Why Politics is Pointless

[moralist]

I'm kind of surprised that the advocates of forced association paradigms keep wanting to bring up slavery in the modern political context.

Slavery is alive and well in America even today. It is the self imposed slavery to debt. People have become indentured debt slaves of their own need to possess what they cannot afford to own.

Greg

That is a stretch on the word "slavery".

Yeah it is, Bob.

Today slavery is being an employee stuck in an unfulfilling job they hate because they need money to make debt payments on things they went into debt to buy because they couldn't afford to own.

We have laws permitting one to be declared bankrupt and no longer a target of collectors.

That's precisely the personal behavior that grants the government the sanction to do the same through buying its own debt with money created from nothing. See? The government practices exactly the same financial irresponsibility as its citizens...

...because it is how people live that creates the government in their own image.

Greg

[Selene]

I'm kind of surprised that the advocates of forced association paradigms keep wanting to bring up slavery in the modern political context.

Slavery is alive and well in America even today. It is the self imposed slavery to debt. People have become indentured debt slaves of their own need to possess what they cannot afford to own.

Greg

That is a stretch on the word "slavery". A person who cannot repay his debt is not put in chains and sold to a new owner. We have laws permitting one to be declared bankrupt and no longer a target of collectors. Being in debt beyond one's ability to repay is uncomfortable and even humiliating, but it is not slavery.

Why was the last time a lash was legally laid on the back of someone who could not repay. (ok, ok, the Mafia types break knee caps, but that is not legal).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Seems that is not completely true...I was surprised when I discovered this a few years ago...

6 | OCTOBER 2010

Debtors’ Prisons Come With Devastating Human Costs

Incarceration has a devastating effect on men and women whose only remaining crime is that

they are poor. Upon release, they face the daunting prospect of having to rebuild their lives yet

again. Even for those men and women with unpaid LFOs who do not end up back behind bars,

their substantial legal debts pose a significant, and at times insurmountable, barrier as they

attempt to re-enter society. They see their incomes reduced, their credit ratings worsen, their

prospects for housing and employment dim, and their chances of ending up back in jail or

prison increase. Many must make hard choices each month as they attempt to balance their

needs and those of their families with their LFOs. They also remain tethered to the criminal

justice system—sometimes decades after they complete their sentences—and live under

constant threat of being sent back to jail or prison, solely because they cannot pay what has

become an unmanageable legal debt. This report highlights the experiences of dozens of men

and women who have been ensnared in the criminal justice system, some of whom ended up

incarcerated, merely because they were too poor to manage their LFOs:

• In

Louisiana

,

the ACLU profiles Sean Matthews, a homeless construction worker who was

assessed $498 in fines and costs when he was convicted of possession of marijuana in

2007. He was arrested two years later after failing to pay his LFOs, and spent five months

in jail at a cost of more than $3,000 to the City of New Orleans. We also profile Gregory

White, a homeless man who was arrested for stealing $39 worth of food from a local

grocery store. He was assessed $339 in fines and fees, which were later converted into

a community service sentence after he was jailed because he could not pay his fines. Mr.

White spent a total of 198 days in jail because he was unable to pay his LFOs and could not

afford the bus fare to complete his community service. In all, his incarceration cost the City

over $3,500.

•

In

Michigan

, the ACLU profiles Kawana Young, a single mother of two young sons, who

was arrested in March 2010 for failing to pay LFOs connected with several minor traffic

offenses. Ms. Young was ordered to pay $300 or spend three days in jail for one of her

offenses. She was unable to pay, having been recently laid off and unable to find work

again, but the judge refused to allow her to pay on a payment schedule and remanded

her back to jail for three days. Because she was sent back to jail, Ms. Young was charged

a booking fee and a daily fee for her room and board, LFOs she would not have incurred

had she been able to pay her $300 fine on the day she was sentenced. We also profile

Walter Riepen. In late 2009, Mr. Riepen was sentenced to 30 days in jail and probation for

a misdemeanor. Within days of his release, he received a letter from a private collections

agency working for the state that contained a bill for $60 per day for his jail stay, for a total

of $1260. Mr. Riepen’s only income is a monthly social security disability payment, he has

no funds to pay down the $1260 for his room and board, and he lives under the threat of

being sent back to prison due to his unpaid LFOs

https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights-racial-justice/penny-rise-americas-new-debtors-prisons

[moralist]

Debtors’ Prisons Come With Devastating Human Costs

...and people build their own debtor's prisons.

Greg

[Frediano]

Michael:

The boundary condition of reality -- that a child is a child of his parents -- is no more the meaning of 'forced association' in a political context than the reality of gravity is, in this universe.

The 'forceful' can't avoid it if we tried reality of a child being a child of his parents is no more human voliional force than the force of gravity, when compared with force in the context of human volitional relationships and our discretionary application of force in our relationship with our peers..

We are all 'forced' into existence beyond our non-existing will. I can live with that boundary condition of 'force' (no pun intended; I can't live without it,) And upon reaching the age of majoirity, or even awareness, we are all certainly free to void that condition and end our own lives; happens every day, so we are not forced to continue that egregious application of force, if we find it egregious.

We don't choose our own parents? OK. But as Feynman said, that is some other universe. We live here, in this one. And so, we focus on what we can control,. which is, the use of force aimed at others by our volition.

I don't hold any other peer accountable for the force of gravity, and the fact that it is harder to run uphill than downhill. I don't hold my parents accountable for the fact that i didn't choose them; that is a physical impossibility. I am in fact grateful to them fpr imperfectly attempting what all other generations have done, which is, as rooklie management that never did it before, attempted to raise kids.

But when it comes to some human constructivist artifact, like IRS 1706 or the ACA, yes, IMO, it's time to take names and hold peers accountable for things clearly under their control, unlike biilogical facts or the force of gravity.

But it is ntirely reasonable...but cumbersome...to explicitely qualify 'forced association' to the context of human constructivist interactions. Indeed, we don't choose our parents, but that is because, in this universe of space-time, we can't. My application of 'forced association' is implicitely restricted to the subset of what we can.

regards,

Fred

[Frediano]

Michael:

The ethics of 'locking up the bad guy' as a necessary action of the state is crucial. It is not the initiation of force; it is the response to an initiation of force with superior violence/the paradox of violence. It is not 'forced association.' It is, in fact, the ethical purpose of (in a free state)an ethical state: to prohibit where possible acts of forced association; to innhibit where it is not possible to prohibit; to discourage where it is not possible to inhibit. As a minimum. Totally unneccessary icing on the state cake(because free peope do it freely)would be to actively encourage free association. Not necessary.

No victim of crime freely agrees to be a victim; that would be a victimless crime. Murder, rape, theft, fraud, extortion are all examples of forced association; an ethical state is ethically empowered to prohibit/inhibit/discourage acts of forced association(especially by itself.) The response to the initiation of force/vio;ence/forced association with force/violence is not the initiation of force/violence. It is, even as Ghandi understood, a necessary fact of civi; defense in a universe where force ultimately rules; where power can do what power can do.

Clean air and water laws: fouling the air as a result of the commerce of others is an act of forced association(with the industry/commerce of others) by those others. I can -see- the principle at work when the state applies force, as clean air laws, and ethically accede to the use of state force in that application. I understand and agree with the ethical foundation. It is another instance of the state responding to an instance of forced association.

So I am not the 'putting the bad guys away' by the state is a bad thing anarcho-capitalist guy; I am the 'defining the clear principles under which the state defines 'bad guys' and then uses force, ethically, to put them away' capitalist guy.

Simple majority rule, to me, is not the source of those principles; a gang rape is simple majority rule. Some missing axis of principled constaint is required to govern pure democracy other than what the majoirty wants.

regards,

Fred

[Frediano]

Michael:

I appreciate focused criticism. It is important.

My terms:

Superior Violence does not mean 'more violence' it means "The just response to the unjust initiation of voilence; self defense. In this case, of civil life."

Paradox of Violence: Civil life ultimately must rely on Superior Violence in order to defend civil life from the initiation/first use of violence. Civil wishes on paper are ultimately insufficient without enforcement of those civil wishes. No freedom without it. Not just police, and heated jails, but also, the US Marines. They run toward the sound of gunfire. They don't start the shooting. They end the shooting. The best friends of some. The worst nightmare of others. Indispensible to the concept of freedom. In their case, they strive, professionally, not only to be the embodiement of Superior Violence, but superior violence.

The function of principled restraint is to make sure that those civil wishes on paper are in fact civil.

The unfettering of forced association -- for the initiation of forced association -- for a really good cause had better be done so carefully, or before you know it, it is anything a mob says it wants as its -ethical- argument.

regards,

Fred

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Fred,

I am certainly not for mob rule. My thing is a constitutional republic with mostly elected officials based on individual rights and checks and balances on power.

But I want to stay a minute with the locking up a bad guy example. You claim this is not a true "forced association" because the bad guy initiated force against a third party. I think that depends on whose perspective you are looking at it from. To the bad guy, it most definitely is a "forced association."

Also, you want to exclude children from "forced association" and call it more akin to gravity instead. I begin to wonder what force means in this formulation.

Rather than make a simple equation that forced association is bad and voluntary association is good, I think other standards have to be added to qualify when (and from which perspective) a forced association is good or bad. Ditto for voluntary associations.

Here's an example of when a voluntary association is not a good thing. Lots of western movies used to show a scene where a mob of people would gather at a jail house so they could lynch the prisoner. The sheriff would stare down the ringleader, and once he broke the will of that person, the will of the crowd would break.

Now did he then leave people alone so they could freely continue with their voluntary association? Hell no. He told them to go home. Go away. Get back to their lives. And if they had insisted on remaining, even though that never happened in the movies, I have no doubt he would have arrested a few.

This is fiction, but I believe it represents reality about the way people are. Why would the sheriff make people stop freely associating like that?

Isn't that their right?

It's context. Within the context of the sheriff having just defused a violent intent, the emotions are still running high in the people in the crowd, so it's better to get these people to disperse to safety (the sheriff's safety and theirs) instead of leaving them there voluntarily associating and running the risk of someone lathering them up to murderous intent again.

That's just one situation.

In my thinking, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that contextless principles not only don't work, they can become dangerous when followed in the wrong contexts and cause a lot more damage and infringe a lot more rights than if context were taken into account and there were some flexibility for common sense to be used. (With checks and balances for punishing things like abuses of power, of course.)

In other words, I'm not against principles. I'm totally for them. But I want principles to apply to human beings as they exist, not to imaginary beings that live in a contextless reality.

This, actually, is why I favor a constitutional republic with mostly elected officials based on individual rights and checks and balances on power for government over a simple democracy.

Michael

[Frediano]

Michael: Re: learned helplessness

You mean, projected by deceit; like indoctrination, propaganda? It is a gray area in a continuum between what I call 'politics' and 'mega-politics.'

My definition of politiics. (I repeat myself, because, IMO, the word politics is the most used and least well defined word in all of politics, and the reason for that, IMO, is poltical.) None of us can possibly understand -- that is, be given sufficient information necessary to comprehend -- what each of us is saying when we use the word 'politics' or 'political' because it is deliberately so poorly defined. We dont' share a common meaning...by design of poltiicos long dead.

So, to me: Politics: the art and science of getting what we want from others using any means short of actual violence. The superset that includes actual violence as a tactic I call 'mega-politics.'

So things like deceit, lying, blind indoctrination, and propaganda, which are short of actual violence, are in some gray area(to me)between honest poltiics and mega-politics.

There are some other general definitions of 'politics' around: The art and science of ruling/governing others. (Yes, when what one wants is to rule/govern others.) The art and science of who gets what. (Yes, when what one wants is to be the emperor over others of who gets what.)

We want all kinds of things from other people.. The TV remote. (Tactic: we ask for it. Done.) Love, affection. Their vote. The car for the weekend. Carnal knowledge of them. (We ask for that, or indeed, it is rape.) Their validation for the parking of our soul. To ride them like a public property pony. Kuwait. When Saddam wanted Kuwait from others, politics was not enough, and so, he resorted to mega-politics.

The hardest thing to obtain in the world, many have died trying to get this for themesleves, their families, and their children: to be left alone, except under a model of free association.

What ethically limits not only what we can reasonably want from others, but our means of obtaining what we want from others? There is clearly a spectrum:

ask

buy/negotiate value for value

convince through honest argument

beg (ask with implied duress)

lie, deceive

use force

go to war

All of it is politics of some kind, as I define politics. Is a more common, restrictive definition of politics limited to state politics, and if so, is it limited to ethical state politics? It doesn't appear so; lying, deceit, indoctrination, learned helplessness, propaganda all seem well embraced and tolerated in American state 'politics.'

On Madison Ave, a line has been drawn, at least, on subliminal imagery. That is a deliberate no-no. A manipulative image projection industry, fishing for Victoria Postrel's The Power of Glamour reception, aimed at a broad(or even narrowcast)population? No doubt. But the reception of that projection of imagery, at least, is in our hands. We must respond to it, even if it is fake. And so, I suppose, even with political faked imagery. (No, buying the BMW will not necessarily achieve for you the manufactured photoshiopped image of effortless grace not sweating in the sun, on the deck, looking at the sunset over the driveway with the BMW parked in it. just as trading in the iPhone3 for the iPhone5 wont secure your membership into a non-existing community of dreadlocks flailing cool...) But still, BMWs and iPhones give us pleasure, and we smile when respond to the imagery, even as we know it is not real imagery. In the end we've bought some Dove soap, not signed up for serfdom to the state.

So there is a difference; in the end, nobody puts a gun to our head and makes us buy the BMW, iPhone, or Dove soap. In the end, when the reasonable man is telling us "What is wroing with asking the wealthy..." he really isn't asking us for our permission to ask anybody, he is campaigning for our consent for him to aim a gun at somebody, and yet debating the act using words like 'ask.' The outcome of his marketing/campaign lies are, in fact, a gun in his hands with the argument that we agreed to his aiming it at some.

We can be sloppy with the Madison ave soap all we want, the consequences are nill compared to being sloppy with what we don't question about tribal politics.

regards,

Fred

[moralist]

I'm kind of surprised that the advocates of forced association paradigms keep wanting to bring up slavery in the modern political context.

Slavery is alive and well in America even today. It is the self imposed slavery to debt. People have become indentured debt slaves of their own need to possess what they cannot afford to own.

Greg

Depends.

--Brant

Sorry to hear about your incontinence, Brant.

Greg

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Fred,

Funny you should talk about this. What a damn coincidence.

Yesterday I bought Postrel's book on glamour, and the one on style. I stumbled across a reference to them, looked them up and they seemed really good from the descriptions and reader reviews. So I ordered them.

Here. Lemee give a plug since Illinois changed the law and I'm an Amazon associate again :

The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion by Virginia Postrel

The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness by Virginia Postrel

I'm waiting for them to arrive. This is my cup of tea so I can't wait to dig in.

Michael

[Frediano]

Fred,

I am certainly not for mob rule. My thing is a constitutional republic with mostly elected officials based on individual rights and checks and balances on power.

But I want to stay a minute with the locking up a bad guy example. You claim this is not a true "forced association" because the bad guy initiated force against a third party. I think that depends on whose perspective you are looking at it from. To the bad guy, it most definitely is a "forced association."

Also, you want to exclude children from "forced association" and call it more akin to gravity instead. I begin to wonder what force means in this formulation.

Rather than make a simple equation that forced association is bad and voluntary association is good, I think other standards have to be added to qualify when (and from which perspective) a forced association is good or bad. Ditto for voluntary associations.

Here's an example of when a voluntary association is not a good thing. Lots of western movies used to show a scene where a mob of people would gather at a jail house so they could lynch the prisoner. The sheriff would stare down the ringleader, and once he broke the will of that person, the will of the crowd would break.

Now did he then leave people alone so they could freely continue with their voluntary association? Hell no. He told them to go home. Go away. Get back to their lives. And if they had insisted on remaining, even though that never happened in the movies, I have no doubt he would have arrested a few.

This is fiction, but I believe it represents reality about the way people are. Why would the sheriff make people stop freely associating like that?

Isn't that their right?

It's context. Within the context of the sheriff having just defused a violent intent, the emotions are still running high in the people in the crowd, so it's better to get these people to disperse to safety (the sheriff's safety and theirs) instead of leaving them there voluntarily associating and running the risk of someone lathering them up to murderous intent again.

That's just one situation.

In my thinking, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that contextless principles not only don't work, they can become dangerous when followed in the wrong contexts and cause a lot more damage and infringe a lot more rights than if context were taken into account and there were some flexibility for common sense to be used. (With checks and balances for punishing things like abuses of power, of course.)

In other words, I'm not against principles. I'm totally for them. But I want principles to apply to human beings as they exist, not to imaginary beings that live in a contextless reality.

This, actually, is why I favor a constitutional republic with mostly elected officials based on individual rights and checks and balances on power for government over a simple democracy.

Michael

Michael:

re: To the bad guy, it most definitely is a "forced association." Yes; his preference after the fact(and maybe before the fact as well)is for the world to be a free-crime zone, not a crime-free zone. What I am saying is, my consent, in advance, not after the fact. The principles under which I accede, if I violate some readily understandable principle, for the state to lock me up/apply the reasonable level of state force to remedy my offense as the 'bad guy' are, these principles. Not whim. The state/mob always can do what the mob can do; that is not what I am talking about. What I am talking about are the ethical principles ethically limiting what the state can do.

The mob doesn't have to agree with me; I can't force that. And if the mob decides that its ethical princples are some other whim that I don't accede to, of course I(or any of us)will, when being 'locked up' as the black guy -- I mean, bad guy -- consider the principles under which the mob is acting and the local state is doing what the local state can always do. Joan of Arc posessed 'rights' in her own ethical framework, even as she was burned at the stake by the local state. Not that they helped her avoid being burned at the stake. The mob always can do what the mob can and will do.

re: children and forced association with their parents. I mean, by that, it is an unavoidable by human intervention biologocal fact of existence, not impressed. In fact, when children have reached an age, they are not forced to live with/associate with their parents. (Our modern economies, flat on their asses, are taking a big bite out of that naked assertion of mine; they are supposed to move the hell out, so we can spoil the grand children...)

re; standards need to be applied to free and forced association. Agreed. Not vague standards. Carefull standards. Sarah Conly's "Against Autonomy: In Defense of Coercive Paternalism" is the new anthem. You mention children and parents; she is arguing not about children and parents, but elites and permanent dependents. She and her admirers purport to be no less than the modern answer to Mills. And why not, when , per wiki(sorry):

Mill's On Liberty addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. Mill states that it is acceptable for someone to harm himself as long as he is not harming others. He does argue, however, that individuals are prevented from doing lasting, serious harm to themselves or their property by the harm principle. Because no one exists in isolation, harm done to oneself may also harm others, and destroying property deprives the community as well as oneself.^[18] Mill excuses those who are "incapable of self-government" from this principle, such as young children or those living in "backward states of society".

The Magic Keys to the Totalitarian Prison: each and every one of us are 'network externalities' to each other, and by that logic, infinite ethical license is granted to the Tribe to break down our doors and strain to see what is inside our homes. By abusing Mill's harm principal, even Mill can be abused to endorse that unlimited license. His argument simply shifts the debate to 'what is harm?' Harm, apparently, includes things such as what quintile membership freight train we pile onto every year to have our income summed and counted, even though none of us do any such thing.

Not a choice to be seen for adult peers living in freedom, but for an endless struggle of competing emperor wanabe elites, alternating between Mill's Liberty and Conly's Coercive Paternalism. The political game seems rigged; no wonder libertarians struggle to find a soft landing in the out of control tribal mess. The tribe is struggling to reclaim what is its own. For a brief moment, the existential threat(to the Tribe)of freedom from the tribe erupted, and just like the Jungle, the Tribe has clawed back against modernity to reclaim its own, which is, every life in the tribe.

re: vigilante justice/the rule of law I am not the anarchy guy. But the assumption is, the bad guy was put away under the law, and is subject to the law. A mob showing up with torches isn't free association under any ethical rule of law; that is just anarchy. I don't equate freedom with anarchy; i equate freedom with civil life in a state constrained by ethical laws.

And as well, I agree an element of that is distributed/non centralized power with checks and balances. Another element is constrained, limited government, doing as little as is necessary, with a national/federal government looking mostly outward, not inward, at 50 state governments already covering the same internal dirt, unless one of those states get's a little locally jiggy with ethical principles, such as, forced dis-association, and points the NG bayonets in the wrong direction to enforce that forced dis-association. That, to me, justifies federal internal focus, as in Eisenhower sending federal troops to Little Rock to turn those NG bayonets around and point them in the other direction. (I argue that, once public school is a reality, that state segregation is an act of forced dis-association, or alternately, forced association with racist views. Our laws do not compel attendence in public schools; they compel some form of education. There are private schools and home school alternatives. But once there is public education, it is a resource of the commons, available to peers living in freedom. The mere existence of peers on the commons is not 'forced association' especially when there are alternatives to attendence in public schools. Our laws against public discrimination apply only to peers on the commons; we are all free to, and regularly do, privately discriminate in our lives using any attribute we choose.

It is a totally separate political argument whether there should be public education in this nation; my argument is based on the fact that it today exists, under existing law. If we don't agree with that law, there are only so many ethical choices open to us, short of breaking the law or fometning a revolution. We can accede to it, and choose other battles. We can work politically to repeal the law. We can leave the poltiical context and seek another. Having exhausted those choices, we can break the law, if we can, or we can foment revolution, which is like a combination of breaking the law in our poltiical context and either pushing the boulder all the way up the hill(succeeding at revolution)or having it fall back on us, as criminals.

regards,

Fred

[Frediano]

Fred,

Funny you should talk about this. What a damn coincidence.

Yesterday I bought Postrel's book on glamour, and the one on style. I stumbled across a reference to them, looked them up and they seemed really good from the descriptions and reader reviews. So I ordered them.

Here. Lemee give a plug since Illinois changed the law and I'm an Amazon associate again :

The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion by Virginia Postrel

The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness by Virginia Postrel

I'm waiting for them to arrive. This is my cup of tea so I can't wait to dig in.

Michael

There was a YouUbe link to a Virginia Postrel interview on RoR-- I think from Steve W. I enjoyed the interview; I ordered the book, too.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

re: To the bad guy, it most definitely is a "forced association." Yes; his preference after the fact(and maybe before the fact as well)is for the world to be a free-crime zone, not a crime-free zone. What I am saying is, my consent, in advance, not after the fact. The principles under which I accede, if I violate some readily understandable principle, for the state to lock me up/apply the reasonable level of state force to remedy my offense as the 'bad guy' are, these principles. Not whim.

Fred,

I only have time for one right now, and please understand, I'm not playing gotcha.

This stuff is important, so it needs a good shaking out. I believe that and I imagine you do, too.

You must understand in your argument there is an assumption of individuals automatically assigning a monopoly on force to the government, as Rand stated. I have always had difficulty with the way Rand talked about that assignment because I don't recall assigning anything of the sort to the government. Not me, Michael.

I'm not saying I'm against a government monopoly on force (except self-defense, but even then, I am for things like citizen's arrest), but I am against justifying this with a false argument.

If this assumption does not underlie your argument, then what about feuds like with the Hatfields and McCoys? Do you simply go back and forth and back and forth until you arrive at the first person who started the feud and say all the people who killed from that side over all those years were initiating force and all those who killed from the other side were merely acting against force being initiated? Thus one side is all right and the other is all wrong?

That's a hell of a mess to untangle with NIOF as the governing principle. And I know a pretzel might be coming.

It's a shame I don't like pretzels.

I think this premise needs some serious checking. Not because I believe it's wrong. But because, to me, the inclusiveness is forced--force fed with pretzels as it were , which indicates that the principle is not in the form it needs to be yet to be all-inclusive.

But I think there is a good deal of validity in it to build on.

(btw - I sometimes find this scope problem with Rand's arguments.)

Michael

[SoAMadDeathWish]

Naomi,

Your premises are flawed.

They assume the obedience and violation of rights are inherent parts of human nature.

The argument is logically valid, so this simply is not true. The conclusion follows logically from the premises I've listed alone and no others.

And I really don't care why you think that I think the things I think are nothing more than blind faith. Reality-wise, your premises are wrong. I can't prove anything using them to make the button work for you and give you instant results. When I check your premises with reality, I get this:

Slop

More slop

Therefore: even more slop

If my premises are wrong, then it follows that you believe that:

1. It is possible for a quantity to both be and not be at a minimum.

2. Checks and balances are not the best way to keep rights violations to a minimum.

3. There is both a best way to do something and a still better way to do it.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Naomi,

Do you have any evidence that obedience and violations of rights are inherent parts of human nature?

Open any anthropology book and you will get lots of evidence about obedience and violations within tribes, but not about rights. It's more about power and standing.

Concern with rights comes much later in human history, after a great deal of conceptual learning.

If all you are doing is word games disconnected from reality, OK. Logic yourself to death. I don't care. If you want to connect your premises to reality, however, some observed evidence would be very useful for them to be valid.

Your beliefs about my beliefs left one out: Rights arise from human nature. The contrary, human nature arises from rights is false (which, in this case, means does not correspond to reality).

I prefer to make a correct identification before evaluating what is best and worse.

Michael

[Frediano]

re: To the bad guy, it most definitely is a "forced association." Yes; his preference after the fact(and maybe before the fact as well)is for the world to be a free-crime zone, not a crime-free zone. What I am saying is, my consent, in advance, not after the fact. The principles under which I accede, if I violate some readily understandable principle, for the state to lock me up/apply the reasonable level of state force to remedy my offense as the 'bad guy' are, these principles. Not whim.

Fred,

I only have time for one right now, and please understand, I'm not playing gotcha.

This stuff is important, so it needs a good shaking out. I believe that and I imagine you do, too.

You must understand in your argument there is an assumption of individuals automatically assigning a monopoly on force to the government, as Rand stated. I have always had difficulty with the way Rand talked about that assignment because I don't recall assigning anything of the sort to the government. Not me, Michael.

I'm not saying I'm against a government monopoly on force (except self-defense, but even then, I am for things like citizen's arrest), but I am against justifying this with a false argument.

If this assumption does not underlie your argument, then what about feuds like with the Hatfields and McCoys? Do you simply go back and forth and back and forth until you arrive at the first person who started the feud and say all the people who killed from that side over all those years were initiating force and all those who killed from the other side were merely acting against force being initiated? Thus one side is all right and the other is all wrong?

That's a hell of a mess to untangle with NIOF as the governing principle. And I know a pretzel might be coming.

It's a shame I don't like pretzels.

I think this premise needs some serious checking. Not because I believe it's wrong. But because, to me, the inclusiveness is forced--force fed with pretzels as it were , which indicates that the principle is not in the form it needs to be yet to be all-inclusive.

But I think there is a good deal of validity in it to build on.

(btw - I sometimes find this scope problem with Rand's arguments.)

Michael

Michael:

I've got no problem at all with honest criticism and examination; none.

re: You must understand in your argument there is an assumption of individuals automatically assigning a monopoly on force to the government, as Rand stated. I have always had difficulty with the way Rand talked about that assignment because I don't recall assigning anything of the sort to the government. Not me, Michael.

Rand, I think, will have to speak for herself. I am an admirer, not a worshipper. Self defence would be outside of government monopoly, in my view of an ethical use of force.

I was speaking for me; what I regarded -- in advance, before the fact, as a free adult -- as an ethical license -- as what I would regard as a just use, as opposed to an unjust use of Joan of Arc style force against me as the 'bad guy.; By the state, by a mob, by three guidos from Tiverton. That is the alpha and omega of my consideration. Because no matter what I accede to, the mob can and always will be able to do what it can and will. If I have projected some form of forced association against others, then I would accept, as an ethical response, others projection of scaled, effective reactive force at my boorish behavior. Ethically as in, I accede to it in advance-- as an informed adult/citizen. And if there is some other reason behind their agression aimed at me, without that provocation on my part, I would regard it as a unethical, unjustified act of agression. I might still burn at a stake, but I for certain will not build the stake, nor light the fire, nor do anything other than fight for my life.

This is very similar to Mill's harm principle.

To your point -- the implicit assignment of any license to the state, agreed to long before your (or my) arrival as informed, capable adults. It kind of goes back to that child/parent discussion a little bit. While we are children, we kind of get an existential bye from the whole process. We actually enjoy a kind of special status as children, with limited freedom. We also have no responsibility for the flames around us. We are still fed and clothed and educated. THere is at least lip service applied to the concept that we are transitioning from nothing to something, and it might take a while to get there, so timeout, Childhood is often, not always, pleasurable. I wish it was always so. For some/many, paradigms that promise an endless Thirteenth Grade of Life, with restricted responsibility, is an appealing siren's call to endless childhood. Other's can't wait to grow up and get on with it.

But when we arrive, as infromed, capable, educated adults, unlike our existence as a child, we do now have an ethical responsibility. We, through no plot by others, find outselves inside of a poltiical context. At great expense of those who came before us and created this political context, we, in our poltiical context, actually have the freedom to leave it, if we don't support it. We also have other ethical choices, when we don't agree with the deal.

1] We can choose our battles, and accede. We can enjoy our freedoms in total, and live to fight another day. Not every issue is worth going to war over.

2] We can choose to work poltiically, within our political context, to change the deal. Others are free to react to those efforts.

3] We can choose to leave our political context and find a better deal elsewhere in the world. Canada. Cuba. North Korea. Estonia, if we hurry.

Those are the ethical choices. In 1] and 2], we are supporting our poltiical context and agreeing to subject ourselves to its laws.

In 3] we are rejecting our political context, but are still acting ethically. We are not stealing from the freedom pie baked by others.

There are mega-political options.

4] We can scofflaw and choose to be outlaws in the current poliical context. Even, selectively. We can succeed at that, or we can get ready to sing John Couger Mellancamp's 'Authoriity.' The ethics of this choice depends on your assessment and my assessment. Ann Frank and family were scoff laws in their poltiical context. We can evaluate, each of us, whether we accept their actions in their poltiical context as ethical, under our concept of 'ethical.'

5] We can choose to foment revolution, and attempt to overturn the local poltiical context. Clearly a group effort.. But this option in any politiical context is based only on one ultimate truth of power; succeed, and you and yours are revolutionary heros of the next political context. Fail, and you are the latest terrorist radical criminals of the existing poltiical context. The victors get to decide, even as we all, indvidually, declare with our own ethical beliefs what we are thinking when some are being burned at the stake while yet others are celebrating around the bonfires.

There is a political battle, waged by elites, to declare what is the Universal Ethical Truth; I am not speaking to that; I am speaking exactly to my accepted definition -- the license I do agree to, as an adult-- as in, similar to the one you correctly identify as never having agreed to; mine is the one I agree to. Yours might be different in some important way, or, be so similar that we arrive at similar conclusions. They could even be substantially different and we could still largely arrive at the same concensus regarding specific laws. Or, another possibility is, (this is hard to believe, but it happens) we reach different conclusions. And then, each of us, concede power to the state, our local poltiical context, and it does as it will, as always, and each of us individuals pass through that five station sieve above.

Maybe there are other stations in that sieve, other alternatives. (Universal enlightenment/concensus? PETA celebrating at the Outback Steakhouse with a porterhouse, the Enlightenment has arrived!) I'd love to hear additions to those stations.

regards,

Fred

[Selene]

Naomi,

Your premises are flawed.

They assume the obedience and violation of rights are inherent parts of human nature.

The argument is logically valid, so this simply is not true. The conclusion follows logically from the premises I've listed alone and no others.

And I really don't care why you think that I think the things I think are nothing more than blind faith. Reality-wise, your premises are wrong. I can't prove anything using them to make the button work for you and give you instant results. When I check your premises with reality, I get this:

Slop

More slop

Therefore: even more slop

If my premises are wrong, then it follows that you believe that:

1. It is possible for a quantity to both be and not be at a minimum.

2. Checks and balances are not the best way to keep rights violations to a minimum.

3. There is both a best way to do something and a still better way to do it.

Test your premises with this site:

Type: Formal Fallacy

Form:

Any non-validating form of categorical syllogism.

Exposition:

The categorical syllogism is part of the oldest system of formal logic, invented by the first formal logician, Aristotle. There are several techniques devised to test syllogistic forms for validation, including sets of rules, diagrams, and even mnemonic poems.

More importantly for us, there are sets of fallacies based upon the rules such that any syllogism which does not commit any of the fallacies will have a validating form. The subfallacies of Syllogistic Fallacy are fallacies of this rule-breaking type. If a categorical syllogism commits none of the subfallacies below, then it has a validating form. To understand these subfallacies, it is necessary to understand some basic terminology about categorical syllogisms:

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/syllfall.html

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

Thanks for the discretion.

I guess I tend to get blunt at times.

I just reread what I wrote.

Slop?

Dayaamm!

LOL...

Michael

[SoAMadDeathWish]

Naomi,

Do you have any evidence that obedience and violations of rights are inherent parts of human nature?

Open any anthropology book and you will get lots of evidence about obedience and violations within tribes, but not about rights. It's more about power and standing.

Concern with rights comes much later in human history, after a great deal of conceptual learning.

If all you are doing is word games disconnected from reality, OK. Logic yourself to death. I don't care. If you want to connect your premises to reality, however, some observed evidence would be very useful for them to be valid.

Your beliefs about my beliefs left one out: Rights arise from human nature. The contrary, human nature arises from rights is false (which, in this case, means does not correspond to reality).

I prefer to make a correct identification before evaluating what is best and worse.

Michael

I never made that claim.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There was a YouUbe link to a Virginia Postrel interview on RoR-- I think from Steve W. I enjoyed the interview; I ordered the book, too.

Fred,

Í started a thread about this:

Glamour - Postrel and Getting This Right

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Do you have any evidence that obedience and violations of rights are inherent parts of human nature? ...

I never made that claim.

Naomi,

Sure you did.

Here's the clunker premise:

Premise 2: Checks and balances are the best way to keep rights violations to a minimum.

Really?

You think that's what checks and balances are about?

Kiddo, the checks and balances are on power, an inherent part of human nature.

Not on rights violations.

That premise is a false statement right out of the gate. But the assumptions behind it are worse.

To do it your way, we have to assume obeying and violating rights are inherent to human nature where things like urge to power, reason, growth, etc., should be. The role of the individual is to be an on-off switch on obeying/violating rights within a collective. A statistic of the collective, if you will.

But if you start by observing human beings and trying to make sense of them enough to identify them correctly, you look at arms, legs, head, trunk, etc., then start looking at behavior. Then you start going more abstract. And when you look at groups of humans, you realize that that--human beings--are what organize into groups. Not abstractions like rights and duties to obey them.

In other words, governments arise out of human nature. They do not arise out of rights. Epistemologically, we start formulating rights after we have a notion of what humans are. And after we have groups of humans. Not before.

Believe me, bullying is and has been a huge problem of human nature way before the Enlightenment ever conceived of natural law. Checks and balances were not instituted to allow a government to decree natural law, rights and so forth. There was a far older problem to deal with first. They were instituted to hogtie a destructive human urge and protect each individual from it when power comes from within the government, seeing as how the government is made up of humans.

The fact that some checks and balances overlap the enumeration of some individual rights in documents like the Constitution does not make rights their reason for being.

Like I said before, if your exercise is merely a logical puzzle to make a correct syllogism with false premises, that's different. But if you want to tie it to reality, your premises must reflect reality as it is.

There's another assumption that renders your problem irrelevant to a government that emerges from human nature and constrained by checks and balances. The purpose of government itself is not to keep rights violations at a minimum. In O-Land, it is to protect individual rights.

(Elsewhere the purpose is sack and pillage and plunder and so on. But that kind of government is not what we are discussing.)

This may not seem like a difference from the kind of stuff they teach these days (and I presume the kind you learned), but think about it. If we are talking about fundamentals, the difference is huge. One is statistical, outcome-oriented and collectivist at root. The other is principle-based--a sacred duty the government has toward each individual.

I suppose it's fun to think about the government as a puppet-master controlling and shaping society, but if you flip it around and start with society (i.e. a group of individuals), you get the difference between a constitutional republic and a dictatorship by technocrats. I know which one I prefer to live in, warts and all. And it doesn't start with "d."

Vastly different consequences result in practice from these vastly different premises. And you know why? Power tends to corrupt--even technocrats. (It's a human nature thing. )

For the record, the best way to keep rights violations to a minimum is for the individuals within a society to foster a culture where people want to be good by choice, not by manipulations of power-holders. Then the government doesn't have to do a damn thing.

Michael

[SoAMadDeathWish]

Michael,

This is what you said

It gets reduced and constrained like all the other forms of power by the checks and balances system.

Any form of power taken to the extreme can be individual rights-friendly or opposed to rights. That depends on the person or people wielding it.

The problem with a benevolent dictator is not him if things are running well, but his heir if such is a nasty person. Or in a democracy, when the opposition gets voted in.

Checks and balances exist to keep that problem to a minimum.

I understood this to mean that you were implying that a more powerful government will tend to violate the rights of citizens more than a less powerful one. That's where that premise came from.

Now if you meant to say that checks and balances limit government power, my argument is slightly different, but it remains fundamentally the same.

If you believe that government power, today, is already at a minimum, then you have to admit that there is no point in trying to reign in government power any further. If it is not at a minimum, then checks and balances don't deliver on the promise.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Naomi,

That's not it, either.

Checks and balances is not a system of constraints on the size of the government. (I wish it were, but that's not its function.)

There is no government power (or collective power) without the individuals in it exercising power. There is no such thing as government power in practice divorced from the individuals in government, written constitution notwithstanding. (What effect would that document have if no individuals showed up to take positions in the government?)

Checks and balances work by blocking the individuals within the government from having too much power as individuals.

If one person has power in a system where only a part of the potential power is available to him or her--because the system has been divided up previously--the only way that person can get more power is to take a slice that someone else has. But when people get power, they are loathe to give it up. On the contrary. They want more themselves. So human nature itself is a natural block.

Person A wants more power and tries to take it from Person B. But Person B say. "Hell no!"

There you have it. Checked and balanced. And nicely done, too.

The underlying idea when this system was devised was to impede a new kingdom with an all-powerful monarch from coming into existence.

Ever.

Michael

[SoAMadDeathWish]

Checks and balances is not a system of constraints on the size of the government. (I wish it were, but that's not its function.)

Checks and balances work by blocking the individuals within the government from having too much power as individuals.

The underlying idea when this system was devised was to impede a new kingdom with an all-powerful monarch from coming into existence.

Ever.

Michael

If checks and balances can only keep power from congealing within one individual, but are unable to actually constrain government power... then what's the point? Does it matter that you're being ruled by one person or many?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Does it matter that you're being ruled by one person or many?

Naomi,

Yup.

Government by many is vastly superior when there are many individuals in power who collide against each other all the time (without violence).

Michael