Still, this amused me:

I think the main defining characteristic of a liberal – as opposed to a libertarian – is that a liberal recognises the need for such measures but thinks they should be as few and as minimal as possible.

This is very true. What I can’t understand is that, why would anyone who believes ’such measures’ are necessary, therefore a ‘good thing’, want there to be as little as possible of this ‘good thing’? Or visa versa, someone who accepts that ’such measures’ are a bad, destructive thing ever tolerate their use at all?

Do you see what I’m saying? Either you accept that ’such measures’ are a bad thing and resist them entirely, or accept they’re a good thing – which is the libertarian point of view. We like to be consistent and logical, apparently.

Usually the response comes that sometimes it’s necessary from a pragmatic and/or electoral point of view and that they’ll only support it when it’s absolutely necessary.

In practical terms though, it’s always absolutely necessary. Always. Welfare state? Necessary. Redistribution? Necessary.

It may be dressed up differently but how is this any different from what Labour do? What makes a ‘liberal’ any different from a ‘democratic socialist’?

I sure as hell can’t tell the difference. Can anyone?

The emphasis, if there is an emphasis, seems to me to be on questioning whether a “state” type apparatus is the most suitable mechanism for protecting what you call the weakest whilst maximizing the ability of all (including those “weakest”) to pursue their own freedoms and ends.

Most libertarians/anarchists/mutualists/etc I know and know of, though I will admit to probably spending more of my time amongst what some might call “left libertarians” (though personally I eschew those labels because as one in particular said to me, they seem very “porous” boundaries between them), are acutely concerned about the fate of what you call the weakest and have concluded in good conscience that state sponsored and protected monopoly in fact skews the playing field to the disadvantage of the weakest more than a truly free market would.

Some seem to think that libertarians would somehow be happy simply to return to some pre-welfare state “free market” and everything would be fine. Nonsense – if that were the case, why was that supposed hey-day also the hey-day of people like the individualist anarchists and mutualists pointing out the gross inequities created by the then (and still) “big four” monopolies, for example.

Personal freedom is one issue we need to bear in mind but certainly in terms of economic ‘rights’ the emphasis seems to be very much on the right to be as greedy and individually grasping as possible

the only thing you seem to have gained from “reading a book full of long words and difficult concepts” is a belief in your own intellectual superiority, which has perhaps contributed to your authoritarian tendencies.

Anyway, I prefer history to the ramblings of an intellectual onanist.

I can’t believe no-one picked this up. “The testimony of people who have died”? How are you getting this, exactly?

“And on this night was Belshazzar the King slaughtered by his slaves”

“Tough Titty” – motto of Norwich Girl’s High

“Jaw-jaw better than war-war” ‘n all that, but eternal blah-de-blah?

I think not – the collapse of traditional employment (including the conscript army) and the ‘Welfare State’ is creating an *immediate* crisis

This should be the priorityof *any* dodgy combination

Slavery can be defended on a variety of grounds (human liberty is the last saleable good, which is why it was historically created in relation to unpayable debts, such as war reparations).

Whether you can actually defend the practice nowadays depends on your ability to restrict your logic to that of antiquated financial systems.

The intellectual debate has moved on in that informational and communicative processes sped up sufficiently during the industrial revolution to enable the level of realisable derived incomes to surpass the basic asset price over the earning cycle. On other words as the taxable economy became more productive and was integrated on a global scale it began to expand faster.

I really don’t like using words like ‘ideological’ or ‘moral’ because they have been politicised too far to be useful any longer, though I do think how slavery causes people to behave is repugnant – it is inhuman and inhumane, and it is also uneconomic.

Hmm. I’ve no ideological commitment to democracy – I favour it because empirically other systems have tended to have worse outcomes on a broadly utilitarian basis, but I don’t see any moral impetus behind it.

Agreed.

While I do actually strongly favour liberty anyway, I think it’d be possible for someone to make a similar claim here: they don’t think liberty is relevant in its own right, but they believe that empirically slavery has worse outcomes on a broadly utilitarian basis.

Then let the man argue that. I just want to know whether he has an ideological objection to slavery: if you believe that ““liberty isn’t good per se” then surely one can have no ideological objection to slavery (putting aside questions of utility).

Besides, at risk of putting words in Woobegone’s mouth, I don’t think that the utility argument would hold much water. Judging by the comments above, Woobegone would object to the legalisation of drugs (’cos they are bad for people) despite the fact that it is the very fact of their illegality that causes the vast majority of problems. As such, he/she is unlikely to argue from a point of utility.

DK

If something were very likely to improve health & save lives, and it was possible, and it wasn’t going to cause massive disruption, I would do it.

Which is why you and I will remain implacable enemies: you are the utter antithesis of everything that I believe in.

Whilst I would be happy to ensure that everyone has as much information as possible available to make their choices – you cannot make a free choice if you cannot weight the consequences, and for that you need information – I do not support punitive policies.

People should be allowed to live their lives in whatever way they see fit. Whereas you would impose “pro-healthy eating & pro-excercise policies” (pro-exercise policies? How very reminiscent of 1984. “Come on, touch your toes, comrades.”).

You cannot tell other adult human being how to live their lives, Woobegone. Apart from anything else, you have no more moral authority than do I, or anyone else on this thread. Who are you to decide what other adults should prioritise? Who are you to tell them what they should do with their lives?

People used to believe, to use Tim Worstall’s example, that homosexuality was wrong and they pursued policies to punish those who practised it, by hanging them. This was, effectively, one group imposing their personal morality onto others. Don’t you think that’s wrong? In which case, what makes your personal morality any more valid than theirs? Or mine?*

And what if your policies did active harm? Let’s say that the current cholesterol fever gripped everyone in a really manic way and you forced us all to adopt totally cholesterol-free diets: we, your population, would be dead (and very nastily) in very short order.

Even if you believe that yours is sound, what happens in the government that follows yours? What if they pursue moral objectives that you dislike, or feel threatened by? Can you really not see how dangerous your ideas are?

DK

* The point about what I believe, i.e. libertarianism**, is that I would let people live their lives as they saw fit. If they want to form a little socialist enclave, for instance, provided no one was coerced into it, then good luck to them.

** I should point out that I am closer to Classical Liberalism than full-on anarchism, i.e. ideally, I believe in a very small state (minarchism) to handle defence of the citizen from a) overseas aggression, and the aggression of other citizens. In other words, the state should handle a) national defence, and b) the criminal justice system. Nothing more.

While I do actually strongly favour liberty anyway, I think it’d be possible for someone to make a similar claim here: they don’t think liberty is relevant in its own right, but they believe that empirically slavery has worse outcomes on a broadly utilitarian basis.

Someone defending slavery? Where?…
oh wait, I forgot. As a libertarian you must be following Robert Nozick in his, er, rather “special” argument that taxation is slavery. Well, yes, I do believe in taxation, so by Nozick’s “unique” lights I am defending slavery. On any other, actually good definition, no I’m not.

No, not at all. Apart from anything else, I haven’t read any Nozick (or any other political philosophers to any real degree. I like to come up with my own opinions, you see).

Anyway, I did actually quote the bit of yours that I was referring to, but I shall do so again:

I reject the notion, in ethics and politics, that liberty is good *per se*, because although the liberal idea has a long and noble history in Western philosophy, from the outset, no-one has ever been able to explain why liberty is good per se.
…

Liberty isn’t good per se.

So, would it be correct to say – since “liberty isn’t good per se” – that you have no ideological opposition to slavery?

DK

“I would suggest however that excuses along the lines of “for your/their/our own good” have been used by a number of nasty people (and of course by quite ordinary people who go along with them). I guess that’s why you’ve caused so much consternation in this thread, but for my part I continue to wonder how far you would go and when.”

Yes I know that’s why people don’t like it. They’re wrong because a) that’s guilt by association and b) There aren’t actually any historical examples of this. The Communists, for example, didn’t kill people for the good of the people they killed, they killed people for the good of “future generations”, which is completely different. I think when people dislike the idea of doing things “for their own good” what they’re afraid of is Brave New World. Which is…fiction…it’s not real.

Anyway, how far would I go? I don’t know. It would depend upon what was possible, for one thing, it’s clearly impossible to move the whole of New York to Alaska so that’s out the window.

The whole point about what I’m saying here is that you can’t build a political theory on abstract ideas. So it would depend upon the individual case. If something were very likely to improve health & save lives, and it was possible, and it wasn’t going to cause massive disruption, I would do it.

So I support curtailing tobacco & alcohol advertising, taxes on alcohol & tobacco, pro-healthy eating & pro-excercise policies, I’m strongly in favor of carbon reduction policies even if they have some moderate impact on consumers, I support mandatory vaccination, etc. These are all pragmatic policies that have a good chance of working.

On the other hand something like banning alcohol entirely, while it would have some good effects, would probably end up being a disaster in the long run. So I wouldn’t do it.

As a matter of fact G E Moore did make an argument along those lines, although obviously it was much better than your precis of it suggests, but Principia Ethica is completely seperate from that.

Moore, y’see, had more than one thought in his head.

Someone defending slavery? Where?…
oh wait, I forgot. As a libertarian you must be following Robert Nozick in his, er, rather “special” argument that taxation is slavery. Well, yes, I do believe in taxation, so by Nozick’s “unique” lights I am defending slavery. On any other, actually good definition, no I’m not.

Could people please read what I write, instead of what they would like me to have written because it makes me look stupider than they are?

Author: douglas clark
Comment:
Devils Kitchen,

It was Liberals, not Libertarians that thought that slavery was a bad idea, was it not? And did something about it.

Or, you could argue it was Willam Wilberforce, whose politics are a bit opaque, if not reactionary that brought it about?

I’m not sure what that comment was intended to mean. I don’t recall anyone claiming that “Libertarians are better [than Liberals] because they opposed slavery”. Besides, many of the voices against slavery are luminaries for both modern Liberals and what we now know (in a word that in a political sense has only been coined in the last century) as Libertarians.

But surely you comment only makes it even more egregious then that in a liberal forum such sentiments can be voiced and tolerated?

Well, if obesity were twice as bad as smoking I would certainly want to do something about it. Like “sin taxes”, subsidies on green vegetables, more bicycle lanes, that kind of thing. You know, real fascist, evil, totalitarian stuff…

Now, I didn’t claim sin taxes, subsidised vegetables, bicycle lanes etc are fascist, evil, or totalitarian, so I hope you don’t think those are among my opinions. I would suggest however that excuses along the lines of “for your/their/our own good” have been used by a number of nasty people (and of course by quite ordinary people who go along with them). I guess that’s why you’ve caused so much consternation in this thread, but for my part I continue to wonder how far you would go and when.

I referred to overweight and smoking because I (mis)remembered a paper I find interesting. It’s called the Catalog of Risks, by B.L. Cohen: “a large variety of risks are quantified in terms of the loss of life expectancy [LLE] they cause in the United States”.

I don’t know how accurate the figures are but I think they provide food for thought here. A few sample activities, done throughout life, with LLE:

Professional boxing 8 days
Non-smoking female taking oral contraceptives from ages 15-45 25 days
Driving a small car 70 days (driving a big car increases LE by 70 days)
Dedicated mountain climbing 110 days
Living in New York 250 days
Living in Alaska 740 days
Being 15% overweight 777 days
Deep sea diving for 20 years 800 days
Smoking one to two packs of cigarettes a day 6.8 years
Not using the best available (in 1991) technology and medical care to prolong life (including proper sleep, exercise, and diet) 9 years

And of course there are various LLEs relating to different occupations, measuring up to a few years in some cases. Presumably you wouldn’t persuade people against joining the fire service but at what LLE would you start interfering, in what circumstances, and what interferences would you support? For example, if you thought people should be prevented from doing things that would cause a loss of 100+ days of life expectancy would you persuade people to not climb mountains and if so how? Would you persuade people to move from New York and Alaska? How would you help overweight people reduce their LLE below the 100 day threshold? Would you force people to undergo blood transfusions and organ transplants?

It was Liberals, not Libertarians that thought that slavery was a bad idea, was it not? And did something about it.

Or, you could argue it was Willam Wilberforce, whose politics are a bit opaque, if not reactionary that brought it about?

– I have hands
- Therefore I am not a brain in a vat

Was he? That really was reaching the nadir of analytic philosphy.

“That “pleased” does not mean “having the sensation of red”, or anything else whatever, does not prevent us from understanding what it does mean. It is enough for us to know that “pleased” does mean “having the sensation of pleasure”, and though pleasure is absolutely indefinable, though pleasure is pleasure and nothing else whatever, yet we feel no difficulty in saying that we are pleased. The reason is, of course, that when I say “I am pleased”, I do not mean that “I” am the same thing as “having pleasure”. And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that “pleasure is good” and yet not meaning that “pleasure” is the same thing as “good”, that pleasure means good, and that good means pleasure. If I were to imagine that when I said “I am pleased”, I meant that I was exactly the same thing as “pleased”, I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics.” – G.E. Moore

This is your idea of a good read, is it?

Alix, I’m with you, get the straightjacket!