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Your entire chain of argument sounds religious in nature, and at no point did it touch at all on why anything having to do with rights would affect economic out

Your entire chain of argument sounds religious in nature, and at no point did it touch at all on why anything having to do with rights would affect economic output in any way. You've neither pointed out a specific flaw in nerfhammer's argument, nor answered waterside81's question for clarification. All you're doing is reminding us that hard core libertarians hate almost everything that government does, and that they all consider most things that governments try to do to be bad for the economy. You can't successfully argue that a particular action is bad by falling back on the base libertarian dogma that all actions of that sort are bad, or at least you can't do it without offering at least some independent support for the base dogma. We already know that you believe it; what we're asking is why we should believe it in the context of this individual example. There are dozens of possible responses you could give, I've come up with several myself, but frankly, I can come up with many arguments for both sides of the issue, so I'm of the mind that it's likely something we'd need to see a bit of empirical data on to be sure. One of the few things I know for sure about econ is that first-principle-based arguments tend to be complete and utter trash whenever they measure up against real world tests.

maxharris 16y ago
> Your entire chain of argument sounds religious in nature, It's not. You make the mistake of equating or asssociating morality with religion. I'm an atheist, and I think that ethics is a science. Applying the same metaphysical and epistemological foundations that give rise to science to ethics (and politics and art by extension) is what I'm advocating. > and at no point did it touch at all on why anything having to do with rights would affect economic output in any way. Yes, and this was intentional. The principle that underlies individual rights is not that it gives rise to increased economic output! (Although it does, this is not essential.) There are plenty of voices out there that will tell you all about the economics of capitalism (AEI, Cato, etc.) But that can't work because economics is not a fundamental field because any economic statement, no matter how trivial, subsumes a great number of concepts. Altruism (a pernicious legacy of Christianity, and before that, ancient Egypt) dominates ethics in the West. It is an awful, irrational and anti-life doctrine, but it will trump economics every time, because ethics is more fundamental in an individual's life than economics is. The only proper way to deal with altruism is to name it, and fight it on principle. You can't do that by talking primarily about economics.
- nerfhammer 16y ago
  > Altruism (a pernicious legacy of Christianity, and before that, ancient Egypt) dominates ethics in the West. It is an awful, irrational and anti-life doctrine, but it will trump economics every time, because ethics is more fundamental in an individual's life than economics is. I'm just curious. You're obviously just mostly parroting this from something you read once. What was it? I swear Karl Marx is Ayn Rand from the inverse bearded mirror universe.

maxharris 16y ago

> Your entire chain of argument sounds religious in nature, It's not. You make the mistake of equating or asssociating morality with religion. I'm an atheist, and I think that ethics is a science. Applying the same metaphysical and epistemological foundations that give rise to science to ethics (and politics and art by extension) is what I'm advocating. > and at no point did it touch at all on why anything having to do with rights would affect economic output in any way. Yes, and this was intentional. The principle that underlies individual rights is not that it gives rise to increased economic output! (Although it does, this is not essential.) There are plenty of voices out there that will tell you all about the economics of capitalism (AEI, Cato, etc.) But that can't work because economics is not a fundamental field because any economic statement, no matter how trivial, subsumes a great number of concepts. Altruism (a pernicious legacy of Christianity, and before that, ancient Egypt) dominates ethics in the West. It is an awful, irrational and anti-life doctrine, but it will trump economics every time, because ethics is more fundamental in an individual's life than economics is. The only proper way to deal with altruism is to name it, and fight it on principle. You can't do that by talking primarily about economics.

nerfhammer 16y ago
> Altruism (a pernicious legacy of Christianity, and before that, ancient Egypt) dominates ethics in the West. It is an awful, irrational and anti-life doctrine, but it will trump economics every time, because ethics is more fundamental in an individual's life than economics is. I'm just curious. You're obviously just mostly parroting this from something you read once. What was it? I swear Karl Marx is Ayn Rand from the inverse bearded mirror universe.