Libertarian Davi Barker emails me a link to her (his?) remix of my “24 Types of Libertarian” cartoon, “The 24 Types of Authoritarian.”
S/he has changed all the words in my cartoon, turning it into a mocking of both liberals and conservatives. Good for Davi for posting such a good-humored response.
I’d only make two criticisms: First, the credit could be clearer — it now says “by Davi Barker,” but I wish it had said “by Davi Barker, reusing drawings by B. Deutsch” or something. (It does say it’s a “parody” of my work, but “parody” doesn’t normally imply “only the words have been changed, otherwise it’s not my work.”) Not a big deal, just a preference of mine.
Secondly, I like the reworking of “the Island” into “Drug Warrior,” but Dani should have redrawn the crumpled-up piece of paper in his hand and made it into a pipe. C’mon, folks — details count! (I liked the little police hat and vest added to my gun-totin’ dude, though.)
I’m not sure the entitled case is meant to be a black guy. You’re the one doing a strawman here. In any case, you’ll have to take that up to the author, cause I do see that the system is biased towards the rich and that benefits are among the crutches the State offers after it has broken the poors’ legs. Like a drug that dulls the pain, it does not address the root problem though, but only fixes it superficially, and creates another in its stead.
Regarding the educator, again that is an issue with the way you do it, rather than the intent behind it, which is laudable, but does not justify coercion. If you think that’s outrageous, I enjoin you to take a walk in any classroom of today, and tell me that people are learning stuff there. They’re only learning so long as they are whipped (figuratively), and they forget quite quickly after that, which shows how much of a waste of time that is. And I don’t even mention the puritanical habit of obedience and martyrdom that instills in people, learning that you have to suffer to be good. That’s disgusting. I actually have a friend who keeps reading volumes after volumes, that she does not particularly like, setting herself x number of pages per day, and barely remembering anything. Does that not make you hate the fake education we are accustomed to? People should learn about what they truly love, rather than be forced to ingurgitate subject matters that were decided for them at the top.
Well, okay. I don’t think I’m a libertarian in the way that Masebrock is. For one thing, I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged, nor do I feel like reading it. I’d like to know why no one takes me up on what I said regarding obligations that cannot be enforced, yet do exist. Let’s return to your main point then:
I don’t think the Law is entirely deducable by logic, as opposed to Masebrock. Where it is not, the only way to derive obligations is by social consensus of those concerned. Hence, I kinda agree with the above in some cases, although I would say that if it is not unanimous, then it is again tyranny of the majority, and that does not count as a legitimate system of law, binding on people.
How would this work in a real-life scenario involving even the relatively small number of 50,000 people? How are you ever going to get unanimity? What it winds up being is no system of law and where does that leave the small community of 50k?
Sorry if you read the previous comment, which I’ve just deleted. Very simply, if consent is the source of law, then there is no continual conflict possible (because it happens between people who have consented to the legal system). Because you start out with a fixed number of agents all glued together as a community, you necessarily and naturally end up with different views and politics. But is there any reason the 50K should have a single policy? What if half were communists and half were capitalists? Further, what if capitalists had capitalism, and communists had communism? I don’t see anything wrong with that, in and of itself. I see possible practical issues around the edges, but people can talk and negotiate, rather than wage civil war.
I think of it this way: if I can’t stand my wife, and vice-versa, do we fight it out until one of us wins and has his or her way? Or should we rather go through a divorce and try to be civilized? Clearly, the latter.
I agree.
Let me offer a vision of how this works in practice.
1) As a large group of geographically contiguous people operating on some basically similar principles (henceforth to be known as a ‘nation’) we realize that unanimity of decision making on the large scale is impossible.
2) Therefore, those among us who want to continue being part of that ‘nation’ agree that, though it will mean that sometimes things end up going a way we’d prefer they not, we’ll abide by majority rule.
3) Of course, it can’t be strict majority rule, since those who end up being on the losing side want some assurances that the winning side won’t be able to horribly abuse them, so we write down some basic principles that are not subject to majority rule. Coincidentally, these basic principles are mostly the same as the basic principles we agree on in part 1.
4) People who don’t want to live according to majority rule are utterly free to leave and liver under another agreement! This is the ‘amiable separation’ you mentioned earlier. If you stay, though, majority rule is not ‘tyranny’, it’s the deal we’ve all made.
—Myca
Let me stop you right there. It does not matter what an authoritarian is to you. What matters is the actual definition of the term as used by the vast majority of people who use it. It is the height of arrogance to simply reinvent a word in order to smear your opponents by using the same word that others apply to Pinochet.
While using ctrl + F will not find anyone using the term, authoritarianism is, in fact, a dogma and you are acussing 99.2% of the politically aware population of subscribing to it, all the while adhering to your own dogma. If you don’t mean to label all non-libertarians as being dogmatic, then by all means stop attatching a dogma like authoritarianism to them.
Others have handled this better than I. I will only point out to libertarians what I point out to creationists. Namely that simply because you try to poke holes in the ideas of another does not automatically make your own ideas true. We can all find flaws in the various forms of non-libertarianism, but unless we get a working alternative (perhaps one that can be tried by a small group, like many other utopian ideologies) such nit picking is pointless.
Who, among this humble blog, is denying the importance of judging legislation? The only who prejudges legislation, regardless of what it does, is the libertarian, since s/he assumes it is automatically bad. The rest of us are free to weigh the merits of said legislation. It really is quite liberating.
Just to be clear, are you saying that the person in the panel marked “Entitled” is not black? I think everyone here can clearly see that the man in the panel originally marked “Too much Heinlein” is clearly African-American. If anyone cannot see the subtle (though probably unintentional) racial message then your white privilege is just off the scale.
Regarding your comments about the poor, I think it is fairly obvious that the poverty rate goes down in periods when the government is more involved in the economy. The Way We Never Were: American Familys and the Nostalgia Trap by Stehanie Coontz is a particularly good source for the evidence of this, though it is one of its many foci. To say that one non-libertarian system is biased against the poor and that they thus all are is insanely fallacious.
You missed the point. The one panel with the image of a woman just happened to be turned into a shrill public school teacher. The sexist implications (again, probably unintentional) are way, way to obvious.
Again, I repeat my point that one cannot simply criticize non-libertarianism (this time in its education policies) without suggesting an alternative. I have yet to see libertarians suggest anything, since the nations they point to with higher scores have, if anyting, less libertarian educational policies. The horrors you describe perfectly sums up pre-public school American education. The hyperbole of your writing would no longer be hyperbole if its subject was that time period.
That’s hogwash. We are not geographically contiguous, not by a long shot. People in a city or town or village are. Again, even if we were, it is still more desirable to negotiate or leave people be, and split into smaller political entities.
I’m sorry, did you just do the statist jump from what’s official to what’s popular? Yes you did. Just like that time some other guy said that the legislation is what the people ‘collectively negotiated’ (LOL) and we needed it to “keep track.”
Last I heard, a dictionary definition is also written by a bunch of guys. And those guys are probably for the state. I can tell the above is written by constitutionalists.
So point taken, but I’d like to see the same skepticism more often. Giving me a definition written by someone else is just saying that you disagree with me on my own use of the word, without bothering to say why I shouldn’t use it this way. There are correct and incorrect definitions, granted. Saying mine is incorrect and then giving me your definition does not advance the discussion. You need to prove that I should not use it this way; that this use is fundamentally flawed.
Oh? Good! So when the legislation says you have to pay that amount of dollars, then I can judge that this is theft and refuse to pay as is my right, and resist any and all collection. And when the legislation says I have to sing the anthem at school, I can refuse to sing. And when the legislation says that I cannot have drugs, then I actually can have drugs. Etc. You don’t seem to realize that if I can judge the legislation, then the point of the legislation vanishes. We are not supposed to judge it and potentially disobey, else the legislation would not be binding on us. (It actually isn’t binding.)
?? The author didn’t touch the graphics and merely changed the text. What’s African-American about saying ‘ Lazarus long said that men are created unequal. It’s not my fault I’m smarter than poor people! ‘ ??
That’s just bullying, stop that. I hate this crap. If you think I’m racist then prove it, rather than make disgusting innuendos. If you can’t prove something so hateful about me you should shut the fuck up. This guy does not look black to me and even if he was, I made CLEAR that I do NOT agree that the system has not fucked black people over.
Just more involved? So when the government gives 300 billions to bankers, suddenly the poverty rate goes down? You should be more specific. There are clearly actions that lessen the poverty rate and actions that do not. Government is funded by taxation, therefore it is illegal as such. Who cares that if the government gives you money you are less poor. It has no right to exist in the first place. Also, whatever good things the government does, can just as well be done on a voluntary basis. I suppose it’s time to bring in the existence of Mutualists, Libertarian Socialists and Libertarian Communists? Those guys the cartoon completely ignores.
“That’s just bullying, stop that. I hate this crap. If you think I’m racist then prove it, rather than make disgusting innuendos. ”
It’s not crap. It’s another way of discussing racism, sometimes the kind that stops just short of virulence.
Clearly, yours is virulent.
You’re waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too present in this thread. Take a 24 hour break, and when you come back, try limiting your posts to no more than 2 in a row.
I just gave you the definition from the dictionary.
I never said that, and I never said it for a reason. I’m trying to have a “what you did” conversation instead of a “what you are” conversation. I’m not calling either you or the cartoonist racist or sexist because this is about picking the only picture of a black guy* and the only picture of a woman and making them represent entitlement and a shrill teacher respectively. This isn’t about what is in your souls because I neither know nor care.
You are again taking one action and saying this reflects the actions of all non-libertarian governments. That’s just silly. I was talking abou things like the minimum wage, the GI Bill, labor rights, worker safety, pre-school for working-class kids, and other government actions that clearly reduced poverty.
Citation?
Read panel five of the original cartoon again.
*Seriously, print that panel, use marker or white-out to cover up the writing, go out into the street, and ask people if that looks like a male of sub-Saharan African ancestry to them. The transcript to the original even said “Black guy making big arm gestures: lazarus long said that[…]”
Ah good. Ian admits that he doesn’t know me. I’m glad. The dictionary definition was written, just as my comment was. You need to tell me how my definition is wrong. As it happens, I’ve seen that video, but I’m not convinced that because I didn’t see a black guy in the entitled panel, I am consequently a racist. I’d say the contrary would hold true. Had I thought the guy was black merely because he thought he was entitled to benefits…The funniest thing is, I’ve been saying again and again and again that black people have been wronged and are entitled to reparations, but it doesn’t seem to matter. If I don’t agree to the taxation scheme, suddenly this very radical position of mine is going out the window and I’m a racist.
Mordecai, you, sir or ma’am, have horrible reading skills.
As a total aside (well, not total, but off the main topic): There really is a way to avoid your gender-confusion word salad, and it’s called gender-neutral pronouns.
..her (his?) remix..
becomes
..hir remix..
and
S/he has changed..
becomes
Ze has changed..
Or you can use singular they / their.
Mordecai, you have been asked to step out for 24 hours. Make that 24 hours from now, please.
I am a moderator here, if you were wondering.
[Edit:Sorry, hadn’t seen the previous.]
You said government intervention reduces poverty. I’m taking you at your word and I bring forth an example of government intervention that does not reduce poverty. What you said was incorrect and deceitful. Funny that you didn’t even think of giving specifically the measures you had in mind. As if there was no such thing as the billions of dollars given away to bail out bankers. There’s your bias in favor of the state. You don’t see the poverty it CREATES. We would not even need a minimum wage or labor rights, if we were truly in control.
(Regarding the non-discussion of socialists and communists among libertarians.) I believe panel 5 refers to left-libertarians, that is, free market people who consider themselves on the Left and support the labor struggle to a large extent. The libertarians I was referring to are an entirely different thing, and probably see the previous as very naive.
You mean, just because I find a hole and point it out for everyone to see, that doesn’t make my own theory true? In general that’s very true. But I think that government and non-government are much more related theories than evolution and christianism. The one is a scientific theory, the other is a very long fairy tale. As opposed to that, if government is not justified as such, then non-government and libertarianism follow.
What? Is there anyone to cite for such a statement? What part of it is untrue, does the conclusion not follow? If taxation is theft, then surely everything follows smoothly. Since taxation consists in taking property without consent, it is certainly theft; and your point isn’t that it’s not theft, your point is, the proceeds can be put to good use.
No, it doesn’t. Christ, that’s stupid. If I was to pick one thing libertarians say that the most intellectually dishonest, childish, narcissistic, and myopic, this would probably be it.
By living here (or wherever you live), you derive certain benefits from our (their) social system, and agree to support it with your taxes. As long as you’re free to leave and go elsewhere, taxation is not coercion. So: In North Korea? Sure! In the USA? Don’t be stupid.
By way of analogy:
I move into large house shared by 7 or 8 other roommates. They tell me up front that one of the things they’ve all agreed upon is to each pay $50 a month above and beyond their rent in order to provide for household expenses, and that if I move in, I’ll be expected to pay the $50 too.
Now, I may decide to move in and pay. I may decide to go looking elsewhere. What I CAN’T do (or what I can’t do and be an intellectually honest person) is move in and then complain about how that $50 is coercion because if I don’t pay they’ll throw me out on the street, etc.
You’re free to leave. You’re free to convince your other roommates to change the system. Maybe the $50 a month is a bad idea! It could certainly be! But bad is different from invalid, and the $50 is certainly not theft.
—Myca
Oh, and, you said:
You’re not even pretending to address my argument.
In fact, rather than unanimity, what you’re proposing is that the system the vast majority of us favor ought to be considered invalid and out of bounds.
That’s not unanimity, that’s oppression by a small elite, purporting to tell us what we ‘really’ want or ‘really’ need.
If you disagree, try rereading. Read for comprehension this time, and then pen a response that actually addresses what I’ve said.
—Myca
Additionally, of course, within the group of people who favor democracy (Christ. I can’t believe I’m having to defend democracy. Yay for the Enlightenment, I guess.) there are plenty of disagreements on what ought to be subject to democratic rule and what ought not.
For example, since we all agree on the principles of equality under the law, I don’t think that something like gay marriage ought to be decided democratically. I think it flows from first principles. Others disagree.
Some folks think that abortion is rightly considered murder, and that therefore it ought to be illegal, whatever the democratic majority has to say. I disagree.
The areas where we disagree, though, are dwarfed by the areas where we agree … we all agree broadly that we’re not going to reach unanimity on many issues, and we’d all rather live by democratic rule than splinter the country into hundreds or thousands of micro-nations. I’m just guessing, but I’d say that there’s over 90% agreement across the country on those two points, since anarchists, fascists, (some) libertarians, and a small subset of communists are the only people I’ve ever heard disagree with them.
If there’s such broad agreement on a point, to deny those who agree from practicing it is, in fact, authoritarian.
—Myca
The State is not a social system, it is the creation of a few who believe they act on behalf of everyone, but they are either wrong or impudent on that regard; it certainly is not the creation of the people. Also, how can the State provide services or benefits without first obtaining funding for them? And how does the State obtain funding, if not by taxation?
Also, “free to leave and go elsewhere”? Really? From a lefty? Okay. Here’s something I thought you already knew: just because you’re legally free to do something, it doesn’t mean it’s an option that’s on the table for you. For instance, you have the right to get a job. Or, you have the right to become a millionnaire. And have you tried moving to another country with a different language? And finally, if one does not want to be at the mercy of State robbers, then what freaking country to go to? It’s not even a serious suggestion!
That’s an awful analogy but I must concede that it illustrates very well how wrong you are. In the analogy, you decide, of your own free will, to move in. In the real world, no one decides to participate in the State. Participation is mandatory, non-participation is unpatriotic and treasonous. You say paying taxes is as natural as paying rent. Neither of those things are natural, they are artificial, the first criminal and the second a contractual matter. The right of property is natural and cannot be made void because a minority has decided to provide services you didn’t ask for.
Telling people about a system that I think would be much better than the current one is not oppression. Also, I have a right to be free. If you want to pay taxes into the current monster, fine. Leave me out of it, and I’ll do the same.
Is there some place in the world that one can move into, totally free, without someone footing the bill? Do you think there should be?
I didn’t choose to be born to my parents or to live in their house for the first eighteen years of my existence. Once I became an adult, I had to either get a job and start contributing financially, or choose to find another place, which I also would have had to contribute to financially.
In what way is this different from being born into a certain state?
Completely laughable.
There are no ‘natural’ rights. All rights come from society, and I pay taxes so that society can enforce them.
Well, it looks like I’m definitely not getting that apology.
I find it interesting that Mordecai seems to be the only person who brought up the term “racist.”
I’m sorry I thought we had a right to be free. But maybe being free to move somewhere is too much! Oh God, all those people leaving and entering the country! That’s so wrong!
What do you mean, someone footing the bill? What bill? The bill constituted by what? If you provide me a bill constituted by, among other things, the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the Patriot Act, the Surveillance State, the Pro-Capitalist Nanny State, do you think I’m gonna be enticed to pay for crap that I think endangers me and violates my rights and those of others? No I won’t.
At what point does it enter your head that there are natural costs to what we do, and artificial costs to what others decide, against our consent, “for our own good,” to provide us with? Why are you such a naive tool telling yourself and others fairy tales on what it means to live under a state? You need to get a job and contribute financially. To what? What if you are under Nazi Germany, or what if you are in America right now? Do you have to indiscriminately contribute to every single thing America happens to be doing, no matter what it is?
Of course, all this debating is a waste of time, because there isn’t a choice in the matter of paying taxes. The tax is not a voluntary contribution on your part, it’s a mandatory payment ordered by the authorities.
I would say that most people already are libertarians and anarchists, and that transpires here in the way you take pains to strip the state of all its crimes and oppressive actions, and make it look like a voluntary association. It is not, though, and that is solely why it must end.
You do not deserve one. I’ve been clear enough I think. Libertarians who use the right of property to provide apologies for racial discrimination, forget that non-violent methods and social pressure to achieve change are also legal things to engage in. As they do not advocate such things, it is clear that it isn’t just that they think property rights allow for racial discrimination. They believe that racial discrimination is justified on its own. That is what makes them racist, and that is why I was the one who was insulted, along with all the other libertarians who would take action against those things, without relinquishing their anarchism.
Do you have anything to support this conclusion?
As I said, you all take pains to portray the state as a voluntary association. You say that the right to govern is based on the consent of the governed. That people voluntarily choose to pay their taxes. That they are choosing to live under the state, and so it’s fine. That’s not the reality, but it does show that you have the same principles as us, even as you do not apply them because you are deluded about the State.
I’ve been keeping score. So far, Mordecai has demonstrated Types of Libertarians numbers 1, 2, 4, 14, 19, and 21.
That’s really cheap. Do you have a point to make or are you content just repeating things?
Sure. I’ve seen democrats and republicans, they get along fine. There’s no such thing as tribalism under the state. No no no no no. It’s not like everyone who’s into politics has a morbid hatred of their counterparts. Nahhhh.
You seem to have a problem comprehending what the Naive type means. It doesn’t mean that folks get along now, it means that it is naive to think that folks will just automatically get along once government disappears.
And my comment was no more cheap than your statement that folks here are somehow deluded about the state (when it’s pretty obvious that it is you who don’t understand what the state is or how it operates). That was what prompted me to point out just where your own performance intersects with Amp’s cartoon.
I’m unspeakably happy that somebody thought to keep score and then share. Thanks, Bear!
Masebrock way up at #86:
That sentence has to be the absolute best example of overstatement I have seen since my 5th grade grammar lessons.
What, Bonnie, you mean I won’t get the death penalty if I don’t pay my taxes?
@Mordecai
What the hell are you talking about? Have you given up on making actual points, and decided to just start ranting incoherently?
There’s also public roads, the fire department, the police department, garbagemen, the Post Office, the DMV, public transportation, and public schools, all of which I can logically assume you have benefited from at some point or another. These things do not pay for themselves. By living here, you have a responsibility to contribute, just as you would in any living situation. You may not like everything we do here–I don’t either. But you and I have the power to vote, and to make our voices heard in many other ways. You may think the system set up in this nation is bad enough that it needs to be torn down completely. 99% of your fellow tenants disagree. Have some respect for the rest of us.
Chris – Ha!
My thoughts fall particularly on misdemeanors in the US, transgressions which generally involve the potential for a fine and/or imprisonment for not more than 1 year: Jay-walking. Breach of the peace. Public drunkenness. Failure to appear. Resisting arrest. Trespassing. Petty theft. Parking in a space marked for emergency vehicles only.
Just because there are legal consequences for transgressing a law does not mean that the ultimate consequence for every transgression of any and every law is death.
The potential for a fine and/or loss of liberty for breaking a law != an implied death threat!!!
I got cited for jaywalking once. And I was sentenced to death. I know it seems like kind of a stiff penalty, but I deserved it.
See! If only we were a truly libertarian, stateless society, than Jake Squid would still be alive, rather than having to transmit his posts to his friends via Ouija board.
But you see, I did not call you, or anyone else, a racist. You are the only person who has evoked the term “racist” in this discussion – in fact, you’ve done it twice, in your response to me at 43, and then later at 111 where you again try to say that someone has called you a racist, when in fact what they said was “your white privilege is off the map.” Oh, and then you do it again at 114, so that’s three times. You seem to have something of a tic when it comes to the word “racist” – you just blurt it out, like you can’t stop yourself.
Your comment that “people like [me]” should “stop conflating all libertarians with racists” was way out of bounds, because I did not call you or any other libertarian a racist. I said that I have a problem with the fact that libertarians are more concerned with the “oppression” of a white-owned hospital that is mandated to serve people of all races, than with the consequences to non-white people without that mandate. An observation, might I add, that you have agreed is an accurate assessment of your personal position, in comment 45.
(We’ll sidestep the fact that it’s rather rude to make “people like YOU” type statements when you know nothing about me other than the fact that I’ve said I have a problem with the libertarian position on civil rights legislation. However, I’m rather surprised that a moderator hasn’t asked you to step your tone back, because you’ve escalated into swearing, accusations of bullying, and other stances that seem antithetical to the principles of commenting this site upholds.)
Myca said to you:
And again you start with the “racist, you said I’m a racist” blurting.
Yet you’re the one who asks, in what appears to be an aggrieved tone, “Do you even read what I say or should I just stop discussing things with you?”
So here is my point again, and perhaps if there is a reasonable answer, you can supply one. However, I would request that you do so in a reasonable manner, without resorting to “you’re saying I’m a racist.”
I take issue with the statement “libertarianism is against any form of oppression,” because I see libertarians as having no reasonable answer to the oppression experienced by minorities (and women, and the elderly, and GLBT people) in the absence of civil rights legislation compelling equal treatment under the law. I see libertarianism as misusing the term “oppression” to mean “having to do something one doesn’t want to do because one is compelled to by law, such as providing equal treatment to suspect classes of people,” which I see as 1) rhetorically dishonest, and 2) disproportionately concerned with the well-being of those at the center versus those at the margins. Therefore, I object in the strongest of terms to attempts to label libertarianism as “against any form of oppression” because in practice, what I see is libertarianism as against a few things that they label “oppression” in contradiction to the generally-accepted understanding of the term, while perfectly willing to allow other, more pervasive kinds of oppression to exist without remedy. “The right to protest” is not a remedy, it is a response. If a person of color dies because s/he is turned away from the only hospital in 40 miles due to race, the fact that family and friends can express outrage and disapproval is not a remedy, and in the meantime, others will also suffer harms or death. “Protest” is a disingenuous, non-remedy for discrimination, which is why the Civil Rights Act was necessary – there was a great deal of protest going on during the Jim Crow era, but it was not an effective remedy, and allowing the situation to persist did very real, tangible, pervasive harm to people of color.
I have a responsibility to contribute, just because I’m an inhabitant of a given country, and a bunch of guys in the capital have decided that I need to have this this and that. Rather than basing payment on actual use, an authority provides me with things I have not asked for, and then gives me the bill. Talk about public roads and everything you like all you want, that’s only part of the picture. There is not a choice in the payment, and neither is there a choice in what is funded, or provided. Please stop using the word contribution in such a context.
Oh by the way, did you know that lorries are doing most of the damage on the roads, but because the roads are nationalised that means the individual citizen is paying a lot more than what he’s actually using, as against the big business interests whose profits depend on good enough roads for the distribution of their crap?
You’re melting two issues into one. Adequate healthcare and anti-segregation laws. Also, I did not discuss remedying a death with a protest. I would say this would provide grounds for pressing involuntary homicide charges. I do not believe that any hospital anywhere refuses to provide health care to people of color, but if you know of one, then should you not organize a campaign to put an end to that? Instead of relying on the same State that puts the same people of color in an institutional poverty. I’m sorry, I thought you weren’t racist and you were actually a very active member of the citizenry. Is it not that putting a moral duty into law relieves you of the responsibility of acting on it on your own?
Oh right, there’s this small issue as well. Are people of color wronged by the present system in any way? From the way you are saying it, it sounds like there is no institutional racism that puts them in poverty and thus entitles them to a form of reparation, which would be benefits. Is there equal treatment by law, or not? If not, then explain why the legislation has not effectuated that decades ago.
You know what? Take a look at this. Pay particular attention from the 2:06 mark forward.
It’s a remarkable combination of what speaking to libertarians is like.
Property rights and disbelief in passive forms of harm is no basis for a system of government.
Justice, law, and rights, all those are normative concepts, and they cannot be changed just because you would like them to. Now, we can debate the content of each of those terms. It could be, for instance, that the law actually compels owners to provide equal treatment to each class of persons. But rather than have a bunch of guys write it down on paper, and the rest of us obey blindly, you need to say why it is so. And if it sounds true and reasonable, then it is indeed part of the law. So now it’s up to you to tell me why, as a general rule, you are committing a crime by refusing to associate with a person on the basis of his skin color. It is a foolish and vile thing, but I fail to see that it’s directly criminal. In what precise way is a person or belonging aggrieved by this?
You have a very, very strange concept of how representative republics work.
Okay this is my last post. I give up. There’s too much bullshit for me to cope with on my own. Passive forms of harm. This is insane. And I don’t believe in it. I’m a heretic, rather than someone to reason with.
I do want to say that I’m a mutualist and I would opt to live in possession-based communities, were I free to do so. Everyone have a nice day.
Mutualism? You mean the anarchist system created by Proudhon? The Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who advocated levying a tax against all stockholders and capitalists, totaling a sixth of their income, to be disbursed among their tenants and debtors and a second tax totaling a sixth of their income to be used to fund a national treasury? The Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who, at another time, proposed a 1% income tax to fund a national bank?
Apparently, taxation is not always “being robbed by a bandit on the road” when the robber in question is the libertarian himself…
Hospitals did do that. People did organize to put an end to it The campaign (commonly called the civil rights movement) caused people in the capital to pass laws restricting the right of free association to limit the ability of businesses to exclude people based on suspect categories such as race. Everyone but the racists and the libertarians were happy.
You aren’t aware of any hospitals that do that because hospitals are legally forbidden from doing it.
It’s really quite obvious.
If a doctor refuses to treat a black patient, and that patient dies, that patient dies as a result of the doctor’s refusal to treat him based on his race.
That is a passive form of harm.
There is no way this is that hard to understand.
And you can thank the oppressive civil rights movement for that.
You fail at…. everything.
Arkansas. This is insane. And I don’t believe in it.
Yeah. That’s a pretty amazingly ignorant statement. You really don’t have any idea of the laws or history of the US do you.
Remember when Mordecai said the following at comment #42?
Do you remember how I pointed out that that was absolutely false by writing the following – complete with a link at comment #46?
And remember how Mordecai in no way acknowledged this?
Yeah, good times. Good times.
@Bonnie
The State says: “If you do not follow the law, I will fine you. If you do not pay the fines, I will attempt to arrest you. If you resist arrest, I will physically subdue you. If you fight me, I will kill you.”
Every law is a death threat. When you say that you want something to be illegal in the US, what you are saying is that you are willing to have people killed for it.
@Bear
Modern mutualists usually don’t incorporate taxation into their ideology.
@Chris
Right, and every starving child in Africa which I posses the financial capability to fly over and feed, but don’t, dies because of ME. I am a mass murderer, and so are you apparently. Do you think there needs to be a law that says everyone must work to their fullest extent for the benefit of the needy? I ought to buy stock in whips and chains.
@ Jake Squid
Seems like neither the constitution nor the supreme court is doing a good job of keeping the death penalty from being used in the US.
Please, by all means move the goalposts.
Just to be clear, you are saying that you believe that people should be killed for handling benzene (since that is the action that then makes inaction criminal, and inaction never causes harm)?
The existence of the state includes its death threat. I’m not sure why this is being argued against.
However, Masebrock is incorrect about the mechanism. The state’s death threat exists whether or not any given action is illegal. Just ask Aiyana Jones or Oscar Grant.
If we move back to Masebrock’s particular scenario, then we see that he attributes the proximate cause of lawful killing to action A (the violation of any given law, however minor), when the exercise of the death threat exists primarily in response to action D (threatening police officers in the course of resisting arrest). Most Americans are not comfortable condoning the legal killing of people in response to action A, but they are comfortable condoning the legal killing of people in response to action D.
Masebrock might argue further that no one would take action D (violent resistance of arrest) without having first taken action A, which causes them (via escalating chain of events) to resist arrest. However, that’s not the only chain of events that can get us to action D, since people can be arrested on suspicion of crimes they did not commit, and they can violently resist those arrests, too. No violation of a minor law is required; action A is neither necessary nor sufficient cause to provoke the threat of death. Action D is sufficient, if not necessary (since it’s not the only scenario that can lead to the state committing lawful murder). Thus the theoretical connection isn’t between action A and lawful murder; it’s between action D and lawful murder.
Of course, in the real world, people don’t always have to violently resist arrest in order to be killed by the state… people don’t even always have to violently resist arrest in order to be killed by the state for violently resisting arrest. However, we still don’t, by and large, see Masebrock’s scenario unfolding; the actual murders perpetrated by the state seem to occur under a different aegis, largely institutional racism.
Mandolin,
Excellent point. That Bonnie and Jake and Chris were mocking the wrong part of Masebrock’s argument had been bugging me.
Masebrock,
3 scenarios:
1) Somewhere in Timbuktu a man is dieing of appendicitis. I, an ER surgeon working in Tallahassee, FL, do nothing about it, and the man dies.
2) In a restaurant in Tallahassee, FL, a man is dieing of appendicitis. I, an ER surgeon who works in an ER in Tallahassee, am also in the restaurant (it’s my day off), see the man clearly in critical condition. I do nothing about it, and the man dies.
3) A man is brought into the ER in Tallahassee, FL, and he is clearly dieing from appendicitis. I, the ER surgeon on duty in this ER, look at the man, recognize him from a Gay Pride parade I protested, and refuse to perform surgery on him because he is gay. The ER calls up the back-up surgeon, but while the back-up surgeon is driving into work, the man’s appendix bursts and the man eventually dies.
Can you really see no meaningful difference between these three scenarios in terms of moral responsibility and whether we might want to legally punish one and not the others? Can you not see in what way coming in to work as an ER surgeon might be like putting a drum of benzene out in the factory yard in terms of being an action that creates a responsibility to perform additional actions, and that causes real physical harm to others if you decide to renege on those responsibilities?
Is this really a meaningful statement? Is it true of all states? Is it always, has it always been true of the US?
If it is a meaningful and true statement, in what possible configuration of a large group of people could it not be so?
“in what possible configuration of a large group of people could it not be so?”
Probably none.
Actually, I take it back. An organized group of people could threaten exile, not death, if they were in a situation where there was plenty of land, and also the land provided a good enough living for lone individuals to survive on their own.
@Mandolin
You deconstruct arguments pretty well, so I’m hesitant to jump back into the fray here. You are absolutely right that most real-world murders by the state don’t come from the scenario I presented (although deaths from the drug war often follow a similar chain of events), and you are right that most people submit one way or another before it escalates to such a point. But the law does grant the police the power to use violence if anyone fights back. And yes, you are right that it is because of “D”, not “A” that they use this force. It is this violence written into the system, this authoritarian “I can legally kill someone for not submitting” threat I am against.
@ Chris
It depends on the manner in which they handle benzene. If they go about pouring it down people’s throats or leaving it in a water supply, I would say yes as a last result to get them to stop. They should be treated as an attempted murderer. What would you say? (This position sounds contradictory after reading my response to Mandolin, but this is the difference between aggressive vs defensive violence)
I guess so, writ extremely large.
However, in the misdemeanor instances I posited, that threat is so statistically tenuous, given the numerous paths that can unfold, as to be an irrelevant and immaterial threat. It is not a calculus, I would wager, that enters into most citizens’ calculus when they do a cost-benefit analysis of their actions, legal or otherwise.
I do not consider the tenuous fact that there is a vanishingly remote possibility I might be killed by the state if I jaywalk, or if I dishonor a contract when I decide to act or not act in those instances. So to me, and I would wager to most people, because it is a threat I do not consider, it is a wholly toothless, meaningless (albeit potentially existing – I’m not convinced) threat.
In fact, thinking further, the state would not be killing me for jaywalking, nor for dishonoring a contract, nor would it be justified, moral, or ethical if it did – solely for those infractions. If it did kill me, it would be as a result of later actions taken by me, say, violently resisting arrest and posing a threat to the arresting officers. My latter actions, as well as the state’s, are in no way direct consequences of my misdemeanor offenses, nor do they logically follow. The subsequent actions of the arresting officers, killing me in response to some threat real or perceived from me, is logically severed 100% from my misdemeanor offenses, offenses for which there are codified penalties that in no way bring death.
This is almost exactly what I was saying to Charles S in the meatworld the other day.
I suppose you could say that the existence of law and the apparatus to enforce it always carries a death threat. But then it becomes a meaningless statement because you’re saying that the existence of human organization always carries a death threat which is to say that the existence of a death threat is there in any group of more than one person.
I’m left feeling that the statement that, “The existence of the state includes its death threat,” even if true, is entirely without meaning.
@Charles S
Perhaps if you advertised yourself as a doctor who would heal the general populace and you failed to perform the duties you placed upon yourself, you could be guilty of breach of contract/false advertising that resulted in death. But as long as discriminatory businesses put signs up and made it clear who they serve, I don’t see how they are placing themselves into a position that defrauds others. I don’t see how they should have any legal responsibility to perform an action they have never advertised to perform.
Unlike benzene barrels, no matter how long the discriminatory doctor sits around he isn’t going to poison you.
Sure.
I think it can be argued that the damage caused by an officially (or unofficially) sanctioned class of enforcers outweighs the good they can accomplish, at least in any system wherein there are other tools (consensus, expulsion, social shunning) for enforcing socially acceptable behaviors. Of course, those systems will still have both rules and enforcement mechanisms.
People have invented political systems based on their attempts to preserve both freedom from state-driven violence and mechanisms for social order.
The trick, frankly, is balancing the collective interest of the workers with the individual interest of the workers, hopefully creating a mechanism for dual power.
Some people already live in communities like this, ensconced within American society (and therefore, of course, subject to its benefits and detriments).
Since some people are already living out these philosophies, in one sense they are very concrete things. In another sense, though? To me, they’re extremely abstract. The demolition of the American system of government in order to create, what? A network of anarcho-syndicalist states? Is a very interesting intellectual exercise, a good grounding for a science fiction novel. From my perspective in the American bourgeouisie, however, these are at best long term goals.
I don’t know if I favor the abolition of the police. I don’t know if I favor the abolition of a centralized democratic government. I don’t know if I favor dual power anarchy, though the tenets make sense to me. I don’t know if I think anarcho-syndicalism is viable, though I find it persuasive when people indicate to me that idealism is a necessary component in any new political vision, just as it was a vital component in the revolutions that made Democracy possible for the first times.
I *do* know that, by and large, my short-term political goals as someone who is undecided on those larger issues are basically identical, no matter what my eventual position might be. Working against the onerous conditions in prison, and against needless imprisonment? Yes, even if I might ultimately want to preserve some prisons for some violent offenders. Less police power? Yes, even if I might ultimately want to preserve some police power. Marriage equality? Yes, even if I might prefer to see marriage abolished in favor of better, stronger support for all individuals, regardless of their family structures. Stronger unions? Oh hell yes, yes with bells, whistles, and ticker-tape parades.
My difficulty with libertarianism is not that it distrusts the state; it’s that its reaction to the state appears mostly unnuanced and completely unable to deal with the massive problems it invites as a philosophy.
Masebrock,
(it is actually me and not Chris you are responding to.)
You fail to understand my question. Before I besmirched your human decency, you argued that it was legitimate to make laws against mishandling toxic chemicals (such as benzene) because mishandling toxic chemicals such as benzene was an action that caused physical harm. I pointed out that if a company left barrels of benzene sitting out until they rusted, that that was an inaction, not an action, and you responded that putting the barrels of benzene somewhere was an action.
So I was just checking to confirm that you believe that the full violence of the state should be applied (or rather, back some minor state action) against people who take the action of handling drums of benzene (or telling someone else to do so). Since you don’t believe that anyone should be punished for inactions, in your schema it is the action of handling significant quantity of benzene that draws the punishment, not any subsequent inaction.
But really, I am far more interested in your answer to the three surgeon/appendicitis situations than I am to your answer to the benzene example. We both agree that the full violence of the state should hang over the head of anyone who handles a significant quantity of benzene. Where we disagree is that there are other sorts of actions that incur similar moral and legal responsibilities.
Thank you for the reasoned response Mandolin. Although I don’t personally identify as an anarcho-syndicalist, their vision is very much what I think we should strive for, as idealistic and unpragmatic as it may be.
I agree that libertarianism certainly has issues that needs to be worked out. The adherence of US libertarians to absolute private property being one of the most glaring contradictions I see. I identify with the term “libertarian” only as it relates to non-aggression as a core ethic.
Jake: OK, as I understand the theories, here goes.
In group organizations that are not nation states, you don’t necessarily have a separate group of enforcers whose job it is to maintain social order. Roles tend to be less formalized. With the invention of the state (here being used as short-hand for “nation-state”), you have the invention of an abstracted entity that suddenly accrues rights and responsibilities.
This tends not to be the case in societies that are organized by principles other than nation-states, where the abstraction and person are generally not separable. So, for instance, in a European monarchical nation state, the king is separable from “the crown.” The king has rights and responsibilities, and you can talk about those separately from those of the position, the rights and responsibilities that accrue to the crown. Person and role are two different things.
This kind of separation is unusual in human societies, and possibly linked to the development of the nation state. Holistic approaches are more common. So, for instance, some anthropologists attribute the massive problems with governmental corruption in parts of Africa to conflicts between European ideology that separates public and personal spheres with indigenous patterns that don’t. We see a person assuming a role as a government official, and thus becoming an abstraction–the government official. They don’t. So the person, even when acting as a government official, is still the person, not the role. So if he can fulfill personal obligations to family via graft, then he is still obligated to as a person, because he is not moving into a different, abstractable mental space in the job role.
To try to make this clearer–take the idea of a jurist who has been instructed to disregard some exchange they just heard between a lawyer and a witness. In their abstractable role, they are expected to act on less information than they have as a whole person. To get to this kind of compartmentalization, you have to have a concept of separate spheres, that now you are not a full person anymore, you are an abstraction called jurist.
So anyway, societies bound together without nation states tend to be bound together based on some association that is less abstract, for instance relational associations, or religious associations. “We are both Muslim” or “We are both McCoys” has a different meaning than “We are both Americans.”
The invention of the nation state is the creation of a shared national identity based on political boundaries. It creates a group that did not exist before.
Some nation states include earlier group identifications, such as blood relationships or religions. But a number don’t; they’re actually the creation of a shared identity between disparate groups of people who have little in common.
This is really obvious in Africa where the current national boundaries are mostly determined by prior colonial states. Colonialists went to Africa and carved it up, in ways that made sense to the colonial nations, but had little to do with the identities of the African peoples already living there. When the colonialists were driven out, the African peoples mostly agreed to keep the national boundaries where they were. That meant that some ethnic groups were split up, and others forced together, in ways that would never have happened if the African peoples were allowed to self-identify. New identities were created, based on the ad-hoc colonial identities, and we’ve seen how enormously problematic all this has been.
Anyway, mostly in groups that don’t have nation states, you don’t have the abstraction of the separate spheres. If someone has to kill someone else as part of maintaining social norms, they do it as the person they are. The person they are may have status that allows them to kill, but that person isn’t abstractable.
With the invention of the abstraction of the nation state, you get a class of enforcers who is taking on an abstracted role when they enforce social norms and kill. A policeman is killing as a member of the police force; he’s killing within that role. He’s killing on behalf of an abstraction, the state. The state is an abstraction that kills. (Though it is hardly the only abstraction that kills.)
The way that justice is carried out on behalf of abstractions–and particularly the way it is carried out with codified laws–is really different than the way it’s carried out without them. Groups that are bound together based on other forms of identification are more likely to have justice systems that use an agreed-on arbiter, appeal to a leader, or have no formal arbitration at all. Social penalties are likelier to be things like fights between people, sacrifice of goods, social shame, social shunning, and exile. Sometimes death.
If you kill me in the American system, then you are committing a crime against the abstraction of the state. The abstraction of the state puts you through court, to pay penalties to the abstraction of the state.
If you kill me in many traditional systems, then you are committing a crime against my family. You would enter some interaction with my family, arbitrated or not, in which any penalty you paid–material, physical, or social–would likely be paid in relation to my family. You might give them goods; they might beat you up; my family and the people who like my family might all agree to shun you.
If you’re, say, a serial killer who has murdered many people (although you would be unlikely to do so in a pattern we associate with American serial killers), then in a traditional system, someone might decide to just kill you, even if you hadn’t threatened them.
In the American system, that person is not allowed to kill you unless you directly threaten them, because the meting out of punishment for crimes is reserved for the abstraction of the state.
Nation states that are not founded on pre-existing identities tend to be loosely bound at first, and thus particularly murderous toward people who challenge the national identity. After a while, as the nation state identity gains traction, that’s not so important. But we can see that the death penalty is still on the table in America for people who defy their national identity–if you are ruled traitorous to the abstraction of America, you can be sentenced to death.
There are some traditional societies that are more murderous than others; in some, exile is the preferred form of social censure. Generally, though, even in those that kill, the group is never going to murder the dissenting individual–unless the entire group is actually directly participating in the murder. The abstraction of the state makes it possible (though it is not the only thing that makes it possible) for a person to assume a role and commit murder on behalf of an abstraction, thus meaning that the group/state has committed that murder indirectly and collectively.
I don’t know if this all seems like nit-picking to you, but there are ways in which the use of the abstraction of the nation state materially affects the way things
tend to play out on the societal level. The state is not the only abstraction that allows for indirect, collective murder via abstract roles, but it does permit that flow of events. That doesn’t make the state illegitimate. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a state. But I think it’s good to acknowledge the facets of states, since that will allow us to decide how we want to create and sculpt them. (I know there are theories, for instance, on how to create states that do not inherently possess the threat of death.)
(bold indicates words added in editing)
Thanks, Mandolin, for that lengthy explanation. Some of it does seem like nit-picking, sure. For example, I’m not sure that murder on behalf of an abstraction is worse than murder on behalf of a non-abstraction. There’s also the fact that family is an abstraction (to me, anyway).
It does make sense in other ways.
This may be the hardest part of your explanation for me to understand. To me, “We are both of religion X” or “We are both of family X” is no less of an abstraction than “We are both of state X” so I am unable to see the difference in meaning of your examples.
I have problems understanding other parts of your explanation, as well. This may be because the way I understand myself & the roles I play is significantly different than the understanding needed for this explanation to make sense.
For example, work Jake Squid is a different role than default Jake Squid. I act differently, I work from a different set of social assumptions and responsibilities. There are things that I do as work Jake Squid that I am unable to do as default Jake Squid. The same is true of default Jake Squid vs Diplomacy playing Jake Squid and a host of other roles that I play in my life.
Since I’m reading you from this perspective, the idea that, “This kind of separation is unusual in human societies, and possibly linked to the development of the nation state,” is difficult for me to grasp.
There is no disagreement from me on this.
I’ll have to think about this some more and see if I can get a better understanding of your explanation.
It’s actually, from the papers I’ve read, very weird. I’m not saying that I don’t do it too, because I absolutely do. The idea that people and ideas can be separated into spheres is a default setting in our society, and not just in terms of identities, and it’s often really hard to see default assumptions as being assumptions that other people can lack.
Our assumption of separable spheres is actually linked to the way that we investigate the whole world. The idea, for instance, that we see religion as something separate from life in general? Is weird.
Let me see about how to illustrate this. Breathing isn’t something you do separately from work or play or living. It’s an integrated activity. Or, belief in cause and effect. Maybe not everyone in western society would call it cause and effect, but basically everyone in western society believes in cause and effect. They believe in it when they’re working; they believe in it when they’re playing; they believe in it when they’re sleeping. They act on the belief in cause and effect all the time. They don’t set off a day to go to Cause and Effect church.
Historically, westerners have been very interested in the idea of separating things into categories. The whole enlightenment, this break things down into bits and put them into their proper boxes obsession (which I share to an amazing degree), is part of creating separate spheres of things. This is this, and this is not that!
We get very antsy when the idea that things can be broken down into little boxes is challenged. For instance, the traditional definition of species is misleading; you can’t neatly break down species into groups of animals that won’t voluntarily breed. You get populations where group A will breed with group B and group B will breed with group C, but group C won’t breed with group A. You can’t really break these down into meaningful species–and that’s not shocking, because the idea of “species” is an abstract tool we’ve invented to make sense of the world, and we can’t actually expect the world to conform to our categories all the time. But it niggles. Is group A a species or aren’t they? How do we classify them in the scientific literature? Etc.
By contrast, imagine a society that takes a more holistic view. Religion isn’t something you care about more at some times than others; belief in gods or spirits or ancestors, or whatever, is fully integrated into every action. You can’t say, “What is your religion?” because that’s not a question they’re going to frame differently than, “Tell me everything about what you think, and how the world works” because religion is part of that, not a separate category.
Basso goes into this in Wisdom Sits in Places (which is a fucking amazing book, by the way) when he talks about why the Navajo have not traditionally written histories of their own poeples; they don’t interact with history as an abstractable concept, but instead as something integrated with places. History is seen as part of a holistic understanding of the world and their location in it.
Going back to religion, that’s part of why the Abrahamic religions spread so well; they’re abstractable. Many other kinds of religions are not abstractable, or not easily abstractable. They’re often bound up with locations. There’s not an abstract sacredness; there’s a specific sacredness bound up with that shrine, or the place where this battle happened between those people, or the goddess animating that river.
In the extreme example in this book, Everett describes an Amazonian people with a strong bias toward accepting only knowledge that comes from immediate experience, preferably present experience.
There are basically a number of ways of experiencing self in relation to culture. Ours is heavily abstracted and very interested in categories, and we’ve been busy forcing others to adopt it via colonialism.
I don’t know if you’re reading me making judgments about what’s bad or what’s good about all these things. They’re not inherently bad or good (although they may have bad or good consequences–for instance, the category thing has been super good for science and I’m a big fan of that result); they’re just different from each other.
I know about the concept. I’m just extremely skeptical that it is a crime, and you just seem to try and blag it as if it was very very obviously true. Also cheers for continuing the discussion even though I’d said I’d stop.
The thinly oppressive civil rights movement. I said I agreed with the objective but not the methods. Their methods make them oppressive, in a matter-of-fact kind of way. If I mandated muffins by law for everyone every morning, I’d say that is oppressive as well. So oppression is a much broader term in my dictionary, and covers potentially agreeable objectives.
Family is sort of an abstraction, but it also sort of isn’t.
OK, so, who you name as family, and who you don’t name as family, is often arbitrary. You see this when you look at the titles given to relatives in various cultures. Ours is usually discussed as being sort of middle range; we have aunts and uncles and cousins and parents and brothers and sisters. There are cultures with very large numbers of specific kinship terms–he’s not just my uncle, but the eldest brother of my mother. And then there are cultures with very few kinship terms–all female members of my village who are about my mother’s age, including my mother, will be referred to with the same word.
In very general terms, there’s usually some association between how much a culture is invested in material inheritance and how specific it is with its kinship terminology. (There also seems to be a vague relationship between how much a culture is invested in material inheritance and how freaked out they get about female chastity.)
So whether or not I have a word for my uncle’s wife is arbitrary. Whether it’s considered the best thing ever for me to marry my mother’s elder brother, or conversely whether it’s considered totally unthinkably taboo for me to marry my mother’s elder brother, is also arbitrary.
And at a certain point, some groups also start mythologizing family connections. It may be traditional for some groups to say they’re related when in fact they actually aren’t–or, perhaps more often, when they may very well be related, but no one remembers how anymore.
There’s also arbitrariness in who’s considered to be close family. It could be your mom and her brothers. It could be your mom and your dad and your dad’s family. It could be your mom and your dad and your dad’s other wives. It could be your mom and your two fathers, who are both married to your mom, and who are brothers. Or, you know, whatever.
So there’s heaps of arbitrariness here, in terms of who your family is, how much family you acknowledge, whether some of that family is even related to you, and what reciprocal obligations you have toward your family.
There are actually, though, actual facts going on, too. Mothers are bringing forth babies, at the very most basic level. And all societies that I’m aware of organize at least around this biological fact.
So while the character family takes is highly dependent on culture, there are actually biological facts underlying that. Family is also somewhat of a constant.
Now–religion. A shared religion is effectively a shared ideology or world view. It’s shared whether or not you have political connections going on. You can have the same religion as someone who lives far away, and the two of you can live under totally different regimes, and you still have the same religion.
Unlike these other two concepts, the state creates (or can create) a political affiliation between previously disorganized individuals. If there are political connections between family, and you dissolve those political connections, then the family still remains. If there are political affiliations between co-religionists, and you dissolve those political connections, then the people remain co-religionists (barring conversion).
If there are political connections between two people with disparate backgrounds who have just been bound up in the same nation state–and then that nation state dissolves–what remains? Nothing. The only thing connecting them was the political connection.
At least initially.
Eventually, people can and do develop a national identity and that’s… well, honestly, not my cup of tea… but that happens. “American” means something now; it refers not just to a shared political connection, but also to probabilities of shared experiences, shared histories, shared perspectives, and shared assumptions.
But it doesn’t mean that initially. If you have a conqueror with an army wandering around, taking control of disconnected tribes and uniting them under one banner, and then calling it… oh, say, China… Then that’s nothing but a forced political association, until such time as a national identity develops. If the leader dies, and no one can replace him, and the coalition falls apart, then all the disparate groups of people go back to being disparate groups of people.
States assembled in this way are the creation of something out of nothing, until they become something.
That’s as clear as I think I can be? Also, I seriously need to stop typing comments here. Talk about using up my day’s word count. :-P
Thanks again, Mandolin. I really do appreciate the effort you’ve put into explaining something that’s a new concept to me. I will read the book you mention above – thanks for giving me a source to start with.
Like I said, I’m going to have to think about this for a while before I’ll begin to really understand it.
Then why didn’t you stop? Oh, right – because you made a dramatic exit and wanted to get the last word in, and it’s getting right up your nose that people are having an intelligent, productive discussion that doesn’t involve paying attention to you.
Pro tip: “I’m leaving and never coming back/Okay, one last post/I’m really leaving this time” is just a tired, common game on the Internet that it’s probably named after somebody.
Uh I didn’t make a dramatic exit. I said I wouldn’t post again cause there was too much bullshit around. I’m still reading the page. And if you want me to shut up you and the others might want to stop talking to me, and involve yourself in the admittedly better discussion just above. I’ll admit that it’s ridiculous for me to get back to people now, but I feel that it’s up to them to stop having a go at me.
“I can’t HELP posting! You all MADE me do it by continuing to talk after I told you I was leaving and ordered you not to!”
I find it very obviously true that the life of a person bleeding outside an emergency room is more important than the doctor’s “right” not to treat them based on their race/orientation/class/etc. Do you disagree?
Are you talking to yourself here?
It’s so broad as to become absolutely meaningless. What you consider “oppression” from the Civil Rights Movement has drastically increased freedom amongst what was before the most unfree group of people in the United States. Meanwhile, the cost to the dominant class because of this advancement was so infinitesimal, that to argue we as a society are more oppressed now than before is downright comical in it’s stupidity.
No one has asked you to shut up. You have been asked to stop playing the “I’m leaving! For realsies this time!” game. And my reason for replying to your points wasn’t so much to talk to you, but to deconstruct your arguments in the hopes that others reading might be persuaded. Whether you leave or not, your comments are still there, and unless a mod asks, we are under no obligation to refrain from responding to them.
Doctors, in every state of the US in which I’m aware (and likely in other countries) are under an ethical obligation to treat people in an emergency situation – this has nothing to do with Good Samaritan laws or committing crimes.
I agree with that.
No orders. Would have been wise, is all.
That’s true. But again, if today’s so good, then what have Black People to complain about? I can so see your position lead to assumptions about the poor. It’s not just an increase people want, but complete freedom. And you can’t get that with a government.
I think I’ve said earlier that I would consider this grounds for involuntary homicide charges. What I’m reluctant to say is that it’s a clear-cut crime, precisely because the state of the person who’s about to die is not the doctor’s doing. Usually it’s held that people have a moral duty to help their fellow men, but each decides to what extent and if he will fulfill that duty. Now what if they don’t fulfill that duty at all…They also say that there is no crime without a criminal intent. Possibly, it could be argued that not saving a person’s life based on his/her skin color implies a wish to see her die.
Just a note that “black people” should not be capitalized. Thanks.
Why would it have been wise for people not to address your comments?
Did you say that after the Emancipation Proclamation? Better does not mean perfect. Wow. You are making the libertarian position appear more morally repugnant and less relevant to the real world every time you post.
My bad Mandolin.
Jake, I’d like to sum up the discussion a bit. Let’s see if I get this right.
I think no government is better, whilst you think there could be better government.
I think there’s a great number of ways in which the state practices and defends racism, through its War on Drugs for instance, and another number of ways in which it curtails racist practices, through its no-racial-discrimination legislation. I think you can achieve no-discrimination via non-statist means, and so I don’t see the point in having the bad parts that we currently have. I think the bad parts are linked with, and much more destructive than, the good parts, and we should get rid of it all.
To the contrary, you think state policies exist independantly of one another and you could chop off the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc. all the while keeping benefits, anti-racial discrimination legislation, etc. I think benefits exist where capitalism does, and that entails poverty for the majority, much more so when you’re black and capitalists are mostly white. Without such a system, most of us have easy access to employment and the need for benefits is greatly reduced, and can be accounted for by mutual aid societies, trade unions, etc.
I do not see that I’m morally repugnant. I make the point that black people do not have it good at all, and I’d like you to say, yes indeed. And then to provide an explanation as to why it is so, after your blessed but not perfect legislation has been put into effect for decades. Clearly if it does not achieve equal treatment in effect, then it is not repugnant to wonder if this legislation is any use, especially as the same state has overtly racist practices!
Really? Exclusively?
OK. But you must see that your arguments re: things like passive harm are leading you to some places you’d probably rather not be. I think you might do better to say “passive harm exists, but is better addressed through social change” although that still leaves you open to being characterized as callous toward the people who would die without legal intervention.
A fundamental question here–and I confess I don’t remember all the ins and outs of your political philosophy–is what kind of radical you are. All the best radicals I know work simultaneously within and without the system. In fact, realizing that radicals (and I define radicals as anyone who wants to see the system uprooted and replaced) didn’t just write off the current problems in the system, and still worked to address those *while also* working to see the world they want, was what made me realize that radicalism could be a very positive thing, and not just a useless ideological statement.
So in a system that has a state, are you willing to use that state to address concrete problems that exist right now? While simultaneously working to dismantle state power through means like organizing, unionizing, advocacy, protest, modeling alternative lifestyles, and other options?
Or are you just planting both feet on the ground and shouting “No!” at the state because it’s not what you’d like to see?
We live in a flawed world, and must make policy accordingly. It does not work to legislate as though utopia had already arrived.
My father occasionally gets stuck here… he was a liberal in the 60s. He wanted to see oppression against women and black people overthrown. He saw the legal changes he wanted… and I know he still feels sort of crushed that they didn’t solve every problem immediately. I mean, genuinely, sort of crushed. They really thought that everything could change in a snap, the whole tide of social forces. A few laws and voila, beautiful equality.
That’s not really how things work, though, which any anthropologist worth his or her salt–at least one who hadn’t been doing the LSD of the politics of the time–would have been able to clear up for everyone. Apart from very unusual watershed events, hegemonic mores are usually very, very slow to change.
The claim to evaluate is not whether the civil rights laws have cured every social ill facing black people, but whether they have made a significant, measurable, positive change. I believe they have. If you have an argument that they haven’t, then please do advance it–but “there are still problems” is not inherently that argument.
Probably not exclusively, but I presume that the poverty created by state capitalism requires some safety net to save the elites from a revolution by the dispossessed.
(emphasis mine)
So they say. I think we can make sure they wouldn’t die even without legal intervention, and thus I’m not callous at all unless it’s proven that my strategy is doomed to fail. In fact, people do die, with legal intervention in favor of the insurance industry and Big Pharma, bloating up the price of everything. Africa anyone? AIDS? Intellectual property?
That’s fair enough. I can’t deny that because I don’t possess the knowledge. Nevertheless, neither is “it’s made things better in some ways” an argument for the necessity of government intervention.
As a related question, does libertarianism ‘work’ when implemented incrementally, or only as a total system?
I mean, it does seem to me that near-100% of the time we’ve had deregulation of an industry, there have been pretty awful consequences … I think of the energy crisis in California in the mid 2000’s, the recent banking crisis, the home loan crisis … hell, I think it’s hard to argue with a straight face that less regulation would have prevented the BP disaster.
Often the libertarian response is some version of “Sure, but …”
Sure, but … what we need are strict liability laws that would have seen BP dismantled to pay 100% of all damages, if necessary.
Sure, but … what we need is further deregulation!
Sure, but … we don’t need environmental regulation, what we need is for any release of any harmful chemical to be a crime!
Okay, well, that system, in toto may work out just fine, but all of those are arguments that the libertarian system doesn’t work on an incremental basis, but only as a whole.
If that’s so, why try to implement it incrementally? If lowering regulations within our current system will consistently produce worse results, then I don’t want to lower them. Go off and implement libertopia elsewhere as a demonstration to the rest of us as to how well your system, taken as a whole, works.
If that’s not so, if ‘increasingly libertarian policies’ should lead to ‘increasingly better results,’ then why don’t we see that happening?
—Myca
Well under the state, that’s precisely what we’re not allowed to do. But it’s a point well taken. I don’t know how to implement something this wide, except incrementally. But if you mean, by incrementally, that one regulation after another will go, and nothing else, then that’s not an incrementalism I’d be comfortable being associated with, because it assumes that the thing that was regulated is fine on its own. It might be, as there would be the incentives you have cited, but those may not be enough. So this would be a case of a good idea having been absorbed and monopolized by the state that we would be well advised to reactivate in the civil sector, before we actually dispense with it at the state level.
Oh right. I actually wanted to reply to this.
Somalia. Try Somalia:
The commercial for Somalia is made by the 2 “cholera” lines. The timing and intonation of them is great. I am now going to watch this piece 17 more times.
Sorry myca, due to IP bullshit laws, I from France am unable to watch this. I’m sure I’d have been red with anger after watching it, though, so take comfort. :p
Somalia is not a very convincing counter-example. It’s more a state in the making than a full-fledged anarchy. Certainly you are not allowed to do what you want, unless you have the right warlord on your side, if my understanding is correct. So it’s more a multi-state situation, which kinda looks like anarchy, but isn’t. The idea behind “anarchy leads to order” is that everyone is content that he lives his life in his own way and so has no incentive to fuck with someone else. The polycentric and decentralized structure some libertarians emphasize is only an assumption about the natural disagreements among people. Of course, a thousand tyrannies are still tyrannies. Anarchy will probably be made of thousands of consensual societies, and it’s the consensual bit that matters, not the thousands of them.
Now I know that one point about there being several societies is that you can choose among them, and that increases your freedom, even if those societies are not very nice. But because you are within a tyranny, it is quite probable that you will be refused leave. This is what is happening at the moment in Erytrea, and this is what makes the whole border regime in Europe such a bureaucratic joke.
Just as an example of how aware some people are on the anarchist side, I suggest you take a look at this article. Also, look here for a reintroduction of the usually neglected proviso in Locke’s defense of private property, in the context of BP’s disaster.
One more thing. Someone said that my definition of oppression/tyranny was so broad as to become meaningless. I think it’s a strict definition and that’s why it works. Oppression is not always sensational, you know. In fact, because of this view of the term, a lot of things that are done routinely and do not involve blood spilling everywhere are just ignored. “Hey, that migrant does not get beaten up, he has a cell where he is fed and can sleep, so what are you complaining about?” is what one officer said. It’s like there’s no such thing as liberty inside their heads. And that’s what your approach creates. So I’m sorry to be bitchy, but I think I need to.
Is it me, or is Mordecai taking what would ordinarily be a straw-libertarian position if someone hadn’t, in fact, taken it — namely that the state shouldn’t exist, and all its functions be taken over by private agreeents between individuals?
I mean, that’s obviously untenable, but I’m wondering if part of the reason people have such a hard time arguing is that you don’t believe Mordicai is saying what the words mean. But when you say “you’re protected by the police whether you want to be or not” and Mordecai says “well, I don’t want to be, and forcing me to pay for it is only compounding the injustice” you’re talking past each other.
If it is a misdemeanor to paint your toenails pink, the only way (protections for freedom of expression aside) to prevent the escalation from A to D is for you to accept that you do not, in practice, have the right to paint your toenails pink, even if you believe you ought to.
Taxes are indeed collected at gunpoint among people who refuse to acknowledge that they are required to pay.
Presumably because if you are arrested for jaywalking you don’t intend to resist arrest. And are white.
You should post more, Mandolin.
This is why I’m an atheist, or more precisely a secularist: it’s the only belief system I can fully integrate into my life.
Why would it be untenable? And what exactly do you mean by ‘untenable’? I was under the impression that the State was the creation of a minority of people. Maybe you can explain how, considering it is created, such an institution would be vital to humanity? There has been quite a lot of time during which there were no States at all, anywhere. So it can’t be untenable in objective fact.
Unless you’re arguing from a pre-4000 BC standpoint, this isn’t true.
And if you ARE arguing from a pre-4000 BC standpoint, its useless.
Certainly your understanding is correct.
Because this is what happens when there is no functioning state.
No. You’re stacking the deck here. None of us are compelled to accept your made up definition of ‘the state’ as ‘any system of coercion or control.’ The State is a specific system of government that involves coercion and control, but you can’t just use it to mean ‘anything I don’t like.’ It already has a meaning.
Either a system of no government is what you want or it isn’t.
If it is, well … Somalia is what you get. You can’t argue that what you really want is a system that lacks government but possesses cooperation and love and noninterference and noncoercion. Well, I mean, I guess you can argue that, and I’ll just add that yeah, I’d like the same thing … and a pony.
Okay, well, since we have a system in which there is a region that utterly lacks a functioning government, and the system of “everyone is content that he lives his life in his own way and so has no incentive to fuck with someone else,” manifestly DID NOT HAPPEN, how do you justify continuing to believe in your ‘government is the problem’ fairytale?
I mean, look, man … it’s put up or shut up time. What I’ve been looking for is evidence. Evidence that when we move in a libertarian direction it will make things better rather than worse. Evidence that a total libertarian revolution woudl make things better rather then worse. Evidence that areas lacking government are generally better rather than worse.
And each time what I’m hearing are excuses.
Well no more. If your proposed system is so awesome, why aren’t we seeing it in practice? From where I sit, each time self-proclaimed libertarians take power in my country things get much much worse for poor people.
—Myca
It is untenable because of trisomy 23.
If we are to accept his definition, that really changes my view of 5th grade. It wasn’t the bullies who made me miserable… it was The State!
As to the rest of it… Your argument, Myca, is spot on.
These people have no state*, and their social structure doesn’t resemble Somalia’s.
*Well, they’re geographically attached to a state, but their social organization, which appears to have been static for some time, isn’t integrated with it.
I don’t think that anybody in this conversation believes that such cultures can’t exist. I do think that such cultures can only exist among small numbers of people and in significant isolation from other cultures. Such a culture could possibly have existed in Somalia, but due to the proximity of warlord culture would no longer be able to exist.