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The whole point of individual liberty is to minimize the amount of authority our society reserves, and the what it dictates/moralizes to individuals; to decentr

The whole point of individual liberty is to minimize the amount of authority our society reserves, and the what it dictates/moralizes to individuals; to decentralize power/authority as much as possible, and let people interact without intervention as long as they're nonviolent and non-fraudulent. > we teach people to be good citizens There is no one way of being a good citizen. This isn't the PRC. > something, as a society, about "right" and "wrong?" The whole point is that in a truly free society, this "something" is the strict minimum required for peaceful coexistence. Basically true crime and property law. These are morally justified in defence of fundamental liberty. Everything else should be out of the scope of government/society's authority. Telling people how to raise their children or what to think is absolutely not justified in defence of fundamental liberty, so it's out. If you want to raise your kid in a forest school, who is anyone else to stop you? What is the source of moral authority that gives strangers more control over child rearing than parents? If you want to sell your kidney to fuel your heroin habit or feed your children, who is anyone else to tell you that you can't? What is their source of moral authority over your kidney that supersedes your own? > parents who have the responsibility to be involved in the educational process This seems to be a common thought, but where is it codified? Who imposes this responsibility on parents? What is their source of moral authority to do so? > The larger trends look more like Your article doesn't address my point about domestic culture.

shadowgovt 4y ago
> There is no one way of being a good citizen. This isn't the PRC. I don't recall claiming there was one way. There's generally one curriculum, of course, for public school (at least since we decided standardization was valuable), but the standard for social studies tends to include things like teaching critical thinking and how to evaluate multiple competing viewpoints. In my high school, we studied Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Adam Smith, and several other authors whose names currently escape me. > Telling people how to raise their children or what to think is absolutely not justified in defence of fundamental liberty, so it's out. Again, the government can and will tell you you may not set your child on fire or starve them to death and will deprive you the liberty of raising them if you try. This is, of course, in defense of their fundamental liberty. Sometimes fundamental liberties clash. Pure liberty doesn't exist in a society as large as ours. It is always walking hand-in-hand with responsibility. > What is the source of moral authority that gives strangers more control over child rearing than parents? Speaking in the broadest sense? The fact those children will be partially deciding the fate of those strangers in the future because they'll vote. This is real "we live in a society" stuff and I think you can't see it because your moral code may be incompatible with living in the kind of collective post-1930s society that has adapted to avoid Great Depressions and the like. This is why even if you raise your kid "in a forest school," as you said, the state will require you to teach some minimum standards and you can be stripped of homeschooling rights for failure to comply (varies from state-to-state). > If you want to sell your kidney to fuel your heroin habit or feed your children, who is anyone else to tell you that you can't? What is their source of moral authority over your kidney that supersedes your own? Are you postulating absurdities now? You know this society does not allow you to sell your kidney, right? The state has a vested interest in not allowing for the creation of a market for kidneys in a similar sense to its vested interest in not allowing for the creation of a market for child pornography. Is this an issue you want to discuss? Take it up with someone else. > This seems to be a common thought, but where is it codified? Who imposes this responsibility on parents? What is their source of moral authority to do so? State laws, each state, we live in a society and the state has obligations to make good citizens of the children of the state. You can have all these qualities in a free society without it being the PRC; perhaps you didn't know, but while the PRC happened a continent away, the US had a "Great Society" project and a lot of modern philosophy of governance came of it (along with some nifty things like social security, an arts endowment, some pretty neat civil engineering projects...). I don't know what point regarding domestic culture you mean, so I'm going to merely re-assert that (a) you have a great plan for if parents are good at their jobs but no idea what to do for people who's parents didn't get with the program like yours did (and those are people who, in a fair society, deserve a chance just like you do) and (b) the numbers show that the average case looks a lot more like "they aren't with the program" than your experience. I appreciate this discussion. It helps me test my priors to have someone from such a radically different worldview call them into question.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  > you may not set your child on fire or starve them to death > the freedom to do everything which injures no one else You're always using examples that obviously injure other people. They're a bit nonsensical. > collective post-1930s society Yes exactly, we abandoned deontological liberty for utilitarian collectivism. We decided that outcomes were more important than principles. The whole nation was founded on the principle that individual liberty was the primary concern. Being forced to cooperate with someone else's version of "the good", whether that someone was elected or not, is morally unacceptable to many people. If we're pursuing utilitarianism, then we'll end up in the PRC. Lots of their policies are quite effective from an outcomes perspective. If you embrace collectivism, where and by what principle do you draw the line around individual autonomy? Is it just anything the majority agrees on goes? I keep asking you about moral justification and you respond with legal obligation. These are not the same thing. How do you determine if a law is moral or not? I've outlined some principles by which to do so, how do you do it? > in a fair society I guess we have different definitions of "fair" - would you care to provide your definition? This is kind of my point: different people have different definitions of "good" and "fair" and "just". Given there is no higher authority to appeal to, it's unreasonable to impose your definition on others. Your definition isn't inherently any more correct than mine. The only difference is your comfort in imposing.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    > The whole nation was founded on the principle that individual liberty was the primary concern Did you know that immediately after the Revolutionary War ended, and among the reasons the Continental Army never actually disbanded (as was the original plan), it was used to put down a tax revolt among Pennsylvanians who weren't interested in paying the new alcohol tax? We have always forced people to cooperate with someone else's version of "the good." From their point of view, the distillers believed the federal government and PA state didn't have the right to levy that tax. They learned otherwise. Similarly, about a hundred years later, a whole half of the country would try to take their ball and go home on the entire constituted union. They learned otherwise. The coercion you imagine only came about in the '30s was always there; it's probably necessary to maintain the empire. We do, however, get a vote on what we're coerced into (and we did in the '30s also). The moral justification for collective organization of the country is the old do not die starving cold deaths, children don't go hungry, and we're all better off if some are forced to put more in the till than they would of their own volition (including, ultimately, them; the ultra-wealthy also drive on public roads and use public sewage, and their air is just as clean as their neighbor's because the EPA told them they had to put a scrubber on their factory's smokestack). Here's a secret about the US and the PRC... We and the PRC have the same goal. We're empires of over a hundred million souls and we instituted governments to provide for the common welfare. We have quite different ideas of how to get there, but ultimately? More similarity than difference and we basically always have, ever since we stole a country from a king. Anyone who tries to calve off a chunk of the country we stole to run as their own isolated compound (like our forefathers did) learns pretty quickly that their freedoms end not at the beginning of their neighbor's nose, but when the outflow from their pockets to the tax coffers dries up. It's always been that way, ever since Washington rode up in front of a hundred men to tell some whisky distillers what the score was now that the king was gone. As technology has evolved, it's become practically more possible to centralize the federation, and we've generally found that to be useful to improve the common welfare (everything from the interstate rail line network to EPA rules). > Given there is no higher authority to appeal to ... which is why I fall back to the law. It's the ultimate Chesterton's Fence... if someone wants to tear down, for example, the Department of Education, it's incumbent upon them to explain how our ancestors erred and how we improve the common welfare and strengthen the union by turning back the clock. Because we instituted the thing to solve a problem... Why does that problem not come back if we reverse the old decision? (Incidentally, if you want to argue the counter on things like this, that's my recommendation to you: talk about how modern society differs so much from the society of the '30s that such-and-such government function is no longer needed because it's redundant or irrelevant. You're trying to roll back a clock, to argue we misstepped... Roll the clock forward instead, explain how, for example, the Equal Rights Act is no longer necessary because the animosities of old were cured. Sadly, on this specific topic you will fail because the Proud Boys decided to show up and be the living, breathing, carb-eating counter-example. But that's the avenue of argumentation that has promise. Otherwise, you're forever fighting the question "The people in the past passed these laws for a reason... What dragon does the fence keep at bay, and why wouldn't it come back if we take the fence down?").

shadowgovt 4y ago

> There is no one way of being a good citizen. This isn't the PRC. I don't recall claiming there was one way. There's generally one curriculum, of course, for public school (at least since we decided standardization was valuable), but the standard for social studies tends to include things like teaching critical thinking and how to evaluate multiple competing viewpoints. In my high school, we studied Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Adam Smith, and several other authors whose names currently escape me. > Telling people how to raise their children or what to think is absolutely not justified in defence of fundamental liberty, so it's out. Again, the government can and will tell you you may not set your child on fire or starve them to death and will deprive you the liberty of raising them if you try. This is, of course, in defense of their fundamental liberty. Sometimes fundamental liberties clash. Pure liberty doesn't exist in a society as large as ours. It is always walking hand-in-hand with responsibility. > What is the source of moral authority that gives strangers more control over child rearing than parents? Speaking in the broadest sense? The fact those children will be partially deciding the fate of those strangers in the future because they'll vote. This is real "we live in a society" stuff and I think you can't see it because your moral code may be incompatible with living in the kind of collective post-1930s society that has adapted to avoid Great Depressions and the like. This is why even if you raise your kid "in a forest school," as you said, the state will require you to teach some minimum standards and you can be stripped of homeschooling rights for failure to comply (varies from state-to-state). > If you want to sell your kidney to fuel your heroin habit or feed your children, who is anyone else to tell you that you can't? What is their source of moral authority over your kidney that supersedes your own? Are you postulating absurdities now? You know this society does not allow you to sell your kidney, right? The state has a vested interest in not allowing for the creation of a market for kidneys in a similar sense to its vested interest in not allowing for the creation of a market for child pornography. Is this an issue you want to discuss? Take it up with someone else. > This seems to be a common thought, but where is it codified? Who imposes this responsibility on parents? What is their source of moral authority to do so? State laws, each state, we live in a society and the state has obligations to make good citizens of the children of the state. You can have all these qualities in a free society without it being the PRC; perhaps you didn't know, but while the PRC happened a continent away, the US had a "Great Society" project and a lot of modern philosophy of governance came of it (along with some nifty things like social security, an arts endowment, some pretty neat civil engineering projects...). I don't know what point regarding domestic culture you mean, so I'm going to merely re-assert that (a) you have a great plan for if parents are good at their jobs but no idea what to do for people who's parents didn't get with the program like yours did (and those are people who, in a fair society, deserve a chance just like you do) and (b) the numbers show that the average case looks a lot more like "they aren't with the program" than your experience. I appreciate this discussion. It helps me test my priors to have someone from such a radically different worldview call them into question.

thegrimmest 4y ago
> you may not set your child on fire or starve them to death > the freedom to do everything which injures no one else You're always using examples that obviously injure other people. They're a bit nonsensical. > collective post-1930s society Yes exactly, we abandoned deontological liberty for utilitarian collectivism. We decided that outcomes were more important than principles. The whole nation was founded on the principle that individual liberty was the primary concern. Being forced to cooperate with someone else's version of "the good", whether that someone was elected or not, is morally unacceptable to many people. If we're pursuing utilitarianism, then we'll end up in the PRC. Lots of their policies are quite effective from an outcomes perspective. If you embrace collectivism, where and by what principle do you draw the line around individual autonomy? Is it just anything the majority agrees on goes? I keep asking you about moral justification and you respond with legal obligation. These are not the same thing. How do you determine if a law is moral or not? I've outlined some principles by which to do so, how do you do it? > in a fair society I guess we have different definitions of "fair" - would you care to provide your definition? This is kind of my point: different people have different definitions of "good" and "fair" and "just". Given there is no higher authority to appeal to, it's unreasonable to impose your definition on others. Your definition isn't inherently any more correct than mine. The only difference is your comfort in imposing.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > The whole nation was founded on the principle that individual liberty was the primary concern Did you know that immediately after the Revolutionary War ended, and among the reasons the Continental Army never actually disbanded (as was the original plan), it was used to put down a tax revolt among Pennsylvanians who weren't interested in paying the new alcohol tax? We have always forced people to cooperate with someone else's version of "the good." From their point of view, the distillers believed the federal government and PA state didn't have the right to levy that tax. They learned otherwise. Similarly, about a hundred years later, a whole half of the country would try to take their ball and go home on the entire constituted union. They learned otherwise. The coercion you imagine only came about in the '30s was always there; it's probably necessary to maintain the empire. We do, however, get a vote on what we're coerced into (and we did in the '30s also). The moral justification for collective organization of the country is the old do not die starving cold deaths, children don't go hungry, and we're all better off if some are forced to put more in the till than they would of their own volition (including, ultimately, them; the ultra-wealthy also drive on public roads and use public sewage, and their air is just as clean as their neighbor's because the EPA told them they had to put a scrubber on their factory's smokestack). Here's a secret about the US and the PRC... We and the PRC have the same goal. We're empires of over a hundred million souls and we instituted governments to provide for the common welfare. We have quite different ideas of how to get there, but ultimately? More similarity than difference and we basically always have, ever since we stole a country from a king. Anyone who tries to calve off a chunk of the country we stole to run as their own isolated compound (like our forefathers did) learns pretty quickly that their freedoms end not at the beginning of their neighbor's nose, but when the outflow from their pockets to the tax coffers dries up. It's always been that way, ever since Washington rode up in front of a hundred men to tell some whisky distillers what the score was now that the king was gone. As technology has evolved, it's become practically more possible to centralize the federation, and we've generally found that to be useful to improve the common welfare (everything from the interstate rail line network to EPA rules). > Given there is no higher authority to appeal to ... which is why I fall back to the law. It's the ultimate Chesterton's Fence... if someone wants to tear down, for example, the Department of Education, it's incumbent upon them to explain how our ancestors erred and how we improve the common welfare and strengthen the union by turning back the clock. Because we instituted the thing to solve a problem... Why does that problem not come back if we reverse the old decision? (Incidentally, if you want to argue the counter on things like this, that's my recommendation to you: talk about how modern society differs so much from the society of the '30s that such-and-such government function is no longer needed because it's redundant or irrelevant. You're trying to roll back a clock, to argue we misstepped... Roll the clock forward instead, explain how, for example, the Equal Rights Act is no longer necessary because the animosities of old were cured. Sadly, on this specific topic you will fail because the Proud Boys decided to show up and be the living, breathing, carb-eating counter-example. But that's the avenue of argumentation that has promise. Otherwise, you're forever fighting the question "The people in the past passed these laws for a reason... What dragon does the fence keep at bay, and why wouldn't it come back if we take the fence down?").