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> The benefit is adhering to a set of principles that guard against committing atrocities that have already cost countless millions of lives. If your ideology
by bccdee 3y ago
> The benefit is adhering to a set of principles that guard against committing atrocities that have already cost countless millions of lives.
If your ideology would permit the preventable death of a billion people, I'd say it's very bad at preventing atrocities.
> Unprincipled people driven by utilitarian objectives have done by far the most harm in human history. The Holocaust, [...]
I don't know where you got the idea that the Nazis were utilitarians, but you're completely mistaken. They did not consider the lives of the people they exterminated to have value. If they did, they would not have exterminated them.
In fact, if you examine the actual justifications the Nazis espoused for their crimes, you'll find that they were much more in line with rights theory. Nazis believed that Aryans collectively held certain natural entitlements; that their race had the right and a duty to look out for its own interests above and beyond those of other races. Hence the argument in favour of, for instance, German Lebensaraum. Nazis had plenty of rhetoric justifying the idea that nature had endowed Aryans with a destiny which they were entitled and obliged to fight for, but made no arguments that the Holocaust was somehow intended to minimize net suffering across all of humanity.
> What ground-breaking innovations that changed the shape of the world originated in China?
Rideshare apps aren't a "ground-breaking innovation"; they're a way to squeeze profit from bad independent contracting laws. If you think self-landing rockets are a big leap of innovation, just wait until you hear which country was the first to put a satellite in orbit. And right now, Chinese social media is more innovative than American social media. WeChat is what Elon Musk wishes X could be. TikTok is a cultural juggernaut. Your argument here is weak; innovation can't be measured by "number of domestically famous apps."
As far as Nobel prizes go, China's disproportionate lack of awards is fairly well-studied, and is generally attributed to a particular set of cultural practices in their scientific institutions which conservatively reward and empirical advancements over theoretical ones. I think it'd be a mistake to overgeneralize that. China has put itself at the centre of the global economy; to argue that they must be an economic paper tiger because a lack of Nobel prizes proves they aren't innovative is frankly just denying reality via cherrypicking.
> You're citing cases where the state failed to intervene to protect the physical safety it guarantees.
I'm citing cases where powerful capitalists exerted power to get what they want through violence, either using the state or circumventing it. You can frame that as "the state failing to intervene" if you'd like, but it still proves my point. The people in power call the shots.
> These errors are far easier to correct than trying to convince some maniac that their utilitarian calculation is wrong.
I really don't know where you got this "utilitarian maniac" idea from. People in power don't make decisions according to some set of ethical rules. They act in their own interest and in the interests of their backers. Leaders don't have values—they have power bases. This is a universal constant in democracies, dictatorships, juntas, kingdoms, corporations—every form of organization that exists.
> You have to define evil though. Would you care to suggest a definition?
Sure. Anything that creates a substantial deviation from the greatest possible net amount of well-being in the world. But that's just my opinion.
> What is the source of this right?
I'm not a rights theorist; I don't assert that we have any essential moral rights. But if I were, I'd say that it comes from the categorical imperative, or from my interpretation of nature's intent, or wherever you say rights come from.
> Can't you use the same sort of math to demand a kidney transplant from an unwilling donor?
No, because the math bears out that this is a net negative. Can you imagine the harm that would arise in a society where the state permits people to be abducted and have their kidneys stolen? Society would collapse!
These utilitarian "gotcha" hypotheticals tend to have massively negative utility once you take into account the consequences that such policy would have on society more broadly.
> People have agency and the responsibility for an action lies wholly with the agent who took it
You're dancing right past my argument! Let's backtrack and revisit my injection scenario: If I were to inject you with a substance that had a 50% chance of making you use drugs, and then you went on to use drugs, it would be absurd of me to blame you for that. Here, I'm chemically affecting your decision-making process. Do you have agency? Sure, in a sense. But I'm still unarguably causing your drug addiction. Because of this, "agency" is not a useful concept in ethical analysis. It's a way to exonerate the actor in question from the consequences of their actions. I caused you to use drugs. If I hadn't acted, you wouldn't be on drugs. My actions caused preventable harm. Given that my choice is the one being scrutinized, your agency does not change any of this.
Similarly, we can't let the fact that people have agency exonerate the state from putting them in positions where they're highly likely to make decisions that are harmful. This is still harmful policy. "Agency" and "responsibility" are ways of obfuscating that.
> They are designed to protect the capable and the fortunate, who exist in all tax brackets, from the shackles you would impose on them. In doing so we safeguard against the disastrous consequences of the concentration of power, and create an environment that fosters the innovation which has benefited us all.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this reads to me as an admission that you're working backwards from a predetermined conclusion and finding principles which support it. You want to preserve the current status quo (because of its perceived propensity to create innovation, which you believe is responsible for prosperity). You attribute the existence of the capitalist status quo to the freedom of "the capable and fortunate" (i.e. capitalists) to conduct business without government intervention in the market. You contrive a set of "natural" rights which permits them to do this and which does not permit anyone to get in their way; a set of freedoms which concentrates power in the hands of capital owners at the expense of the general public.
Also I find it funny that a bump in the top marginal tax rate is considered an "unjust shackle" while denying coverage to people dying of cancer is simply a tragic sacrifice which must be made in the name of freedom. Surely the wealthy could "tragically sacrifice" some pocket change instead.
- thegrimmest 3y ago> I'd say it's very bad at preventing atrocities Not every event that results in a lot of death is an atrocity. An earthquake is not an atrocity. Your ideology already has resulted in atrocities. Who was the last libertarian that perpetrated a genocide? > I don't know where you got the idea that the Nazis were utilitarians You missed the rest of the genocides. Are you going to argue that the Cultural Revolution also wasn't utilitarian? What happened to all the sparrows? Regarding Nazis, their ideology was complicated, but let's take a clear example of medical experiments. Nazi medical experiments are a pure distillation utilitarian ideals. Having united society in a common hatred of a relatively dispensable minority, they proceeded to use this minority as subjects for the most horrific variety of medical experiments. They had good doctors. Many of the outcomes of these experiments have advanced the state of the art, and benefited society as a result. Nazi society didn't collapse in fear that people would be abducted. It was only Jews, gypsies and other undesirable minorities who were subject to such horrors. Germans were content in the knowledge that their society would benefit, at the small cost of a few Jews. How would you construct an argument that unequivocally refutes this? > Rideshare apps aren't a "ground-breaking innovation" Because of them me and countless others haven't bought a car they otherwise would almost certainly have. I'd say that's a pretty big difference. > Chinese social media is more innovative than American social media Sure, but who invented social media? I'm not arguing that smaller iterative innovations happen everywhere. I'm arguing that paradigm shifts come from disproportionality few places. > [China] must be an economic paper tiger I never argued this. I argued they're an innovative nonstarter. Yes being the world's factory has economic benefits, obviously. You've also not addressed their one-child policy or COVID response. > powerful capitalists exerted power to get what they want through violence Yes, and where they were able to do that the state had failed. And our systems of governance should correct for this. This is their primary and only function. > this "utilitarian maniac" idea from Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, etc. All of these people were in pursuit of the greater good. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. > the consequences that such policy would have on society more broadly. Only if you keep things simple. If your kidney transplant victims are a minority for whom you hatred has been cultivated, your society will be just fine. The banality of evil. > If I were to inject you with a substance that had a 50% chance of making you use drugs Presumably without my consent, you've already violated the core principle I'm defending. I thought this was apparent. So of course you are responsible - you are an agent, and you used force. This example would not apply if you only suggested, or convinced me to use the drugs. In that case it would be me that is fully responsible. Do you have a hypothetical that doesn't start with the use of force? As I've said, it's a categorical difference. > Anything that creates a substantial deviation from the greatest possible net amount of well-being in the world How do you quantify wellbeing? Is a nuclear accident that kills 1000 just as evil as a nuclear bomb that does the same? > I don't assert that we have any essential moral rights. I don't either, exactly. I only assert that we are all moral equals, and each of our conceptions of good and evil are, absent an oracle, equally valid. What makes your idea of the good more valid than someone else's? > an admission that you're working backwards from a predetermined conclusion I'm working from a 1700s definition of liberty. It was clearly not universally or justly applied in the 1700s, but the definition was good. You owe nothing to no one. You exchange/associate with others on a voluntary basis. Disputes are resolved via due process. Violence is prohibited. I'm all for expanding who is entitled to be thus free. I'm vehemently against eroding the definition. > the capitalist status quo Capitalism is just a byproduct of freedom as above described and the right to personal property. I'm not coming out in particular defence of special status for corporations, or even limited liability as a concept. These subjects are, while interesting in their own right, unrelated to individual liberty. > bump in the top marginal tax rate is considered an "unjust shackle" It's not about the rate, it's about what the government is permitted to spend it on. Before US v. Butler (1936) the power given to the government to tax and spend on the "general welfare" of the people was limited to what was explicitly written elsewhere in the constitution. After, the government could basically do whatever it wanted as long as it could be construed to be in the interest of the "general welfare". This was the turning point at which our liberty began to erode, and erode it has. If there is one decision I would reverse, this would be it.