to understand the issues and tradeoffs. Complete and accurate information is critical for making good decisions — consumers and shareholders aren’t effective deterrents if they don’t know what the corporation is doing.
As for pragmatism, even libertarians need to recognize the need for laws and regulations. And among the most important regulations are the requirements for transparency. People need to know how their taxes are being spent, and what the corporations are doing against their interests, and what the ingredients are in the foods they buy.
On the whole, libertarianism requires enlightened self-interests far beyond the ability or inclination of most systems to enlighten them sufficiently.
My political opinions are about as hefty as Justin Bieber’s … but, any political system that requires universal voluntary ‘buy-in’ seems doomed.
Well, that’s certainly the neutral, non-propaganda thing to say!
And walto doesn’t deserve opprobrium either, which just makes you an immoral little shit for giving him grief.
What’s your excuse? Makes you feel better to play the supposed moral superior? Is making yourself feel better at the cost of other people feeling worse one of your Libertarian values?
Well, of course it is. Silly me!
hotshoe_,
If he can’t take it, he shouldn’t have started dishing it out. And yes, he does deserve opprobrium.
Something about “what can be asserted without evidene” springs to mind …
No, he doesn’t.
Yes, he does.
No, he doesn’t.
Let’s just take all that as read.
I know which is the more moral stance – one which you yourself supposedly believe it – which is not to harm people. But somehow you think harming walto (or trying to harm him at least) is an exception to your moral rule.
How does it make you feel to try to justify harming someone? Why are you not willing to back off and, even without admitting you were wrong to try to harm him, just stop repeating it?
What’s your payoff for repeating it?
Thanks, hotshoe. My sense from reading patrick’s posts over the last few months (I’m not reading his stuff anymore) is that he believes that anybody who disagrees with him about anything is posting in bad faith and as such deserves whatever mud patrick chooses to sling at them.
It’s a weirdly directed moral compass, I agree , but apparently it works for him.