Blog for Choice day has come and gone, and there’s a lot of great posts. I’m very excited that a lot of feminists have taken this opportunity to interogate and question the usefulnes of ‘choice’ as a slogan, goal, or analysis. I have lots of ideas about this, and hopefully I’ll get round to writing about some of them soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to write about one tiny corner of those issues.
When abortion battles were fought and won (or lost, in New Zealand’s case – but we won the wore), they weren’t fought using the term ‘pro-choice’.
The feminist slogan was: “A woman’s right to choose.”
The most obvious thing we’ve lost in the compacting of the slogan to a label is the woman. The feminist slogan put women at the centre of our argument.
The term pro-choice, also steps back from demanding our rights, and phrasing those rights as anything which interferes with making the choices we wish to make. I believe that charging women fees for abortion interferes with her right to choose, just as surely as making her get her abortion signed off by two doctors.
The phrase pro-choice is too wishy-washy, too vague, and too open to the idea that it’s the ability to choose that matters, rather than the quality of the options. The choice between continuing and unwanted pregnancy or working as a prostitute to pay for an abortion is a choice some women have to make, in places where abortion isn’t funded by the state. That doesn’t mean I’m for that choice. Other women have to have abortions because they can’t afford the time off work that would come with pregnancy. Again I’m not pro-that choice. As a feminist part of what I want is to ensure that women don’t have to spend their lives choosing between two shitty options.* In the meantime I will fight to ensure that women themselves are able to decide which shitty option they think is better, but that’s not my end-goal.
So maybe I’m not pro-choice after-all – I think I’ll ditch the short-hand – waste the extra syllables and make sure I always say that I believe in a woman’s right to choose.
* I’m not saying (and don’t believe) that abortion is always a shitty option, but that it can be, for some women under some circumstances.
Thanks for the links.
– CJ
…and if they disagree they’re stuck with your decision as well, at least if you have done a superior job convincing others of the correctness of your position.
Are you attacking the entire concept of majorities? Don’t get me wrong, that’s a great discussion–I’m just not sure from your posts what you’re getting at.
Sailorman, what I’m saying is that the relationship between me and my government is different from a business and a customer. Not better or worse; different.
Slyphhead in post #87 said, “‘I’, the taxpayer, am a customer of the government.” and argued a number of points based on that premise. I hold the premise to be false; I am not a customer of the government. What you are quoting is part of my endeavor to show that. If Slyphhead’s premise is false, then his arguments are at most not valid and at least must be re-argued.
“IIRC Wendy’s is (or is part of) a public company. So I could buy a share and vote for it’s leadership.
But the paucity of your example is perhaps beside the point.”
Hmm… clearly you’re unable to pick up on intended humour. I guess the overriding need is to slip in the word ‘paucity’ in somewhere.
“So I could buy a share and vote for it’s leadership.”
Shareholder control is not the same as customer control. Buying two or three “shares to keep up with the Joneses isn’t the same as having a hedge fund on the left and your buddy boys stocking up the board of directors on the right. Most small time shareholders don’t even attempt to exert control over leadership and don’t attend the annual shareholders’ meetings, and the corporate system is set up to complicate political union of small stakeholders as much as possible.
“In the non-governmental sector, I have not only a choice of whether or not I buy a given product (or service – it’s irrelevant),”
I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but I see we’re still hung up on widget-o-philia, which invariably comes up when Right wingers defend the private sector from the public. So let me make my point, in terms doubly clearer than the ramble I offered last time:
When dealing with that fruit vendor down the block, I can take my business elsewhere and hit him where it hurts. When dealing with a multinational fruit company that sends up banana republic dictatorships as a hobby, all I can do personally is give the purely symbolic act of voting with my feet, and maybe voice my discontent at some political rally where I can preach to the choir. I could potentially take my business to its competitor – but at this level, chances are there are only two really big companies, and both share similar values and priorities. No possible individual action of mine is likely to effect change at the highest level. Get it?
“I have a choice of buying them from one of a group of competitors.”
During that time I humour their upstart, financially unstable, high priced competitors for the pure symbolic hell of it, what disciplining effect this could have on the big boys is nil. (Incidentally, since you can vote for upstart also-rans like Greens and Libertarians, there’s nothing wrong with your political system.) But having that ‘freedom’ is the most important thing, right? Important enough to justify a ‘negative rights’ social system that is designed around giving rich people the right to secede from the rest of society. This is actually happening in Atlanta, so neoliberals of the world rejoice!
Incidentally, what’s happening is that white people are cutting off their section of the city from black people, essentially reinstituting segregation. But segregation is nothing if not compatible with the ‘negative rights’ brand of the ‘rich shouldn’t be taxed’ Right.
“I even have the choice of starting my own company and using my own product or service and then selling them to someone else.”
Yes, you have the choice of making a little repairshop that makes bikes, scooters, and mopeds on the side. I’ll even pay a visit to your shop. I’ve always had a thing for mopeds; I suppose it’s the New Romantic urbanite in me. But you don’t have the choice of starting your own airline or car company. And before you object that even though it’s highly unlikely it’s at least not within the bounds of the law. But neither is it beyond the bounds of the law to start your own government. I’d wager that with the same startup capital that you’d need to start a car company that DOESN’T fold in eighteen months and result in a 250 pound man named Steely Bubba coming after to cough out the last of your loans, you could buy an island or something from a sovereign nation. (There have been attempts like this from rich utopians, though they have largely been spectacular failures. I give you the Republic of Minerva.)
“I do not have that choice in a great many cases when dealing with the products or services the government controls.”
That’s probably because the products or services the government controls generally fall under the category of natural monopoly, where you would not have a choice, even if it were privatized and John Galt placed at the helm. Now, there are cases where the government either owns or exercises a domineering amount of control over an industry that isn’t a natural monopoly. Here, positive externalities are the issue (or negative, in the case of the arms industry), and it is decidedly not the case that there is not that much choice. Education is an obvious one. There are private and charter schools all over the damn place. You can find smaller budget Catholic schools that’ll let people of all religions in but make them sit through mass. You can find higher budget prep schools where people really do drink tea with crumpets and play croquet. You can even still find single-sex boarding schools, just for the kinky hell of it.
“The government will not allow me to set up a court and adjudicate murder cases and execute or imprison offenders. I cannot hire and arm and train a private army and invade Venezuela. I can protest if the U.S. does the latter, but I cannot withhold those portions of my taxes that would be allocated to that effort and say “I don’t want to buy any more ‘invasion of Venezuela’” (nor can I send in extra money and buy extra portions of it). I cannot give the government specifications for the road in front of my house and demand that either it build that road according to my specifications or else I’ll fire them and hire someone else to build the road. They can stop me from building one of my own, and if I build a driveway from their road to my front door on my private property they can tell me what the specifications for it have to be and tear it up, build one they like and bill me for it if I ignore them.”
Of course you can’t start a competing government of sorts on the existing government’s own jurisdiction. You also can’t brew your own coffee and go sell it in a Starbucks, shouting down the poor girl behind the counter in the name of ‘free enterprise competition’. But you can always pull a Minerva.
So where is this leading? It’s a tall order to ask every disaffected libertarian in the world to just go start their own country, and that’s not what I’m advocating at all. But it’s also a tall order to ask every disaffected worker, tenant, or client to similarly vote with their feet, especially considering the size of some of the companies that they’re up against. When this is brought up, the Right responds by painting much of the same picture that Ron painted: a lumbering government where one vote is so diluted and everyone gets lost in the system and it’s all just a tyranny of the majority. Meanwhile, the private sector is a high-powered machine that zips the marginal buck instantly to where it is best allocated. Workers can’t be oppressed because oppressed workers will just go work for someone else. Customers can’t be cheated because customers will just go buy from someone else. But if only you bring it back and compare government to real life companies, large enough to be immune to the simplistic controls that neoclassical economics tells us should work, you’ll see that the analogy is more than apt.
Most people, in particular those on the Right but not exclusively, can’t seem to come to grips with corporate power. Ron’s picture of the private sector is accurate – but more for a market resembling a Middle Eastern bazaar and less the modern corporate world. Ordinary people have no power against the corporate marketplace, and where they have no power, their rights aren’t positive or negative but equal to exactly zero. The government can’t help you find someplace to sleep. That’s up to you and the landlord, and if the reality on the ground is that the ‘landlord’ in question is a behemoth of a company that owns all of the low rent sublets and studios in a twelve block radius, and it’s cold and the guy hasn’t eaten and exercising his freedom to shop around is completely impractical, well then: the zero percent financing, anti-biotic soap suburanite says ‘tough noogies’ to you, sir. The government can’t help you with your medical treatment. That’s up to you and your private insurance plan, which is controlled by your current employer. He’ll cover your Mesalamine – but in exchange, no bathroom breaks and say goodbye to the weekend.
Hmm… I wish this blog had an ‘edit’ feature.
Just in case I didn’t make it obvious enough, the ‘fruit vendors’ argument was an extended analogy of the political system. If you find problem with one scenario but not the other, please tell me why.
After “… on the big boys is nil”, the first word in parentheses should be ‘similarly’, not ‘incidentally’, which should make the analogy clearer.
“And before you object that even though it’s highly unlikely it’s at least not within the bounds of the law.”
This is a mess of a sentence. It should read “You may say that even though it’s highly unlikely, it’s at least not OUTSIDE the bounds of the law”.
My entire point is that the different between the private sector and public sector is very small where large corporations are concerned, which they usually are. You can perhaps squeeze out some negative rights justification I haven’t covered or something if you really tried, but my point is clear. Either by votes or dollars, you’re going to get swarmed and you’re not going to get what you want. Ending dependence on government is a good thing, but only the effect isn’t to merely increase dependence on your higher ups in the great economic chain of being. And the difference is, you don’t get to vote for your employer or leaser or landlord. THIS is the reason why the Grover Norquists and Murray Rothbards of the world hate government.
How about this? We shouldn’t talk of decreasing dependence. We should talk of increasing independence. The ‘rugged masculinists’ – or as ruggedly masculine as you can get whilst driving an Audi and spraying Miracle-Gro on your lawn, anyway – have no reason to object, I’m sure.
“Drives all printing press manufacturers in the world out of business? Or even in the U.S.? That’s a rather far-stretched analogy.”
Did I say ‘unduly impossible’? No. I said ‘unduly difficult’. Even buying out all the printing presses in town would probably suffice.
sylph: brilliant.
Shareholder control is not the same as customer control.
No, it is not, which is why I didn’t say it was. What it’s more analogous to is voter control of a government. Except, as you in part pointed out, a given individual can only have one vote in the government but can buy a lot of votes in a company. Another significant difference between a company and a government and thus in my relationship to them.
When dealing with that fruit vendor down the block, I can take my business elsewhere and hit him where it hurts. When dealing with a multinational fruit company that sends up banana republic dictatorships as a hobby, all I can do personally is give the purely symbolic act of voting with my feet, and maybe voice my discontent at some political rally where I can preach to the choir.
Or, you can simply stiff the multinational fruit company and buy your fruit from the fruit vendor down the block. If enough people do that, the big vendor has to respond.
At the risk of overgeneralizing, the “left” (I use quotes because they are no more a monolithic entity than the “right”) has this world view:
Ordinary people have no power against the corporate marketplace, and where they have no power, their rights aren’t positive or negative but equal to exactly zero.
Which seems to me to be nonsense. What happened to Montgomery Wards, once the largest retailer in the country? They stopped being responsive to the market place, people stopped buying stuff from them, and they went under. Their place as “largest retailer” went to Sears (before Wards went bankrupt). What happened to them? They stopped being responsive enough to the marketplace, and ordinary people found these stores that Sam Walton was putting up all over and Sears is in trouble. Big businesses go out of business. Small businesses become big businesses. The big corporations have a lot of influence, certainly. But in no way do they have the world’s marketplace sewn up. People individually have little influence on a large corporation, but big corporations have to have a lot of customers. A lot of individual decisions can put a big corporation in a hole, and that phenomenon happens time and time again and will continue to do so. Just ask Ford Motor Company.
Yes, you have the choice of making a little repairshop that makes bikes, scooters, and mopeds on the side.
Tell that to Sam Walton or Bill Gates. Sam started out with one rural store against behemoths like Sears and Montgomery Wards. Now Wards is gone and Wal-Mart can buy and sell Sears; except now they are worried about Target. IBM used to sit astride the computer business as a virtual monopoly, but all those upstarts like Hewlett-Packard and Apple and all the rest ate their PC lunch. Not to mention that they used to control the software market before Bill Gates and a few of his buddies got going. Seems to me that plenty of people were able to overcome dealing with them as “upstart, financially unstable, high priced competitors” to the big boys. Likely for the simple reason that they weren’t high priced, they were financially stable enough, and their “upstart” status was an attraction, not a negative. You seem to have forgotten all the advantages a small business has; no entrenched “that’s the way we do it/have done it” culture and a general ability to be more nimble and timely in serving the customer’s wants and needs. Plenty of people avoid dealing with big businesses and work with small ones; that’s how small ones become big corporations.
We are not all powerless non-entities living at the mercy of the big corporations. We have control over our relationship with them. I have numerous places I can buy a car or a computer or a house or a shirt or my food or get my taxes done or my hair done or my car fixed or my shirt cleaned or a general ledger application written. Competition is real and fierce and is not the sole domain of big corporations. Some few are virtual monopolies, but even they can fall in time.
And I can choose to do without a big corporation’s goods and services entirely. If I don’t like what the big corporation is doing with the banana republics, I can stop eating bananas entirely. Very few large corporations have monopolies on something I can’t live without, and they can’t force me to consume their product. The government does have monopolies on things I can’t live without, and they can force me to consume their product.
Of course you can’t start a competing government of sorts on the existing government’s own jurisdiction.
I quite agree. And that’s exactly my point.
You also can’t brew your own coffee and go sell it in a Starbucks, shouting down the poor girl behind the counter in the name of ‘free enterprise competition’.
But I can start my own coffee shop and try to expand and outcompete Starbucks. Unlike governments, Starbucks does not have a jurisdiction, which is an excellent illustration of why my relationship with Starbucks is customer vendor and my relationship with the various levels of governments is not. “Jurisdiction” highlights that difference very nicely. I am not a customer of the government.
But you can always pull a Minerva.
I have no idea what this means.
I just wanted to say that reading Sylhphead’s comments lately have been absolutely making my day. Very nice.
“Or, you can simply stiff the multinational fruit company and buy your fruit from the fruit vendor down the block. If enough people do that, the big vendor has to respond.”
You can vote for the Libertarian party. If enough people do that, the government has to respond. Or you could move out of the country, or form your own as per the Minerva example I gave. If enough people do that, the government has to respond.
“No, it is not, which is why I didn’t say it was. What it’s more analogous to is “voter control of a government. Except, as you in part pointed out, a given individual can only have one vote in the government but can buy a lot of votes in a company. Another significant difference between a company and a government and thus in my relationship to them.”
Customer control is also something you can ‘buy a lot of’, because the rich may buy newer, more expensives models, premium services, etc. etc. But overall, an individual customer’s power is more equal to that of any other customer than an individual shareholder’s is to a another shareholder’s. That ‘exception’ was basically my whole point.
As for that another significant difference, the whole point behind assiduously denying a similarity between government and corporations is to provide an out for rich people from having to pay for social programs, is it not? (Not you personally, but the Right in general. There are Right wingers who really dislike government qua government, but they are not the ones running the show.) The effect of this is to increase the clout of money. So I don’t think that saying that the clout of money is already high in the corporate sphere is that damning a rebuttal. If anything, it proves why we need taxes to fulfill some sort of distributive role.
“Which seems to me to be nonsense. What happened to Montgomery Wards, once the largest retailer in the country? They stopped being responsive to the market place, people stopped buying stuff from them, and they went under. Their place as “largest retailer” went to Sears (before Wards went bankrupt). What happened to them? They stopped being responsive enough to the marketplace, and ordinary people found these stores that Sam Walton was putting up all over and Sears is in trouble. Big businesses go out of business. Small businesses become big businesses.”
There are power shifts in politics all the time. 1994. 2006. Parties change philosophy all the time. Howard Dean vs. Terry McAuliffe. Parties change positioning on a lot of issues all the time. Barry Goldwater. Bill Clinton. Does that vindicate Washington? The modern corporate marketplace is about as true to the marketplace of neoclassical apologetics as the modern American political system is to textbook democracy. I suppose the Right could argue that they find nothing wrong with the current system, either, but that would entail admitting that they don’t have so much a problem with ‘government’ or ‘politics’ – I don’t see how a legitimately anti-government populist can support the current state of affairs in Washington – as with, say, take a guess.
The individual corporations at the top may change, just as the party in power may change or the reigning caucus within the party may change. Sometimes the system itself is the problem.
“Tell that to Sam Walton or Bill Gates. Sam started out with one rural store against behemoths like Sears and Montgomery Wards. Now Wards is gone and Wal-Mart can buy and sell Sears; except now they are worried about Target. IBM used to sit astride the computer business as a virtual monopoly, but all those upstarts like Hewlett-Packard and Apple and all the rest ate their PC lunch. Not to mention that they used to control the software market before Bill Gates and a few of his buddies got going. Seems to me that plenty of people were able to overcome dealing with them as “upstart, financially unstable, high priced competitors” to the big boys. Likely for the simple reason that they weren’t high priced, they were financially stable enough, and their “upstart” status was an attraction, not a negative.”
And I suppose someone like Jon Tester proves that Washington politics is within the hands of the everyman. Up here, maybe a guy like Tommy Douglas would suffice. He was named the ‘Greatest Canadian Ever’, too, I believe.
Corporations aren’t entrenched. Political parties and coalitions aren’t entrenched, either. But by and large, the corporate system, the larger corporate marketplace, and the current system in Washington, IS. Low wages aren’t Microsoft’s fault. They are the corporate marketplace’s, or at least the version of it practiced on this side of the world (the rest of the industrialized world generally has a firmer grasp on it all). LTV Corp. is not responsible for the hollowing out of the American economy. The corporate marketplace is. New corporations are constantly gaining ground, and old ones losing ground, in a continuous treadmill, but the dynamics of the relationship between the corporations as a whole and the individual remains the same. At the same time, one consumer is part of some big revolution that replaces one market giant with another – and his participation in this revolution is of the most passive possible, and he is one among millions effecting the change, hardly empowering – he is holding no such sway over the hundreds of other companies he has to deal with on a day to day basis. At any given moment in time, a few of the markets of many of which he is a part is undergoing a transformation, many are staying the same, and all could individually defeat him as an individual if the hard Right gets its way and political control of the private sector is abolished. I don’t see how it is possible to miss the larger point. I don’t see how it is possible to claim that the wealthy taxpayer is oppressed while the customer is empowered.
And I’ve only been talking of customers. What of workers? The social dynamics of the labour market, and all the problems with the corporate marketplace’s values existing in perpetuity, are even more stark here. Almost as stark as Paris Hilton having to pay the estate tax, I’d reckon.
Even the system isn’t completely entrenched, however, otherwise we would not all be here, trying to turn the tide on the scrappy blogosphere. But claiming that the corporate system is exonerated because Proctor and Gamble hit the shit is the equivalent of saying the Washington establishment is exonerated because the Republican Party got creamed three months ago.
“You seem to have forgotten all the advantages a small business has;”
Interesting sidebar: part of the advantages that a small business has is government support. For example, government contracts usually have a quota system for small businesses. Small businesses get preferential tax treatment; for instance, they are able to pass the costs of deprecation of capital onto the public buck. They are often given preferential interest rates by law.
We need small businesses. They provide innovation to a marketplace that would otherwise stagnate. What finger the private market has to the pulse of the latest consumer trends and demands, are usually done through the medium of small businesses. Our society would be a lot closer to an aristocracy than it is if the big boys occupied more the field than they already do. But we also need waiters and orderlies and nannies. The difference between them is that a small business owner can bilk ten times the amount of money from the taxpayers (‘that trip to Bermuda was a business expense’) than a welfare mom can with ten times the ease. Small businesses are more dependent on government dole than any poor person is. But the Right needs to identify with small business to push its big business agenda, so if it means letting a lot of dependence on government, a lot of personal irresponbility, a lot of social engineering policy go off scot free with nary a mention, then so be it. They never really care for those things to begin with.
“The government does have monopolies on things I can’t live without, and they can force me to consume their product.”
I still don’t think you understand the analogy. The government of the United States of America can ‘force you’ so long as you choose to live in the United States of America and use the government’s services. (It’s pretty hard not to. Drive on a road lately? Or use printed money?) McDonalds can ‘force you’ to eat their quarter pounders so long as you keep buying their quarter pounders. (Unless you’re buying them just to stare at them or something, in which you’ve beaten my analogy, albeit in a very odd way.) Yes, you may like printed money and paved roads but not welfare. I like McChicken’s (it’s a Canadian thing) and McDonald’s french fries but I hate any of their burgers with their brand of beef patty. Doesn’t mean that if I buy large fries, McDonald’s must funnel the money I paid to only make more large fries. They could use that money to make quarterpounders, which I hate. But that is not up to me.
It is not entirely the same case with government, because government expenditures and services have more of a normative component to them. You couldn’t really say that making quarterpounders instead of fries is unethical, but you could argue that using the tax money from our roads and funneling it into a certain program could be unethical. (I suppose you could argue the former from a vegetarian perspective, but let’s not lose sight here.) Certainly, a social program could both be paid from rich people’s tax moneys for the benefit of the poor and at the same time be unethical. For example, is it the government’s business to fund the abortions of poor women? I think yes, but I at least understand where the other side could be coming from, in a way that I can’t if the issue were, say, food money for the starving.
“Of course you can’t start a competing government of sorts on the existing government’s own jurisdiction.
I quite agree. And that’s exactly my point.
You also can’t brew your own coffee and go sell it in a Starbucks, shouting down the poor girl behind the counter in the name of ‘free enterprise competition’.
But I can start my own coffee shop and try to expand and outcompete Starbucks.”
But do you not get the relation from one point to the other? The equivalent of getting to make your laws, specify your own highways, and all the examples you gave, within the territorial sovereignty of the United States of America, isn’t the equivalent of starting a rival coffee company to Starbucks. It’s the equivalent to staring your own coffee kiosk within a building owned and operated by Starbucks. The correct analogy to starting your own government would be creating your own territorial sovereignty, and building a rival government there. Follow the link to the example I gave you; then you’d know what I mean by ‘pulling a Minerva’.
I think many of your objections stem from the fact that you still haven’t internalized what a natural monopoly entails. On another claim, to imply that the government is ‘monopolizing’ the rule of law (not being allowed to set your own laws, in an earlier example you gave) is a strange contention. It’s rather like saying that Delphi is ‘monopolizing’ the sale of Delphi electronics; the rule of law is what the government provides. If you had another rule of law, by definition you’d have another government. To claim that ‘rules of law’ should be sold on the open market – which is the corollary if you’re accusing the government of ‘monopolizing’ it – when the open market itself is a function of that same rule of law, has all the causal convolutions of a manic scientist going back in time and shooting his parents before they could ride the purple piledriver on the night he was conceived.
I’m not asking individual libertarians to take on government. The power imbalance completely makes this an unfair proposition. But libertarians often ask, say, individual employees to take things up against their employer. The employee in question may be working three different jobs to make ends meet, and the temporary cessation of one source of income would be enough to finish them. Regardless, many libertarians are soured to the core at the bargaining position of an employee to an employer not being more lopsided than it already is. No unions, they say. No labour laws or regulations. No support from the state. The power imbalance is, ruefully enough, the main thing that governments and corporations have in common.
Myca and sailorman, very much appreciated. It makes procrastinating on my work to write on blogs worthwhile.
I’d like to talk a bit about abortion, in one of those swimming-against-the-current attempts to pull a blog discussion back to its main topic. The way I see abortion, is that it is not a medically necessary procedure, in most cases. But I do think it is a socially necessary procedure. I’d wager than unwanted children are a major cause of poverty – by impoverishing the mother, by creating another who’ll join the ranks of the poor, and to a lesser extent by bogging down someone else with child support. I still don’t see the need to separate out abortion from government health plans because of this distinction. Health plans cover medical procedures, whether or not that medical procudure’s primary role is to improve health. Braces are covered by dental plans but are more about looking good than anything else. (Yes, there are health issues involved, such as the long term effects that a misaligned bite has on the jaw. There are health issues with any pregnancy as well. I’m saying the PRIMARY role.)
On a side note, lessening poverty could have the effect of saving the money spent alleviating it, so we may end up saving money in the long run. Not to mention all the runoff costs of poverty: crime, and the money spent fighting it. Poor health, and the money spent on procedures that we paid for instead of abortion. Lower worker productivity, from having an underclass with little education or stake in the system, and all the opportunity cost incurred here.
As a rule, parents should be notified if their daughters are getting an abortion. Parents have to approve medical decisions for any minors under their guardianship as a law. My problem comes in when the motivations of lawmakers isn’t helping parents look out for their kids, but on using the response that many parents unfortunately give toward hearing their daughters are pregnant as a weapon to further punish girls for having sex. Some of the laws that codify parental notification, above and beyond treating it like any other medical procedure, show this clearly. Criminalizing transporting girls to states that don’t have notification laws, for instace, is plain unconstitutional (it discriminates based on state of residence). But screw the Constitution, right? It’s that same dastardly document that gave us “freedom of ” this and “freedom of that” and created this whole ungodly society of permissiveness and bare midriffs.
Yes, good separation. let’s do a little pre-sidetrack work here: Medically necessary abortions are BY DEFINITION “health care.” So because we’re talking about abortions in general, as per sylph’s request, and not health care, let’s skip those for the moment, shall we? So when i say “abortion” i mean “abortion which is NOT medically necessary”
here’s part of my problem:
I know that raising kids is hard, expensive, and difficult. because of that, it really IS a lot harder to make (or save) money when you have kids. i’m also of the belief that an unwanted child is even more expensive and difficult, because it’s less likely to have your full emotional support.
So if we want poor people to have the best chances of not becoming poor, we have to make it as easy as possible for them to avoid having kids they don’t want.
But that is sort of a scary proposition, as it seems to link poverty with, I dunno… birth control? Governmental programs aimed at reducing kids? I’m not sure exactly how to describe it but i get squeamish at including poverty in the abortion discussion.
I acknowledge the fact there’s a link. I just think that it’s not a link which can really be considered.
You can vote for the Libertarian party. If enough people do that, the government has to respond. Or you could move out of the country, or form your own as per the Minerva example I gave. If enough people do that, the government has to respond.
True. But if enough people don’t vote for the Libertarian (Communist/Democrat/Republican/Green/etc.) party and the government doesn’t respond, I still have to pay my taxes and watch them get spent on whatever the legislature and executive decide and the judiciary lets them get away with. I still have to drive on the public roads. Whereas if I don’t like Big Macs, I can go to Burger King. Or I can become a vegetarian.
I still don’t think you understand the analogy.
I understand it. I don’t think it’s applicable.
The government of the United States of America can ‘force you’ so long as you choose to live in the United States of America and use the government’s services.
True. Although I don’t understand the quotes around the word force. The government’s use of force is quite explicit at times. But if I move out of the U.S.’s territory, I’ll just end up moving into some other country’s territory, where once again there is a government. The only way I can set up a separate country on the Earth is to find a piece of land unclaimed by any other government and that whose soverignty would be unchallenged by either another country or though some international agreement (the latter being why you can’t set up shop at the South Pole, for example). That’s pretty unlikely. I read the Minerva link but didn’t make much sense of it. Is Minerva recognized by any other country as independent? Is it a member of the U.N.? Or is it simply a couple of guys having fun with a web site, whose prank is continuing because it amuses the government that actually has soverignty over the land they claim?
But do you not get the relation from one point to the other? The equivalent of getting to make your laws, specify your own highways, and all the examples you gave, within the territorial sovereignty of the United States of America, isn’t the equivalent of starting a rival coffee company to Starbucks. It’s the equivalent to staring your own coffee kiosk within a building owned and operated by Starbucks.
No, it’s not. Starbuck’s power to prevent me from doing the latter is not inherent; it’s due to the power of the State to regulate ownership of private property. It is in the end the power of the government that keeps me off of Starbuck’s private property. Starbuck’s can theoretically hire armed guards to throw me off the property; I can theoretically hire more armed guards. Before the whole thing escalates to a pitched battle, Starbucks will appeal to the State. Whereas the power of the government to keep me from declaring my house a separate country is inherent – no outside authority can interfere with the State if it decides to walk though my door.
Again, none of which has anything to do with me being Starbuck’s customer vs. being a citizen of the U.S. (or any other government).
McDonalds can ‘force you’ to eat their quarter pounders so long as you keep buying their quarter pounders.
They can’t force me to buy them in the first place. And they can’t force me to eat them once I’ve bought them.
(Unless you’re buying them just to stare at them or something, in which you’ve beaten my analogy, albeit in a very odd way.)
I could decide to give them away for someone else to eat. Or if you are going to make some kind of art work out of them. Or have a food fight.
They could use that money to make quarterpounders, which I hate. But that is not up to me.
They can’t use your money if you choose not to give it to them. Try not giving your government the money that the law has established you owe them.
As for that another significant difference, the whole point behind assiduously denying a similarity between government and corporations
I don’t recall denying that there are similarities. Could you point out where I did? There are some similarities. There are also some differences. Discussing the differences is not the same as denying the similarities. It appears you are trying to distort the arguments I have presented to make yours look better. Don’t do that; it’s dishonest.
And speaking of the differences, the ones I have pointed out are significant enough that there is also a difference between being a customer of a corporation and being a citizen of a country, the relationship between those who are governed and the entity of government. The various and lengthy commentaries that you have written on the similarities you see in how corporate systems and governmental systems work in the U.S. that you have written do not really seem to address the differences between them.
is to provide an out for rich people from having to pay for social programs, is it not?
Not in my case, at any rate. I’m not rich, and I don’t object to paying for at least some social programs. Anyone else can speak for themselves. I haven’t seen anyone else assert that we are “customers” of the government and haven’t seen anyone else argue against it. Have you seen any such? Because if you haven’t, I’m curious what basis you have (outside of your own inferences) in making this generalization.
“True. But if enough people don’t vote for the Libertarian (Communist/Democrat/Republican/Green/etc.) party and the government doesn’t respond, I still have to pay my taxes and watch them get spent on whatever the legislature and executive decide and the judiciary lets them get away with. I still have to drive on the public roads. Whereas if I don’t like Big Macs, I can go to Burger King. Or I can become a vegetarian.”
Say you’re a customer of a landlord. They enact policies you don’t like. You and some of your fellow tenants try to exert control over the committee through various means, but it’s not enough. Then yes – you are forced to accept the vagaries of the landlord’s policies so long as you remain on his land.
“I understand it. I don’t think it’s applicable.”
There is still some confusion because the equivalence between ‘taking your business elsewhere’ with the government has two connotations: one, the electoral system. Two, actually stop patronizing the government’s services (and the only way to do this is to stop living on the land over which it has sovereignty). The government thus gives us two ‘market’ mechanisms in order to ‘discipline’ it, and you’re forgetting the latter when it’s convenient. (If the party you voted for doesn’t win, you still have a choice: to leave.)
“True. Although I don’t understand the quotes around the word force. The government’s use of force is quite explicit at times.”
Mainly because of the connotations of the word ‘force’. If you’re showing your happy to a little boy at the park, and the police come and request that you stop, and you still don’t – the government can use ‘quite explicit’ force. It can do that. It’s not a tyranny. A propertarian society where there is no concept of social welfare would be an example of a tyranny.
“The only way I can set up a separate country on the Earth is to find a piece of land unclaimed by any other government and that whose soverignty would be unchallenged by either another country or though some international agreement (the latter being why you can’t set up shop at the South Pole, for example).”
There’s a difference being able to form your own government of sorts, and being able to form with the same diplomatic privileges as everyone else. You also don’t get the same prerogatives of Dell and HP if you start your own computer wareshop in your basement.
The Republic of Minerva was an attempt by libertarians to form their own government. It’s been largely a failure. Leaving and starting your own country is inherently impractical in so many ways – but the barest of possibilities exist in the abstract. Many economic injustices seem to be justified by such barest of possibilities existing in the abstract, so I don’t see the problem between being softly coerced to do the bidding of employers or being softly coerced to do the bidding of a democratic government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva for more information
“No, it’s not. Starbuck’s power to prevent me from doing the latter is not inherent; it’s due to the power of the State to regulate ownership of private property.”
This is true in an abstract sense, but without the power – of the State or otherwise – to regulate ownership of property, there is no marketplace. The alternative is either letting private goons do the enforcing, which would worsen the situation, or let no one do it, and leave us without a marketplace to be hijacked to create inequality, which would mean conservatives who make ad hoc ‘negative rights’ justifications for that inequality would be out of a job. And I couldn’t do that to their self-esteem.
“They can’t force me to buy them in the first place. And they can’t force me to eat them once I’ve bought them.”
“I could decide to give them away for someone else to eat. Or if you are going to make some kind of art work out of them. Or have a food fight.”
Hamburgers are transferable once you purchase them, so I guess it’s not the best comparison. How about riding a taxi? You pay for it after the fact – like government services – and it’s non-transferable. There are always private sector equivalents out there, it’s just that we’re geared not to think about them because government is uniquely bad. Using the government to help people is what commies do.
“I don’t recall denying that there are similarities. Could you point out where I did? There are some similarities.”
I don’t recall you admitting similarities, but I could be wrong. I’ll look over it again.
“And speaking of the differences, the ones I have pointed out are significant enough that there is also a difference between being a customer of a corporation and being a citizen of a country, the relationship between those who are governed and the entity of government. The various and lengthy commentaries that you have written on the similarities you see in how corporate systems and governmental systems work in the U.S. that you have written do not really seem to address the differences between them.”
The government/governed represents one ‘market’. The private sector provides many. Similarities vary depend on the specific example you’re using. For instance, the relationship between a private landowner and a tenant is nearly identical to that of the government/governed. But in any case, they all share a similar power dynamic, where choice exists in the abstract and that is enough to justify all sorts of inequality in power. One power dynamic – taxpayer and government – is tyrannical, whereas one – worker and corporation – is not.
“Not in my case, at any rate. I’m not rich, and I don’t object to paying for at least some social programs. Anyone else can speak for themselves. I haven’t seen anyone else assert that we are “customers” of the government and haven’t seen anyone else argue against it. Have you seen any such? Because if you haven’t, I’m curious what basis you have (outside of your own inferences) in making this generalization.”
Perhaps I should have been clearer. I was talking about the Right wing’s version of negative rights, which informs your position on this issue, am I right? Very few Right wingers believe in absolute negative rights, because let’s face it, that’s kooky. We would have no criminal justice system, for one thing. (What’s the ‘negative rights’ equivalent of getting a phone call, a lawyer assigned to you, a quick and speedy trial by a jury of one’s peers? Sounds like ‘entitlement’ rights to me.) But their moral support of negative rights as a concept works toward, whether intentionally or not, to impugn the concept of social welfare.
This was REALLY written in haste. I’m late for a meeting right now. I’ll be back for somethign more comprehensive.
Okay, let me quickly go over what I would’ve said in full had I not been in a hurry right now. This discussion’s reaching the end of its natural lifetime anyway, so I’ll try and keep the back-and-forth ping-pong style arguing to a mum and focus on more thematic stuff.
First off, if you believe in the modern criminal justice system – and to a lesser extent, the whole concept of legal citizenship, with the entitlements of treatment, particularly in foreign land, that that entails – you don’t believe in negative rights. Period. You may not believe in them as they pertain to a specific situation, but that’s a different matter.
Now back to the micronation issue. The whole concept of forming your own country is relatively new. In the past, splitting off sovereignty for political or protest reasons was common but only recently have people began to take this more seriously – even if everyone around them did not. The first micronation in history, Talossa, began during the 70’s, though this particular country suffered from the Starbucks problem we went into earlier. (Namely, the city of Milwaukee owned the property that the founder arbitrarily declared to be his.) (You could reasonably argue that ‘pirate islands’ of seafaring days were essentially micronations, but it’s not a topic I know much about.) Then came Minerva, which was successful in making a political point, though the kibosh was eventually put on it, as even its inhabitants expected. The Republic of Tonga, to be specific, claimed it for its own. Minerva wasn’t a prank, it was a multimillion dollar project that its members took very seriously, but it did have trouble with the official recognition biz. There have been attempts to make it independent again, though I haven’t kept up to date with these. I’d be surprised if they are going well.
There was also New Utopia, which was another ostensible libertopia begun by some American kajillionaire. At least until it turned out that it was all a fraud, that no island was being articially built in the ocean and that all the libertarians who had paid so much to escape the United Statists of America had been had. But at least those libertarians were exercising their right to start their own country, right? As opposed to passively accepting all the abuses of the Statist system and only getting worked up about social welfare policies with the cost of frickin’ peanuts, say.
What does this tell us? First, forming your own nation is still a legal possibility – practicality is another issue. For most residents of industrialized nations, forming their own business would be still be a more practical matter than even for Bill Gates to buy his own island sovereignty – but there are those who aren’t in the same position as ‘most residents’. The working poor do not need to be told that, technically, they could start their own business. And that justifies the present day system. Well, my point is that a right that exists only in the legal abstract is no right at all.
Secondly, these micronations typically fail because they have leverage over larger nations because there is no supragovernmental organization capable of laying the ground rules. A competitive system without ground rules – let’s give it a nickname, like say ‘anarcho-capitalism’ – inevitably degenerates into a calcified plutocracy of the powerful. (Well, the UN could be considered a supragovernmental organization, but it has neither the capability nor the inclination to override the wishes of its few, most powerful members. Which just goes to show you – any governing organization must be both capable of overriding the wishes of its most powerful few, as well as have the stated goal of making the playing field level for its weakest, in order to prevent this degeneration.) Remember all that stuff I said about small businesses? Small business would be even less of a challenge to big business if the government didn’t give them a helping hand.
If anyone wants to argue that the lack of supragovernmental regulation – perhaps the single biggest difference between the market of nations and the market of socks and roof shingles – proves that we need government regulation of the market, then be my guest. Of course, such admissions are always couched in saying that the ‘primary’ goal of such regulation has to be to grease the wheels of the system and not for any social engineering objective, but that’s purely subjective. Government services regarded as ‘upkeep’ and traditionally accepted by mainstream laissez-faire – printing a common currency, keeping a standing army – are not all for hard-nosed, uber-rational reasons, and government services regarded as ‘social engineering’ – labour regulations, universal health care – are done purely out of tenderness. There are pragmatic reasons to not having safety and health be concerns in the labour market, and there are social engineering effects of standing armies and central currency, which any hardcore libetarian (as opposed to the Republican-lites who populate the media) would be able to tell you. It is impossible for a government to both exist and not dabble in ‘social engineering’. If you believe in ‘minimal government’, you believe in social engineering. If you believe in the modern criminal justice system, you believe in positive rights. What you don’t like are certain outcomes associated with application of these ideas in ways you don’t approve of.
Let’s can the generalities now. There are similarities between government and the market. And there are differences. There are both warranted and unwarranted extrapolations we could make from the similarities. The one I’m looking for is very specific: is the power imbalance between a poor employee and a megacorp employer, and that between a taxpayer and the federal government, similar? Which is more unjust?
First off, if you believe in the modern criminal justice system – and to a lesser extent, the whole concept of legal citizenship, with the entitlements of treatment, particularly in foreign land, that that entails – you don’t believe in negative rights. Period.
This is simply false. The negative-rights conception is perfectly compatible with the modern criminal justice system. We’ve just phrased things in a way that is less abstract. You don’t have a positive right to an attorney, a phone call, all the rest of it – instead, you have a negative right to not be unjustly locked up by the state, and courts have ruled that the implementation of that negative right requires the provision of certain positive acts.
A couple of edits: the first sentence should read ‘last time’, not ‘right now’. And that sentence about social engineering should read ‘NOT done purely out of tenderness’.
Also note that my use of the second person ‘you’ was intolerably loose. At times, such as the last paragraph, it was RonF specifically. More often, however, it was to the Right in general. I’m aware that RonF has said that some forms of social welfare are justified, and that my comments have been directed at a more extreme brand of conservative. But I kept it in that scheme because a) the average conservative I meet on the net is of the extreme sort, perhaps out of self-selection (moderates are not going to be proportionally represented in a group that voluntarily spends a hell amount of time spouting its opinions, on either side), so it’s become something of a shorthand and b) I find something problematic about the idea that some social welfare is justifiable, but paying for it is optional, which is the logical result of de-emphasizing our obligation to pay taxes.
“But that is sort of a scary proposition, as it seems to link poverty with, I dunno… birth control? Governmental programs aimed at reducing kids? I’m not sure exactly how to describe it but i get squeamish at including poverty in the abortion discussion.”
I neglected to be clear enough about one point, sailorman. Abortion is emphatically not the only medical procedure that usually does not rise to the level of medical necessity but is nonetheless proposed to be a part of shared medical plans. I offered the braces example. Taxpayers should subsidize little Suzie’s grad photo, but let the little slut get what’s coming to her if she got pregnant. And given the general political leanings of pro-lifers, taxpayers should not subsidize her forced-pregnancy baby’s food, either. Medical necessity has NOTHING to do with abortion being left out of medical plans, and sexual puritanism and 2000-year old barbaric slave ideologies EVERYTHING.
Poverty and birth control do go together, though I can see why that can be unsettling. Paying for the baby itself is the least of it. It’s the complete lack of self-determination that results – you can’t go to college. You always need money NOW, and if that means degrading work for piecemeal wages, which over time develops into full blown exploitation, then so be it. If discouraging people from having children is a concern – though anyone who believes that the presence or absence of a single government program affects adults’ decision to have children, something must have been done to him as a child – then the government could also provide a national day care system. It wouldn’t be that expensive, and would actually take away money from government programs such as juvenile crime and metal detectors in public schools and the like.
“This is simply false. The negative-rights conception is perfectly compatible with the modern criminal justice system. We’ve just phrased things in a way that is less abstract. You don’t have a positive right to an attorney, a phone call, all the rest of it – instead, you have a negative right to not be unjustly locked up by the state, and courts have ruled that the implementation of that negative right requires the provision of certain positive acts.”
Through creative phrasing, you can justify anything and call it a negative right. A main reason for the existence of a safety net is to prevent the downward spiral that results when the poor bargain for a wage with no fallback income of any sort. So government checks aren’t about positive rights – they’re protecting the negative rights of those who would be unjustly exploited in labour contracts. (Of course, most of those who profess belief in negative rights won’t see this as even a negative right, either, but all rights, negative or not, are subjective. We have a right not to be unjustly imprisoned by the state, because people decided that that was immoral. That’s it. No other immutable, ineffable reason.)
The net effect is that taxpayers pay for the court case, and for the lawyer who may have been assigned to you. If you decide to appeal or call mistrial, they pay again. If you decide to relocate the trial, as is your prerogative in certain, sensation-laden cases, they pay for that also. The implications of this is obvious.
The rights issue is fraught with manipulative, misleading word play. For instance, small business owners, as per another example I gave, get numerous government benefits that end up having to be offset by payment somewhere else. Do they have this ‘right’? Fine, don’t call it a right. But we don’t have to call welfare or health care a right either. Usually, it’s the conservatives who step in with the ‘no one has a RIGHT to provisions, amenities, etc.’
Because that’s true – nobody does have a right to amenities. We’ve decided to provide those things through the democratic process, but there’s no right to welfare, for example, or food stamps – we can pull the plug on that any time we feel the urge. (Not that we should.)
We can’t pull the plug on things where there is a genuine negative right. You’ll always get to have counsel in a court case – even if a changing telecommunications environment means that you’re now entitled to one e-mail or one visit to your attorney’s web page, rather than a phone call. As a slightly more realistic example, cities are free to get rid of their public defender programs – as long as they make some other provision that’s acceptable to the courts to ensure legal representation for the poor. (Lawyer vouchers, say.)
“Because that’s true – nobody does have a right to amenities. We’ve decided to provide those things through the democratic process, but there’s no right to welfare, for example, or food stamps – we can pull the plug on that any time we feel the urge. (Not that we should.)”
Did you read anything I wrote above that last sentence? Those amenities can be semantically manipulated into provisions in defense of a negative right. The same with positive provisions elsewhere. Not that I give one grain of turd about the positive/negative distinction, but so long as others are caught up in the term.
By ‘can’t’, are you referring to it in an absolute, factual sense? Or rather, as an ethical prescription – in which case the proper term is ‘shouldn’t’, not ‘can’t’? Because if you mean the former, then the White House of George Dubya must really straddle a vortex in the universe where it can violate immutable laws of nature, I’ll tell you. If you mean the latter, I fail to see the difference between your position on this and your position on amenities. No one has a right to welfare and food stamps, but we SHOULDN’T curtail those. Everyone has a right not to be censored, so we SHOULDN’T curtail this.
Rights are a problematic issue. Saying that democratic socieities should just decide what rights are for everyone has its own slew of problems – ask the Tutsis or the Tamils the problems inherent in majoritarian rule. At the same time, the concept of natural rights usually only ends up using circular logic to harden existing prejudices, and nothing presents would-be oppressors, majoritarian or otherwise, from using natural rights language to cause the same sort of problems anyway. Breaking this down into semantics only complicates it further and in the end gives us nothing, but it gives those who would dishonestly hide their true motivations a lot of intellectual cover.