I’ve been asked to join a new blog called Bleeding Heart Libertarians, which my friend Matt Zwolinski describes in his inaugural post as a “forum for academic philosophers who are attracted both to libertarianism and to ideals of social or distributive justice” (which defines a fairly wide tent). About half the participants are old friends of mine from IHS days.
The blog’s getting some attention in the blogosphere, thanks to plugs from Will Wilkinson, Tyler Cowen, and Andrew Sullivan. (The latter says: “The gulf between the Obama administration’s campaign rhetoric and governing record on civil liberties shows that building the left-libertarian alliance is more important than ever.”)
My first post is now up: Whence I Advene.
Today’s democracynow episode has a funny juxtaposition. The top story is about the “shock doctrine” and the danger of “extreme, free market principles”. The one below it is about how oil companies privatize profit and socialize costs. You can’t make this stuff up.
http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2011/3/9
Libertarians that care about social justice? Glenn Beck’s head is soon to explode.
If it hasn’t already exploded by now I don’t know what could make it happen.
BerserkRL as a guest on the show explaining why Beck is a fascist?
I see you changed it, so, what about you explaining on his show why Beck is a fascist?
I suppose that my point is this: Beck has told his audience that “social justice” is code. That code is what the Nazis used to glorify the extermination strategy. Beck banks of “social justice” to only be used in the sense that it prompts big government intervention. If BHL presents an alternative sense, then Beck loses grip of his main argument. Seriously, the only thing he’ll have left is to pretend that BHLs don’t exist. I may be overoptimistic, but I think we represent (a) him waving the white flag, (b) him slowly deteriorating into a corner, or (c) an on-air mental breakdown. I suppose the alternative is (d) he says that BHLs are “socialist communist” whatever. But if he goes with (d), then eventually he’ll have to answer why he’s not an even bigger communist since he wants more government than BHLs.
You may remember his “conservative libertarian” blackboard lectures (the ones Jon Stewart reanimated). Beck could always say “Oh well Stewart’s a fascist.” And that would play with his audience. But what happens when someone says, “OK what about liberal libertarians; are they fascist too?” He has nothing here. The $28 million/year idiot has no clothes. Can we please call him on it?
You see that who changed what?
In any case, he’s already said that anarchists are people who want total government, so I don’t see how liberal libertarians are going to faze him.
Someone changed BreserkRL to Roderick T. Long.
Has Beck told that to the guy he has sub for his show — Andrew Napolitano — who says here that he’s an anarchist? Boy, that would make a funny blackboard lecture: a line from Beck to Napolitano who represents total government.
But anyway, I don’t see why BHLs are necessarily anarchist. I suggest, BHLs are anyone who can reconcile the distinction between no-ownership and all-ownership. Obviously I think you can/do, but I also think that people who believe in choosing between governments (Molinari-style) can transcend that distinction. I’ve always thought panarchy is the way to describe that; anarchy seems needlessly limiting.
It seems to me — and I’ve commented to Kevin Carson on that page, but he hasn’t yet responded — that the paramount distinction for BHLs to make is whether the notion of ownership can transcend no-owner and all-owner, to demarcate outside the bounds of BHLs any theory/believer that rests on one or the other. I think that satisfies the task Bruce Bartlett lays out of reconciling Rawls and Hayek or, better, Wittgenstein and Molinari.
It seems to me, not only that such a synthesis is unassailable, but that BHLs ought to claim it as our own, and as our criterion. That way, questions of governing/not governing are strictly secondary. And the Glenn Beck types can’t — justifiably — accuse us of anarchy or total government since our root is entirely separate from politics. If he wants to say that is anarchy, then we say that so is any notion of God-given rights or natural law. But, first, we’d have to establish the synthesis of no-ownership and all-ownership as our foundation. As it stands, I’m fairly sure that the foundation is the Difference Principle, which merely says politics and philosophy are separate. The synthesis I’m describing would be even more sound since it says why politics and philosophy are separate.
Thoughts?
From a slightly different angle, if we want to be “root strikers,” then shouldn’t we attack the incoherent “concept” of resources: that they start off either owned by no one or owned by everyone. I think we’re committed to seeing resources as both/and, rather than either/or. It seems that moves beyond Lockeanism and mutualism.
On second thought, flip that argument upside-down: BHLs are the only libertarians who take resources as they are — in ordinary language. It’s the political theorists that put the concept under the knife and make the distinction that can’t be made in the first place. To twist a Wittgenstein quote: “‘resource’ is perfectly in order as it is, it’s just political theorists that muddy the waters!” So the burden rests with non-BHLs to say why ‘resources’ are essentially all-owned or no-owned. They have to say why the ordinary notion of resources which doesn’t make that distinction can brought into questioning.
I realized in a dialogue on Brad Spangler’s facebook page that defending the reconciliation is superfluous and confusing. Instead, the question, “why should it be brought under the knife?” is more intuitive and technically correct. Anyway, that’s my 400 cents.
That would be the only reason I would ever spend a single minute of my time watching that goofball’s show. That would be TV with a capital T and a capital V, my friends!
I’m sorry I cannot visit that blog again, though I enjoyed your first entry, the rest is a terrible mishmash of nonsense.
Yeah, how could a group of people possibly reconcile Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance with libertarianism? That would actually require the reader to step outside of themselves and analyze their own belief-system as a whole. Who has time for such trivial matters like critical thinking?
Who has time for your vapid bullshit?
Liberaltarianism is certainly the least compelling and least interesting form of left-libertarianism. It’s like the Bob Barr/Wayne Allen Root wing of the libertarian left.
@Jan, good argument. Eat a dick.
@JOR, Rawls’s difference principle itself is the cognitive seed for agorism; Rawls just didn’t understand the logical implication (see here). BHL is to neo-Rawlsianism as Rothbardianism is to neo-Misesianism.
@Jan, BTW, I mean that playfully — not in a hostile way.
It’s clear that “social justice” is a statist codeword. If a group of anti-statists adopts this codeword and, in the unlikely event, succeed in undermining its meaning in the same way that statists have undermined the meaning of “liberal” and “progressive”, that doesn’t invalidate Beck’s observation. At worst, he’ll have to change it to “Social justice was/(is sometimes)/(is often) a statist codeword.”
If you mean “liberal” in the classic sense, “liberal libertarians” is redundant.
If you’re using the modern sense, then “liberal libertarians” literally means “A libertarian who advocates liberty in the personal realm, but who is authoritarian in the economic realm.” Of course this oxymoron is nonsense.
What people really mean when they say “liberal/conservative libertarian” is “A libertarian who advocates partial economic/personal authoritarianism.” and are usually liberals/conservatives moving toward or away from libertarianism, as opposed to moderate libertarians, who are moderates along the liberal – conservative axis and are usually moving toward or away from libertarianism.
No more so than conservative libertarians.
To say that ‘social justice’ is a statist codeword would be to suppose that they use the term to mean something other than it seems to mean. At the very least, that’s not clearly true, and I’d be willing to say that it’s clearly false. Of course, most people who talk about social justice advocate state-driven redistribution of wealth. But what they mean by ‘social justice’ is a fair distribution of wealth and opportunities, not ‘statist redistribution of wealth.’ Even someone who assumes, as most self-proclaimed advocates of social justice do, that statist programs are the only means of achieving social justice, does not thereby use ‘social justice’ as a code word. That would be like saying that Thomists use ‘contingent being’ as a codeword for ‘the existence of God’ because they think that contingently existing beings necessarily depend on the creative activity of God, or that Aristotelians use ‘virtue’ as a codeword for ‘habituation’ because they think that a person can only develop the virtues through habituation. To hold that X is necessarily connected to Y is not to use ‘X’ as code for ‘Y.’ So, even if anarchists who think they can support social justice through non-statist means are mistaken, they’re pretty clearly using the term to mean the same thing as their statist counterparts. Ranting about code words in these contexts is just a way of avoiding honest rational engagement with people’s honestly held views by portraying them as sinister sophists out to dupe their unwitting rhetorical victims.
Bob:
What social justice should mean is equal rights; what statists actually mean is economic redistribution, censorship and the aggrandizement of the state. It’s a codeword because it’s used as benign sounding euphemism for something most people, except for the kind of people who use the term, consider to be malignant.
Explain how “state-driven redistribution of wealth” is “different” from statist redistribution of wealth.
There is no deception by the use of benign sounding euphemisms for malignant or controversial ideas in these examples, so how are they analogous?
If you mean libertarian “anarchists”, and their thoughts haven’t yet been completely corrupted by conflating “anarchy”, the closest description of the total state, with the stateless or civilized component of a society, then their sense of the term couldn’t be more opposed.
It isn’t, but that’s not the point.
Progressives and BHL:s both want “social justice”, which usually includes some form of wealth redistribution. However, BHL:s stress that it shouldn’t be brought about by statist means, whereas progressives either want to use statist means because they’re the tool of the status quo or they think it’s the only tool powerful enough. The goal is still roughly the same (the rich can’t kick others around and the poor have good living conditions).
Consider the difference between Marxist-Leninists and anarcho-communists. Both hate capitalism and want to bring about stateless communism, but the former want to use the state as a tool, whereas the latter want to smash the state because it’s what enables capitalism in the first place. However, if you place the Marxist-Leninist and the ancom in a stateless communist utopia, they’ll both be (presumably) happy and say “This is exactly what I wanted!”
Watoosh, you’re wrong to say that BHLs and communists are after the same goal. A communist’s “goal” is an internal contradiction. Insofar as a communist wants to control the ruling-class in order to abolish the ruling-class, the communist isn’t articulating anything at all. It’s like saying “my goal is to cross the river by staying on this side of the river.” It’s gibberish. The communist has failed to reference anything. And in that sense ‘anarcho-communism’ is like ‘illogical thought’. All sign; no symbol. But BHL is an olive branch to the closed-minded statists who think that only violence can bring about non-violence. As they say on the BHL site, the wounds are deep and the trust will be slow-coming. Re-building from the schism will take time. But BHL is a way for statists to say:
Some closed-minded statists will say:
The BHL will say, “What could you possibly reference with the proposition ‘peace through war’?”
The closed-minded statist will say,
The BHL will say, “But Gaddafi is the head of the Libyan state. You’re a statist demanding to override a state!”
That closed-minded statist says,
The BHL says “Well, why do you believe that the American state is a monolith?”
The not so closed-minded statist says,
The BHL says, “The force to command someone to do whatever someone else wants them to do.”
The not so closed-minded statist says,
The BHL says, “So you think the criteria for ‘rightness’ is determined by what then?”
The open-minded statist says,
The BHL says, “So what should happen when the military apparatus commands independent of the golden rule?”
The open-minded statist says,
The BHL says, “So what should happen when the feds — those with the formal power to command the military apparatus — command independent of the golden rule?”
The open-minded statist says,
Jefferson Davis barges in,
The open-minded statist says,
The BHL says, “Then someone else has to command the military apparatus.”
At this point, the BHL and the open-minded statist agree. But the Confederacy doesn’t understand. The Confederacy “thinks” it has the moral upper-hand because it cleared the first hurdle. But the BHL and the open-minded statist point out that the Confederacy merely “thought” that was enough. And here we have the point of intersection where the BHL and the open-minded statist agree: the BHL here stands in the Agora and the open-minded statist stands in the Constitution. The Confederacy names it ‘Evil’. Glenn Beck names it ‘Nazi’.
And here we stand. The Secessionists have cleared the first hurdle, but don’t understand that there’s a second hurdle. The Agorists/Zionists are invisible because the Secessionists label themselves “Agorists,” and Glenn Beck/Benjamin Netanyahu label themselves “Zionists.” And so the BHL and the open-minded statist shake hands while those calling themselves “Agorists” and “Zionists” point to the handshake as impossible — as the handshake happens. That is our context. That is the spirit of the living Constitution. That is spacetime.
Damn, my blockquote failed. I intended to quote Mark’s statement “Explain how “state-driven redistribution of wealth” is “different” from statist redistribution of wealth.”
Watoosh:
Social justice, in any non-statist sense, has nothing directly to do with wealth or its redistribution, except as a secondary consequence. Even then, the secondary consequence of wealth creation is far more important than its redistribution. A libertarian version of social justice would only reference the administration of justice without regard for social class
Regarding wealth redistribution, unlike statists, for non-statists it’s not about social justice, it’s either about opportunity for wealth creation or charity for the victims of misfortune and gifts to one’s community of education, beautification, arts, wisdom and science.
Look, Mark, I think you just need to give up on the idea that you get to determine the content of the views that other people hold. Let’s suppose that there are people out there who, when they say “social justice,” actually just mean “statist redistribution of wealth” (for what it’s worth, I didn’t intend that phrase to mean anything different than “state-driven redistribution of wealth”). Fine. The problem is that this is very plainly not what most people who use the term “social justice” favorably actually mean. Perhaps you have some sort of special sixth sense that allows you to determine when people are intentionally deceiving others. I somehow doubt it, but even if you do, I’d have to conclude that your super-cool sense faculty was malfunctioning if it were being set off by most favorable uses of that phrase.
Perhaps you are inclined to see deception because appeals to social justice are frequently presented as though they were some kind of trump card; we have to institute some proposed set of federal welfare programs, say, because social justice demands it. I would agree in being annoyed at the assumption that statist redistribution of wealth is the only conceivable means to a fair distribution of wealth. But even if fans of social justice haven’t even considered whether that assumption is false, they aren’t thereby trying to deceive me or using the term to mean “statist redistribution of wealth.”
But even if, for the sake of argument, I were to grant that people who simply assume that social justice requires state-driven redistribution of wealth are using a ‘deceptive euphemism,’ what reason would I have for saying that of people who explicitly argue that a fair distribution of wealth is a requirement of justice, that a fair distribution of wealth can only be achieved by statist means, and that therefore statist redistribution of wealth is a requirement of justice? Rawls, Nagel, Sen, and Nussbaum all come to mind as examples of people who make this argument explicit. Their arguments don’t have to be good; making a bad argument is not the same thing as lying.
Until you give me something better than this, I’m going to have to conclude that your own insecurity about the rational defensibility of your position has driven you to attribute nasty motives to your opponents in lieu of focusing on their actual ideas. If you don’t like it when people psychologize you in this way, you might consider cutting it out yourself.
And accusing someone of epistemic closure is not psychologizing about them. It’s making an evaluation of their propositions as to whether or not what the propositions say is drawn from logic or extracted from external relations — while the person makes claim that the relations are logical. This has nothing to do with psychologizing. If I say that Glenn Beck is extracting from external relations, I’m not saying that he’s “crazy,” I’m saying that he cannot possibly offer information — not in his current mode of “thinking”. Should he be censored? Well, if he should be, then so should everyone else who extracts from external relations and packages it as truth — that’s almost every television program. The problem is that Glenn Beck is packaging his method as sound. Now, as a people that aren’t necessarily a group of logicians, we’re having a hard time discerning what — ostensively — is presented as logic vs. what isn’t logic. So when someone claims that an external relation isn’t consistent with logic, it appears ad hoc because the television folks (not just Glenn, though especially him), are acting as if logic is found in particular external relations. We’re becoming one nation under Jared Lee Loughner. Think about his quote:
It amounts to a claim that logic is found in external relations, and that one must identify those external relations before one can access logic. This claim is entirely senseless, but it mirrors the television’s “logic” (of which Glenn Beck is its only begotten Son). And so now we have people affirming this mode of “thinking” in the same way the same people affirm a religion — from the outside-in, rather than inside-out. If we’re to censor Glenn Beck, then we’re to censor the evangelicals and the snake-handlers. Not a good idea, unless we can show how such activities puts us in danger.
I do believe that we have a moral obligation to educate people how the scam works, how epistemic closure is itself being packaged and sold. How that brings about belief-systems that insulate the fact that epistemic closure is a product just like human-poison is a product. How the purchase of that product puts all of us in danger: note that it likely caused JLL’s breakdown and allowed his subsequent rampage. And while people have the right to poison themselves, we have the right to raise awareness about the self-poisoning that’s going on. And if someone wants to stop us from raising awareness, then they’ll have to confront whether their claims are based in external relations or in logic. If external relations, then we’ll just have to tell them that their accusations are like the vomiting of poison. Would this not be a better justice system? Any one up for advocating Glenn Beck to not be censored but that he be sued for selling epistemic closure? I’d be pleased with a legal system that saw selling epistemic closure as 10x worse than selling drugs. Is there any precedent for such a suit? If not, would anyone be up for Glenn Beck as the precedent?
Bob:
I’m not saying that people who use the term “social justice” don’t really believe that statist wealth redistribution is, in their irrational beliefs, just. I’m saying that, when addressing a non-radicalized statist audience, they are using “social justice” instead of “socialism”, “communism”, reparations for slavery or “redistribution of wealth”.
Not that I blame them; it would be political suicide for them to do otherwise. But as I view them as a cancer on society, I believe that exposing their codeword to the public may help along their justly deserved apoptosis.
A cancer? Because by ‘social justice’ they mean ‘socialism’, ‘communism’, or ‘forced redistribution’? As long as by ‘a cancer’ you mean a benign cancer. Those words may reflect a misunderstand of stateless socialism and stateless redistribution, but the malignant cancer is the military-industrial complex and the information-industrial complex. To call these people who mere misunderstand justice a cancer, without reference to the military-industrial complex and the information-industrial complex, is not only wrong but represents epistemic closure in America par-excellence. So we’ve got people who misunderstand justice and people who rape justice. Yeah, let’s call those who misunderstand it “a cancer.” Mark, I really hope that you’re someone smart using an avatar to show what epistemic closure is. If so, bravo.
Mark Uzick: I’m saying that, when addressing a non-radicalized statist audience, they are using “social justice” instead of “socialism”, “communism”, reparations for slavery or “redistribution of wealth”.
Christ. Generally they are using it instead of those terms because it better expresses their intended meaning, not because they are intending to deceive. “Communism” for example is not some kind of general synonym for “out of control economic statism.” It means something quite specific about institutions of property ownership in an ideal social order and most of the people who spend a lot of time talking about “social justice” (like, say, Sen or Nussbaum or “Progressive” welfare statists generally) don’t believe in it. Their views are objectionable for other reasons, but if you go around saying “A-ha! When you say ‘social justice,’ that is really just a code-word for organized collective ownership of all but small-scale possessory property, and a system of free distribution based on stated desire, or (in cases of shortage) collectively-determined need!” then you are just going to make an ass of yourself, because that’s generally not what your interlocutor really believes in, either at the beginning or at the end of the day.
“Social justice” is in any case a term which is intended to encompass a lot more concerns than just a concern with overall distributions of wealth or property-ownership. Nussbaum’s Sex and Social Justice, for example, discusses, alongside quite a few economic topics, other topics such as female genital mutilation, the objectification of women in pornography, the criminalization of prostitution, prohibitions on gay marriage, and the use of coagulated social power to deny women opportunities for sexual joy. This sort of discussion fits pretty awkwardly, to say the least, within any narrowly economic interpretation of what “social justice” is supposed to mean. To try to reduce “social justice” to a simple slogan about, e.g., achieving a more “progressive” or egalitarian distribution of wealth, is to seriously distort what the people who use the term are saying.
Yes.
Yes, but force is not the issue; it’s the initiation of force, as in socialism.
The most malignant social cancers have always been the self righteous fanatics, who sincerely believe in their dogmatic religions.
Stateless collectivism may only be a stupid fantasy, but the methods propounded for its realization are evil and the end goal of the fantasy, even if stateless, as it requires the destruction of our humanity, is evil as well.
You know from my previous comments on this thread that I’m not unaware of possible alternative interpretations, so you know that I’m speaking of redistribution by theft.
You’re speaking of just two of the cancers of socialism.
Wrong. A social system reflects the overall values of its members. A diseased body politic cause the metastases that seed the large tumors to which you refer and the tumors themselves are comprised of many of these “mere misunderstanding” people. The state, even if criminal, is just an enterprise and like any enterprise, it succeeds by giving the market (the political market) what it demands and markets its product to stimulate continued demand.
The ones who rape justice are the merely corrupt. We can deal with them; we either jail them or pay them off. It’s the ones who promote evil with sincere righteousness that are the dangerous cancer. The corruption is only a symptom, but the corruption of thought is the systemic cause of the cancer.
So you want to hurl insults? OK:
You got that wrong, but all is not lost: I used you to show what epistemic closure is.
Well, I distinguish inside-out religion from outside-in religion. If you mean outside-in religion is dogmatic, OK, but it’s usually those on the right who are religious in the outside-in sense. How are lefties in a state of confusion more dogmatic than the outside-in religious types on the right? I won’t play the game where you call large swaths of people cancerous. Now you’re just vomiting poison.
Libertarianism transcends that false choice. You would need need to be be trapped in a left – right paradigm to read that into anything I’ve said. Are you? or are you just lying as a cheap rhetorical tactic?
When I debunk your misconceptions line by line, instead of making up the lie that I claimed superior objectivity of rightists over leftists, try correcting your misconceptions instead. Remember: some “libertarian” doctrines can become dogmatic too. The cancer of corrupted thoughts can be cured; you just need the will to do it.
You don’t like the word cancer? When members of the “body politic” cease cooperation, turn on each other and cannibalize society from the inside out, can you think of a more analogous name for it than cancer?
Also: Cancer is the effect of DNA, the cell’s operating system, corrupted by a toxic environment, analogous to the corruption of thought in a toxic social environment that results in a society riddled with cancer.
Early stage cancer cells, given an improved physiological environment can re-differentiate back into healthy cells, while late stage cancer cells usually must be suppressed or destroyed.
You can finish the analogy yourself.
Let’s see if we can nail down where we differ, rather than play this counterproductive game. What do you think about this?
His message is that egalitarianism, which is neither fair nor just, is also destructive of its ends. It puts the ends (ensuring every one’s needs are equally met) before the means and so it does nothing to conserve scarce resources nor maximise human flourishing. By putting the ethics of the means first, the ends are best achieved, showing that morality is harmonious with utility .
Egalitarianism of what? Are you not for egalitarianism of rights? Is he not advocating egalitarianism in production?
Egalitarianism advocates a system of equal ‘rights’; you want to know if I’m for a system of equal ‘rights’ of rights?
‘Rights’ in egalitarianism are positive rights. A system of positive ‘rights’ is an attack on negative rights, just as social-‘justice’ is an attack on justice.
The friend who came by years later, demanding half the apples, was an example of egalitarianism.
You must not have read about The Other Unknown Ideal.
So in a world where someone has 0 access to the means of production, oh well? His fault for not being born in more favorable circumstances?
I was demonstrating the senselessness of your question.
BTW: The link doesn’t work.
Define what you mean by “the means of production” so that I don’t answer the wrong question. It could mean many different things.
Coming from the guy who says that ‘illogical thought’ is not senseless.
Recall the David Schmidt example. Well, imagine that a child is born in a world full of well-developed property. According to your take on “rights”, if no one wants to give property to the child and eventual teenager, then she’s just shit out of luck and can’t produce. And she’ll certainly starve. But oh well, he should have gotten here when the gettin’ was good.
You also think Bradley Manning is a war criminal?
He took an oath to defend the Constitution. I don’t know his actual motives, but what he did was required by his oath.
He’s being punished for treason on account of his refusal to commit treason. It’s just another example of how the state represents lawlessness and anarchy.
Then we agree there.
When you say “generally” I take it to mean “in their exchanges with fellow statists”. It’s not being used as a codeword under those circumstances.
It’s when a word’s used in addressing a general audience, who may be dismayed by what they really mean, or when a general audience is expected to listen to them address each other that noble sounding words like “progressive” or “social-justice” are used.
Yes…some of them may be “liberals”. Just because, in some cases, a codeword may encompass some beliefs shared by libertarians, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t trying to obscure that meaning from the audience too. Also: even if they’re not trying to hide everything about their meaning, that doesn’t mean that they’re not using it to obscure the other parts. E.g., when addressing a libertarian leaning audience, they might selectively elaborate those parts to which libertarians would be sympathetic.
Statists don’t hold a monopoly on codewords. Libertarians, too, are often afraid to reveal too much to their audiences, engaging in similar deceitful tactics.
I see. Only His Majesty is permitted to point out errors. One would think His Royal Highness would care to know about his errors.
Why couldn’t you have just said “natural resources” or “land”?
Why are you making up this straw-man argument? You know very well my position is the opposite.
I made this comment to you previously and I’ve touched on this subject in other comments:
BTW: The largest obstacle along this path may very well be ownership by fiat of natural resources, such as land, as things in themselves, instead of limited property rights in their use through their transformation into useful things.
Natural resources are not created by men and so cannot be property. We can only have property in the uses to which we put them and may exclude others from their use only to the extent that our use, if preexisting to theirs, is disturbed.
Where their intended use has a higher utility than ours, they can offer to buy some or all of our property rights in the use of the resource.
A monopoly on the use of a piece of land irrespective to any use of that land, I refer to as “landlordism”. If we had an otherwise stateless society, except divided into countless parcels, we would live in a society of many little states in their most virulent form: dictatorships and those without land would be either slaves or dead.
In time, either through buy-outs, alliances or aggression, the landlords would regroup back into conventional states.
So the question in question is “Are you not for egalitarianism of rights?” How’s this: “Do you think that for a right to be a right it must necessarily be universal?” By ‘universal’ I mean: available to everyone.
Do I? You think people using the phrase “social justice” are cancers. And you expect me to be surprised that you wouldn’t reject a derivative positive right?
It’s called a thought experiment. Please read this.
Hopefully you’ve read the link by now and you know what a thought experiment is. In this particular thought experiment, the perspective from which you’re assuming — that of the aging girl — there aren’t natural resources because everything within, say, 100 miles has been highly cultivatived.
In this thought experiment you’ll notice that no one has to use fraud or force on you. The legal system(s) is run by people who strictly adhere to the non-aggression principle absolutely and context-independently. So, if you’ve followed to this point, you’ll recognize a problem. Negative rights, by themselves, allow unconscionable injustice. Now: do you want to do the sensible thing and add positive rights to your system or do you want to maintain the “integrity” of your system and disallow positive rights — damning the aging girl herself and her right to produce. You may find it enticing to reject my thought experiment altogether again.—Well, as the link will tell you, then you haven’t quite made it to philosophy 101. Is this Leonard Peikoff?
Equal rights of rights is gibberish. Let me restate your question coherently:
Yes. I’m not.
Not just anyone; only those who respect the same rights for others.
Statism is a cancer that cannibalizes a society from within. There is no statism without statists. Theft, murder, slavery, extortion and genocide isn’t some floating abstraction for you to politely pontificate about; people do these things. People promote these things. As long as you willingly allow them the pretense of being good people, you share in their guilt. If they really mean well, then show them what they really are, and, if they’re as well meaning as they want you to believe, they will reform. If they’re not, then at least make them live with the stark reality of what they really are. They want the sanction of their victims and you seem all too happy to offer it.
What’s that?
404 not found
If natural rights are recognized and adhered to, then, by definition, there is no injustice. I’m certain that you’re confusing injustice with hardship, misfortune and all kinds of evils which befall all living things.
Your belief qualifies you as a statist.
Why the implausible story? Why not a believable scenario that gets immediately to the point:
The young mother is fine. One day she takes a spill and becomes seriously injured, unable to take care of herself or pay for her medical bills. She has no family to support her and her children.
Your answer is welfare extracted at the point of a gun, which, of course is always a phony justification for a power grab. Only the tiniest amount of what’s wasted and stolen ever gets to people who really need it and those people are too useful where they are to actually help them to become independent.
My answer is private charity. The best hope that anyone befallen by evil has, is to live in a free and prosperous society. A society enlightened enough to be free is a society is enlightened enough to have many people with empathy and wealthy people whose highest ambition is to help the deserving poor, victims of fate and even those doing well to improve their minds and health. Once people have enough to secure their material needs, their focus on contributing to society changes from guilt driven obligation to a rewarding passion.
I’m making a distinction between instances where someone cannot exercise their right to produce because of a situation beyond anyone’s control vs. because of a situation that the configuration of a legal system causes. You’ve given an instance of the former. I’m asking about an instance of the latter.
It’s strange that we value the approval and the privileges of the state so highly that, as libertarians, we find ourselves in the position of demanding equal rights for everyone to have their marriages licenced and regulated by the state.
It’s like the New York naturopaths demanding the same right to be licenced and regulated by the state as other doctors.
Sorry. My comment was meant for “The Logic Of Marriage” thread.
No you’re not. The example you gave put no person or system as a morally liable cause. You set up an implausible scenario where her situation was a circumstance of fate and where no initiation of force was involved. That was the whole illogical ethical point of your scenario: that a lack of aggression “caused”, as in “was responsible for” her situation, wasn’t it?
No. I am not saying that a lack of aggression is responsible for her situation. I’m saying that an incorrect conception of rights is responsible for her situation (a conception that you continue to advocate). If you believe, as you say, that no injustice can logically exist in a situation where natural rights are 100% respected, then explain this logical scenario in which natural rights are 100% respected. No one is forcing the girl in any way. No one is defrauding the girl in any way. So, by definition, you say, this is just an act of fate (maybe we should say “Fate”). I’m saying that this situation is hardly a matter of “Fate” and more a matter of a poorly thought-through system of rights. A system that you may find extremely convenient, from your perspective, and without the capacity to switch perspectives, you’ll continue to make to that case. Though, any reader who is able to switch perspectives, will see that what you’re describing as “Fate” is perfectly within the control of human beings. Ready to adjust yet? Or do I need to explain who else spoke of “Fate” in the way you do?
In my example, looking at it from your perspective, the accident victim and her children are just as much a “victim” of “a poorly thought-through system of rights”. In both you have people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in a situation where they cannot take care of themselves without help.
In your system of “positive rights”, other members of society would be forced to help the unfortunate through, in my scenario, state welfare and through forced redistribution of wealth in your scenario.
In my system of negative rights, the unfortunate have far greater opportunity to help themselves without aggression deployed on their behalf, but failing that, they can only rely on the voluntary generosity of others. After all, there’s a reason why my system is called “voluntaryism”.
Your scenario, if it’s in a voluntaryist society where, for some inexplicable reason, no opportunities were available, the unfortunate would be given an opportunity, by generous volunteers, to become self supporting.
The unfortunate, in my scenario, would get medical help and care for her children until she recovered sufficiently to take care of her family.
The fallacy of those who believe in “positive rights” is their belief that people can’t be trusted to have concern for the plight of others, yet they can be trusted to employ unprovoked violence for good of all; this very same abuse and violation of rights that acts as a catalyst for antisocial behavior and corruption, then fueling the cynicism toward human nature that leads people to distrust liberty. It’s a vicious cycle leading to tyranny and anarchy.
Well, we both agree that voluntarism is ideal. So you can continue to pretend that I want something other than voluntarism, but you’re demoting the debate from dialogue down to dramaturgical action.
As to the actual issue: my scenario is not calling for a positive right in the sense that you and Glenn Beck want to imagine is a slippery slope to fascism. Maybe that will fly in some AOL chatroom, but even this website’s host has explicitly stated his support of derivative positive rights.
My beef with you is not who-does-what and whether they use guns to make it happen (though you clearly haven’t processed that yet, or you don’t know what pure communicative action is in the first place). My beef with you is purely conceptual. Maybe you don’t know what that means. Your use of Fate is quite worrisome. You still seem to appeal to a sideways-on view in which the bio-chemical realm — as the various reactions amongst particulars — has some causal affect on thought. You still haven’t said anything to show that you’ve been able elevate your conception of thought above the bio-chemical. And so long as that’s the case, Fate will appeal to you — as it did to others throughout history (I don’t want to mention names to poison the well, but Fate has justified some really awful undertakings in mankind’s record book).
To flesh out what matters, and what you haven’t addressed at all: you want to say that so long as there isn’t force or fraud, there is a voluntarist society. I say that natural rights encompass more than the right to not be forced or defrauded. I say, along with David Schmidt’s thought experiment, that the very nature of human living entails purposeful production. And, so that you can suppress your inner Glenn Beck, let’s put it in your terms. Natural rights include the right to not have hoarders prevent you from purposeful production.
Even in a voluntarist society, by your view of natural rights — which excludes the right to not have hoarders prevent you from purposeful production — the people will be unable to distinguish the impoverished who need private charity from the impoverished who don’t need any charity at all! They need the hoarders to register the Lockean Proviso, and see that a good drought is not whatever the hell you want it to be. Yet on your conception of natural rights, if you can do it without force or fraud, then nothing’s wrong with possessing as much as you can get away with.
This isn’t just a blind-spot. This is blindness entirely. You’ve grasped a “concept” of natural rights which you’ve made true by definition and now you take this tail-consuming activity to be linear. And yet I’m the one who is engaged in a vicious cycle? Seriously?
I remember when I, too, was confused about the distinction between determinism and reductionism.
Wrong. Voluntaryism requires force. Another word for “pacifists”
is “slaves”.
That’s one of the oldest statist fallacies. What statists call hoarders, enlightened people call prudent. People who save against future uncertainty are the ones who make a society’s recovery from bad times possible.
Under a non-voluntary system possession is often accomplished by “getting away” with something. In liberty, you can only become rich by creating value. The wealthier you become, the more good you have done toward meeting the wants and needs of your fellow man. When you become tired of creating value, you can then retire and devote even more of your time and capital toward good works.
Dude. I’m giving you classic John McDowell. If the Space of Reasons is infringed upon by anything outside of itself — causation specifically — then you fall in the Myth of the Given. Fate is a belief in the absolute power of cause and effect. The only way to short-circuit determinism is to short-circuit reductionism (or at least the kind of reductionism the blocks the Gestalt). To grasp the Gestalt is to no longer be subjected to determinism. Does that help you out?
Voluntaryists aren’t necessarily pacifists. But negating pacifism does not require the use of force. If (you think) voluntaryism requires force, and you self-identify as a voluntaryist, then you advocate the use of force. That’s trouble for you there bub.
First, you’re going to have trouble calling me a statist since your version of voluntaryism requires force. So, you might want to deal with that before you call me a statist. Second, you think it’s enlightened to accumulate as much property as possible, without respect for whether or not it begins to hurt the community?
First, by “in liberty” I’m assuming you mean the voluntaryism that requires force. So, not in liberty. Second, you still haven’t even touched the issue. You’re preaching capitalism, when capitalism is irrelevant to your problem. Your problem is your “concept” of natural rights. That “concept” says there is no right to not be prevented from producing. So a perfectly capable young woman — ready and able for the workforce — has to be thrown to private charity in order that she not starve, because you want to be able to accumulate as much property as is possible without regard for what is enough.
If studying John McDowell helped you to understand why causality was not a universal principle, then, by now, you would have been able to make a logical case for that idea.
“Voluntaryist-pacifists” are people who wish for liberty, but only if it requires no defense; otherwise they’ll settle for slavery.
Right; just logic.
And how will you negate people’s right to self defense? will you kill them?
You’ve been presented with countless cases. Try not to think of it as whether causality is universal or not. Think of it in terms of whether causality is a constant or a variable, similar to the case with ‘object’ and ‘thing’. ‘Causality’ is a formal concept and so a variable. It’s a variable that comes with a constant form. And so, just as you saw from how we have to treat formal concepts like ‘object’ and ‘thing’ as variables, the same goes for causality. “‘X’ brought about this state of affairs.” where X stands for a set of causes and a set of effects. But note that the proposition ‘x brought about this state of affairs’ is not itself subject to causality. Causality does not infiltrate the proposition; it stands in logical space, where cause and effect are one (a koan).
OK but you said that voluntaryists will use force. Are you unaware of what transcends the contradictory voluntaryism with force and the self-defeating voluntaryism of pure passivity?
OK you’ve got a terminological problem. Self-defense is not force. Force is a species of aggression. Self-defense is not the same as any species of aggression.
Sets of causes and effects are not particular examples of causality in the way that books are particular examples of things. It’s called “causality” because it helps govern ( is one of the boundaries) of causes and effects.
Causality is not a set of things or events. It’s a principle governing time.
Causality is a proper concept that’s part of the set of the formal concept: principle.
If what your saying is that my statement isn’t, strictly speaking, true, then you’re right. Just like “Another name for a “voluntaryist-pacifist” is “slave”.”, it’s purpose is purely rhetorical and its effect works by contrasting the deeper truth to the superficial lie. But I thought that was obvious.
That definition only applies to a limited legal usage. Have you heard of the “non-initiation of the use of force” principle? The implication of it is that you may use force in self-defense.
Pacifism is not synonymous with non-aggression; it means you cannot physically fight in self-defense, e.g., if you use a gun in self-defense, you are not a pacifist.
So all this time you’ve been calling people who peacefully protect themselves with weapons pacifists?
I dig it.
Might one say that the rule only holds in some modes of communication, but not in others?
And in conceptual communication which manifests linearity.
No.
Tolstoy———————Gandhi—————-Washington
Jesus———MLK——–Thoreau—–Rand——Fox News
<—-Peace———————————————War—–>
Will-less Intellect———Satyagraha————–Aggression
Pacifism——————-Self-Defense————-Barbarism
So your response to getting nailed for changing the topic to evade a losing stance is to do it again? “This is pathetic.” is, obviously, a warning as to the following content of your comment.
BTW: There can be no such thing as a “voluntaryist state”. Whatever the progressive inspired notion that you’ve got in mind, since you’re so reluctant to unveil it, the only real issue probably is: how to keep from there.
Are you attacking all Christians and Muslims as anti semites? or just the ones that are mostly libertarian?
If names could stand alone, then so could concepts.
A name, by itself, is just a sound.
Just as a concept by itself is a pseudo-concept, so a name by itself is a pseudo-name.
What’s funny is your rote belief that anytime someone comments about the inanity of what you’re saying, it must necessarily be a way to avoid the devastating force of your argument. Maybe it just really is pathetic. How many hours a week do you watch Fox News?
It just keeps getting better. Please, point to me where I said or implied that a “voluntaryist state” is possible. You put it in quotes so I’m assuming you see that somewhere. Happy hunting.
OK, first, you think that Glenn Beck is mostly libertarian? You do realize how insulting that is to people around here? Second, no, I’m only pointing out that fundamentalists in any religion can only play make-believe that they’re pro-anything-other-than-their-own-definitely-100%-perfect-religion. And if you’d like to debate whether Glenn Beck is a fundamentalist or not, tell me how many non-fundamentalists hold rallies with several hundred thousand folks and tell them to “return to God” (specifically the one and only God, as understood by the Joseph Smith). Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.
You don’t comment or reply at all; you just make some stupid crack about something unrelated.
Explain how you can have a system of “positive rights” without the right to initiate the use of force. That’s the essence of the state.
You can no more do that than have a system of negative rights without having the right to defensive force.
Glen Beck is the most successful promoter of libertarian ideas among the average poorly educated public that constitutes the vast majority in our society.
I’ve seen his effect on people I know, who tell me that for the first time they understand and agree with much of what I’ve been saying and which they couldn’t understand for so many years.
He was just like them and as he evolves, he’s been managing to bring them along.
This is further evidence that you get your “information” second hand. Glen Beck only advocates that people follow their faith, even if it’s ethical atheism, eastern religion or Islam.
How can you have a system of natural rights without the use of force?—People organize themselves spontaneously and honor the fact that everyone else has the same natural rights. Well, why exactly do (derivative) positive rights have to be any different? You may think that positive rights absolutely cannot derive from natural rights, but why? You might even — as J. Neil Schulman once did on my facebook wall — have a mild seizure over the idea that a positive right need not be a legal right. But that is what this boils down to, isn’t it?—You’re making the unjustified assumption that a positive right must necessarily be a legal right. Only negative rights, you squirm in your chair, aren’t necessarily legal rights. So tell me: how is a positive right that doesn’t claim to be a legal right “the essence of the state”?
The idea that selling hysteria with the left hand and Fusionism with the right hand is somehow good for libertarianism is frighteningly misguided.
Me too. And then when you start to dig into the details you realize that their impulse for freedom is hijacked by Fusionism, one of the greatest practical jokes in the history of power relations. But I’m glad you get to feel understood. At what cost, though?
Now that’s not a bad thing. In fact, as long as by ‘evolves’ you mean ‘stops salivating over external relations’ then that’s wonderful. I did however watch him for several days during the Egyptian revolution, and all I saw was classic Fusionism. That’s a very un-evolved position. In fact, it’s constant in everything that he says. “Be scared.” “Take Fusionism.” “Feel relaxed until I’m not on your television anymore.” If you can find me where he breaks from that pattern, I’d love to see it. Oh, and return to God doesn’t count. Bill O’Reilly’s been playing that game long enough for everyone to know it’s just an abstract version of “Be scared.” “Take Fusionism.” “Feel relaxed until I’m not on your television anymore.” Epistemic closure pre-packaged as truth. That’s the product Faux News sells. I see where GB is weighing his own channel. If he plans on selling something other than fear, fusionism, and fixation, then I’d love to see it.
Is that right? So tell me all about this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. That’s just a few months worth. Let me know if you need more…
Pacifism could only work as an enclave inside a very well behaved and defended society. If even one member goes rouge or they are invaded by, or have a dispute with, an outsider or dispute among themselves, they’re doomed.
Since rights are moral claims on others, natural rights are moral claims on others, where morality is derived from Man’s nature.
Since morality is a code of values, the moral claims that constitute natural rights are based on the values (things that Man seeks) that promote his life and happiness.
Since liberty (freedom from aggression) is the only way for a rational being to have a productive and happy life, the only morality that’s natural to Man is one that claims the right to be free from aggression, the basis of all negative rights.
A person’s moral claim on other people (his rights) must be limited to not having his liberty violated. Any claim that goes beyond this negative right, that isn’t based upon it, is a positive right that can only be enforced through aggression.
If you say that a right need not be a legal right, then you’re saying that a moral claim is voluntary and need not be enforceable, so we’re back to the unworkable idea of pacifism.
Also: Since natural morality should be based on one’s life and happiness, then the only moral demand on someone to provide charity to another must come from his own reward for satiating his own empathy and/or admiration and love.
Concern for others should come from the goodness of their heart (empathy and love), not as a guilt driven and dreary obligation. A benefactor should be praised, not snarled at and demanded from.
All rights are legal rights or they’re just doomed experiments involving unenforceable claims. What right do you have to prevent someone from enforcing a just claim? and how would a pacifist stop him?
So you believe that liberty cannot be improved by a gradual process?
So you don’t believe someone like Ron Paul as president and more like him in the house and senate would be an improvement?
His message wasn’t to be scared, but to be prepared for some potentially scary things. He wasn’t advocating intervention, only explaining how intervention has made thing worse.
Don’t compare him with O’Reilly, who’s a neo-con.
I’m an “ethnic Jew” and I can tell you firsthand that large swaths of Jewish culture are steeped in progressive, socialist and communist ideology. The same is true for radical Islam. As much as I dislike theology, Beck is right that they would do much better to concentrate on their traditional religious values than statist ideologies. I know of cases were he has succeeded.
While I would personally prefer that Beck would steer clear of theology and other of his idiosyncrasies, then he wouldn’t be Beck and he probably wouldn’t be effective at moving so many of the kind of people I could never get across to, toward many solid libertarian ideas.
I don’t claim to be a pacifist, though I do think that defense ought to be a last resort. Pacifism’s strength is in elucidation: withdrawing nonsense from circulation. Natural rights will never be respected where unbound language has free reign. The only hope is a criterion of sense, otherwise no army in the world can stop the march of “understanding” sign-posts/orders (which is what language is) and the cognitive mutilation that brings. Even in a voluntary society, if language is not bound by a criterion of sense, you’ll be free to enjoy cognitive slavery and non-violent (physically speaking) exchange. And before you tell me that I want to force such bounds, stop. I don’t, but if you think Fusionists give two shits about sense, or that they’re advancing your cause, you might want to check your premises.
I think the time for gradualism is nearly over.
I would like to see a Paul/Kucinich ticket in 2012.
The scariest thing Glenn Beck can imagine is the collapse of the banking cartel. He loves financial rackets as long as their undertaken by private companies. I’m assuming you do too. We wouldn’t to argue over that though, ’cause David Friedman might pick up his marbles and go home.
A last resort for what? Defense?
You must mean that force should be a last resort; coercion before force; negotiation before coercion; persuasion before negotiation; cooperative friendliness and good will before persuasion.
You must be confusing passive resistance with pacifism.
Agreed.
This scenario isn’t possible. There is no voluntary society where mental anarchy reigns: only the anarchy of the state.
I’m not interested in fusion; it’s evolution I prefer. People don’t learn and change by flipping a switch.
Then you’d better start preparing your bunker.
Kucinich is an enemy of liberty. He’s not evolving at all. An alliance on specific issues is the most that can be expected.
You’re just making stuff up.
Free market = financial racket? And you wonder why I suspect you’re a “progressive”?
As far as categorical strategies go: passive resistance, yes. As far as my personal strategy goes: Thich Nhat Hahn/MLK-style pacifism through Wittgensteinian language boundaries and third nature “willing” of one’s own evolution. I also think that through that specific effort, utilitarian and deontological criteria are only satisfied by self-interest.
I’m making stuff up? Why does Mr. Beck call it economic terrorism? Great news though! Cato unmasks the fascism within the neoconservative movement. I can’t wait to hear Glenn hit them like he hits progressive fascism. Or. You don’t think he’s a phony do you?
No bunker needed if the demands are non-violent/pacifistic.
Free market does not = financial racket. Red market and/or dark market = financial racket. My concern is less that statelessness won’t neutralize those markets, and more that without the proper transition to statelessness, dark market investors will make the state feel like an under appreciated friend you want back.
Are you talking about the plan to collapse the financial system with a mortgage strike? It’s not a free market plan to liberate the financial system by removing the monopoly powers of the Federal Reserve banking cartel, but to undermine the economy, driving a desperate populous into the embrace of dictatorship.
Beck wants to eliminate the Fed banking cartel.
Beck has been hitting them as hard, pointing out that there’s little difference between neo-cons and the progressives.
So the people who want liberty haven’t the numbers to even bring about gradual reforms yet they have the power to bring about complete revolution using passive resistance, the violent majority completely impotent in their demands for the state to crack down on liberty?
In the current state of our culture, any revolutionary change will be a revolution against whatever remnants of liberty still exist. Gradualism, via education and reforms, is the only realistic path.
You’ll need to give an example of a social function instituted in liberty that is more evil than the state’s version of this function if you want to make a point.
And how does Beck plan on breaking the Fed’s cartel? You do know the Fed is run by private banks, don’t you? Are you suggesting that toxic assets in the banks will just become whole on a gold standard, like magic? Just bolt the door shut even though the horse has long left the stable? What good does that do? ((Gold standard from here on out! And what do you know? The cartel still has leverage over nearly all the gold. You think we’ll be OK with an OPEC-style banking system? You think the cartel would even be broken up while — post-Fed — they still out-leverage the USG debt by at least 43-1?)) What could possibly go wrong with a tunnel-vision objective like Glenn Beck’s?
Beck has been hitting them hard? Evidence please…
So you demand a gradualism via education. I demand the same but I believe in Gladwell’s concept of tipping points.
I don’t need to give you a social function in liberty, I need to give you a 100% commercial function in liberty. Do you believe that all commerce in liberty is a priori a social function?
For someone who hates Beck, it’s strange that you seem to think he should have all the answers. I haven’t heard one, but I’ll take a guess that he would support Ron Paul’s bill to end the Fed.
Money needs to be opened up to free market competition and FRNs need to be phased out as leverage is unwound. It may be messy without bail outs and many banks will go under. Depositors will be paid off in fiat, but all new deposits will have to depend on private insurance or no insurance. Banks will need to make money by providing services, not through money creation and loans.
Of course, the public isn’t ready for anything like this. If there are any reforms, they likely will come about in a manner which protects the politically connected while devastating the entrepreneurs and middle class savers.
Within the past week he did a show on the Fed, featuring G. Edward Griffin discussing “The Creature from Jekyll Island”.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but there are different senses of “commerce”:
1.
an interchange of goods or commodities, especially on a large scale between different countries (foreign commerce) or between different parts of the same country (domestic commerce); trade; business.
2.
social relations, especially the exchange of views, attitudes, etc.
3.
sexual intercourse.
4.
intellectual or spiritual interchange; communion.
and all of them are important social functions.
I do not hate him; I pity him.
He spoke of right-wing fascism in the interview?
So language will necessarily be bound by a criterion of sense in a stateless society? I have no idea how you think this issue can be settled a priori. Though I’ll certainly hear you out…
Statelessness is a matter of degree. Stateless government exists in every society and is found where reason rules. A society is a collection of people, so political liberty is rooted in the person. Personal liberty is achieved through discipline – the rational control of ones faculties, both mental and physical – which, itself, is possible only through liberty . (see Montessori on how “Discipline must come through liberty“. pg. 86 for a true insight into the relationship between liberty and self discipline.)
Where irrationality predominates in a society, society surrenders liberty to state control, but where reason prevails, a society jealously guards its freedom to engage in activities unmolested.
Are you saying that without observing an actual stateless society that that we can’t predict whether this principle of liberty following reason will hold or suddenly reverse, rendering a free people suddenly insane?
I didn’t imagine your conception of statelessness as a matter of degree. In that case, I’m more inclined to accept the non-empirical framework as the only one that doesn’t tend to foreclose ethical frontiers. Though, the empirical capacity of Magnetar and the rest to intentionally and effectively collapse the financial system to benefit maybe 0.0001% of the population, without any government regulations standing in the way (an extremely high degree of statelessness), demonstrates to me that counterfactuals are already open to view. If you think that there’s necessarily a direct relationship between degree of statelessness and ethical behavior, I’ll point to Magnetar all day and say “not exactly”. Am I not justified in saying that there tends to be very high correspondence between statelessness and ethical behavior, though less than 1:1?
Magnetar Capital actually lost huge amounts of money betting on a fundamentally flawed strategy. Only the bailout of AIG made them profitable instead of bankrupt. They “made” money either though dumb luck or a shrewd guess that “the government” wouldn’t permit the banksters to fail. In any case, they profited from and helped to promote a huge increase of the size and scope of the state.
That’s just false. Their strategy was ethically flawed, but financially genius. It depended 0% on bailout money. Please read the facts.
I’ve truly appreciate the Montessori links you’ve supplied. They’ve opened up areas I didn’t know had been charted. In return, I humbly suggest:
Consider the story of a random guy with high-functioning autism. From the outside he recognizes how reckless a set of loans are (the criteria for credit was outside the legal system entirely — MERS acted/acts as a competing legal system to the USG). The autistic man — it becomes apparent in the story — is either unwilling or unaware of the fact that if he could gather this information from the outside, those who packaged the mortgages intentionally designed them for default. In fact, we know for certain that Goldman Sachs did just that: they even admit it. The question is: was such an operation isolated? Or was it the very foundation of the mortgage industry (and a substantial chunk of the financial industry)?
You call this a flawed strategy? In the financial sense, you call this a flawed strategy? In the jungle-law sense, you call this a flawed strategy? From a pure profit-motive perspective, what’s wrong with forming a shadow legal system in shell companies, herding all the suckers you can find, and then betting on their inevitable default against foreign investors who will naturally assume the loans accord with the USG’s standards? You seriously think the people who packaged the mortgages and securities lost money? You don’t think they maybe bet a dollar or two on the defaults — where no one could tell who was betting what?
See for yourself.
No. No mention of neo-conservatives as fascists. It also seems no one passed him the memo to read Kevin Carson.
Practically every point he made was making that case. Were you waiting for him to literally recite your precious “neo-cons = fascists” mantra? He’s made the comparison between the various statist ideologies often enough that I, for one, really don’t care to hear him repeat himself, as he already does so far too often for my taste.
Carson seems to be saying that because of the perverse legal and regulatory incentives that make it less profitable to deploy capital productively than to engage in financial games and fraud, the wealthy should be taxed even more, thereby killing off the productive sector even further. He also repeated the fallacious idea of “planed obsolescence”. Maybe he’d like to implement a freeze on innovation so that nothing will become obsolete anymore. Much of what he said was true, but why muddy up truth with obfuscating nonsense.
Practically every point he made was contra right-wing fascists qua fascists?
Do you want to say that the distinction between inflation and deflation is not real?
Yes. Do you have a different interpretation of his points?
No. What’s your point?
(1) Tell me one thing he says that you interpret as neo-conservatives are fascists.
(2) I interpret his “points” to amount to, “the fed is the source of all major problems.” And I would expect many “conservative-libertarians” to agree. Though I’d be interested in how you/they square that belief with this.
That 1/3 of what GB said consists in the belief that the Fed is hurting America through inflation. As KC says, you’re living in a dream world.
You do, but I’m not one to say that. Causality is not conditional and all modes of communication must be logical if they’re really communication.
Pacifism means “no defense”, not “self-defense”.
In no context does defensive force equal aggression.
Really? So command/order is necessarily logical? Advertise/buy is necessarily logical? Campaign/vote is necessarily logic? You better not tell me these aren’t communications, cause I’ll paint you red.
To whatever extent that they are coherent, they communicate something, but if there’s no coherence, then they’re just noise.
Do you rule out an interactive modality that overrides the principle of causality?
Whatever that is, if we’re talking about reality, then of course.
Do you want to say that no form of expression is immediate?
If you’re speaking of spontaneity and creativity, there is both, but they don’t take place in a vacuum of context.
Agreed. But context is within philosophy’s jurisdiction. What do you want to say here:
Do you want to say that the context for this particular use of ‘table’ is the bio-chemical on-goings? Or is the scene itself the relevant context?—-Sure, if the table consists of conditions and chemical compounds and the instructions are to connect the proper reactions, then causality is part of the context. But only sometimes.
The context for this use of table is the particular relationship by which a word might correspond to another.
I’m sure this has little to do with the point you’re trying to make, so you’ll need to set up your illustration in a more cogent way.
OK, but every word you’re trying to relate it to is like a lever, and you don’t necessarily grasp the levers’ functions unless you grasp the whole scene.
So you compare the relationship between different sets of words until you find a common one that can use all the words in making these sets.
If I understand what you’re saying, then no, I don’t do that. The work is not in finding a word that represents the relationships. The goal is to grasp a concept that expresses the relationships.
I thought that a word stands for a concept.
Anyway what you’re seemingly trying to say is that grasping a concept must somehow violate the principle of causality. I don’t see why you think so.
Why would grasping a concept violate causality? I want to say merely that it’s not subject to causality.
Then you must mean: “not involving causality”, but grasping involves perception and thinking which involve interaction things both internal and external to ourselves, so causality is both involved and inescapable, regardless of whether the mind is completely physical or not.
Exercising a concept “involves” perception and thinking. I get the sense that you’re embedding the Space of Reasons inside causality, rather than causality inside the Space of Reasons.
Exercising (grasping?) a concept may involve an exercise of logic (the space of reasons?), but is not logic itself. The possible ways for any activity, mental or otherwise, to occur is bound by logic and is thereby bound by causality.
I’m not saying otherwise.
The Space of Causes is inside the Space of Reason. The overlap is not 100%.
Mark, I need space for a picture, so I respond to the idea that all activity is bound to causality here.
So you were making a comment – not an argument?
Is there a difference between “the space of reasons” and “the space of reason” or was it a typo?
What is the relationship between logic and reasons/reason?
Typo.
Well, I find it highly misleading to say that all actions are bound by causality if you mean that only some actions (most even) are bound by cause and effect. Maybe it’s my fault for conflating causality with cause and effect. So, no argument, just a complaint that this particular use of ‘causality’ tends to encourage the Myth of the Given.
If you’re looking for a rule of thumb: logic is the ground for reason(s). I think of logic as the context of contexts.
I interpreted what you said (in bold type) as: causality is subsumed by logic, but as a smaller part, it is not the whole of logic. That would be a comment aligning with my own view.
I, apparently, didn’t get your meaning.
The other parts of logic cannot contradict causality. The boundaries of reality are not conditional, as reality encompasses all conditions affecting its parts. Logic is defined as universal; a conditional rule isn’t a part of logic.
I agree. I’m just saying that to avoid compatibilism, some action must be capable of taking place outside of particular causes and particular effects. If every action is necessarily the result of cause and effect — the proper concepts — then everything is bio-chemical reactions and free will is an illusion.
Speaking of illusions, why does Glenn Beck say that the system is fine, but the people are corrupt (especially those bums that spent beyond their means)? Do you agree with him? He implies that the system as it stands today is in accord with the constitution; it’s just the people that break the constitution. Do you agree with that? Is the system today a natural outgrowth of the constitution? Is the system in no way a perversion of the constitution?
I looked up compatibilism and it seems identical to what I’ve been saying here, but I don’t say “undetermined free will” is an illusion – I say it’s meaningless; a pseudo-concept; an irrational version of “will”.
Beck, like most libertarians, believes in a limited state as a necessary evil that’s kept in check by an enlightened populace that enforces constitutional limits by means of representative democracy.
If you’re willing to accept the minimal state, then Beck is correct: the system is workable, but the system alone can’t guarantee that the populace will have the rectitude to protect the system’s integrity.
If he says that, then no; the system is supposed to be the constitution, but the modern interpretation is a perversion of the constitution.
Maybe he means that enough of the system is still intact in order for the people, if they’ll wake up, to bring the state back into compliance with the constitution without first descending into anarchy and violent revolution.
If you think that ‘interaction’ is a formal concept, a variable, filled with ’causes and effects’, then you might understand that if the variable is constant, then free will might be understood as expressed in propositions that reflect ‘interaction’ as a constant variable.
Beck has the potential to mold his position into the correct one if he reads Molinari and becomes a member of the Molinari Institute. Otherwise, he’ll continue to babble as he has been his whole life.
Come on. I listened to 30 plus minutes of his incoherent rambling because you requested it. See for yourself whether he says it or not at the 5:31 mark.
I agree.
And his solution is to fight inflation. Even if I agree with the sentiment, I don’t agree with his answer. Kevin Carson, take it away.
I have no inkling of what you’re attempting to convey to me. Also: could you explain what you mean by a “constant variable”? It sounds like an oxymoron, but I’m sure you don’t mean it the way it sounds.
Beck’s a smart and charismatic guy; he’s perfect at being the imperfect spokesman for libertarianism-lite that the average middle American can identify with and not feel like they’re being talked down to.
People hungry for a higher level of dialogue have other and better avenues available than Beck.
Yeah…I did listen after posting.
Beck talks about much more than the issue of fiat money, deficit spending and inflation. That show just happened to be about the Fed.
I’m having some trouble following the way you use the “head on view” picture.
I still don’t see how any of what you wrote addresses what I’ve said before:
Then you must mean: “not involving causality”, but grasping involves perception and thinking which involve interaction with things both internal and external to ourselves, so causality is both involved and inescapable, regardless of whether the mind is completely physical or not.
Simply put: there’s too much of the thinking process that we know to be a physical activity for the subjective experience (qualia) to be doing any more than providing a motivating factor for thinking. Qualia do no actual thinking and make no decisions; they are that which allows us to feel and experience so that we will be motivated to think, make decisions and take actions required for living.
I mean: irrespective of cause and effect. Free action does involve causality. It was my mistake to conflate causality with cause and effect. Would you argue if I suggest that one think of ‘causality’ as a formal concept and ’causes’ and ‘effects’ as proper concepts?
I think qualia are open to view and cannot be broken into internal qualia vs. external qualia. Qualia manifest strategies — to rephrase Sartre’s way of looking at the issue. Qualia are to a script as thinking is to a director’s choice between scripts.
I agree.
I’m not denying thought as physical. I’m denying that what you’re calling physical is some kind of basic element. To me, the metaphorical director’s perspective and choices between scripts is itself elementary. And even those elements are secondary in comparison to the creation of new scripts.
We’ve been through this sequence before. Causality (“cause and effect”) is a principle that governs interactions, not a general concept for “causes and effects”(interactions). “Causality” is the proper concept of the formal concept of “universal principle”/”logic”.
“Causes” and “effects” are proper concepts of the formal concept of “interaction”.
What does this mean? Is it in reference to something I said or is it an independent reflection?
As in “shows strategies”? I don’t get what you mean.
Let’s see: thinking is the means by which a director chooses a script, so qualia is the means by which a script…(The analogy seems incomplete.)
I don’t recognize this idea of “the physical as some kind of basic element” as representing my view. Can you explain what you mean?
That is sublime. (Seriously)
It was intended to reference a prior issue. It’s of no consequence anymore.
Yeah, or display.
Qualia are different forms of expressions, like themes. (Critical) thinking is — relative to Qualia — to compare and contrast the different themes without being absorbed into one of them. Communicative action, for instance, takes place in a Space pre-Qualia. But it still expresses itself, albeit through pure reason. I think this represents ‘interaction’ — the formal concept you mention. All Qualia is grounded in ‘interaction’ (logic). Here, one can see the sense of ‘there’s no escaping endoxa’ (Long, 2000). A concept Ms. Rand bungled.
To the analogy: the themes are represented in scripts (language-games) and critical thinking is to see the interrelationship between games, like a film director will instruct an actor to posture in a different way because the previous posture is an instrument in an irrelevant language-game.
You say “there’s too much of the thinking process that we know to be a physical activity […]” How can a physical activity not take place between physical elements?
Why strategies? Why not subjective experience, feeling and emotion?
Displays them to what?…consciousness?…thought?
I think qualia constitute awareness (the subjective aspect of consciousness) and that consciousness is the interaction of awareness displayed to thought and the conclusions of both conscious and unconscious thoughts and sensory data displayed to awareness as emotions and perception.
Are you asking whether I believe that awareness (the sum combined effect of qualia) is an element of what is physical? Well…it would offer a convenient explanation for how awareness can interact with objects: that awareness is a property of the physical (A property of the physical what? discrete objects or the energetic ether – the universal substratum – itself? We manifest as separate entities and yet are all part of the same energetic ether.).
The feelings are like echoes of the scripts/strategies. I’d say maybe 99% of folk are unaware of these experiences as scripts and the potential for them to function as strategies.
Instead of display, express may hold more purchase.
If you’re placing awareness as a feature of the physical then I’d be more sympathetic if not in agreement. Where do you put formal concepts?
Are you saying that qualia change when we see things as something because of how our interpretation of what we see changes how we see something and that this change displays scripts/strategies? Why “scripts/strategies” and not “interpretation/thought”?
It’s ontological speculation, but I’m not completely comfortable with the idea. I wonder if it not so much solves the problem as displaces the problem by redefining “physical”.
I see formal concepts as wider/generalized concepts that are derived from narrower/less generalized concepts.
“Thing” is the formal concept of the proper concept “object”.
“Object” is the formal concept of the proper concept “organism”.
“Organism” is the formal concept of the proper concept “animal”.
“Animal” is the formal concept for the proper concept “cat”.
“Cat” is the formal concept for the proper concept “tiger”.
Instead of saying “is the formal concept”, would it be more precise to say “is a formal concept”, as there are usually intermediate steps between a formal and a proper concept?
We’re always seeing as something. Do you mean that, when a different aspect of something dawns, does the qualia change?
I think that’s probably right.
You mean, since multiple formal concepts are always in play — intertwined as it were — doesn’t it ignore the significance of circumstances to use a singular notion of formal concept?—-If so, yeah, you’re right.
That too, but I meant the reinterpretation of perceived sensations as something different from what it originally seemed.
We perceive sensations that we instinctively interpret and continuously reinterpret according to how the patterns of sensations fit into our experience and expectations so that we automatically perceive things “as some kind of something” when the patterns evoke a strong association. When the patterns don’t fit close enough to our past experience, then we can’t interpret what we perceive at first and only assume that it must be something because experience informs us that things cause sensations, with the exception of internally caused sensations that may seem to have causes external to our bodies.
Can you answer now:
“Are you saying that qualia change when we see things as something because of how our interpretation of what we see changes how we see something and that this change displays scripts/strategies? Why “scripts/strategies” and not “interpretation/thought”?”
I’m not sure; I need to work on it.
Formal concepts are genus and proper concepts are species of a genus?
That just doesn’t seem right.
Think of it in terms of Roderick’s paper on action and fact as congeneric and homogeneous with reason. Formal concepts are to actions as proper concepts are to facts. Formal concepts are to market exchange as proper concepts are to market signals.
Some questions:
1. What’s the difference between “congeneric” and “homogeneous”? The dictionary definitions seem the same.
2.What is the relationship between a formal concept and an action?
3. If a proper concept is a kind of thing, then are you saying that a formal concept is a kind of action? I don’t get it.