151–160 of 160 posts
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Libertarian and redistribution have an obvious logic conflict, so you may be right about very weird friends. Libertarian base idea is freedom, as much as possible; redistribution is the opposite of freedom because you work, earn money and someone comes and takes it from you. Makes sense?
That conflict is only there if you assume redistribution is forced rather than opt-in.
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So let's handle it as a moral question. The classical liberal claim is then that the moral right that certain things should not be done to you beats the moral right of others that you should do certain things for them. Which is exactly the distinction between negative and positive rights. And furthermore, that these will unavoidably conflict, wherefore the enforcement of positive rights must lead to morally inferior…
I'm not sure that is the distinction. In a system of negative freedom contracts entail a duty to honor them, ie., are the source of obligations to others. So a system of negative freedom is really just one where only you can obligate your future self to be duty bound to do something for someone else. The libertarian still regards this as a duty, so it is a seemingly arbitrary one and contrary to "freedom as such". Th…
As to the point of obligating your future self to honour any contract that you have agreed to, the point is that you yourself chose to enter said contract voluntarily. The strength of the whole philosophy is that it seeks to deal with potential sources of conflict by presenting a minimal set of clear-cut rules and leave the rest up to the participants. As you cannot choose to be a participant, because the mere fact of your existence forces you to be one, it simultaneously tries to maximise your freedom of choice from there on out.
Many words have been spilled about the "social contract" as legitimisation for the state. Yet how convincing do they really sound in the face of Spooner's pithy rejoinder that "I didn't sign any contract, so I'm not bound by your laws and regulations."?
BTW, I don't think you will have an easy time to argue that any other set of a priory rules does a better job of maximising freedom. The toughest critique of libertarianism that I know of rather seeks to dispense of a priory morality altogether in favour of a consequentialist point of view. Scott Alexander Potter has done so in his anti-libertarian FAQ, just in case you haven't already read it (not saying you didn't, just mentioning it).
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The law that applies/ought to apply is the one against fraud in the beef example.
By the time the fraud has been discovered and the company has been successfully sued, the owners will have long moved on, leaving behind nothing but a shell with ownership registered in the Cayman Islands. (Lax regulation of companies is also part of deregulation). In any case there are other areas of regulation, such as environmental protection. What will happen when those are relaxed?
My relationship with politics and economics is complicated like it should be. I "stay in the center of the circle" as Tao Te Ching advises, but I also cannot deny the superiority of the Free Market. (Not to be confused with whatever the United States does for healthcare). We have countless examples of competitive markets performing best, and a handful of government controlled markets that are horrible (healthcare, ed…
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> No, if you don't work you don't have healthcare, only emergency care that I think it's similar to the one in US. No, really, you do. I'm speaking for Germany here, if you're unemployed and on long term welfare, the state pays for your health insurance (and it's at a subsidized rate), you have the exact same health insurance as any normal employee that is using the public health insurance (which is the super majorit…
Then please call it Germany, not Europe and we're all good.
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I'm not sure that is the distinction. In a system of negative freedom contracts entail a duty to honor them, ie., are the source of obligations to others. So a system of negative freedom is really just one where only you can obligate your future self to be duty bound to do something for someone else. The libertarian still regards this as a duty, so it is a seemingly arbitrary one and contrary to "freedom as such". Th…
To the best of my knowledge, it is. As to the point of obligating your future self to honour any contract that you have agreed to, the point is that you yourself chose to enter said contract voluntarily. The strength of the whole philosophy is that it seeks to deal with potential sources of conflict by presenting a minimal set of clear-cut rules and leave the rest up to the participants. As you cannot choose to be a…
My point here is just the contingency of the starting point: many do not regard "their word" as obligating. It's a rather magical sort of perspective: that "an oath", "binds", etc.
The reason we find promises of this kind even intuitively plausible is social: we immediately intuite that there is reputational damage associated with breaking a vow.
Libertarianism thus trades on social instincts in its set up, strangely prioritising just a few of them (aggression, vows, etc.).
This is disguised by a language of "freedom and reason", but really it's just a very old-fashioned communtarianism -- that as with most -- works in a near pre-social small-tribe environment, but fails to generalize.
When you cannot track people's reputation because you live in a civilization of millions/billions, "contracts" alone aren't a plausible to conduct business.
The "social contract" is not something "to be signed", but a recognition of the folly of "signing" (oath giving) in a society where no one hears your oaths.
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To the best of my knowledge, it is. As to the point of obligating your future self to honour any contract that you have agreed to, the point is that you yourself chose to enter said contract voluntarily. The strength of the whole philosophy is that it seeks to deal with potential sources of conflict by presenting a minimal set of clear-cut rules and leave the rest up to the participants. As you cannot choose to be a…
I have read it, and I agree: the fatal critique is the failure to solve collective-action problems. My point here is just the contingency of the starting point: many do not regard "their word" as obligating. It's a rather magical sort of perspective: that "an oath", "binds", etc. The reason we find promises of this kind even intuitively plausible is social: we immediately intuite that there is reputational damage ass…
To the people who keep calling for a stronger state to protect them from the evils of capitalism I say: You are being duped! Your chosen path to salvation is in truth the instrument by which you are enslaved!
I am much more optimistic that practical solutions may be found to deal with the problems of non-statist societal solutions than with any statist ones.
I'm convinced that as long as we have not achieved a state of post-scarcity - which may be never - any attempt to abolish property rights is doomed to bloody failure.
Lastly, any societal order that demands even the slightest obligation of active cooperation from any individual - be it at the behest of another individual, an oligarchy, or even a majority - must in time devolve into tyranny.
The only path to a solution that I can currently see would have to work along Georgist lines. When money can be raised from common inalienable property, that would enable redistribution without theft. The capitalist tragedy of negative externalities could be solved with a scheme of compensation for damages to a common property. (&c.p.p.) Such a kind of setup might be able to avoid all of the worst pitfalls, I believe.
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I have read it, and I agree: the fatal critique is the failure to solve collective-action problems. My point here is just the contingency of the starting point: many do not regard "their word" as obligating. It's a rather magical sort of perspective: that "an oath", "binds", etc. The reason we find promises of this kind even intuitively plausible is social: we immediately intuite that there is reputational damage ass…
As problematic as any voluntaryist-ish programme may be, I am even more dissatisfied with all of the alternatives. To the people who keep calling for a stronger state to protect them from the evils of capitalism I say: You are being duped! Your chosen path to salvation is in truth the instrument by which you are enslaved! I am much more optimistic that practical solutions may be found to deal with the problems of non…
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"A strong union presence is significantly more effective than a minimum wage." Why? To me it seems that governments have far stronger means to enforce a minimum wage than unions have.
A minimum wage is easy to enforce, but that's more of a bug than a feature. Minimum wages have two problems: 1) It's very hard to set it at a correct level. Too low and it does nothing; too high and it causes rampant unemployment. Set it at the right level and you can get some real benefits, but good luck figuring it out, considering that the right level changes from year to year, city to city, and industry to indust…
I’ve seen effects of both good and bad unions, but struggle to define clear distinctions other than one appears much more corrupt
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==To say nothing of the way more diverse human capital of the US.== It actually sounds like there is something you want to say about human capital diversity. Why not say it?
Say what? That the US still has to handle the slavery thing that it got herself into since its very inception while Denmark doesn’t have that problem? I thought that was common knowledge. We (Romania) have the same problem with our Roma population that we “de-slaved” in the 1860s (so pretty much at the same time as slavery was abolished in the States) and during all this time we have had problems similar to the US (e…
The Danish West India Company? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_West_India_Company
==Yes, when you have a small, privileged and mostly white population things are easy, only when it gets mixed up things start becoming complicated.==
Not sure where you are going, but you seem to equate “culture” to “laws”. People aren’t pining for the culture of Norway and Denmark, they want the economic policies and Norway and Denmark. We could pass distributionary legislation regardless of how many “white” people we have. It sounds like a cop-out.