Comment by bccdee
2 years ago
> Would you kill one unwilling person to save a million? a billion? I would not.
Yes, in an instant.
I find your perspective completely self-defeating here. The cost of your way of thinking is a billion lives, minus one. What is the benefit? A sense of self-righteousness? What thing of value are you preserving here, that is worth more than a billion living people?
> [China] is not able to generate important innovations on its own.
Can you cite a source on this? China has (for example) a huge and very productive tech industry. I don't accept the unilateral assertion that they're doing all of this without innovation. If you contend that innovation comes from the market, China agrees. That's why their policy, post-Deng, has been very market-forward. You seem to be asserting that the world must conform to your beliefs, rather than conforming your beliefs to the world. China is plenty innovative, as far as I can tell.
> If the government were not so empowered to regulate every aspect of our lives, corporations would not so easily be able to capture that power.
You've got this backwards. Corporations express their power through regulatory capture. The less government there is, the more that corporations fill the power vacuum left in its absence. A corporation can arrest you. It simply lobbies to have the police do it on their behalf. The only way to prevent this is either for the government to have the backbone to keep corporations in their place, or for the government to dissolve entirely—at which point law enforcement is replaced by independent security contractors, and a corporation really CAN arrest you.
> The wealthy cannot round people up and imprison them. They do not have that kind of power.
I invite you to revisit the history of the Gilded Age, where Pinkertons brutalized union organizers and robber barons had the US Army drop munitions on striking coal miners. Capital tends to exert power through subtler means today, but don't let it fool you. Capitalists still call the shots.
> Aye, but you can have enough respect for others to draw a principled distinction between your own moral compass, and how far you're willing to it that on other people who disagree.
Certainly it's worth picking your battles, especially when the stakes are low. However, the stakes are high when it comes to violence, incarceration, social hierarchy, poverty, etc. I won't concede to let evil happen simply out of respect for someone else's belief that evil things are actually good.
> This is anti-freedom because it violates the rights of an individual to choose their own level of risk tolerance
I feel like you completely missed my spiel about the flexibility of the concept freedom-based rights. Again, what about the right to freedom from treatable illness? You seem to be starting from the position of "single-payer healthcare shouldn't happen" and working back to a set of "natural" rights which will allow you to justify that.
> Health, just like everything else, is a personal responsibility.
Now, this is a PERFECT example. Consider lung cancer. While, yes, getting lung cancer is a consequence of the personal choice to smoke, let's consider for a moment why people choose to smoke at all. For one, an extensive campaign of misinformation on the part of tobacco companies to suppress evidence of the harm of smoking. For another, high-stress circumstances tend to push people towards substance use. 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. Similarly, given that poverty (which can be ameliorated through policy) is a significant cause of substance abuse issues, blaming poor people for using substances is another way to deflect blame in service of promoting public inaction.
On top of this, many health issues cannot be prevented at all by lifestyle choices, which in and of itself debunks the idea that health is a "personal responsibility," but we'll set that aside. Even purely through the lens of lifestyle health, the claim that "health is a personal responsibility" is extremely suspect. People ultimately do not always have the power to live a healthy lifestyle. Nobody wants to get sick; everyone tries their best. It's in their best interest, after all. However, corporations and the state do not try their best to ensure people lead health lives. Neither group is nearly so incentivized to look out for the health of individual citizens. In fact, insurance companies profit by withholding treatment, and the insurance lobby is very powerful.
So when I see you sculpting a careful set of "freedom-based rights" designed to specifically protect insurance companies and high-bracket taxpayers at the expense of the most vulnerable people in society—the poor and sick—I gotta say, I grow extremely cynical as to the motivations behind your philosophy. As far as I'm concerned, natural rights theory is the purview of sophists. I'm sure there are some Kantians somewhere in the depths of academia who have put together a rigorous and consistent system of rights-based analysis, but I haven't met them. I tend to only see rights invoked as excuses to permit evil and turn a blind eye.
> What is the benefit? A sense of self-righteousness?
The benefit is adhering to a set of principles that guard against committing atrocities that have already cost countless millions of lives. Unprincipled people driven by utilitarian objectives have done by far the most harm in human history. The Holocaust, the Cultural Revolution, the Holodomor, the Great Purge, the Cambodian genocide, on and on the list goes.
There is no mechanism to constrain authority so concentrated. It always goes horribly wrong. Democracies elect genocidal dictators. The only solution that has been proven to work in the medium term is a regard for individual autonomy as sacrosanct and inviolable. I'm concerned at the erosion of this principle.
I would rather have a thousand robber barons and school shooters than one Cultural Revolution. If you're preparing kill an innocent person, no matter your motivation, you're always the bad guy. The ends do not justify the means.
> China is plenty innovative, as far as I can tell.
What ground-breaking innovations that changed the shape of the world originated in China? Usable smart phones? Social media? Ride hailing? Online shopping? Mass-market electric vehicles? Self-landing rockets? That's all just California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_cou... This isn't a coincidence.
> where Pinkertons brutalized union organizers and robber barons had the US Army drop munitions on striking coal miners
You're citing cases where the state failed to intervene to protect the physical safety it guarantees. Where it failed to uphold the very principles it espouses. These errors are far easier to correct than trying to convince some maniac that their utilitarian calculation is wrong. Also, the harm done by these failures is immeasurably less than the aforementioned genocides.
> I won't concede to let evil happen simply out of respect for someone else's belief that evil things are actually good.
You have to define evil though. Would you care to suggest a definition? It's not a synonym of suffering.
> what about the right to freedom from treatable illness?
What is the source of this right? Why is your right to be treated more important than a doctor's right to choose whom to treat? Does it just stem from some back-of-the-envelope calculation that we're all better off if we use a bit of force to compel others to pay for your care? Can't you use the same sort of math to demand a kidney transplant from an unwilling donor? Or to euthanize the mentally ill? Or those who disagree with you? Where does it stop?
> a consequence of the personal choice to smoke
> poverty is a significant cause of substance abuse issues
These are incompatible statements. People have agency, and the responsibility for an action lies wholly with the agent who took it. The difference between forcing someone to do something and convincing them is of kind (categorical), not of degree.
> People ultimately do not always have the power to live a healthy lifestyle
I agree, but I'm saying that your good luck to be born into a healthy body, with a capable mind, or into a stable family, belongs to you. It is no more within the purview of authority to redistribute than your kidney.
> "freedom-based rights" designed to specifically protect insurance companies and high-bracket taxpayers
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 benefitted us all.
> 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.
> 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.
4 replies →