Comment by bccdee
2 years 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.
> 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.
> An earthquake is not an atrocity
Earthquakes aren't preventable. If you could stop an earthquake and you chose not to, that would be an atrocity.
> Who was the last libertarian that perpetrated a genocide?
Augusto Pinochet was a neoliberal, and he committed all kinds of atrocities. The US genocided the Native Americans, and continued to enact genocidal policies up through the 20th century.
And anyway, which atrocities has my ideology—progressive leftism—been responsible for? The USSR was a conservative authoritarian autocracy, not a progressive democracy, so don't go citing the Soviet Union again. I don't know why you're so fixated on them; you bring them up constantly.
> Nazi medical experiments are a pure distillation utilitarian ideals.
Yeah because the Nazi death camps which made them possible generated so much net well-being. No, this is a half-baked caricature of utilitarianism. Consequentialist ethics assesses the goodness of an action based on its consequences, and the consequences of the policies responsible for Josef Mengele's experiments are a massive net negative.
> Because of them me and countless others haven't bought a car
It's just a taxi subsidized by VC money. The fact that it benefits you does not make it an innovation.
> 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.
Then why are you citing marginal innovations like "what if we reused rocket boosters" or "what if you could order a taxi with an app instead of a phone call" or "what if electric cars had better marketing"?
Besides, social media wasn't a singular invention; it was the product of a shifting communication ecosystem. The internet led to BBSes, which led to forums and blogs, which led to shared software frameworks for these things, which led to hosted solutions for these things, like Geocities, MySpace, and eventually Facebook. Paradigm shifts ARE smaller innovative iterations. You fail to understand how technological progress happens.
> You've also not addressed their one-child policy or COVID response.
What's to address? They have some bad policies? America has some bad policies too. I'm not here to defend every choice China has ever made; only to debunk the claim that liberal administrations are inherently successful while non-liberal ones are inherently not so.
> Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, etc. All of these people were in pursuit of the greater good.
Literally everyone claims to pursue the greater good. Even you're justifying your case based on the need to create prosperity and prevent atrocities. That doesn't mean they're principled utilitarians.
"Oh you want to stop people from getting hurt? You know who else wanted that? Stalin!" No he didn't. This is a plainly unserious position.
> If your kidney transplant victims are a minority for whom you hatred has been cultivated, your society will be just fine.
Setting aside that a society would have to be doing much better than "just fine" to offset the harm caused by the mass slaughter of minority groups, what's your go-to example of the "just fine" society where minorities are butchered for their organs?
No, this is a sophistic parody of utilitarianism where you just assert that some nominal benefit outweighs the consequences of whatever harm you want to justify. Any ethical system can be twisted in bad faith to justify bad things; the question is whether such bad-faith analyses can be distinguished from proper rigorous ethical analysis. This is the case here: Your supposed utilitarian argument for organ harvesting doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
> Do you have a hypothetical that doesn't start with the use of force?
Sure. Maybe my factory produces a polluting smog that affects your propensity to make whatever choices. Maybe I've bought up all the property in your province except for land next to a toxic swamp that emits mind-affecting gas. Maybe I'm the only corporation who created a vaccine for a deadly new disease, and I choose to add the mind-affecting chemicals to the vaccine because it suits my interests to affect your decisions. There are countless ways that I can push you into making a particular choice without using force.
> 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?
Then how can you condemn a serial killer? His idea of good and evil is just as valid as yours, and apparently you aren't entitled to privilege your own morals.
> 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.
The reason this definition was created in the 1700s was because the 1700s was the period where middle-class capital owners were beginning to compete for power with the aristocracy, and they needed an ideology which would justify the consolidation of power in capitalist hands.
> Capitalism is just a byproduct of freedom
Exactly backwards. Your 1700s definition of freedom is a byproduct of capitalism, in the same way that the divine right of kings is an ideological byproduct of feudalism. Capitalism arose because of the shifts in power caused by mercantile imperialism and the industrial revolution. Capitalists created an ideology to justify their own newfound power, and that ideology is liberalism. Power doesn't actually follow ethical rules. Ethics is a toy which philosophers play with to critique society. Power is self-justifying; whoever rules, rules, and the ideology of a ruler is just a set of excuses explaining why they are entitled to have the things they have already taken.
> Augusto Pinochet
Pinochet may have implemented neoliberal economic policy, but he did not support individual rights. The atrocities themselves are evidence of that. Violent suppression of your critics is hardly liberal. Also Chile was a resource economy. None of the ideas I have advanced preclude state ownership of natural resources. They would only preclude state seizure of resources already owned by citizens.
> The US genocided the Native Americans
Right, American liberty did not extend to native populations. Those rights were reserved for white male citizens. As I've stated, I agree that everyone (adult) should have equal rights. I only disagree with watering down what those rights are.
> Consequentialist ethics assesses the goodness of an action based on its consequences
Isn't this precluded on the ability to predict the future? How do you choose a course of action? How do you weigh the consequences? How do you untangle the medical experiments (which have in fact done a lot of good) from broader Nazi policy? Who do you entrust to make these decisions?
> what if you could order a taxi with an app
As I've said, if it were just taxis a la 2000 I'd have bought a car. My not having bought one is a pretty substantial change to my day-to-day life. Same goes for Tesla. Strictly because of their company millions of people drive electric cars that otherwise would not. They get credit for that.
> They have some bad policies? America has some bad policies too.
Again, since the US state has less power the consequences of its poor choices are less impactful. No one was locking sick Americans in cages during COVID. It would not have been possible without facing armed resistance. The US government also does not have the power to limit the birth rate. Such a suggestion would be career-ending for any politician.
In this whole discussion you've avoided the question: In your world of centralized authority targeting utilitarian interventions, who gets to choose the policy? Who gets to wield the power?
> what's your go-to example of the "just fine" society where minorities are butchered for their organs
Again China, where organs are harvested from Uyghur and Falun Gong routinely. Aside the obvious lack of individual rights protecting these people, how do you figure that there it's impossible to construe a policy which violates an individual's rights that may be a net utilitarian benefit?
For your argument to be sound, you need to prove that its impossible to construct such a policy under any circumstances. For my argument to be sound all I need to do is prove one case where extrajudicially murdering someone is a net good.
You've actually already conceded this, when you suggested that killing one unwilling person to save a million is a good trade. From here it's just a matter of price. How many individuals would you murder to save a million? Two? Two hundred? Two hundred thousand? How do you measure the harm that such policies cause? The Nazis very nearly won the war, they were surely a functional society.
> Literally everyone claims to pursue the greater good
No, that's the whole point. I'm not claiming to pursue any greater good, only create an ecosystem where each person can pursue their own good in peace. Thinking you know the greater good is the pinnacle of hubris.
> Oh you want to stop people from getting hurt? You know who else wanted that? Stalin!
No it's "Oh, you think you know what's best for everyone? And you're willing to use force to get there?"
> polluting smog
Again with the natural rights violations.
> There are countless ways that I can push you into making a particular choice without using force.
Aye, but in all of those cases there are ways to opt out. I can refuse to sell you my non-toxic land. I can refuse to take your vaccine. Offering people more choices is never a constraint.
> Then how can you condemn a serial killer?
Based on his actions? I'd never condemn anyone who simply daydreamed of serial killing. Nor would I condemn someone who killed a willing victim. The evil comes from violating consent.
> 1700s was the period where middle-class capital owners were beginning to compete
Or maybe that oppressed people, longing to be free came to a new world unburdened by existing hierarchies, and created a system founded on their equality?
> Your 1700s definition of freedom is a byproduct of capitalism
Capitalism has been practiced since the dawn of agriculture. If you go fishing and trade your fish for cloth you're practicing capitalism. If you're skilled and lucky enough to accumulate wealth, maybe you'll buy a second and a third fishing boat and hire a crew. On the snowball rolls. All of this is possible only when power, however it derives legitimacy, is used to ensure this process can happen peacefully, and restrains itself to a reasonable tax for this service. Such capitalism has occurred since ancient times.
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