SoAMadDeathWish

Fine. Just two questions then: 1. How do you measure morality? 2. What evidence do you have to support your claim?

So then, you must be saying that it is not enough that people be moral, but they must be sufficiently moral in order to have a moral government. Four questions: 1. How do you measure morality? 2. How much morality is sufficient? 3. What exactly do you mean by a moral government? 4. What evidence do you have to support your claim?

The question was not at all about why immoral people do immoral things or how they justify them to themselves, but whether or not people who are actually oppressed are immoral, as you've claimed several times in this thread already. You have merely attempted to dodge the question with an obvious red herring. It won't work.

I was simply pointing out the absurdity of having something that only works when you need it least. So let me get this straight. You're saying that, if the people are immoral, then the government is immoral. But then also, if the people are moral, the government is still immoral? So whether or not the people are moral, they get an immoral government. Now, if the government is moral, then this implies that the people are both moral and immoral, which is a contradiction. Meaning that at least one of your two premises above must be false, possibly (likely, in my opinion) both. Unless, that is, you mean to say that there are no moral governments. But in that case, your theory explains absolutely nothing, since your dependent variable is now a constant. Irrelevant. Even if no one actually wanted power, they will still seek at as a means to their other ends, as I've demonstrated in the OP.

Pretty serious design flaw, if there ever was one... Like a cure that only works on healthy patients....

The only way it wouldn't be right is if what you call "stories" can't actually do the things you say they can:

I agree, but my point still stands.

No they can't. If "stories" can affect the environment at all, they are necessarily a form of collective or distributive power.

Religion, ideology, property norms, trade networks and customs, legitimate authority, etc.

Greg, your belief that only immoral people can be oppressed is irrational. According to you, if a thief steals someone's money, then that is because the victim is immoral. How do we know that the victim is immoral? Because a thief was able to steal his money. This is nothing more than circular reasoning. This belief can be neither falsified nor verified by evidence, and it therefore cannot be the truth.

I do not depict the Founding Fathers as villains. Reality makes no distinction between hero and villain. There are no "hero" or "villain" atoms. There are only people and their actions. It is simply an undeniable fact that the Founding Fathers owned slaves and sought power.

That's not entirely accurate. Risk analysis, management, and mitigation planning are all about the possibilities of things occurring that may or may not ever actually happen. The fact that risks might happen impacts reality in that someone needs to take them into consideration, monitor their likelihood, make backup plans, etc. It's an important part of business analysis and project management. Also, regarding a prior comment, you said that you didn't set out with this thread to describe reality but to explain why reality is the way it is. You can't explain why something is the way it is without at least an implied description of it. For instance, I can't explain why the sky is blue without first establishing what the sky is or what blue is. You implied what you think reality to be, whether you meant to or not. The possibility itself cannot cause anything, except when considered by somebody. It is that person's intellect that influences reality, not the possibility itself.

I don't think I ever said that things that actually happen would be contradictory to the correct political theory. Anyway, you asked me to get back to you after reading some of those essays. I think the most pertinent and interesting one was this one: http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/rudolf-rocker-will-power-part-1 Unlike the author of the essay, I will not concern myself here with the history of libertarian ideas, but rather with Rocker's theory of history as it is presented in the essay. I also reject Marxian economic determinism, but I think Rocker sets up a false dichotomy between economic determinism and his own approach. My position is that social events and institutions do arise from mechanistic causes, but they are not reducible to a single aspect of society. Any aspects that feed into collective or distributive power may explain social phenomena, and this includes people's beliefs. However, only the most socially relevant beliefs will count, i.e., major religions and ideologies, as well as the beliefs of extremely powerful individuals. Here I think we have what is another false dichotomy. It is true that Alexander the Great was full of power lust. However, so were millions of other people, and yet there is only one Alexander the Great. The thing that distinguishes Alexander from all these others is that he was the son of Phillip II, the man who conquered Greece. After his father's assassination, he made himself King of all of Greece and Macedon, and had the support of an entire civilization in his conquests of Persia and Egypt. If Alexander was born just some poor peasant, he would have died in obscurity, regardless of how much power he wanted. There are three major problems I see with these definitions. The first is that freedom is essentially being defined as the absence of power. The requirement of "voluntary interaction" makes this pretty clear. Freedom, as a component of the theory, can be reduced entirely to power, the other component. Power, on the other hand, is too restrictively confined to coercion through violence and the threat of violence. Thus, Rocker's theory boils down to the idea that "Physical force (to the degree that it is present or absent) alone shapes human history." The problem with this is that it then effectively ignores every other relevant social force. The second problem is that the definitions effectively serve to beg the question. The key phrase is: "Freedom is the creative engine of society". Since freedom can be reduced to the absence of power, we can conclude that Rocker believes that society prospers only when coercion is minimized. The third problem is that freedom and power, as they are defined here, are not actually (always) in opposition. The basic premise of the theory is simply false. For example, one cannot have a powerful military without an advanced economy to support it. At the same time, one cannot have an advanced economy without the military might to defend it.

Michael, Rational thought requires that we know why we believe what we believe. But, while it is possible that I'm wrong, a rational person cannot be persuaded otherwise by the mere possibility of being wrong. Rational people should only ever be persuaded by evidence and reason.

Can you post the link to that? It isn't showing up for me. When thinking about the normative aspects of political theory, sure, opportunities may be more important than outcomes. However, this is not the case when you are trying to rationally explain what actually happens in reality. A rational explanation should not explain everything that can possibly happen, only the things that actually do. And the possibility of something occurring cannot have an effect on reality unless it actually happens.

Greg, all of this is just magical thinking. There is nothing in the laws of physics or causality that says "do good things and bad things can't happen to you." The government does not care about the moral laws that I hold myself to. And if it did, it would inevitably be destroyed by a competitor who doesn't. Also, I think you are misunderstanding Rand's "sanction of the victim". I do not think she ever meant to say that the perpetrator and the victim are both guilty, as you seem to imply. This kind of ethics is simply barbaric. Rather, she said that the victims of force and fraud were too innocent, in that they believed, as you do, that everything will be ok so long as they don't rock the boat too much.

None, actually. From what I remember of my history class, we very rarely ever went into any depth at all about political theory. It was all just extremely dry memorization of dates and names. I study political theory in my own time. The thinkers that influenced me most are: Thucydides Machiavelli Hobbes Locke Adam Smith Gaetano Mosca Karl Marx Bruce Bueno de Mesquita C. Wright Mills and Michael Mann. There's also quite a lot of cooperative game theory thrown in from various sources.

There is no single experience of mine that would justify that belief. You have to look at the evidence. Your life chances are determined far more by factors that are beyond your control than not. Where you were born, the era you were born in, your parents and family, your health, etc. All of these things are largely decided for us. Sure, there are always things you can do to improve your chances of success, but there are no guarantees. As I said in post #17, if you were born a serf in Medieval Europe you would be doomed from the start, and virtually no amount of productivity would really help the situation.

Now that's a statement. Let anyone believe it who thinks we can ignore the government and see how far that goes. Power today is held by economic interests in cahoots with the government. Blaming one or the other and not blaming the union of the two is playing the sucker game they want you to play. Oh... I forgot. It's "distributive power" and "collective power" that are the true invisible hands controlling all our lives and making them suck. So we might as well get used to eternal suckdom. Life is bad and will only get worse. What's the use anyway? Might as well obey. (sigh) I never said that we can ignore the government. But I do maintain that the government is really the secondary level of power in American society. Were the political and economic systems equal in power, there would be a lot of friction between them as one tries to dominate the other, like you have in Venezuela. Regarding that last comment, I don't remember reading any books titled Atlas Obeyed. No, the point of the OP was not to describe reality as it is, but to attempt to explain why it is the way it is. It is not the result of brainwashing. As far as I know, virtually nobody except me thinks about politics like I do.

I think the two definitions of power are entirely equivalent when you define control. I never meant to imply that force and power were somehow alternatives. I agree with pretty much everything you've said here.

I think I mistakenly thought that you were talking about a course of action for fixing society. I realize now that you were talking about one's personal policies toward the rest of society, and I have to agree with you. It is definitely possible to improve one's chances of surviving the worst that society has to offer, and I think that this is the most that anybody really ever can or should do with regard to politics. The trouble with that is that the wrong people usually won't wait for you to come to them. That's a very unusual position to take. You're saying that the victim, rather than the initiator of force, is the one who is lacking in moral character. Is this your meaning?

So are you saying that someone who has their wealth seized by the state is lacking in moral character?

And why not? If you weren't lucky, you would probably have been born in a place and era where just about everything you produce is seized by your lord. How wealthy could you reasonably expect to be then? It wouldn't matter how productive you were, you would be born a serf and you would die a serf. Most people that win the lotto are broke in 5 years because cash is not an economic investment. People who inherit actual wealth, such as a business or two, tend to keep it. Can you outline how the bolded is supposed to actually work out in reality? What exactly is your plan for dealing with society as it is? If you act contrary enough to the wrong people it may well end up costing you your freedom and/or life. You're missing the point entirely. The fundamental problems don't lie with any individual but with society as a whole.

Except if it were true. Which it is.

I think the title of the thread makes it quite clear that I don't have any politics to speak of. Any person or organization is capable of wielding collective power. If you're going to use such an inclusive definition of "central planning" then every business is centrally planned and every business owner is a kind, benevolent beloved leader we all have to bow down to. These definitions of power are intended to be as applicable to as many political situations as possible, including complete anarchy. There is no underlying assumption of central planning or authority. Romans could have said as much of their society in their time, as could Sargon of Akkad of his empire, as could most of the monarchs of Europe in the 17th century, and so could present day Americans about their mixed-economy socialist paradise run by God-King/Dear Leader Obama. But so will any post-capitalist society that is yet to come. This is only to be expected, and does not contradict the predictions of the theory at all. That being said, the Founding Fathers did not become less powerful after the revolution just because they castrated the state. They shaped the state to serve their interests, just as the Communist Party did in Russia. It is no accident that the most prominent leaders of the American Revolution were rich, white, land-owners and slaveholders and that political participation was limited to property-owners and that slavery was not abolished despite the supposed commitment to individual rights. Power, even in present-day America, is held primarily by the economic and not the political system (state). I did not say that people always get poorer, exactly. Look at post #7: It can't be, as my whole point is that any political agenda is doomed to failure.