Laissez faire promotes social strength by rewarding the strong and punishing the weak
By "strong," I mean creative individuals with ambition and determination. By rewarding such individuals with wealth and power, society in general becomes leaner and fitter.
Opposition to this view is essentially an anti-life ethic which promotes mercy and pity over greatness.
Agree?
@Terrapin Station?
Opposition to this view is essentially an anti-life ethic which promotes mercy and pity over greatness.
Agree?
@Terrapin Station?
Comments (153)
History indicates that it tends to be efficient but not necessarily fit. The inherent instability can be stabilized with a mixed economy.
Lions rarely elevate zebras, yet the plains are greatly benefited by these blonde beasts. Ambitious humans likewise foster health by 1) creating industries which pay taxes and employ others, and 2) inspiring the next generation of industrialists.
Quoting ernestm
What are you referring to?
What's an example of this instability?
The Great Depression ring a bell?
Is our present economic system mixed enough to eliminate the threat of great depressions?
It's a brand of social darwinism that appeared in the UK and the US in the 1870s.
Among other things, it led W.E.B. Dubois to claim that the moral weakness afflicting black people should be corrected by selective breeding. For real.
It doesn’t eliminate the threat. It helps to stabilize, as I mentioned, and cushion downturns.
I would go with Chicago circa the Haymarket riot. It was a cultural wasteland.
The Great Depression was partly an agriculturally induced environmental disaster.
This is just basic psychology.
As long as you look at humans and their world purely mechanistically, my argument will win (unless I stray too far supposing it to have a scientific grounding, because it doesn't).
So far no argument has diminshed its force. The psychic shock of the Holocaust did more to undermine its power than anything else.
I think it's possible that it can't be defeated logically. It's defeated by something you lack almost completely as far as I can see.
But think about what happened in 2009. State intervention created short term stability, but would a larger scale reset have done more to produce long term stability?
I don’t know what you mean by state intervention or a large scale reset. We were last talking about a mixed economy, as I recall.
Ayn Rand in a nutshell.
No.
Quoting frank
I assume you are trotting out this curdled milk of human kindness cheese dip as a devil's advocate exercise. The idea is that there is only so much goodness to go around, and if it isn't lavished on the people we like, then we are wasting it.
I think any workable argument against it will end up being a moral argument.
Possibly. In a nutshell, why would you say it's wrong?
A single dad sleeping 3 hours a night with 2 jobs for 3 children.
A nurse who can't afford healthcare and has no plan through the privatisation of the healthcare system she is underpaid to serve in.
The craftspeople who had their skillset invalidated by their employers coopting technologies made through public funding and outsourcing all labour to violently oppressed workforces.
A social care worker who comes home every day covered in bruises due to the closures of specialist facilities, their body separating a violent 16 year old child sex offender from the 7 year old girl in the other room. They keep at the job because they know it's needed.
These are the people that should be rewarded for their contributions to society, they are resilient, skilled, hard working and adaptable. They are the value added to our common good, not the whims of shareholders and speculators.
How are we determining "fit," "great," etc.?
The Frodos of the world are truly amazing, but they apparently need a Lord of the Rings to provide them with something to overcome. So does this argue for or against the lords?
My thinking has evolved away from Nietzsche toward just libertarianism. Nietzche is just there to invalidate any moral argument by way of the godless universe.
I'm fascinated by human culture and was really intrigued by the idea that we live in an age of mechanism (can't remember where I first contacted that idea, but it's around.) I'm just exploring some aspects of that.
What sort of divinity do you think Nietzsche believed in?
The anti-biotics of the world are truly amazing. But apparently they need bacteria to provide them with something to overcome. So does this argue for or against streptococcus?
Me? I'm not going to side with fucking Sauron.
If I pointed to the antibiotics of the world as examples of creativity and ambition, and you then reminded me why the great struggle of the antibiotics exists in the first place, then I would understand and withdraw the reference. But that's me. All Asian and shit. But wait, what was your point?
Your point was that there are people who struggle and are not rewarded. It's harsh, but laissez faire will leave them in one of two states: dead, or alive with the a peculiar kind of education that no socialist environment could ever equip them with. It's called How to Stop Being a Slave and Get Your Shit Together.
I could pick on some of your examples, but that would be a side track.
Quoting tim wood
You realise I just replaced contrasting terms in your post with other contrasting terms right? The burden of irrelevance is yours here. Anyway, what were we talking about?
Quoting frank
You are a sickening apologist for Sauron, or a useful idiot for him. The orcs are hard working test tube babies born into war and selectively bred for barbarity. If given the opportunity for their successes to accumulate, maybe they would develop a culture of peace and prosperity. But as it stands Sauron enforces his will on the hard working orcs by making it their will.
I want to live in a Middle Earth where the guttural battle cries of the Black Speech (as called by the forced enemies of the orcs) are replaced by the beautiful harmonies of the Nazgul. Dethrone the Wraiths who built nothing of the present world, only acted as the willing hands of a tyrant against his people.
If you love the LOTR then you love Sauron. Is this point really too obscure for you? Really?
Tell that to the rest of Middle Earth man. Even the rest of the Gods hate Sauron.
They love him too. He's badass.
Ahistorical nonsense.
The Free People of Middle Earth united against him. They hated him. What fucking book did you read?
The one where the organizing principle was: do something about Sauron.
People love life. Life is a great drama. When the monster dies, the drama is over. If you love life, you love Sauron.
Whatever fake sophistication is making you defend a literal avatar of evil, stop it. If you love the free people of Middle Earth, you fucking hate Sauron. The people of Middle Earth will never be free until Sauron is strangled with the entrails of the last Wraith.
Middle Earth is an expression of a primal conflict between good and evil. It only exists because of Sauron's superior, Morgoth.
Quoting Wikipedia
I know this. That doesn't mean support Sauron if you have to deal with all his shit you dolt.
What are you drinking?
I'd be drinking wine from Southfarthing if it wasn't for all these genocidal skeletons on dead horses.
So you can't accept Sauron even though you know the position he holds in the world that you love. Therefore, your argument comes down to a giant wad of emotion, and my point stands: there is no coherent logical argument against the proposition (in or around the OP.)
People didn't fight Sauron because of some symbolic opposition between good and evil. People fought Sauron because he was a tyrant ruining their lives. You've got a really warped perspective here - it's as if you're not living in Middle Earth.
And you read it with relish, while Tolkien's other book, where everything started off lovely, wonderful things happened, and it all wound up beautifully, just sat on your shelf unread until this very day. In fact, I bet you didn't even notice that he wrote that book.
Again: your position is all emotion, which is fine. If you have an argument that has something logical or empirical to say about the matter, I'd be interested.
Otherwise, enjoy the mead.
OK.
Quoting christine
I think we took the concept of mechanism as far as we could. I think the pendulum is poised to turn back. But the age of mechanism will be like a chamber in the nautilus shell. IOW, I think going forward, things like qualia, volition, creativity, purpose, all of them tied to our inherited concept of divinity, will have a more comfortable place in science and philosophy.
How many people will realize that god survived? Don't know.
I don't know what this means, in practical terms, even with the title's laissez faire.
Quoting frankWell, part of what makes us great is that we are also empathetic creatures. We are social mammals that have always taken care of each other - to vary degrees and to varying degrees of what we consider us - and this has always been part of what made us the apex carnivores on the planet. So this second quote is presuming that the life in us is more like the life in insects and some reptiles where there is generally a colder more of what we would call a psychopathic or at least sociopathic base for even intraspecies, even intratribal or familial relations. The very qualities you call mercy and pity are part of what we are as social mammals.
Your principle demands allowing the sinking to drown, both literally and figuratively. Watching people drown seems an odd way to express your pro-life ethic.
It's both true that sometimes trying to help people actually helps them and that sometimes trying to help people actually hurts them. I think our focus as a society should be in doing things that actually help people, as opposed to abandoning the attempt because sometimes we fail.
As for those beyond your sphere, the notion that you could protect them all is unreasonable. What we’re really talking about is whether you should put your energy into a futile attempt to help them in the name of some abberrent and unnatural concept of life.
Think of a farmer who is collecting seeds for the next season. Should he collect seeds from all the plants regardless of their health because to do otherwise would be to throw aside a living thing?
That approach, though heart warming in a childish and irrational way, is mistaken. It fails to take into account that life pours forth stupidly from the earth. Life appears around us with the same amount of forethought and planning as a volcano or typhoon. What we see around us for the most part is the winners: the products of evolution who hit the jackpot. We ourselves relatively recently genetically drifted into apex-hood. We didn’t arrive in this position by some loving, caring, guiding hand. The farmer of our species is heartless and blind. She allows the weak to die, leaving behind a species equipped to deal with what the world throws its way.
Knowing that this is why we exist in the first place, why would we now turn against the blind wisdom of Nature?
One other question I have around this is the people who rise to the top now often get there by damaging themselves, making themselves less human. Not in all fields, but in the business world where real power to transform society generally lies. I also don't see much creativity in that class, though ambition and determination - in those not born into dynasties - are certainly qualities they have. World class musicians have those two qualities and so did Hitler.
How does it protect me to jump in a lake to save someone?
Is my sphere just my immediate family, my extended family, my whole tribe, or my entire race?
The "fittest" will be American, then. They practice this sort of thing, all the time, in case someone tries to take their gun-toys away from them.
Actually the fittest in the US, like other places, in the sense of those with power, real power, have other people who carry guns to protect them.
Your position is literally just a myth divorced from material circumstances. A myth that serves very few people, and is perpetuated to make us venerate unholy saints. This is why the Lord of the Rings was so appropriate an analogy for you - you were already dealing with mythical rather than political structures.
This is why it is so easy for you to bracket all of political reality and reduce everything to a symbolic opposition between good and evil, or between poor and rich. You've discovered that tyrants are made by the people they control, resistance movements are defined by the forces they oppose, policies are motivated along lines of ideological distinction. You have mistaken a conceptual dependence for a political one, but of course you won't notice this because all politics is reduced to myth anyway.
When Sauron comes and burns your lands I hope you still love him after.
More please.
Historically, American socialism has been tied to either Marx or Christianity. Your strategy is confusion about what constitutes your sphere?
Not at all. It's going on all around you all the time. It's nature.
I'm responding to your posts, not Marx. Libertarianism or Marxism is a false dichotomy.
One wonders why regulatory capture and bribes for favours are necessary if the strong must survive unaided.
I wrote several paragraphs. Your response was one weird question.
-LBJ
What's wrong with you people?
I may be reading too much into your thread, but I'm picking up an ambivalence between (1)a baiting reductio as a means of pushing 'mechanists' to self-contradict their own philosophy(?) and (2) actual veneration of the strong qua strong(?)
maybe a third: logic-king/nietzschean drag for the kick? The rhetoric about your argument standing untouched except for emotional appeals - It seems disconnected from whats happening and more an example of a rhetorical type?
None of the stuff about strength and lack of mercy follows from 'mechanism' as far as I can tell.
Plus even if you believe in Zoroastrian Sauronism, you could make the point that in the battle of good and evil, the evil is itself falling prey to the argument for Zoroastrian Sauronism.
edit: well, except I did say 'for the kick', that one's on me.
The point remains that one is not faced with the choice of either laissez faire or Marxism. It's a false dichotomy. There are 1000s of points in between.
You also fail to support your Darwinian ethical theory that you believe requires that the weak be left to die. When challenged, you insert undefinable ad hoc corrections related to the right to protect those within your sphere, whatever that is. It seems that the arbitrary limit set on the "sphere" will determine whether you're anything from a libertarian to a communist.
It was absolutely on topic. You even introduced it!
Being well adapted is another matter. Humans are not well adapted to living in the sea so we are weak if we classified ourselves as a sea creature.
It seems easy enough to manipulate the environment to change which group of persons is weak.
If humans relied only on brute force we would not have the humanities,science and technology.
The implication of all this seems to be we should all move to one of Trump's "shithole" countries for the good of our souls. Surely, compared to the spirit-strengthening joys of the DRC, Haiti, or Sierra Leone, namby-pamby advanced democracies are only killing us with kindness.
But seriously... People need struggle, but surely it's preferable to be given the freedom to struggle with our own creative potential rather than to have that diverted into the life-draining swamps of impersonal bureaucracies, corporate greed, enforced poverty etc. It's the great self-defining struggle most people never get the chance to have that we should be fostering, no? And the fact that not all will take the torch passed is no excuse to blow out the light.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/ebola-outbreak-eastern-drc-reaches-2000-cases-190604133821153.html
My advice to Frodo would be to get the fuck out of there.
[bunch of clap emojis]
Sorry, I was having a mood. Social Darwinism doesnt seem mechanical to you? Freud likewise sees us being motivated in a mechanical way.
My feeling is that, you're right, social darwinism and freudianism have a lot of mechanistic qualities. But that's not the same as saying mechanism entails them.
To take an analogy from art, you could say that artist x's style depends on certain precursors and stylistic conventions, but those precursors and conventions don't lead necessarily to that artist.
Or if you did say that, you'd have to provide a very robust argument for that.
The proponents of the "strong" as a right in itself do not subscribe to the concept of society.
Pick a lane.
To play devil's advocate, Roman society rewarded - and cultivated - ambition and determination. Rewarded it with wealth and power. And it worked! for quite a while. The two -ambition, society - aren't mutually exclusive. I'm not on board with the Thrasymachus thrust of the OP, but I don't think 'society' stops it cold.
I guess my background question has to do with events in the US from the1870s to WW1: the idea of eugenics settled pretty quickly and deeply into the national consciousness.
It was an age of revolutionary engineering feats. It made sense to look at humanity as something to engineer. Why was it that any counter view was too weak to temper that impulse?
Most of the responses I got to the OP seemed to me to be in support of a perceived status quo. Maybe I was misreading, though.
Aren't you already in one?
No, as it happens I live in a country with better health care, better education, a higher GDP per capita, higher economic growth, lower corruption, a cleaner natural environment, lower inequality, and more civil liberties than the U.S. So, I really am in trouble I guess...
I would liked to have seen you engage the question earnestly, but I'm guessing you're busy.
I did and your question in response was pointless filler. The reply was appropriate.
has already pointed out the obvious implication of your thesis lead to the absurd conclusion that we should live in worse conditions rather than better, why is that not earnest engagement? If it seems to you too easy of a point to make, perhaps it was due to a too large a flaw in your claim.
However, I would like to put to you two additional things.
First, if your moral premise is correct, that we need evil entities to harm us in order to learn and express our goodness, shouldn't this be applicable to our teaching of children? Should parents and teachers seek to be the "Sauron in their pupils sky" and harm and abuse them so that they may grow strong and resilient?
If you don't agree to this, then I assume you agree with the alternative method promoted among parents and teachers, which is to challenge students without harming them.
If you want the market to be a sort of teacher, as you express in your OP, shouldn't you want to ensure that the market is suitable challenge for adults but, just like any educational situation, things are arranged that these challenges aren't more than what students can deal with and the consequence of failure is no potentially extreme and unmitigated harm. I.e. would you not want the social safety net which not only follows logically from your desire for "market as teacher", but also has been shown to work fine empirically in the countries that have developed such a regulatory system?
Second, much more important thing, certainly you do not view the market as the source of only bad things, but also good things.
Are you not setting yourself up, with your "harmful entities create good by making people struggle in a heroic way like Frodo", to be in a position to meet any and all information about unregulated market with approval? If you see something good in the unregulated market such as a new gadget, you say "look, the market provides a bounty" and if you see something bad, such as a person crushed by legal bills in an obviously bad faith dispute with a much larger corporation, you say "look, the market is such a great teacher, someone here will certainly learn to be stronger because of it" or if you see no perceptible benefit you say "look, these people had the chance to slay their corporate Goliath -- that the market has been so kind as to place in their path -- to slay the giant and become glorified as reddit memes, but they blew it; too bad for them, still they should be thankful for the chance, maybe the next people to come along will have what it takes".
In other words, you have created an empirical theory, that an unregulated market leads to good results, that has no refutable evidence: good results are good, bad results are good too. Everything you ever experience can only confirm your theory.
Nah. It was me taking you as seriously as you took the OP.
I agree that ambition and rewards for achievement are not antithetical to "society" as the collection of what people value at the same time. People have been raising children for time out of mind with the purpose of replicating what they see as the best thing to be. To that point, Margaret Thatcher once said: "Society does not exist. There are only people and their families."
Her statement is absurd from the point of view that she said it while shaping the circumstances of such people. But there is a value in the point of view being expressed. There is a connection between civil institutions and what makes a person more or less effective within them. A parent makes their best effort at preparing their child for whatever that is. What is strong for some situations is a weakness in others. In some times, being strong and forthright and vocal about things will get you killed. In others, being silent and reticent will make you a door mat for others.
And it is at this point the question of the best form of government should be framed. There are conflicting versions of the best things.
We are not ready for Plato's discussion of the Good.
Social Darwinists favor death for the weak, so why would they mind if some portion of the population moved to Sierra Leone? The kind of engagement I was interested in was: imagine radical rightists are taking over your country. What would your response be?
In regards to your remarks about Roman society, one of their innovations was a process of introducing new citizens on a large scale.
So, is that an expansion of rights or a participation in a larger a set of privileges?
I'll admit I don't know much about the history of Eugenics (or the period from 1870-1920 in general.)
But... the pharaoh let Moses and his people go after a battle of who could summon the strongest plagues. The Old Testament is God's good because he's stronger through and through. Might was right, not just for the eugenicists, or even Thrysymachus, but all the way back to the Israelites in bondage.
So maybe social eugenics was just a very old idea in newfangled mechanist clothing? Same great taste, but now its scientific.
Yeah, I think that's a fair analysis.
Quoting Valentinus
It seems like both? If I read you right, do you mean a larger participation in an existing set of privileges?
Saying that "Laissez faire" is "good" and socialism (or any ideology that doesn't agree with Laissez faire beliefs) is "evil" is a bit of a Binary/False dilemma fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
Also it sounds too much what Ayn Rand use to preach. If you know anything about Ayn Rand then it is likely you know about the numerous arguments against her ideals, if you don't than maybe it would help if you read up on the subject. IMHO Ayn Rand (as well as her followers) beliefs really amount to mere dogma and shouldn't even be considered a "philosophical idea" since it lacks enough critical thinking to be put into such a category.
If you really believe in Laissez faire arguments, then it best to read up on Machiavellianism, since Objectivism is merely a sugar coated version of it. People that have wealth and think it is their 'right' to enjoy their freedom and money without having to fight and claw for it are likely just special snowflakes that think that the rules that apply to everyone else shouldn't apply to them. The problem is if everyone else thinks they too are "special snowflakes" then a society that can support Laissez faire kind of economy will break down from all the social infighting (and sometimes real fighting), that there wouldn't be any real gain from such ideology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)
There is no evil in social Darwinism. Is that a problem for you?
For Israelites, good meant to adhere to the Covenant. If a person fell on hard times, it was assumed that failure to please God was the cause. This is the background of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan helps the injured without concern for the explanation. He does it out of simple human feeling.
In Roman stoicism Nature corrects disease by killing the carriers of it.
So yes, Israelite and Roman ethics each held an element of social Darwinism. In each case, Christianity rejected it (at least in doctrine, if not in practice.)
I do mean such a participation. It is also an expansion of "rights" but with the condition that one breed for and exemplify a particular type. The selection is a deliberate effort to be accepted as a Roman. As a matter of society, it is the conscious identification with a type that does the sorting. To equate this process with "natural selection" as promulgated in the theory of the evolution of species is in the service of articulating a type.
The prosperous mercantile citizen is as natural in his or her environment as a Spartan was in a Spartan community. As Veblen pointed out, conspicuous consumption is a means of signalling to the others in your tribe that you belong and are to be fully accepted as a fellow human being.
They might mind or they might not, but such minding or does not follow from Social Darwanism.
For instance, if they do mind they may say because of Social Darwinism, they have evolved to be people who mind, if they don't mind they can say the exact same argument to defend not minding.
Quoting frank
This seems far from your question in the OP, but I have no trouble responding.
If the radical rightists were taking over in an open and democratic way, my response would be open and democratic: espousing my views in the public sphere, collaborating with others with similar views in an open format.
If the radical rightists were taking over in a secret and violent way (and by taking over I read as the process of succeeding and democratic institutions built to avoid such a scenario have failed and are no longer democratic): my response would include secrecy and violence. What is effective to be secret and what not, what violence is effective and what is not only not-effective but counter productive, would be the important questions and there are no obvious answers.
I’m more concerned with what happens when the “strong” allow the “weak” to feed off of them. It doesn’t see, apparent to me that the “weak” will become “stronger” - society will become “stronger” - just because the “strong” are rewarded.
Also, what kind of “reward” are we talking about? That is an important issue too.
As someone who is slanted toward Machiavellianism I'm not bothered if someone doesn't want to paint things into a "good"/"evil" perspective. However if you ARE arguing for social Darwinism I kind of doubt that you don't put things in some kind of good/evil perspective since you need to follow some kind of metrics that enable to rationalize how and why one ideology is better than another.
It does. Consider a world where there's a vegan hotdog factory which others can use as a ladder out of the gutter.
It's true that the hotdog factory could be nationalized, but that kind of socialism is parasitic on capitalism, isn't it?
We could consider Bronze Age palace economies which were closer to true socialism, and consider what kind of social mobility existed in that kind of world.
Cool. What would you say?
I'm pondering arguments against it and what sorts of foundations those arguments have.
I’m assuming you’ve thought this through? If not that’s fine ... I think you can do better though :)
Neither of those matches the heroic emotional appeal of social Darwinism, though. I think the strongest argument against is an emotional and moral argument. IOW, the best argument against has the weakest intellectual foundation.
Intellectual leftism is poorly equipped to further its own agenda?
No. I didn't say that. Social Darwinism isn't based on science. In practice it has a history if producing social volatility.
None of this is to say I believe there is nothing of value in the social sciences, only that they’re more likely wrong than right in there vague proposals - it is for such reasons that they appeal to the non-scientific who make the hollow claim of being ‘scientists’ because they have an opinion about how to interpret statistical data about demographics based on secondhand views and poorly defined surveys.
Everything else of value is a matter of political and economic balance - of which laws and rules are clumsily assembled around (and ever shifting thankfully!)
So your original defense of the ‘strong’ is opinion. Opinion is fine - often overlooked as unimportant - but I’d like some meat on the bones to admire your personal version of Frankenstein's monster.
Surely you see the possible problem with this statement:
Leaving aside that this is a breed of ‘social Darwinism’ I’ll assume you’re stupid and point out the obvious counter positions which you can patch up or explain as you see fit.
1) Creative killers with ambition to dominate and the will and determination to do so.
2) Will creative rulers necessarily create a more creative population? If so will such be beneficial for all, many or few (see #1).
3) Those with ambition and determination are more willing to use their power and wealth - will the outcome necessarily be ‘good’ given you seem rather unconcerned with their sense of morality.
4) In regards to #3, do you believe ‘creative’ means ‘good’? That would explain much here. Interesting, but I’d need some convincing on this matter.
Thanks :)
Did ja ever think of that?
But I'm concerned about myself, not society. Why should I care about "society"? It's largely made up of imbeciles and cowards.
Are you ok with affirmative action?
Now, while I'm playing social critique, have a think about what a nation in which this occurred would look like. one, perhaps, in which there was so little trust in ones fellows that one felt obliged to arm themselves, perhaps. One in which folk were too distrustful of one another to set up a decent health system. That sort of thing. But of course, that'd never happen.
:up:
Still, Laissez faire says we should let Nature tell us what works instead of the other way around. That part of it I do agree with. Laissez faire also has a history of making economies run hot, so it's not so much that they're nonfunctional, as they're prone to being too functional.
Quoting Banno
Always love the cartoon version of my country. But true, the US headed for laissez faire in the Reagan era and continued on through B. Clinton. The results were not good.
Nature? With a capital "N", no less.
That's a fine example to the Naturalistic Fallacy of course - and also the fallacy of appealing to nature, so well done, two for the price of one.
But you seem to have missed the point; the research shows that unfettered competition results in social disintegration, not social strength. So go for it; those who cooperate will win.
It's a pretty radically amoral perspective, so how did either of those fallacies creep in? A good gardener learns from nature. She works with nature. The alternative is a gardner who rapes the land by trying to force it to be something it can never be for very long. Morality isn't really an issue here. It's about Life, which has no moral grounds for its agenda.
If you can, stop thinking of this as some propaganda in favor of the USA. That wasn't on my mind at all when I wrote the OP (which mainly proceeded from recognizing the way Nietzsche, Freud, and Darwin worked together and participated in a shift in worldview).
This is about Darwin applied to society. If social Darwinists started taking over your country, what would you say to them (and your neighbors?)
Quoting Banno
Laissez faire means the government should not interfere in the economy. It doesn't advise people not to cooperate.
Well, that's not true. You are asking what we ought do, and that is an ethical question.
You are committing the Naturalistic fallacy in suggesting that what is the case is what ought be the case.
You are committing the failure of appeal to nature by supposing that we ought do what is natural.
SO your view is not as amoral as you might like to pretend.
But on the scientific front, it is a misconception to think that Darwin held that it is the strong that survive. It is not always the strongest that survives. The species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.
I recently learned that if I want my 20 year old washing machine to work, I ought change out the coupler between the motor and the drum because it's worn out. Do you see that as an ethical issue?
Quoting Banno
Fine. Exchange "strong" for "adaptable and adjustable." The Nazis are taking over your country (in the scenario I offered you) and you're quibbling over wording. Great.
Yep.
Like most who glanced at this thread, you remain in the ditches instead of looking at the horizon.
To all who actually did mention the importance of treating others as you want to be treated, thanks.
A growing danger today is mono-culture. Large multi-national conglomerates increasingly determine what we have access to in every aspect of our lives.
The problem is not government interference in what should be a free market but rather that powerful corporate entities exert a tremendous influence on government.
Do you think we should leave child labor illegal? Why?
China traded the health of their people for its present economic position. And that position translates to political and cultural influence. Should China not have made that trade? Why not?
Quoting Fooloso4
Is that because of diminished enforcement of anti-trust laws? Or because of of the vast laissez faire economy that is the government-less global economy?
We should allow slave labor too, sweat shop type relationships, indentured servitude, no workers rights, and we should, like the Chinese eliminate freedom of speech. It has also worked for the Chinese to occasionally violently put down dissent, restrict freedom of religion, eliminate rights to privacy. We should encourage much more familial control over children, restrict the number of children parents are allowed to have and have governmental control of the internet. Morals, rights, individuality, freedom matter nothing in the face of the most rapid economic growth China has achieved. We can't annex Tibet violently, but perhaps Canada.
Of course the laws should be kept in place. Children need to be protected and educated.
Quoting frank
What does this have to do with laissez faire?
Quoting frank
In part it has to do with diminished enforcement of anti-trust laws, but technological advances in the information sector present challenges to anti-trust laws. We do not, for example, want to support competition to Google simply for the sake of competition.
The global economy is laissez faire.
Child labor is illegal in the US because of a movement fueled mainly by women: specifically: mothers. Their argument was exactly as you stated.
What is the foundation of this argument? IOW, what is its persuasive force? Logic? Observation? Love?
If you don't mind, could we dwell on this question for just a second?
Does it need a foundation? Does it need an argument to be persuasive. The only persuasion necessary was the persuasive force of penalty for those who did not comply with the law. If one is aware of the abuses then no argument is needed unless one thinks that it is necessary to provide an argument for why children should not be abused.
Outlawing it required persuading the federal government to intervene, outlawing it for every state.
An argument was required, and it was a highly emotional one.
Do you see how much you're taking for granted in saying that no persuasion is required?
You asked:
Quoting frank
My answer was in response to that, not the historical situation.
Is it that you see it as wasted time to examine your bias in favor of child labor laws?
If so, fair enough. Thanks for the discussion.
What does my "bias" have to do with the economic, political, and judicial realities of the time? You asked me about one thing but then jumped to another. You ignored what I said. Perhaps you did not understand it.
There are ethical issues, and I consider this one of them, where asking for foundations and arguments are misguided. Empathy and regard for the well-being of others does not rest on theoretical or argumentative foundations. I do not care because I have been persuaded to care. I do not care because ... I care.
I pursued your interest in child labor laws because I wanted you to say this: that what's wrong with social Darwinism is that it's immoral. It sees people as nothing more than smart rats whose pain is ultimately of no significance. It sees people purely objectively instead of morally, which, as Sartre pointed out, means treating people as subjects.
I agree with you that there is no logical or empirical foundation for morality. But if the morally sensitive don't appeal to others to find that moral sense within themselves, the attraction of social Darwinism is there in the environment, in some ways built into our present worldview.
So in regard to child labor, we're poor at enforcing the laws in regard to immigrants. Isn't something more than just my caring, or your caring needed to change that?
What's wrong with social Darwinism is that it is an ill-conceived and misguided concept. But yes, it attempts to defend immorality or at least moral indifference.
Quoting frank
Yes, change requires action. What course of action should be taken to effectively address the problem is not something I think I am qualified to address. I am not even aware of violations of child labor laws with immigrants.
Unfortunately this isn't entirely true. I've discussed in this thread some of what it gets right. That makes its moral blind spot all the more dangerous.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't think you're alone in that. We enjoy past achievements which were mostly the work of Christian activists. Christianity has disintegrated substantially since slavery and child labor were outlawed.
Maybe some future rise of social Darwinism will spark the kind of reflection I've been looking for in this thread.
I'd go along with Nussbaum's approach. Indeed it has the same ethical goal as laissez faire, so far as that is allowing people to achieve what they are capable of.
There is nothing Darwinian about it, except the name and a misunderstanding of evolution. I am not interested in arguing the point. Perhaps some other time.
Thanks. I'll look into it. I don't favor laissez faire. I wanted to examine a contemporary approach to the issue.
Must start a thread on Nussbaum.
That would be awesome! Thanks.
The main reasons to strictly regulate chlild labor is that
children are not ready to defend themselves against workplace abuse and are much more easily manipulated
child labor interferes with children's education
child labor was used in periods in history when children were seen as small adults, there was a great deal of ignorance about developmental stages and the needs of children which are not the same as adults. They need time to play, for example, to develop well.
In China it is under 10% of the children who labor.
Child labor there is associated with higher school drop out rates.
And who cares what the sex of the people arguing against child labor was? That it was the people who spent the most time with developing children and know the most about them should only be seen as positive, if anything.
And if you think that it was mainly women who decided that child labor should be restricted, you have a very poor understand of women's power at that point in human history. They'd had the vote only a few years, legislators and judges were nearly all male.
It's as if a wave of irrational women overpowered the primarily male government.
That sure smelled of sexism on your part.
Lol this post. At best, like all Ayn Rand's work, that statement is merely a tautology.
Treating the "economy" as a natural condition is problematic. The argument against planning and control of markets has been made by such as Hayek and Milton. They argue that withdrawal of control serves social ends such as the expansion of prosperity and the decrease of tyranny. Whatever one thinks about those policies as means to their stated ends, they both assume that one needs to overcome "natural" reactions to make them effective in terms of outcomes. They embraced the values of the progressive citizen as articulated by their interlocutors but claimed those interlocutors were defeating themselves through attempts to directly create certain conditions.
Introducing the ideas of Social Darwinism into the discussion is a matter of offering too much and too little at the same time.
Those ideas are too much in the way they frame the "Letting it play out" argument of economists to be some kind of acceptance of a natural order. Hayek is closer in spirit to Hobbes than Rousseau regarding the social contract. Hobbes' way to stop the "natural" war between individuals is to agree to an order that binds them together. Rousseau sees nature as something order screwed up. In this battlefield of differing presuppositions, the introduction of evolution is a step back from the fray. Being a species is relationship to other species. The existential crisis of being whatever form of life you happen to be is no longer confined to the struggle within a kind you happen to be suffering but is connected to whatever Life is and the other stuff that is alive.
That last observation shows how the idea of Social Darwinism is too little for the issue under discussion. The biggest fish in the sea, if one is to look at our existence from the point of view of evolutionary development, is Ecology. The "survival of the fittest" idea only makes sense in a region where the "selection" is not a search for the "fit" but an acceptance that the balancing of life forms is well beyond the matter of what we highly prize. The evolutionary perspective calls for humility in the way Spinoza called for when asked to decipher the ends of the Creator.
Do you know where this statement comes from and what it originally meant?
Do I get a cookie if I respond correctly?
Fuck that.
I wasn't trying to be offensive. If you were familiar with that reference it would have saved me some tying on my phone.
How that might relate to my comment I will leave to you to clarify.
The proper question is where do you, frank, think the statement comes from and what do you think it means. How you answer the first question should determine how you answer the second.
I got the feeling you were critiquing some Nature for Nature's Sake cult. It's more about suspicion of people with power and recognition of the hubris of social engineering.
Social engineering is not a thing without an argument about it.
Are you presenting it as a fact? Separable from other facts?
Pray tell.
Later you said you have moved on. Fine, but I want to put in this argument against child labor:
One of the tasks with which people are burdened is "the reproduction of society":
IF the next 50 years were going to be exactly like the last 50 years, child labor would not be a problem. Children born into drudgery would just continue in drudgery, century after century. Child labor would be good preparation for adult life. As it happens, though, the last 50 years hasn't been like the next 50 years for several centuries. Nature will reliably produce new bodies, but it takes nurture to produce people fit to operate a society in which change is on-going.
The upper and ruling classes have always educated their children, because their children needed to be able to manage estates, climb the various hierarchies (church, state, empire, etc.), manage people, be literate to some degree, know how to behave toward their betters and lessers, and so forth. Common labourers didn't need this sort of education, because, as a rule, they were not going to rule.
But in the latter part of the 19th century, it became clear enough to enough people (mothers, among others) that children were going to work at jobs their fathers had not done, in a society that might be quite different than the one in which the parents had been born into. Hence, child education.
Initially, public education (as the term is used in the US) had a fairly high toned quality. Latin was commonly taught in public schools into the 1950s (and in some schools longer). The curriculum served the liberal arts. (Some schools taught trades).
After WWII, to pick a handy watershed, schools began educating children to fit into a more highly commercialised, corporate dominated economy. Liberal arts remained, but there was a greater emphasis than before on one's role as a consumer, as well as being an employee who behaved properly.
By the late 1970s into the 1980s, the role of consumer became paramount (for the masses) and the means to educate children about how to serve as a consumer 24/7 were available: TV, radio, movies, magazines, recordings, and so forth. For many students, education could (sort of) leave school and be conducted at the Mall and by watching TV. Later, the Internet would add another avenue of training outside of the red brick school. (Actually, little red brick school houses went out with 78 rpm records to be replaced by terrazzo, glass, and brushed aluminium).
Mothers were on the right side of history (to borrow a phrase) but history was pushing them along.