Democracy

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=an8150;1242000]Stavros,
But if the government telling you which lightbulbs to use, and where to put your boiler, doesn't constitute micro-management, I don't know what does. Some years ago, a friend of mine obtained a visa to visit North Korea. He told me that in every home, there was a picture of the Dear Leader hanging in the same place in the living room. And the nub of that was: every such picture was required to hang from the wall at precisely the same angle. Does that pass your test for micro-management?
- a) I would assume that micro-management covers every aspect of daily life so no, I am not micro-managed, and anyway neither of us are compelled to purchase any kind of light-bulb, there was a time when candles were the principal form of illumination at night-time, they are still available for purchase on the open market;
b) I do not live in North Korea. And what message was I receiving when I was in Conservative Party Central Office in London in 1986 and there was a portrait of Margaret Thatcher on the wall behind the reception, much as one sees portraits of the Queen in public buildings in the UK, or Mao Zedong in China --?

there have been some interesting experiments in abolishing red lights, which as I understand have tended to show that road users become more cautious. I don't have a problem with rules of the road, though, I merely say that they should be a matter of contract rather than criminal law
-I cannot agree with this, as the covenant we enter into that has created the modern state has endowed government to regulate things such as the use of the road, and governments are democratically accountable; and moreover from what I have seen there are people who should never be allowed behind the wheel of a car drunk or sober, and certainy drunk drivers do not act with caution.

-The fundamental problem is that freedom is not an individual, but a social concept: it is about the formation of relations between people and is derived from the concept of friendship, so that an infringement of freedom is in fact an infringement of a basic human activity, which is to gather together people in mutually beneficial relationships [I think you've gone off the rails there, although I have some difficulty following what you've written. I think you've lost sight of the distinction between voluntary interraction and coerced behaviour
-Not at all, you are just reluctant to define freedom because it will not support your 'minarchist' ideology.
-Liberty is a different concept from freedom [if there's a difference, it's the same as that between loving someone and being in love with someone], and is not an eternal value but one that has developed out of the experience of politics since Sumerian times [I suspect you see politics as positively desirable; to me it just about amounts to a regrettable necessity, and only in very limited circumstances; politics superimposes itself on liberty, liberty is our natural condition]. It counterposes the power of governments, monarchs, dictators, religions etc to the desires and needs of society, a group of individuals who relate to each other. As you know, there are concepts of negative and positive liberty and these have developed with the modern state [and as you know, positive liberty is an abuse of language; it's what I've referred to previously as the failure to distinguish liberty from (dis)ability], but it is common for people to confuse liberty with freedom.
-No, liberty is not the natural condition of humankind, but freedom is, because people are not -in most normal circumstances- born alone. It is the simple fact of being born into a collection of humans beings that generates the concept of freedom as the association of friends with a common purpose, such as survival in a hostile environment.

you know as well as I do that the Queen does not choose who is going to be a Minister in her government even if the Minister cannot take office without it, its a formality so for you to nit-pick when you knew what I mean is either excessive or you are shy in calling for the removal of the monarchy. [I'm ambivalent towards Brenda, contemptuous towards her son and heir; the gravamen of my pet peeve is that the modern tendency to refer to a premier's ministry as his or her government subtly psychologically endorses the increasing presidential tendencies of modern British prime ministers, and few of us wish to see a president Thatcher/Blair/Brown (delete as desired)]
-so suddenly your minarchism is mediated because you don't actually dislike Queen Elizabeth? Either you approve of the monarchy or you don't, to maintain a structure that is opposed to everything you claim to believe in weakens your argument. As for the arguments about Prime Ministers behaving like Presidents, how old is it? Even the claims made about Harold Wilson were predated by Churchill's behaviour in the Wartime coalition.

[you're moving the goalposts somewhat: my observations on this point were intended to respond to the claim that such a free market existed and its failings were therefore justifiably criticised as failings of a free market. It's actually gerrymandered state capitalism. By all means criticise its failings, but don't attribute them to the failings of a free market. But to respond to your moving of the goalposts, as I understand it, you worry that Britons couldn't buy gas from Russia without government-to-government negotiation. Putting aside for one moment the fact that that amounts to nothing more than the claim that because the Russians have a protection racket, we need to have one, too, they'd be cutting their noses to spite their faces if they refused to sell us gas just because we didn't have a government department to oil the wheels. That's not to say they wouldn't do that, but then they could do it anyway. Indeed, I think they've done it with the Ukrainians
-I think you misunderstood my analogy which was one in which your free market was established in the UK so that we, as consumers made decisions about our gas supplies without the interference of the government which had by this time absented itself from interfering in the market. However, if this free market did not exist in either Algeria or Russia, then as consumers we would still be dependent on state monopolies or goods whose price and delivery were subject to political manipulation rather than market regulation -in this sense and in a global economy, the concept of free markets is utopian.

It is also the case that if there is a profitable market in kidnappings, then they will take place, and as you know there have indeed been kidnapppings across Latin America, Africa and India, many of them brutal. But, if you are opposed to the operations of the market in this trade, I think you should explain why. there was, at one time, a thriving market in the sale and purchase of human beings, it was called Slavery. If it emerges that you actually believe in the concept of justice, maybe even of fairness, then you must explain how the choices made by an individual in a free market operate if he or she is not allowed to buy and sell or kidnap people, or for exampe, oil and freight tankers plying the seas off the coast of East Africa. As Don Corleone might have said, after all, 'Its not personal, just business'.

Once you begin to mediate the choices people make in the market, are you not infringing their liberty?

[Stavros]

There are indeed places in the modern world where the rule of government do not apply and where there are no laws. I listened to a BBC report about one this week. A young man, a refugee, had fled his home country somewhere in Africa and had been captured in the depths of the Sinai desert by - I think - Bedouin who were holding him hostage until has family paid thousands in money to win his freedom. The young man said he'd been tortured. And that his family could not raise the money to win his a freedom. His expected fate - already meted out to many other similar hostages was to be doused with petrol and burned alive. This was how the kidnappers exercised their freedom. Their inalienable rights to liberty...
Regulations and laws prevent this being an acceptable way to exercise your freedom in most parts of the world. Such laws of course impinge on the freedom of individuals such as this kidnapper and his associates. Perhaps such laws, should be scrapped on the higher altar of freedom.

When I quoted Hegel a weeks ago the naive idealist who is arguing here for total liberty accused me of being hateful. I was, in fact referencing Isaiah Berlin's use of this phrase in his essays about the challenge a civilised society has in reconciling seemingly irreconcilable concepts - including liberty and societal rules. The example i quote above is - to me - a perfect example of the need for law, for rules, for the hand of government, to limit man's capacity for cruelty.

Kant not Hegel (out of the crooked timber of humanity etc, also the title of the book by Berlin).

You don't see kidnapping as a business then, Prospero?

One of the problems that the minarchists have is that they believe most government is both unnecessary, and an infringement of their liberty; the debate to me can often turn on the concepts of justice and fairness, not just in the debate between John Rawls and either Nozick or Hayek, but because in a broader sense, whether it is about markets or other activities, human beings have a sense of what is fair and what is not. This may change over time, and may not be the same in all societies -some societies believe execution is a fair punishment for murder, others do not. Your other issue is that when Hobbes argued as you do that the creation of a state should actively prevent acts of cruelty and violence within society, the state that follows may gradually acquire more powers than you expected it to when you agreed to the covenant, but then Hobbes was not a democrat. One final thought, can we live in a free society if money continues to exist? Would the abolition of money create more freedom, would it curtail it?

[Prospero]

Indeed Kant...

[hippifried]

You've answered a series of questions there, hippifried, but none of them is a response to the questions I posed. Why have you purported to answer my questions when in fact answering other, different questions? Did you think I wouldn't notice?

I answered all your questions, & the lame assumptions too. Your inability to see past the trivial is not my problem. I'm content to keep on topic, & see no reason to get tangled up in the detailed minutia of hypotheticals. Everybody can cite an anecdote, or make one up, on behalf of the point they're trying to make. That's why anecdotes aren't acceptable evidence. They just get in the way & the point gets lost in the shuffle. The tactic works on some people, but not on me.

[an8150]

hippifried, to take just one example, I asked you:

"so you'd be prepared to see global GDP spent on, say, closing down a dodgy restaurant or treatment for a woman's diabetes?"

you replied:

“I have no problem at all with the "global GDP" being spent on treating & preventing the spread of disease.”

And that’s an answer to a different question. I understand why you did it, because you were caught on the horns of the dilemma you set for yourself when you said, “Can't subject public safety to cost/benefit analysis”, and my contingent question to you was, “did you think I wouldn’t notice?”, which you also haven’t answered. When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Btw, what's trivial about a hypothetical scenario in which global GDP is spent on curing one person's diabetes? It's surely a gargantuan scenario, no?

[an8150]

Stavros, "b) I do not live in North Korea. And what message was I receiving when I was in Conservative Party Central Office in London in 1986 and there was a portrait of Margaret Thatcher on the wall behind the reception, much as one sees portraits of the Queen in public buildings in the UK, or Mao Zedong in China --? [are you seriously comparing my North Korean example with those two things?]

there have been some interesting experiments in abolishing red lights, which as I understand have tended to show that road users become more cautious. I don't have a problem with rules of the road, though, I merely say that they should be a matter of contract rather than criminal law
-I cannot agree with this, as the covenant we enter into that has created the modern state has endowed government to regulate things such as the use of the road [I haven't entered into any such covenant, and although I agree that most people agree with you, I don't suppose many of them have ever given it a first or second thought, so much as they just accept things as they are and cannot imagine anything else; but I think we've covered this ground already], and governments are democratically accountable; and moreover from what I have seen there are people who should never be allowed behind the wheel of a car drunk or sober, and certainy drunk drivers do not act with caution [that may well often be true, but if so traffic lights won't make the blindest bit of difference to them].

-The fundamental problem is that freedom is not an individual, but a social concept: it is about the formation of relations between people and is derived from the concept of friendship [my impression is you're making an etymological argument, possibly from ancient Greece; would you care to develop it? certainly, my concept of freedom has nothing to do with my friends....], so that an infringement of freedom is in fact an infringement of a basic human activity, which is to gather together people in mutually beneficial relationships [I think you've gone off the rails there, although I have some difficulty following what you've written. I think you've lost sight of the distinction between voluntary interraction and coerced behaviour
-Not at all, you are just reluctant to define freedom because it will not support your 'minarchist' ideology [have I been reluctant define freedom? It's quite simple: the absence of coercion. Liberty ditto].
-Liberty is a different concept from freedom [if there's a difference, it's the same as that between loving someone and being in love with someone], and is not an eternal value but one that has developed out of the experience of politics since Sumerian times [I suspect you see politics as positively desirable; to me it just about amounts to a regrettable necessity, and only in very limited circumstances; politics superimposes itself on liberty, liberty is our natural condition]. It counterposes the power of governments, monarchs, dictators, religions etc to the desires and needs of society, a group of individuals who relate to each other. As you know, there are concepts of negative and positive liberty and these have developed with the modern state [and as you know, positive liberty is an abuse of language; it's what I've referred to previously as the failure to distinguish liberty from (dis)ability], but it is common for people to confuse liberty with freedom.
-No, liberty is not the natural condition of humankind, but freedom is, because people are not -in most normal circumstances- born alone [since I see no distinction between freedom and liberty, I don't understand the point you are making here]. It is the simple fact of being born into a collection of humans beings that generates the concept of freedom as the association of friends with a common purpose [a non sequitur, I think], such as survival in a hostile environment [this can be cooperative or it can be coerced].

you know as well as I do that the Queen does not choose who is going to be a Minister in her government even if the Minister cannot take office without it, its a formality so for you to nit-pick when you knew what I mean is either excessive or you are shy in calling for the removal of the monarchy. [I'm ambivalent towards Brenda, contemptuous towards her son and heir; the gravamen of my pet peeve is that the modern tendency to refer to a premier's ministry as his or her government subtly psychologically endorses the increasing presidential tendencies of modern British prime ministers, and few of us wish to see a president Thatcher/Blair/Brown (delete as desired)]
-so suddenly your minarchism is mediated [you mean diminished, in some sense?] because you don't actually dislike Queen Elizabeth [I neither like nor dislike her; I am ambivalent about her in her professional capacity]? Either you approve of the monarchy or you don't [if I were designing from scratch a constitution for 21st century Britain, I wouldn't include a monarchy in it, but we are where we are and, while I agree that the monarchy has an unfortunate role in cementing a lack of social mobility, I think there are much greater and more immediate problems than who is head of state and, indeed, whether we have a head of state], to maintain a structure that is opposed to everything you claim to believe in weakens your argument [see my previous comment: there are far greater, more urgent enemies of freedom than a hereditary monarch]. As for the arguments about Prime Ministers behaving like Presidents, how old is it? Even the claims made about Harold Wilson were predated by Churchill's behaviour in the Wartime coalition. [for sure; AJP Taylor once wrote that Lloyd George was the closest thing we ever had to a Napoleon; my point was no more or less than that few of us wish for an elected president, if that means Thatcher, Blair (Patten? Mandelson?), so why assist the inflated egos of No.10 by referring to their ministries as their governments?]

[you're moving the goalposts somewhat: my observations on this point were intended to respond to the claim that such a free market existed and its failings were therefore justifiably criticised as failings of a free market. It's actually gerrymandered state capitalism. By all means criticise its failings, but don't attribute them to the failings of a free market. But to respond to your moving of the goalposts, as I understand it, you worry that Britons couldn't buy gas from Russia without government-to-government negotiation. Putting aside for one moment the fact that that amounts to nothing more than the claim that because the Russians have a protection racket, we need to have one, too, they'd be cutting their noses to spite their faces if they refused to sell us gas just because we didn't have a government department to oil the wheels. That's not to say they wouldn't do that, but then they could do it anyway. Indeed, I think they've done it with the Ukrainians
-I think you misunderstood my analogy which was one in which your free market was established in the UK so that we, as consumers made decisions about our gas supplies without the interference of the government which had by this time absented itself from interfering in the market. However, if this free market did not exist in either Algeria or Russia, then as consumers we would still be dependent on state monopolies or goods whose price and delivery were subject to political manipulation rather than market regulation -in this sense and in a global economy, the concept of free markets is utopian [correct. btw, I keep being called the utopian and the (niaive) idealist, as if those are bad things; I thought it was you lot who wanted to create the new jerusalem!].

It is also the case that if there is a profitable market in kidnappings, then they will take place, and as you know there have indeed been kidnapppings across Latin America, Africa and India, many of them brutal. But, if you are opposed to the operations of the market in this trade, I think you should explain why [seriously? how about we start with the non-aggression principle?]. there was, at one time, a thriving market in the sale and purchase of human beings, it was called Slavery. If it emerges that you actually believe in the concept of justice [as a process, yes; it is not, as I suspect you believe, an outcome], maybe even of fairness [it means even-handedness; as a concept in law it means, or should mean, that people are treated equally by the law, as a matter of the law's process], then you must explain how the choices made by an individual in a free market operate if he or she is not allowed to buy and sell or kidnap people [that would be the non-aggression principle again], or for exampe, oil and freight tankers plying the seas off the coast of East Africa [I'm sorry, are you saying that oil tankers are engaged in activity as morally odious as kidnapping/buying/selling people?]. As Don Corleone might have said, after all, 'Its not personal, just business'.

[Prospero]

AN8150 - it is encouraging to see such faith in mankind in the face of the immense historical evidence against your position. Bless you for your idealism. It is misplaced. Of that I am certain. Your idealism seems to lead you to think that the recognition of the right to property (whatever that means) and possibly the right to bear arms (your reference to this fellow wandering into the badlands "presumably unarmed" ) would solve all of this.

I'm handing over to Stavros again who has far great time, it appears, to contend with and largely refute your arguments.

[an8150]

You had me worried there for a moment, Prospero, I thought you were going to have another crack at it.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=an8150;1242401]
Stavros, "b) I do not live in North Korea. And what message was I receiving when I was in Conservative Party Central Office in London in 1986 and there was a portrait of Margaret Thatcher on the wall behind the reception, much as one sees portraits of the Queen in public buildings in the UK, or Mao Zedong in China --? [are you seriously comparing my North Korean example with those two things?]
--Yes of course; the display of images in public or in private is not a random act without meaning, such displays are pregnant with meaning, even if they do not give birth to the same consequence. Why, for example, was there a portrait of Mrs Thatcher in the prime location, rather than the Queen? Accidental? Deliberate?

...the covenant we enter into that has created the modern state has endowed government to regulate things such as the use of the road [I haven't entered into any such covenant, and although I agree that most people agree with you, I don't suppose many of them have ever given it a first or second thought, so much as they just accept things as they are and cannot imagine anything else; but I think we've covered this ground already], and governments are democratically accountable; and moreover from what I have seen there are people who should never be allowed behind the wheel of a car drunk or sober, and certainy drunk drivers do not act with caution [that may well often be true, but if so traffic lights won't make the blindest bit of difference to them].
--In the first place, if you pay taxes and mostly abide by the law, you have entered into the covenant by default; in fact in an earlier post you endorsed the existence of the state as the guarantor of your freedom from attack, which once again confirms your confirmation that you have entered into a covenant with the state, and indeed, THIS state, ie the UK.
--In the second place the traffic lights are crucial because to successfully prosecute a drunk driver, it is not only necessary to prove that he was legally over the limit, but that he drove through a red light.

-On freedom and liberty we have to agree to disagree, or this argument could go on forever.


-so suddenly your minarchism is mediated [you mean diminished, in some sense?] because you don't actually dislike Queen Elizabeth [I neither like nor dislike her; I am ambivalent about her in her professional capacity]? Either you approve of the monarchy or you don't [if I were designing from scratch a constitution for 21st century Britain, I wouldn't include a monarchy in it, but we are where we are and, while I agree that the monarchy has an unfortunate role in cementing a lack of social mobility, I think there are much greater and more immediate problems than who is head of state and, indeed, whether we have a head of state], to maintain a structure that is opposed to everything you claim to believe in weakens your argument [see my previous comment: there are far greater, more urgent enemies of freedom than a hereditary monarch].
-as a minarchist I don't see how you can be so ambiguous about the monarchy or the concept of the 'head of state' since crucial elements of your reforms would sweep it away. In fact in the UK it is a form of political cowardice because the Monarchy in general is popular, even if not all royals are: you won't gain any political friends by campaigning for an entirely secular and republican state because people would find the prospect of such a state, at the moment, too uncertain.

I keep being called the utopian and the (niaive) idealist, as if those are bad things; I thought it was you lot who wanted to create the new jerusalem!
--Having lived in Jerusalem to experience its exquisite mysteries and not so exquisite miseries, I have no desire to rebuilt it anywhere, in reality or in symbolic terms.

It is also the case that if there is a profitable market in kidnappings, then they will take place, and as you know there have indeed been kidnapppings across Latin America, Africa and India, many of them brutal. But, if you are opposed to the operations of the market in this trade, I think you should explain why [seriously? how about we start with the non-aggression principle?]. there was, at one time, a thriving market in the sale and purchase of human beings, it was called Slavery. If it emerges that you actually believe in the concept of justice [as a process, yes; it is not, as I suspect you believe, an outcome], maybe even of fairness [it means even-handedness; as a concept in law it means, or should mean, that people are treated equally by the law, as a matter of the law's process], then you must explain how the choices made by an individual in a free market operate if he or she is not allowed to buy and sell or kidnap people [that would be the non-aggression principle again], or for exampe, oil and freight tankers plying the seas off the coast of East Africa [I'm sorry, are you saying that oil tankers are engaged in activity as morally odious as kidnapping/buying/selling people?]. As Don Corleone might have said, after all, 'Its not personal, just business'.
--I don't see how you can claim that kidnapping or buying and selling people is 'morally odious' when Minarchism has no belief in morals, but only in self-interest. Slavery was a lucrative trade for a long time before it was abolished, except of course that slavery may not have been, as 'people trafficking' continues to this day. More importantly, Marx argued that as capitalism transforms everything into a commodity that can exchanged for money, and as life without money in a capitalist society is either impossible or at least very difficult, then we are all 'wage slaves' or slaves of money. Just as the abolition of private property in Marx must mean the abolition of money, I don't see how minarchists can propose a truly rational social order in which money has a role, precisely because it is not just, and it is thus noteworthy that you do not show an interest in justice as an outcome, but as a process.

So yes, there is trade, in oil on oil tankers, people in containers, pornography and narcotics, biscuits and lamb. As soon as you posit a moral concern above and beyond rational self-interest, your whole edifice of liberty falls apart. Which may be why so few people subscribe to it.

[hippifried]

hippifried, to take just one example, I asked you:

"so you'd be prepared to see global GDP spent on, say, closing down a dodgy restaurant or treatment for a woman's diabetes?"

you replied:

“I have no problem at all with the "global GDP" being spent on treating & preventing the spread of disease.”

And that’s an answer to a different question. I understand why you did it, because you were caught on the horns of the dilemma you set for yourself when you said, “Can't subject public safety to cost/benefit analysis”, and my contingent question to you was, “did you think I wouldn’t notice?”, which you also haven’t answered. When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Btw, what's trivial about a hypothetical scenario in which global GDP is spent on curing one person's diabetes? It's surely a gargantuan scenario, no?

What the hell are you talking about? Do you know? I don't know for "Rand-speak", but in the real world, diabetes is a disease. It's a debilitating disease that requires treatment to keep the victim from becoming more of a burden on others due to blindness, circulatory issues, strokes, & amputations. No cure yet, but the publicly funded universities are working on it with their government research grants. "The market" isn't interested in looking for a cure. There's no financial profit, & there's too much money to be made through disease maintenance & exacerbation.

The "dodgy restaurant" isn't being picked on because somebody doesn't like their food. They're being shuttered because they're spreading disease. Even if "the market" could or would put an end to that, it'd have to be after the fact. When people are already dead or deathly ill, it's too late. We, as a collective society, have already pooled our resources to research the causes of these diseases. Refusal to prevent them, especially to merely adhere to some crackpot social theory, would be stupid & negligent to the point of criminality.

There, I addressed your trivial minutia. Happy now? Of course "global GDP" doesn't fall into that category. It's not spent on a dodgy restaurant, or treatment of a woman's diabetes. Part of the global GDP gets spent on the global prevention & treatment of disease, as it should be. You lumped it all together in one sentence. I'm not a mind reader.

You seem to be caught in some silly idea that I have ulterior motives that drive my opinions &/or writing style. You don't know why I do anything. I don't have a dilemma, with or without horns. I'm not confused about my opinions at all. I've been consistent throughout. The public safety cannot be contingent on cost/benefit analysis. I don't know what you notice & don't care. People trump property. People have rights. Public safety is the chief reason that people gathered in collective societies in the first place. The collective society generates all wealth, creativity, & inventive progress. Ayn Rand was a crackpot. Her cult followers are crackpots. Her crackpot egoism theory is even more unworkable than Marx's crackpot theories, & not as well thought out. All these crocodile tears about personal liberty are, for the most part, just a "looter's" claim to impunity. There's no such thing as impunity.