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I've always found it remarkable that people find this at all illuminating. I take it the applicability of that passage is supposed to go something like this: I,

I've always found it remarkable that people find this at all illuminating. I take it the applicability of that passage is supposed to go something like this: I, as a third party bystander, would not have the right to intervene(by force, if necessary) and stop person A from selling person B antibacterial soap. I suppose I get that intuition. But if you add in more pertinent details, I think we're just left begging the question. What if I sell parson A selling antibacterial soap to person B by misrepresenting the fact that it contains a chemical that will kill bacteria when, in fact, that chemical is ineffective as advertised. This sounds a bit like fraud to me--and it touches on an especially important sphere of life to boot--health and medicine--where fraud-like concerns are especially important. Do I, as a third party, have the ability to intervene under these facts? I think there's a cogent case to be made that I do. And, at any rate, I know of no simple analysis that one could apply here to make answering the simplified interpersonal case any simpler than the government-regulation case that it is supposed to help us think about. Of course, it should also be mentioned that there are perfectly good schools of political thought under which the powers of government are not merely the aggregated power of individuals. Here's a thought just to get the intuitions flowing: there might be things that we allow the government, but not individuals, to do because the government acts by way of a deliberative process that can produce more reliable or better justified decisions than we would trust any individual person to make. For example: you might think that it is never acceptable for one person to kill another, even in retribution for a crime, because individual actors can't be relied upon to evaluate guilt and innocence properly, or because their actions would not have the expressive value necessary to warrant such an act. The state, however, is able to organize behavior in a way that largely solves these problems, meaning that there may be cases where it is acceptable for the state to kill even though no individual person could morally have done so. (I actually oppose the death penalty, so I have other objections to this line of argument. But this seems like a potentially useful example nonetheless.)

mindcrime 10y ago
Of course, it should also be mentioned that there are perfectly good schools of political thought under which the powers of government are not merely the aggregated power of individuals. Certainly such schools of thought exist, but I'd stop short of calling them "perfectly good." I think Bastiat makes the case pretty strongly that there's no moral basis for saying that a group can hold any innate authority beyond that which the individual members hold. And by "authority" I mean the ability to compel people who don't voluntarily consent to the governance of the group to do the group's will. Of course if a group of people voluntarily choose to delegate some decision making authority to a collective, that makes perfect sense. The state, however, is able to organize behavior in a way that largely solves these problems, meaning that there may be cases where it is acceptable for the state to kill even though no individual person could morally have done so. I have a hard time with that. How can merely aggregating a bunch of people together create a moral justification that doesn't exist otherwise? What's the basis for saying that this is so?
- pdabbadabba 10y ago
  > I have a hard time with that. How can merely aggregating a bunch of people together create a moral justification that doesn't exist otherwise? What's the basis for saying that this is so? I tried to provide an explanation in my comment, but it must not have been very clear. The answer will depend on one's reason for thinking that individual action was immoral. Often, an otherwise immoral act can nonetheless be justified through extrinsic circumstances. For example, assume that killing is generally wrong. But it can be justified if you have the proper level of confidence that the victim himself is a so-far-unpunished murderer and if killing him after a public trial in which his crime is exposed would send a morally important message. (I think these are fairly representative of the purported justifications for the death penalty.) But there is a problem: an individual acting alone is virtually never in a position to satisfy these criteria. It takes a lot of people acting together to satisfy them--a government.
wonder_er 10y ago
You're right that if fraud is being committed, you should not be a passive observer. But education is a much better option than regulation. Regulation is inflexible, and subject to enforcement by people who have the exact same set of flaws and bad judgements as the groups that we're trying to defend ourselves from. You're right about this being a "schools of thought" difference. You have a good example, about "might we give the government powers to do things, because it could be better at it than we." That's really the fundamental question, and I appreciate that you got to that core issue so quickly! My thought (I'm not OP, but I think he and I might agree) is that since the fundamental weakness we're trying to fix is a part of human nature. Some people will act against the interest of others, even while saying they are acting in their good. So, the solution is not to give more power to one group (who's subject to the same weaknesses as any other group) but to make sure we avoid giving power to one group where they can have undue influence over others if they fall prey to those weaknesses of human nature. I fully expect to have companies try to screw me. I fully expect the government to do the same, in some situations. I wish, however, that I could disregard the negative impact of the government as easily as I could the negative impact of the companies. But I cannot, because one of those groups can override my preferences with its own.

mindcrime 10y ago

Of course, it should also be mentioned that there are perfectly good schools of political thought under which the powers of government are not merely the aggregated power of individuals. Certainly such schools of thought exist, but I'd stop short of calling them "perfectly good." I think Bastiat makes the case pretty strongly that there's no moral basis for saying that a group can hold any innate authority beyond that which the individual members hold. And by "authority" I mean the ability to compel people who don't voluntarily consent to the governance of the group to do the group's will. Of course if a group of people voluntarily choose to delegate some decision making authority to a collective, that makes perfect sense. The state, however, is able to organize behavior in a way that largely solves these problems, meaning that there may be cases where it is acceptable for the state to kill even though no individual person could morally have done so. I have a hard time with that. How can merely aggregating a bunch of people together create a moral justification that doesn't exist otherwise? What's the basis for saying that this is so?

pdabbadabba 10y ago
> I have a hard time with that. How can merely aggregating a bunch of people together create a moral justification that doesn't exist otherwise? What's the basis for saying that this is so? I tried to provide an explanation in my comment, but it must not have been very clear. The answer will depend on one's reason for thinking that individual action was immoral. Often, an otherwise immoral act can nonetheless be justified through extrinsic circumstances. For example, assume that killing is generally wrong. But it can be justified if you have the proper level of confidence that the victim himself is a so-far-unpunished murderer and if killing him after a public trial in which his crime is exposed would send a morally important message. (I think these are fairly representative of the purported justifications for the death penalty.) But there is a problem: an individual acting alone is virtually never in a position to satisfy these criteria. It takes a lot of people acting together to satisfy them--a government.

wonder_er 10y ago

You're right that if fraud is being committed, you should not be a passive observer. But education is a much better option than regulation. Regulation is inflexible, and subject to enforcement by people who have the exact same set of flaws and bad judgements as the groups that we're trying to defend ourselves from. You're right about this being a "schools of thought" difference. You have a good example, about "might we give the government powers to do things, because it could be better at it than we." That's really the fundamental question, and I appreciate that you got to that core issue so quickly! My thought (I'm not OP, but I think he and I might agree) is that since the fundamental weakness we're trying to fix is a part of human nature. Some people will act against the interest of others, even while saying they are acting in their good. So, the solution is not to give more power to one group (who's subject to the same weaknesses as any other group) but to make sure we avoid giving power to one group where they can have undue influence over others if they fall prey to those weaknesses of human nature. I fully expect to have companies try to screw me. I fully expect the government to do the same, in some situations. I wish, however, that I could disregard the negative impact of the government as easily as I could the negative impact of the companies. But I cannot, because one of those groups can override my preferences with its own.