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I actually think we agree on an awful lot as the discussion elaborates. But I think there are some key distinctions in how we frame the same issues. >elected b
by bumby 5y ago
I actually think we agree on an awful lot as the discussion elaborates. But I think there are some key distinctions in how we frame the same issues.
>elected by a narrow majority of his fellow slaves.
In the US at least, we already have checks and balances that avoid the tyranny of the majority.
Nor would it matter that he could leave to another plantation with a different master whose whip stings just the same.
In this case, it only holds if the assumption is that any social arrangement devolves into a master/slave relationship. Why hold onto this assumption if we've already said the "slave" is free to go as well as determine who runs the plantation? To me, that's sounds more like an egalitarian arrangement than a master/slave one. Maybe this is where the slave/master analogy has its limits.
>Does your consent matter? Will revoking your consent be respected by other parties involved?
Yes, consent matters. But I think this may be one of the fundamental areas where we disagree. I think the complexity of society requires numerous implied consents, I get the impression you only favor explicit consent. My larger point is that explicit consent is impossible in a complex society. When I get onto a public road, I do not get explicit consent from the 300+ million citizens who helped pay for that road. Likewise with most of the other social arrangements. The Founding Fathers understood this as well; Washington was a notorious disciplinarian who did not look for consent from individual soldiers regarding their willingness to continue serving because there is a pragmatic limit to instances of individual consent. Soldiers in today's army literally sign a contract and they don't get to revoke that consent merely because they've changed their mind about their willingness to uphold that agreement when things get hard. This is very similar to the idea of the social contract except one is explicit because it's relatively narrow in scope while one is implicit because of the complexity of the context in which it operates.
>These are the axioms I'm starting from. If we're all created equal, and we are all entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (in that order), does everything else not follow? You'll also note that "a baseline quality of life" is not present in this list.
I mean, Jefferson wrote beautifully in the Declaration of Independence but the actual social contact is the Constitution. And within that, the federal government has specific enumerated powers, including using those specific powers for the "general welfare" of the citizens (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1). This general welfare is exactly the quality of life I'm talking about. Also note that a right to property is not in your axioms. Now I'm assuming, from your perspective, this is implied by the right to liberty. My other main point is that rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin. If we have implied rights protected by society, we also have implied responsibilities to said society.
>there are several layers of due process that are in place exactly to prevent punitive action for reasonable violations of the law
This is actually speaking to my point that they are general principles and not hard-lined ideologies. You've indicated you have a hierarchy of rights, starting with the right to life and that lesser rights are subjugate to that primacy (like the right to property, like the flag pole). I agree. So it sounds like we agree that liberty isn't absolute in a society where interactions between rights have to be balanced and that some rights are subjugate to others.
>collaborating at Airbus to build an A380 are cooperating splendidly without being forced to
I agree. But the complexity of the operation means they aren't knowledgeable regarding every operation. The complexity actually makes certain conventions necessary. A software engineer may have little or no clue what a structural engineer is doing. They coordinate by creation of social orders and delegation of duties. It's the same thing we do in order to make a complex society work; we sacrifice explicit consent by delegating authority to people like political representatives. The SWE doesn't get to explicitly approve the decision of Airbus to sell military equipment. We build a system of implied consent to manage the complexity of interactions.
Sorry, I did misinterpret what you had previously wrote. Thank you for correcting me.
>Most of everyone else seems to be wired to derive misery from the fact they do not occupy such a place.
Roosevelt said "Comparison is the thief of joy" and I tend to agree with both of you. I do think this is where those balances to counteract the tyranny of the majority come in.
>The Jeffersonian homestead is the perfect example of functional liberty.
I think we agree here. But one of my main points is that this isn't practical in today's society. As romantic of a notion that it is, I think it's really just a hypothetical indulgence rather than a pragmatic approach to policy. I doubt many people in US would like to return to an agrarian economy because, even though it might have more principled liberty, it would lower their quality of life. That ship sailed over a hundred years ago when America decided to become an global superpower and integrated into a worldwide economy. You can get awfully close to a libertarian ideal by joining a hunter-gatherer society, so why don't people do so? My premise is that nation-states evolved as a social response to the risks of a increasingly complex society. I think the libertarian thought experiments are fun but not particularly useful.
- thegrimmest 5y ago> I actually think we agree on an awful lot as the discussion elaborates. But I think there are some key distinctions in how we frame the same issues. I think so too, and I'm grateful for your replies. Hard to find a good conversation these days. > In the US at least, we already have checks and balances that avoid the tyranny of the majority. Indeed, but my thesis is that these have been insufficient to protect liberty, as it was initially practiced and understood, from erosion so significant as to change its very meaning. > Maybe this is where the slave/master analogy has its limits. > Soldiers in today's army literally sign a contract... > ...one is explicit ... while one is implicit It does seem as though this is the key area where we disagree. To me there is no difference between a soldier who wants to leave combat (but can't because he'll be shot/imprisoned by his unit) and a slave who wants to leave his plantation. These people are both decidedly not free, and must take orders from others. Indeed the soldier may have signed a contract, but we've long established that you can't sign yourself into bondage, and that the penalty for breach of contract should be financial only, backed by bankruptcy protection. For a conscript, this is doubly true, as he didn't even have the opportunity sign his freedom over to begin with, making him indistinguishable from a slave. At least the volunteer soldier had the opportunity to consider the terms of his contract before signing, and has the opportunity to renew or reject those terms every contract period. Neither the slave, nor the conscript, nor any of the rest of us, have that opportunity. Fundamentally, implicit, lifelong obligation to collaborate, with no opportunity to opt-out, is indistinguishable from slavery. Say instead of emancipating slaves completely, they obligated them to work one day a week on their masters' plantations. They would be free to do what they wanted with the rest of their time. If they moved, they would be obligated to find new masters to serve, but still only one day per week. Would these people be free? Returning to your point about defense, this is the strongest moral case for enslaving people: the imminent threat of total destruction. However under these circumstances almost no one objects to cooperating anyways due to overwhelming social pressure. Indeed, this case falls into the broader category where forced cooperation is justified: maintaining life and liberty themselves. Thus the draft to serve in WWII and the draft to serve in Vietnam are clearly in separate categories, with more than public support and opinion differentiating them. > This general welfare is exactly the quality of life I'm talking about. Regarding US policy, we've pretty much narrowed it down to Hamilton and Madison regarding the general welfare clause, ultimately decided in United States v. Butler. My objection to this decision is based in the overall vagueness of the interpretation of "general welfare". It's like saying the government is empowered to do "good". Much like religion, it can be used to justify _anything at all_ to suit any particular agenda. It also seems to be a backdoor to the otherwise carefully and narrowly limited powers set out for the government in the constitution. How do you think the founding fathers would react to the modern US? How do you think the United States would change if this decisions was reversed? > But the complexity of the operation means they aren't knowledgeable regarding every operation You don't need to know what's going in every corner to meaningfully consent. Much like you don't need to understand where the tea you are drinking was grown, and by whom it was harvested in order to consent to an offered cup (you can of course inquire); you only need to consent to direct interactions between yourself and others. If you don't like your manager's tie at Airbus, you can just get up and leave. If you have a contract, then its terms will be used to decide who owes what. > So it sounds like we agree that liberty isn't absolute in a society where interactions between rights have to be balanced and that some rights are subjugate to others. Yes! In my eyes liberty is a graph, where each possible action in a given moment represents a node. The more actions are permissible (note - not possible, permissible - nature has a say too), the larger the graph, the more free you are. Our society, whose stated goal is to optimize for liberty second only to life itself, ought to design policy that will keep every individual's graph as large as possible. There is no requirement to return to an agrarian economy to put this into practice. In this light, GoFundMe is a much more ethical platform to fund personal medical expenses than taxpayer-funded public health insurance. If we keep optimizing for the collective good, we end up in China, who has unquestionably been overwhelmingly successful in lifting its (surviving) population out of poverty, and keeping a large and diverse population (relatively) peaceful and productive. The collective good has been served, but at what cost? > My premise is that nation-states evolved as a social response to the risks of a increasingly complex society. I think the libertarian thought experiments are fun but not particularly useful. I'm not disparaging the nation-state, just proposing limits to its power. I don't think these are thought experiments at all, but rather important boundaries, without which policy decisions are just tools politicians use to advance their careers.