8 ms·

"Selfishness is the the new black and I despise it." That. Right there. He sees it; we (collectively) don't.

by jwatte 12y ago

eevilspock 12y ago
My favorite part: I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ. This is not say that Libertarianism can't represent a progressive force, in the right circumstances, and I don't doubt there will be significant areas where I would agree with Libertarianism. But, really; which bit of not having private property, and the absence of money in the Culture novels, have these people missed? The Culture is hippy commies with hyper-weapons and a deep distrust of both Marketolatry and Greedism. One rests one's case.
- isomorphic 12y ago
  This is because American Libertarianism conflates the two ideas "I should be free to do almost anything I want" with "I owe nothing to other humans (and vice-versa)." The Culture is absolutely about the former and absolutely not about the latter.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >This is because American Libertarianism conflates the two ideas "I should be free to do almost anything I want" with "I owe nothing to other humans (and vice-versa)." Not quite. It confuses freedom with ownership, and thus reasons, "I can only become free by acquiring ownership of more and more of the world around me", with the ultimate conclusion "I can only be free by owning others before they own me." (That's baked in from the start, since the proprietarian ethic was originally designed for a slave society!)
  - meric 12y ago
    Which one of these values, when in-grained into society, offers the most utility: "I give a lot to my fellow human beings, because they are obligations enshrined by law." "I give a lot to my fellow human beings, out of the goodness of my heart." And that's what "Anti-Libertarianists" don't get.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      > "I give a lot to my fellow human beings, because they are obligations enshrined by law." In a democratic society, the laws are, broadly speaking, an expression of the voice of the people. The laws of my country of residence require that I give a significant amount of my income, plus 25% VAT on anything I buy. That's a societal choice, and the popular consensus is that it is a fine system, and the lesser inequality and better social services resulting from it make it entirely worth it.
    - eevilspock 12y ago
      Your "argument" doesn't answer isomorphic's point, nor makes any sense even on its own. The second option of your false choice is, if anything, an ideal of anarchism (which is what some people in the past or outside of America mean by "libertarianism"), not American Libertarianism. Private property, perhaps the most sacred of American Libertarian tenets, is entirely dependent on being enshrined by law and enforced by violence. Another most sacred American Libertarian tenet is the notion of personal responsibility and credit, that each of us in a free market is solely and entirely to blame for our poverty and deserve all the profit and wealth we obtain, that in a free society society is not responsible for our personal condition nor us for society's. How does the importance you give to "when in-grained into society" in your straw-man setup jive with that? Perhaps the important distinction you missed is "American Libertarianism", as opposed to libertarianism in general, which runs the gamut from Ayn Randian worship of selfishness, laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights to libertarian socialism and Libertarian Marxism.
      - meric 12y ago
        I did not note the "American" part of "American Libertarianism". I'll walk back to the anarchy camp. Public benefits can be shared more efficiently and more benevolently by a government around the corner than by one thousands of kilometres away hiding behind lines of police, security guards and lobbyists. I'm just going to leave this here. "Footage shows homeless black man Milton Hall being shot at 46 times by police in the US" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/footage-shows-homeless-black-man-milton-hall-being-shot-at-46-times-by-police-in-the-us-9826453.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/footage-sho...
  - wpietri 12y ago
    Ooh, that's well put. My explanation of it, which I think is closely related, is that they're very focused on a peculiar kind of freedom, freedom from the power of the state. Freedom from want, freedom from ignorance, disease, malnutrition, freedom from oligarchy: all ignored. It all comes across to me as a dressed-up version of "YOU'RE NOT MY DAD!!!" Plus a fair bit of "I've got mine, so fuck you". It make me a bit sad, because the first Libertarians I met, now decades ago, seemed to be very different. They showed me the Nolan Chart [1] and I thought: yes! This is brilliant! Finally I understand why I don't feel comfortable with the left-right spectrum! I don't know if they changed or I did, but what I see of modern Libertarianism seems to me to be a fundamentalist, reptilian form of what I learned about back then. If I have to choose between freedom from food-borne illness and the freedom of kitchen workers not to wash after they wipe, it seems like an easy choice to me. [1] http://nolan.jimeyer.org/nolan_example.php http://nolan.jimeyer.org/nolan_example.php
    - ep103 12y ago
      That's because at its heart, libertarianism started with a number of good ideas. It was more or less born as American political scientists et all learned about the limits of governmental regulation, regulatory capture, and the limits and downsides of the American system of labor union negotiation and membership, and attempted to find a better alternative. I think the problem, and this is just a personal theory, is that many libertarian ideas need to come in duplets or triplets to be effective. Take carbon emissions for a quick (and not completely accurate) example. I've had conversations with libertarians that have argued that carbon emissions should not be fined, capped, traded, or in any way regulated. Basically, when the people care enough about the environment, they will vote effectively with their dollars. Crazily enough, this could actually work, but it needs help. Either carbon emissions would have to be valued (so that companies had to pay to emit carbon, most likely via a tax), or all products would be required to state how much carbon was emitted in that item's production, as well as educated as to what that meant, so they could make an informed decision. In reality, the first idea will be picked up and heavily trumpeted by the energy industry (no government taxation!), but the follow up ideas will be completely ignored or torpedoed. As a result, you end up with the type of modern American Libertarianism you describe. The more this sort of selective trumpeting occurs, the more self-describing libertarians will self-select membership, and the more radical the group may become. That nolan chart is a great example. When I first saw it, it was and still is a great way of introducing people to various types of political theories. But the example you linked is horrendous. The questions underneath the economic freedom section are incredibly misleading, and the result of decades of selective trumpeting. They are NOT the same questions I was shown when I was originally shown the nolan chart all those years ago.
  - bobcostas55 12y ago
    Well, the trick is that he side-steps the latter by having friendly demi-gods provide everything. Humans in the Culture universe don't owe each other shit, because the Minds already provide it all.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I don't really get where he's coming from here, and now of course I never will since he's not around to expand on it. The Culture is a post-scarcity society; while you can't have a planet full of minions and go about conquering other people, nobody in the Culture really lacks for material needs of any kind and risk is virtually non-existent, unless you are determined to off the grid and get yourself killed somewhere that won't be noticed and without having your mind-state backed up. In the absence of economic scarcity and risk, of course money becomes meaningless. I'm not sure about the absence of private property; people certainly have their own houses, ships and other things. Both libertarianism and communism become sort of meaningless in the absence of economic scarcity, and hardly anyone in the Culture seems to be a hippy either - on the contrary, they're all enjoying the hell out of everything technology has to offer, unless he means their energetic epicureanism. Nobody in the Culture (outside of Contact/Special Circumstances, the secret agent set of People Who Have Adventures) is asked to make personal or economic sacrifices of any meaningful kind. It's easy to be generous from a starting point of endless abundance. Some of Banks' most memorable Culture novel characters go against this trend; Jennat Gurgeh in The Player of Games is singular precisely because of his egoism and selfishness, and this is assigned huge economic value in the story, notwithstanding the nose-holding that accompanies it; Bora Horza Gorbuchul in Consider Phlebas is fundamentally opposed to the Culture but is invested with immense moral standing despite his persistent anti-heroism. I think that a lot of the time Banks likes to start with the Culture as the default narrative perspective and then inflict a hypersadistic external antagonist, beside whom the hedonism and self-absorption of the Culture folk seems positively benign, even though it might appear neurotic or narcissistic by contemporary standards. The Culture-Idiran war (which is in many ways the defining event of the civilization) is laid out in some depth in the latter book, and examines the Culture's transformation from a reactive to a proactive culture, or a transition from pacifism to realpolitik, if you like. It's interesting to me that while life within the Culture is largely based on non-economic mutualism, the vast majority of Banks' Culture protagonists are plucked form the moral gray area in which Special Cricumstances proactively attempts to shape events to suit the Culture - a gray area Banks liked so much that he named one of the Minds after it in Excession.
  - tjradcliffe 12y ago
    I both admire and dislike Banks. Stylistically, his writing is brilliant. But I always feel like I need to take a shower afterwards. He repurposes the most tired SF tropes (example: the cannibals that eat their victims while they are still alive, yawn, in "Consider Phlebas") to create sadistic (or, as you correctly say, "hypersadistic") wildly unrealistic, overblown horror novels, and because his style is so brilliant people lap it up, regardless of the egregious idiocy of most of his plots and the overall impossibility, ugliness and stupidity of his completely imaginary society. He never delves into the ordinary lives of citizens of the Culture because doing so would reveal the impossiblity of a "post-scarcity" society populated by human beings who are only capable of being happy if they have "more" than their neighbours. This is a well-documented, empirically proven fact of human life, and it means that the transition to universal abundance is going to be way more problematic and violent than Banks' imaginary world suggests. So his whole imagining of the Culture as a kind of British-Imperial playground for Special Circumstances agents is kind of lame. It assumes a convenient backdrop of humanity as it is not and never has been, which does not withstand even the most cursory scrutiny. Banks avoided all that, and it's too bad because that is where all the really interesting stuff happens, amongst the people who are not special, but merely trying to live decent and ordinary lives.

"Selfishness is the the new black and I despise it." That. Right there. He sees it; we (collectively) don't.

by jwatte 12y ago

"Selfishness is the the new black and I despise it." That. Right there. He sees it; we (collectively) don't.

My favorite part: I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ. This is not say that Libertarianism can't represent a progressive force, in the right circumstances, and I don't doubt there will be significant areas where I would agree with Libertarianism. But, really; which bit of not having private property, and the absence of money in the Culture novels, have these people missed? The Culture is hippy commies with hyper-weapons and a deep distrust of both Marketolatry and Greedism. One rests one's case.

isomorphic 12y ago
This is because American Libertarianism conflates the two ideas "I should be free to do almost anything I want" with "I owe nothing to other humans (and vice-versa)." The Culture is absolutely about the former and absolutely not about the latter.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >This is because American Libertarianism conflates the two ideas "I should be free to do almost anything I want" with "I owe nothing to other humans (and vice-versa)." Not quite. It confuses freedom with ownership, and thus reasons, "I can only become free by acquiring ownership of more and more of the world around me", with the ultimate conclusion "I can only be free by owning others before they own me." (That's baked in from the start, since the proprietarian ethic was originally designed for a slave society!)
- meric 12y ago
  Which one of these values, when in-grained into society, offers the most utility: "I give a lot to my fellow human beings, because they are obligations enshrined by law." "I give a lot to my fellow human beings, out of the goodness of my heart." And that's what "Anti-Libertarianists" don't get.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    > "I give a lot to my fellow human beings, because they are obligations enshrined by law." In a democratic society, the laws are, broadly speaking, an expression of the voice of the people. The laws of my country of residence require that I give a significant amount of my income, plus 25% VAT on anything I buy. That's a societal choice, and the popular consensus is that it is a fine system, and the lesser inequality and better social services resulting from it make it entirely worth it.
  - eevilspock 12y ago
    Your "argument" doesn't answer isomorphic's point, nor makes any sense even on its own. The second option of your false choice is, if anything, an ideal of anarchism (which is what some people in the past or outside of America mean by "libertarianism"), not American Libertarianism. Private property, perhaps the most sacred of American Libertarian tenets, is entirely dependent on being enshrined by law and enforced by violence. Another most sacred American Libertarian tenet is the notion of personal responsibility and credit, that each of us in a free market is solely and entirely to blame for our poverty and deserve all the profit and wealth we obtain, that in a free society society is not responsible for our personal condition nor us for society's. How does the importance you give to "when in-grained into society" in your straw-man setup jive with that? Perhaps the important distinction you missed is "American Libertarianism", as opposed to libertarianism in general, which runs the gamut from Ayn Randian worship of selfishness, laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights to libertarian socialism and Libertarian Marxism.
    - meric 12y ago
      I did not note the "American" part of "American Libertarianism". I'll walk back to the anarchy camp. Public benefits can be shared more efficiently and more benevolently by a government around the corner than by one thousands of kilometres away hiding behind lines of police, security guards and lobbyists. I'm just going to leave this here. "Footage shows homeless black man Milton Hall being shot at 46 times by police in the US" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/footage-shows-homeless-black-man-milton-hall-being-shot-at-46-times-by-police-in-the-us-9826453.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/footage-sho...
- wpietri 12y ago
  Ooh, that's well put. My explanation of it, which I think is closely related, is that they're very focused on a peculiar kind of freedom, freedom from the power of the state. Freedom from want, freedom from ignorance, disease, malnutrition, freedom from oligarchy: all ignored. It all comes across to me as a dressed-up version of "YOU'RE NOT MY DAD!!!" Plus a fair bit of "I've got mine, so fuck you". It make me a bit sad, because the first Libertarians I met, now decades ago, seemed to be very different. They showed me the Nolan Chart [1] and I thought: yes! This is brilliant! Finally I understand why I don't feel comfortable with the left-right spectrum! I don't know if they changed or I did, but what I see of modern Libertarianism seems to me to be a fundamentalist, reptilian form of what I learned about back then. If I have to choose between freedom from food-borne illness and the freedom of kitchen workers not to wash after they wipe, it seems like an easy choice to me. [1] http://nolan.jimeyer.org/nolan_example.php http://nolan.jimeyer.org/nolan_example.php
  - ep103 12y ago
    That's because at its heart, libertarianism started with a number of good ideas. It was more or less born as American political scientists et all learned about the limits of governmental regulation, regulatory capture, and the limits and downsides of the American system of labor union negotiation and membership, and attempted to find a better alternative. I think the problem, and this is just a personal theory, is that many libertarian ideas need to come in duplets or triplets to be effective. Take carbon emissions for a quick (and not completely accurate) example. I've had conversations with libertarians that have argued that carbon emissions should not be fined, capped, traded, or in any way regulated. Basically, when the people care enough about the environment, they will vote effectively with their dollars. Crazily enough, this could actually work, but it needs help. Either carbon emissions would have to be valued (so that companies had to pay to emit carbon, most likely via a tax), or all products would be required to state how much carbon was emitted in that item's production, as well as educated as to what that meant, so they could make an informed decision. In reality, the first idea will be picked up and heavily trumpeted by the energy industry (no government taxation!), but the follow up ideas will be completely ignored or torpedoed. As a result, you end up with the type of modern American Libertarianism you describe. The more this sort of selective trumpeting occurs, the more self-describing libertarians will self-select membership, and the more radical the group may become. That nolan chart is a great example. When I first saw it, it was and still is a great way of introducing people to various types of political theories. But the example you linked is horrendous. The questions underneath the economic freedom section are incredibly misleading, and the result of decades of selective trumpeting. They are NOT the same questions I was shown when I was originally shown the nolan chart all those years ago.
- bobcostas55 12y ago
  Well, the trick is that he side-steps the latter by having friendly demi-gods provide everything. Humans in the Culture universe don't owe each other shit, because the Minds already provide it all.
anigbrowl 12y ago
I don't really get where he's coming from here, and now of course I never will since he's not around to expand on it. The Culture is a post-scarcity society; while you can't have a planet full of minions and go about conquering other people, nobody in the Culture really lacks for material needs of any kind and risk is virtually non-existent, unless you are determined to off the grid and get yourself killed somewhere that won't be noticed and without having your mind-state backed up. In the absence of economic scarcity and risk, of course money becomes meaningless. I'm not sure about the absence of private property; people certainly have their own houses, ships and other things. Both libertarianism and communism become sort of meaningless in the absence of economic scarcity, and hardly anyone in the Culture seems to be a hippy either - on the contrary, they're all enjoying the hell out of everything technology has to offer, unless he means their energetic epicureanism. Nobody in the Culture (outside of Contact/Special Circumstances, the secret agent set of People Who Have Adventures) is asked to make personal or economic sacrifices of any meaningful kind. It's easy to be generous from a starting point of endless abundance. Some of Banks' most memorable Culture novel characters go against this trend; Jennat Gurgeh in The Player of Games is singular precisely because of his egoism and selfishness, and this is assigned huge economic value in the story, notwithstanding the nose-holding that accompanies it; Bora Horza Gorbuchul in Consider Phlebas is fundamentally opposed to the Culture but is invested with immense moral standing despite his persistent anti-heroism. I think that a lot of the time Banks likes to start with the Culture as the default narrative perspective and then inflict a hypersadistic external antagonist, beside whom the hedonism and self-absorption of the Culture folk seems positively benign, even though it might appear neurotic or narcissistic by contemporary standards. The Culture-Idiran war (which is in many ways the defining event of the civilization) is laid out in some depth in the latter book, and examines the Culture's transformation from a reactive to a proactive culture, or a transition from pacifism to realpolitik, if you like. It's interesting to me that while life within the Culture is largely based on non-economic mutualism, the vast majority of Banks' Culture protagonists are plucked form the moral gray area in which Special Cricumstances proactively attempts to shape events to suit the Culture - a gray area Banks liked so much that he named one of the Minds after it in Excession.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  I both admire and dislike Banks. Stylistically, his writing is brilliant. But I always feel like I need to take a shower afterwards. He repurposes the most tired SF tropes (example: the cannibals that eat their victims while they are still alive, yawn, in "Consider Phlebas") to create sadistic (or, as you correctly say, "hypersadistic") wildly unrealistic, overblown horror novels, and because his style is so brilliant people lap it up, regardless of the egregious idiocy of most of his plots and the overall impossibility, ugliness and stupidity of his completely imaginary society. He never delves into the ordinary lives of citizens of the Culture because doing so would reveal the impossiblity of a "post-scarcity" society populated by human beings who are only capable of being happy if they have "more" than their neighbours. This is a well-documented, empirically proven fact of human life, and it means that the transition to universal abundance is going to be way more problematic and violent than Banks' imaginary world suggests. So his whole imagining of the Culture as a kind of British-Imperial playground for Special Circumstances agents is kind of lame. It assumes a convenient backdrop of humanity as it is not and never has been, which does not withstand even the most cursory scrutiny. Banks avoided all that, and it's too bad because that is where all the really interesting stuff happens, amongst the people who are not special, but merely trying to live decent and ordinary lives.