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It may be alarmist, but I don't think only libertarians would object. One of the authors points -- admittedly, not his most vocal point -- is that in the Britis

It may be alarmist, but I don't think only libertarians would object. One of the authors points -- admittedly, not his most vocal point -- is that in the British case government action seems especially unnecessary. This is my main objection (although I am roughly libertarian). The number of people who actually do not know that models are not retouched does not represent a large percentage of people. Expending real energy to solve non-problems seems like a universally bad practice.

foldr 17y ago
Yes I agree that this is unnecessary, but the article goes a lot further than just saying that it's unnecessary. The claim appears to be that any attempt by a government to increase the happiness of its citizens is inherently wrong. It is not as if labeling shopped images for what they are would actually do any harm.
- chasingsparks 17y ago
  The article does go further than it should have, at least given the evidence it was citing. I may or may not (or may) agree that government efforts of increasing happiness may be of limited efficacy, but I would not try to make my argument using only the two cases mentioned. ..Then again, I think that is true for most news sources.
- chasingsparks 17y ago
  p.s. great handle.
- jerf 17y ago
  I am an American; the rules of your local jurisdiction may vary. The government does not have the power to make me happy, in any useful sense of the term power. (It lacks both the capability and the authority, among other things.) It has the responsibility to protect my right to pursue happiness, and that is all. In fact the government has great power to make me unhappy, and I have the right to pursue this problem electorally, but that's about it. The article's point is once you start arguing against the preceding two paragraphs, you really ought to be aware that you just threw liberty out the window. The only way the government can make you happy is to exert an awful lot of control, and given how things actually turn out in real life, all that control is just as likely to make you unhappy, only, now, you have no recourse left, because what is making you unhappy is the Ultimate Authority. It isn't inherently wrong, but it is inherently very suspicious, and for any given concrete proposal of how the government plans to make you happy, the odds of the specific proposal being inherently wrong are very high. (I'm also reacting much more to the British thing than the proximate photoshopping debate, though I tend to think that anybody who still thinks that any magazine picture has any reality left to it is not going to notice or process a tiny little "This image may not be real" note. That is to say, this is a feel-good measure for the lawmaker, I don't see how it will actually change anything.)
  - foldr 17y ago
    >The government does not have the power to make me happy, in any useful sense of the term power. I'm not sure what you mean here. It certainly doesn't have the power to guarantee your happiness under all conceivable circumstances (and neither do you, and nor does any other entity) but it can certainly make decisions which either increase or decrease your happiness. You would be happier, I assume, if the government decided to cut your taxes, and less happy if it decided to increase them. (Or pick some other example if that particular one doesn't work for you.) >The article's point is once you start arguing against the preceding two paragraphs, you really ought to be aware that you just threw liberty out the window This is the alarmist part. Efforts on the part of a government to make its citizens happy do not necessarily entail "throwing liberty out of the window". This is simply nonsense. And in general, saying that anyone who fails to agree with your "preceding two paragraphs" is inherently opposed to liberty is a rather childish rhetorical tactic. >The only way the government can make you happy is to exert an awful lot of control, Governments do all sorts of things (e.g. running the legal system, maintaining basic regulations on the market) which tend, on the whole, to increase levels of happiness. I don't know if this counts as an "awful lot" of control, but it doesn't seem especially unjustified or sinister. Neither does the particular form of control in the case at issue, which is nothing more than a minor market regulation of an unremarkable sort. You are talking as if the aim here was for the government to somehow guarantee the happiness of every citizen, but of course no-one is proposing that it either could be or should be so. Some people do think that in those cases where a government policy may reasonably be expected to increase people's general well-being, it might, typically, absent reasons to the contrary, be a good idea to enact that policy. But this sort of moderate position is of course too radically pro-statist for the doom-and-gloom libertarians. >I'm also reacting much more to the British thing What's the "British thing"? >That is to say, this is a feel-good measure for the lawmaker, I don't see how it will actually change anything. If it's not going to change anything, what is there to get so upset about? I suppose it is a good chance to jump on the usual "gub'mint outa my 'shop" bandwagon.
    - jerf 17y ago
      "Governments do all sorts of things (e.g. running the legal system, maintaining basic regulations on the market) which tend, on the whole, to increase levels of happiness." You seem to have missed or not understood the point about protecting my right to pursue happiness. This entails things like keeping the criminal justice system working, and a military sufficient to defend the country. Everything you outline except taxes fits into that framework. Where things go off the rail is when "the ability to pursue happiness" as a metric for goodness is replaced by "happiness" as a metric for goodness. This is not the same thing at all. Once you permit that as an argument for letting (or requiring) the government to do something, you're in a different domain. Taxes is an example of government making me less happy. You speak as if the government by default owns all my money, and I should be happy about what I am graciously permitted to keep. No, I am unhappy about what they take. I acknowledge the need for it, but it would be fairly odd if it made me happy. Failing to make me less unhappy is perhaps in some sense increasing my happiness, but I'm not ready to accord them much credit for that action, in the hypothetical world in which my taxes might go down anytime soon.
- InclinedPlane 17y ago
  It would do no harm you say? Consider what it would actually take to make this work. There would have to be a standard of labeling, there would have to be laws, there would have to be consequences for not following the law. There would need to be efforts expended to police those laws. This translates into the government spending money, which comes out of tax payer pockets, or public debt, or decreased spending on USEFUL public works. None of these are good things. This also translates into greater reach of the state into everyone's business. What happens if some small-time 'zine writer fails to comply with the law? Do they get fined, hassled, thrown into jail? How do we prevent abuses of power in enforcing these laws? Perhaps some enforcement agent closes down a news outlet they don't like with false claims they are breaking this law. All of these things are very real concerns, even for such a simple law as this one. And ultimately what you end up with is greater power in the hands of the state and an ever increasing infantilization and disempowerment of the individual. This, I put forth, represents harm.
  - foldr 17y ago
    On the other hand, spending time and money on this sort of relatively harmless government scheme just means that there is less time for the government to do all the other sinister and terrifying things that it was planning on doing, no? So from the position of someone who is worried about increasing state power, it seems to me that you could argue it both ways. > I put forth You "put forth", seriously?

foldr 17y ago

Yes I agree that this is unnecessary, but the article goes a lot further than just saying that it's unnecessary. The claim appears to be that any attempt by a government to increase the happiness of its citizens is inherently wrong. It is not as if labeling shopped images for what they are would actually do any harm.

chasingsparks 17y ago
The article does go further than it should have, at least given the evidence it was citing. I may or may not (or may) agree that government efforts of increasing happiness may be of limited efficacy, but I would not try to make my argument using only the two cases mentioned. ..Then again, I think that is true for most news sources.
chasingsparks 17y ago
p.s. great handle.
jerf 17y ago
I am an American; the rules of your local jurisdiction may vary. The government does not have the power to make me happy, in any useful sense of the term power. (It lacks both the capability and the authority, among other things.) It has the responsibility to protect my right to pursue happiness, and that is all. In fact the government has great power to make me unhappy, and I have the right to pursue this problem electorally, but that's about it. The article's point is once you start arguing against the preceding two paragraphs, you really ought to be aware that you just threw liberty out the window. The only way the government can make you happy is to exert an awful lot of control, and given how things actually turn out in real life, all that control is just as likely to make you unhappy, only, now, you have no recourse left, because what is making you unhappy is the Ultimate Authority. It isn't inherently wrong, but it is inherently very suspicious, and for any given concrete proposal of how the government plans to make you happy, the odds of the specific proposal being inherently wrong are very high. (I'm also reacting much more to the British thing than the proximate photoshopping debate, though I tend to think that anybody who still thinks that any magazine picture has any reality left to it is not going to notice or process a tiny little "This image may not be real" note. That is to say, this is a feel-good measure for the lawmaker, I don't see how it will actually change anything.)
- foldr 17y ago
  >The government does not have the power to make me happy, in any useful sense of the term power. I'm not sure what you mean here. It certainly doesn't have the power to guarantee your happiness under all conceivable circumstances (and neither do you, and nor does any other entity) but it can certainly make decisions which either increase or decrease your happiness. You would be happier, I assume, if the government decided to cut your taxes, and less happy if it decided to increase them. (Or pick some other example if that particular one doesn't work for you.) >The article's point is once you start arguing against the preceding two paragraphs, you really ought to be aware that you just threw liberty out the window This is the alarmist part. Efforts on the part of a government to make its citizens happy do not necessarily entail "throwing liberty out of the window". This is simply nonsense. And in general, saying that anyone who fails to agree with your "preceding two paragraphs" is inherently opposed to liberty is a rather childish rhetorical tactic. >The only way the government can make you happy is to exert an awful lot of control, Governments do all sorts of things (e.g. running the legal system, maintaining basic regulations on the market) which tend, on the whole, to increase levels of happiness. I don't know if this counts as an "awful lot" of control, but it doesn't seem especially unjustified or sinister. Neither does the particular form of control in the case at issue, which is nothing more than a minor market regulation of an unremarkable sort. You are talking as if the aim here was for the government to somehow guarantee the happiness of every citizen, but of course no-one is proposing that it either could be or should be so. Some people do think that in those cases where a government policy may reasonably be expected to increase people's general well-being, it might, typically, absent reasons to the contrary, be a good idea to enact that policy. But this sort of moderate position is of course too radically pro-statist for the doom-and-gloom libertarians. >I'm also reacting much more to the British thing What's the "British thing"? >That is to say, this is a feel-good measure for the lawmaker, I don't see how it will actually change anything. If it's not going to change anything, what is there to get so upset about? I suppose it is a good chance to jump on the usual "gub'mint outa my 'shop" bandwagon.
  - jerf 17y ago
    "Governments do all sorts of things (e.g. running the legal system, maintaining basic regulations on the market) which tend, on the whole, to increase levels of happiness." You seem to have missed or not understood the point about protecting my right to pursue happiness. This entails things like keeping the criminal justice system working, and a military sufficient to defend the country. Everything you outline except taxes fits into that framework. Where things go off the rail is when "the ability to pursue happiness" as a metric for goodness is replaced by "happiness" as a metric for goodness. This is not the same thing at all. Once you permit that as an argument for letting (or requiring) the government to do something, you're in a different domain. Taxes is an example of government making me less happy. You speak as if the government by default owns all my money, and I should be happy about what I am graciously permitted to keep. No, I am unhappy about what they take. I acknowledge the need for it, but it would be fairly odd if it made me happy. Failing to make me less unhappy is perhaps in some sense increasing my happiness, but I'm not ready to accord them much credit for that action, in the hypothetical world in which my taxes might go down anytime soon.
InclinedPlane 17y ago
It would do no harm you say? Consider what it would actually take to make this work. There would have to be a standard of labeling, there would have to be laws, there would have to be consequences for not following the law. There would need to be efforts expended to police those laws. This translates into the government spending money, which comes out of tax payer pockets, or public debt, or decreased spending on USEFUL public works. None of these are good things. This also translates into greater reach of the state into everyone's business. What happens if some small-time 'zine writer fails to comply with the law? Do they get fined, hassled, thrown into jail? How do we prevent abuses of power in enforcing these laws? Perhaps some enforcement agent closes down a news outlet they don't like with false claims they are breaking this law. All of these things are very real concerns, even for such a simple law as this one. And ultimately what you end up with is greater power in the hands of the state and an ever increasing infantilization and disempowerment of the individual. This, I put forth, represents harm.
- foldr 17y ago
  On the other hand, spending time and money on this sort of relatively harmless government scheme just means that there is less time for the government to do all the other sinister and terrifying things that it was planning on doing, no? So from the position of someone who is worried about increasing state power, it seems to me that you could argue it both ways. > I put forth You "put forth", seriously?