The way to socialist preference born in academical home(summary in first post)
Summary:
Interesting discussiions about political philosophy with no connection to be leftist born in an academical home.
Some interesting own experiences, would link if I knew how.
Leisure time from a prosperous background make you read and you might end up in a (theoretical?) left position.
Empathy, still unclear to me exactly what kind of empathy.
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Myself being an in-betweener, voting rightish in scandinavian elections aka probably democrat in the US i still com from a working class background. My father made the journey to middle class. Me and my brother are the first ones going to university. Now I have come in contact with people from wealthy academical homes and surprisingly many lean to the left. Same when you read about eg Sartre. Also from a profoundly bourgeoisie home, but becomes a socialist.
In the same family you can see entrepreneurs and activists. What makes people from wealthy, academical background lean left? Very few people in my humble-house background in a not so good suburb became socialists.
Interesting discussiions about political philosophy with no connection to be leftist born in an academical home.
Some interesting own experiences, would link if I knew how.
Leisure time from a prosperous background make you read and you might end up in a (theoretical?) left position.
Empathy, still unclear to me exactly what kind of empathy.
————————-
Myself being an in-betweener, voting rightish in scandinavian elections aka probably democrat in the US i still com from a working class background. My father made the journey to middle class. Me and my brother are the first ones going to university. Now I have come in contact with people from wealthy academical homes and surprisingly many lean to the left. Same when you read about eg Sartre. Also from a profoundly bourgeoisie home, but becomes a socialist.
In the same family you can see entrepreneurs and activists. What makes people from wealthy, academical background lean left? Very few people in my humble-house background in a not so good suburb became socialists.
Comments (203)
Leisure.
If you are poor, you are likely to work hard to become less poor, because that is the obvious way to do it. You probably don't have time or education to make an analysis of society, and almost certainly not the time to spend organising a populist resistance in the form of trade unions or workers cooperatives or boycotts or demonstrations or riots. It takes time, education and money to make these efforts, and much persuasion to convince enough others to constitute any kind of power base. For any one individual, it is always a better bet to work super hard, suck up to the boss, and hope for promotion (see Jordan Peterson).
I'm the son of an architect, middle middle-class educated and comfortable, so I have had the opportunity to 'stand and stare'. As soon as you do that, it is liable to become obvious that no one ever got rich by working hard.
Explain?
If one is on welfare, with no job, this might apply. I have observed this in young British men who are addicted to the sport of climbing. They pool their resources for housing and food and pursue their dreams. (However, my observations are dated having been from the 1980s. Thatcher's government might have made this less likely).
The same arrogance that makes any socialist think they know best how to spend other people's money.
Another factor, I think, is a having a certain amount of personal liberty to pursue what are (in places like the US) quite unpopular ideas. One has to be 'inner-directed' enough to ignore the disapproving frowns and comments of work associates, friends, and relatives.
Lots of people (not in the US) have examples of 'socialistic policies' available to them, which are generally valued by their society. Many countries have had more favorable policies toward the working class, providing good health programs, liberal amounts of vacation time, and so on.
it's worth noting, however, that not too many people in the EU are calling for, hoping for, or planning for the abolition of capitalism (speed the day), which would be necessary for full-fledged socialism (at least, as far as I know).
Is providing basic health care to the population of your country "socialist" or is it responsible government? In either case sign me up.
Is free education for the most talented, motivated and capable regardless of race, sex, religion or socio-economic status "socialist" or an investment in the nations future? Again I am all for it.
It seems to me most cannot distinguish between "socialism" and "communism".
In terms of economies, central planning and state ownership of entire economies seem to have failed multiple times but there are other state interventions that would seem to be in the interest of both the state and the general welfare.
Seconded.
I think the access to academics is a big part. If your worldview expands beyond yourself and you start to think in terms of benefiting the system that all are a part of instead of only benefiting yourself or your family, you start to move in a socialist direction. Wealthy people have this luxury because their family being safe and fed is not a thing they worry about. Working class and even many middle class people are in the position of living paycheck to paycheck so they must have that smaller scale focus.
Quoting Tzeentch
Like this for example. This person is only concerned with their own welfare, and not that of the people around them. All their money is their money because they earned it. There is no conception of the vast array of services and opportunities offered by the collective effort of everyone around them, mostly through government, that make it possible for them to be "self-made". In the US, this holds true even all the way up into the upper middle classes because the consumer culture makes even very rich people feel like they always lack something, so they don't expand their vision. Of course, the super-rich in the US have set it up so that they can buy the politicians to keep tax rates absurdly low. Most other developed countries haven't allowed this. That's American exceptionalism for you.
1. Introductory
2. Pecuniary Emulation
3. Conspicuous Leisure
4. Conspicuous Consumption
5. The Pecuniary Standard of Living
6. Pecuniary Canons of Taste
7. Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
8. Industrial Exemption and Conservatism
9. The Conservation of Archaic Traits
10. Modern Survivals of Prowess
11. The Belief in Luck
12. Devout Observances
13. Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interests
14. The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
Oh, I am concerned with the welfare of people around me. I just don't believe such concern should be forced upon me or anyone else through government.
You speak with the self-righteous ignorance of a true socialist.
And you use ad hominem attacks in place of developing an understanding of reality that show you are both self-righteous and ignorant.
Feel free to not respond. I was not courting your mouth-breathing opinions. I already know everything you're going to say. I've considered your position and discarded it as ahistorical and anti-human. You are only here as an example, not a participant. You may go.
Let's say that having "compassion" for those who have less than you is much easier when you are in a better situation than said miserable.
Every society in the world contradicts this principle. Would you then try to enforce this principle on the societies of the world? Why do humans form governments in the first place? This is what the American constitution says: "...in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."
Without some kind of government it would be exceedingly unlikely that you would secure any of these things. The key is to put the power of this apparatus in check, not to abolish it altogether (though I am totally open to serious conversations on the possibility, they just seem to me like romanticism).
I suspect that these were more likely middle-class than working class. My recollection is that even in the good old days, you needed to be pretty damn literate to negotiate the benefits system with any degree of success. I've known a few climbers too in N. Wales, and they climbed the slate quarries for fun, precisely because they were not the children of the quarrymen who climbed them with drills and explosives for a living.
Why is compassion italicized in quotes? :naughty:
Perhaps they were weened too late. Less responsibility. Less risk. It’s no strange wonder that the coddled grow up to prefer the same treatment when they get older. The “cradle-to-the-grave” concept is no joke.
I've been to North Wales. It's realy pretty there.
I'll see myself out...
I think you got the point.
You clearly don't know anything about the Constitution. It is to be fought for, died for, basically a whole bunch of violence is supposed to be done for it. Its purpose is to give people guns so they can do that violence. God Bless Merka.
No so my friend. I was not advancing an apologetic, I was citing a simplification of reasons to establish government. I don't have a problem with those principles, of course a conversation as to what they mean is necessary, but that is for another thread. My point was about the necessity of government.
Yes, I agree with you. I was making a joke at that other guy's expense.
In the late 1940s Joe Brown and his companions initiated the British era of working class climbers, and those I met in the 1980s and 90s who were living on the dole were largely, but certainly not entirely, from that class.
If one visits some of the poorer areas of NYC they might find unemployed young men exercising and playing basketball during the working day. Well, before the virus struck! A leisure class, but not an appealing one.
The comment I made initially is not original. It was coined by one of the California climbers of the 1960s - perhaps Eric Beck - about dirtbaggers and elitists of that era. I was a member of that climbing generation and climbed and camped with one of those dirtbaggers from a working class background who is now a billionaire. Another colleague and friend from a humble background became almost literally Royal Robbins: Spirit of the Age.
Quoting unenlightened
Your reasoning here leaves me bewildered. When you are so confident about motivations, you should know something about the world to which you refer.
When your tirade has settled I suggest you meditate on what I've said. You may think my remarks were ad hominem, but they hit the mark pretty well.
You seem to take issue with this statement:
Quoting Tzeentch
Socialists want to spend other people's money because they think they know best. That's a statement of fact. If you don't understand why that is arrogant, you're ignorant.
Quoting Pro Hominem
Then there's the quintessential bid for moral superiority, which I interpret as terribly selfrighteous.
You may scream "Ad hominem!" as much as you want, but so far I consider you guilty as charged.
I consider government to be a form of coercion: a means to force individuals to do things by threat of violence.
Furthermore, governments assert power over individuals based on what are essentially territorial claims, and therefore I consider governments, at their basis, to be no more legitimate than a despot.
For these reasons, government will, at its very best, be a necessary evil.
Quoting JerseyFlight
What if an individual isn't interested in securing those things? Under the current system they are simply forced to pay for them anyways!
Quoting JerseyFlight
I agree. Though, governments seem to have a tendency to, over time, grow corrupt and to consolidate more power. Keeping governments small with as little influence over individuals' private goings-on should be an active process. And beware those who see government as a legitimate means to an end.
Easy. He or she has a heart. He or she is an empathetic being, who feels the pain of others, and wants to stop it for them.
The leisure argument above is simply one of the false ideals of the fascist American culture created to justify its own present-day mythology.
I know something; perhaps you know more. And back on topic a bit, it may be middle-class self-satisfaction that cannot believe that the working class can do anything on its own initiative. It may be that the media records the middle-class socialists like the Fabian Society and pays them attention and forgets the grassroots organisers of the Grunwick strike, or earlier, the Penrhyn Quarry strike.
Revolt against their parents and everything they portray to stand for.
The most vociferous and in their hatred of the right nearly disturbed have many a personal aspect to their loathing of everything reeking to the right and conservatism. If your ties with your parents are cut because of politics (among other issues, usually) that hatred is personal.
Seen some examples even in PF.
You asked what socialism. Example from my country : admitting a lot of refugees from trouble areas in countries such as Iraq and Somalia. (How do I include the actual text when replying? Using Ipad)
I am from scandinavia. A very very large amount of refugees are admitted to my country. From middle east and Somalia. A very large number of those immigrants commit crimes. Rob and beat people. There are a lot of shootings between criminal gangs. Etnically scandinavian kids do get beaten in school. And still, wealthy, left-leaning ladys call for ”solidarity”. Is that what a upperclass person with left-leaning views are looking for? ( and how to include the text you want to reply to? The arrow just gives the tag above on my Ipad)
Quoting Ansiktsburk
I was raised in a upper middle class home and I used be a socialist and for much of my life I was on the left. Financially speaking everything was always taken care of for me and in seeing the wealth around me I didn't understand at a young age why poverty or homeless people had to exist. On top of that, I worked some crappy, low wage jobs with bad bosses which further solidified my allegiance to the left. My thinking was in a country as advanced and wealthy as the US, why do we still have poverty and homelessness? I was thinking about the big picture and principles first, and myself last. I also had no experience with poor people. They were just problems to be solved by giving them, as a collective, a certain amount of money or resources.
Somewhere along the line my thinking become more bottom-up. Instead of thinking about vast systemic changes to eliminate poverty, I started studying personal finance and decisions which could be made on an individual level. I actually met and talked to poor people (or atleast people from poor backgrounds.) I'm still down for some systemic changes, but I'm just a lot more careful about them. Every problem doesn't need to be immediately addressed with a scalpel. And I hate to say it but maybe some people are actually directly responsible for their own poverty and routinely choose materialism and status over long term financially health, and they know it.
Also young people don't pay taxes.
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Quoting Pro Hominem
I really like this response because it really captures the essence of it. Capitalists are not just wrong, they're bad people according to the thinking left-winger. They are egotistical and care less, if at all, about those around them. They're basically egotistical sociopaths.
If you were to ask me about my assessment of this issue maybe 10-15 years ago I would have said the exact same thing you're saying now. I get where you're coming from 100% and I'm glad you laid out the issue as you did here.
Not to triple post, but I find this subject interesting.
There's about 38 million Americans under the poverty line. Obviously it's impossible to know all of them, and in turn care about them as individuals. To claim to care about them is really to to care about an abstraction, an idea. And the mark of a good person, according to the leftist, is that he or she genuinely cares about this group of people - not as individuals, because that would be impossible, but as a collective or in other words an idea/abstraction.
So it's not about empathy, at the root of it. Honestly speaking, it's about commitment to an idea or a principle. It's about solving an idea. Solving a problem. Lets leave empathy out of it.
Thats not what it seems to me, reading eg the FB posts from my friends in the academic left. Its more like just that "collective empaty". There is seldom a solution to a complex question. Refugees -"just let them come, no limitations, we have to open our hearts". CO2 emissions - "We have to find a new lifestyle". And this is from otherwise highly intelligent persons that for most other questions can acknowledge a problem as difficult and take part in a solution.
You mean you're special because your upbringing didn't impair your cognitive abilities and everyone else should just be like you?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
This is emotive thinking left over from the dark ages. Do you know how people end up with personality disorders? Do you believe it's all a matter of the will? What you don't realize is that every last ounce of your quality presupposes quality you inherited and were given!
There is no such thing as an individual, all individuals are products of social processes. The highest quality individual is not one who is biologically and intellectually superior, this is a myth, but one who has benefited the most from the advantages of society.
So what are the limits to collective empathy? Does the academic left just feel empathy with all poor people around the world? How about all poor people who have ever existed? Apparently they feel empathy for every single one of them... they apparently feel "empathy" for people who they have no idea exist.
I'm sorry but it's just bullcr*p. You can't empathize with 4 billion individuals. It's just virtue signaling. If they want to empathize with all 4 billion I'll tell them that I empathize with every human being who has existed and has ever faced any sort of problem therefore making a better, more virtuous person than them.
You can't empathize with an idea or an abstraction. That's not how empathy works. You empathize with individuals.
I don't really want to argue with you here, I just kind of feel bad because you're clearly ideologically possessed. I mean how am I suppose to argue with someone who doesn't believe in individuals. Who would I even be arguing with? In any case, just know that I'm trying my best empathize with you...and the reason I can do that is because you are an individual with your own mind which has unfortunately been completely taken over by Marxist dogma. Anyway, I do wish the best for you.
You’re not interested in those things? You’d prefer to not pay taxes and live in a society where everything is privately owned? In a world like that you’d still have to pay for travel, security, and everything else.
This answers a question with a question. We can get to my interests later. For now I am wondering how one justifies that a person who is not interested in the things a state (supposedly) provides, nor is interested in having those things provided to him by a state, is still forced to pay for them.
Quoting praxis
Of course. The difference being; there's no state that gets to take one's things, to provide one with services one didn't ask for nor wishes to receive.
Every person possess some kind of ideology, the question has to do with the concrete nature of ideology. It is ideological to see yourself as a self-made, autonomous individual, when as a matter of empirical fact, every quality you possess came from society. This is not my opinion, not my mere ideology, but the actual concrete, material fact of your being. Have you ever tried to account for the qualities or defects of a person? They do not arise spontaneously, human agents are products of the social processes through which they pass. You are no different, but your ideology makes you think you are better, it also deceives you into thinking that your cognitive abilities are the result of your effort and will. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is I who feel bad for you because you're clearly ideologically possessed. Again, this is not just my assertion or my opinion. The interplay between your right and left brain is crucial to your cognitive faculties, how your brain develops in this sense is not in your power, you are and were the passive recipient of this process.
I’m afraid that I struggle to derive a fundamental warrant. I suppose it comes down to whether or not a particular state is worth it or provides sufficient value. From what I understand, Democracies tend to provide the best value for its citizens because they’re the most resistant to concentrations of power.
God forbid you be that concerned.
But who would be forcing anyone to be concerned? It's not the mental state of people that would be impacted. They could be as miserly, unsympathetic, uncaring, cruel and selfish as they please. They'd just have to contribute to the welfare of people around them, even though they don't want to or don't care to do so. True? Someone who's concerned about socialism is concerned about his/her money and property being used, by government, for someone else's welfare.
Shouldn't that be up to the individual to decide then?
Based on this sentence, you do not know the meaning either the word "socialist" or the word "fact". This seems like a better argument for your ignorance than mine.
Quoting Tzeentch
I didn't have to bid for moral superiority. You ceded that position when you adopted a set of beliefs that the only people that matter are you and those who agree with you. You stand in opposition to ideas like everyone having access to medical care, every child having equal access to a useful education, ordinary people being protected from the poisoning of their food and environment by uncaring corporations, and levying higher taxes against people who are struggling to make ends meet than against people with access to many billions of dollars. Your only justification for this is you think it is "your" money, but you completely fail to understand that it is precisely the systems that you say you hate that permit you to have a job, grow your wealth, aspire to a higher social class, leave your house without the expectation of being robbed, etc., etc. etc.
It would be hard to take a position that was not superior to yours, morally or otherwise.
The real irony here, my friend, is that this fella is a beneficiary of government, and more importantly, he is not going to walk away from it any time soon. I mean, he can flee to the mountains with his anarchist gang and they can all be free, but they had better not be leeching off society in any way if they want to remain consistent with their principles.
What you're describing here is the difference between Classical Liberalism and Bleeding-Heart Liberalism, an unfortunate modern off-shoot. Bleeding Heart leftists are almost as bad as these neo-conservatives because they miscast liberal ideas into these generalized "moral" statements that are unsubstantiated and produce terrible results.
Erasing national borders, environmental terrorism, political correctness, identity politics - all this stuff comes out of a theoretically well-intentioned, but rationally unexamined amplification of this empathy impulse.
A rational leftist understands that these problems are complex and their solutions must also be complex. Sadly, the empowering of mediocrity that social media has brought about combined with the resurgence of the reactionary right have pushed the leadership of the left in a more radical direction. Hopefully we will see a return to reason in the not too distant future.
Using a system of coercion to force people to do things against their will seems highly problematic to me.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Not really. For many, me included, it is the fact that a government may force individuals to part with their wealth.
This is the problem that is central to the political spectrum.
While I understand individuals may have different opinions on the implications of this inherent tension at the center of governance, I find it disconcerting that many cannot even recognize it.
Do you stop at the red light?
This is, of course, the equivalent of telling an immigrant to go back to their home country if they do not like it here. In fact, it is even worse, because an immigrant made the voluntary decision to become part of another society.
When it seems useful to me, sure.
Quoting Pro Hominem
Mhm.
What a swift refutation. :lol: :up:
Ah. So you are not coerced into following the traffic rules. You choose to out of a sense of utility.
You would follow then even if they were not attached to a set of penalties.
Do you like the idea of their being penalties for other folk? Or do you think we should leave it up to other people to decide for themselves the utility of following traffic rules?
Do you support the removal of penalties so that we may each decide how to behave on the road?
Or do you think that we ought coerce other people - not you - into stopping at red lights?
No, you are complaining about government, an immigrant is seeking life in a new domain of government.
There is another way out of this, just let your beliefs about the topic alter. That's the value of other minds. It's pretty clear you have been refuted. Don't hold onto the error, move in the direction of the greater truth.
Maybe in some vague, general sense everyone possesses some ideology or way of viewing the world, but not everyone is equally ideologically possessed.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Oh really, well thanks for letting me know. I never knew spina bifida or cystic fibrosis came from society. Never knew the amount of fast twitch muscles I had actually came from society. I never knew tongue tie came from society.
1. Being a part of a community "forces" people to part with all sorts of things. In isolation, you might be able to do whatever you want all the time. If there are other people around, there must be limitations on that power or everyone will eventually just end up killing one another. This is where systems of law come from - the need to organize humans in groups. That law is encoded in governments, which provide a framework for the behavior of large numbers of individuals, and if they are good governments, they provide all sorts of services that the individual could not achieve by themselves.
2. In order to do this, governments posses two main powers of force. One is taxation, the other is policing. They are each fundamental to government's very existence and its ability to fulfill its promise of providing a working system for large groups to live in.
3. In a complex community, the notion that wealth is held by the individual is a fiction that the group agrees to support to one extent or another. The reality is that without the community as a whole and the government that organizes it, none of these people could accrue wealth in any significant measure at all. Therefore taxation is best understood in the negative - how much does your government let you keep? Ultimately, your actual labor contribution to the wealth you "possess" is quite small, unless you are very poor. Thus, the poor should be able to keep a much higher percentage of their wealth that the rich, and the richer you are, the greater the share that government can and should reasonably take.
Awesome logic. You're so right. Just send me your location and I'll send someone over to murder you and take all your stuff. Of course, you can't even describe your location without the benefit of these services you neither want nor need.
How are you managing to join this forum? The computer you're using, the electricity it runs on, the internet this information is traversing - all completely impossible without the act of government. Without the government you claim to not need, you likely would have died in childbirth, killing your mother along the way. If not, you would probably have been killed by a minor infection, been eaten by wolves, or just starved to death before reaching adulthood. You have already lived way beyond your without-government life expectancy, so if you want to be true to your "values" you should take one of the guns you're undoubtedly stockpiling with your government-given rights and use it on yourself.
I love to read discussions where people respect each other. :smile:
Come to a point.
Is it that coercion doesn't always produce situations which are highly undesirable?
I never said it did.
What I said is that coercion is something inherently problematic. When we apply that to politics, it results in the position that government is, at best, a necessary evil (, , pay attention next time). Thus I believe government interference in individual's goings-on should be minimalized at every opportunity. A classically liberal (read: not the "modern" use of the word), perhaps libertarian, view.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Quoting Pro Hominem
Pathetic.
This is fairly obviously a tongue in cheek statement to demonstrate how asinine the logical results of his position are. Or perhaps you were referring to the fact that I am wasting my time talking to someone who is obviously deeply committed to their dangerous fantasies and I should respect myself more?
I am saying that using aggressive language will not lead to any conclusion other than some injured egos and - eventually - banishment. You may disagree with ech other, there's nothing wrong there, we are not yet living in times of totalitarianism.
Your conclusion is false. Government is at worst a necessary evil. At best it is a major contributing factor to human happiness. You did get the necessary part, though, so why are you taking the inconsistent position of arguing it should not exist?
Quoting Tzeentch
Ok, so you don't believe in the abolition of government. You recognize it has a critical role to play and you acknowledge that it can only do this through taxation (I realize I'm putting some words in your mouth, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt). You like the idea of "small government". But you have shifted your focus from taxation to some as yet undefined sense of individual freedom. I suppose it wouldn't do any good to point out that the US government is probably less involved in people's personal lives than almost any government in history? What is your personal gripe?
Quoting Tzeentch
"Classical liberals argued for what they called a minimal state, limited to the following functions:
- A government to protect individual rights and to provide services that cannot be provided in a free market.
- A common national defense to provide protection against foreign invaders.[17]
- Laws to provide protection for citizens from wrongs committed against them by other citizens, which included protection of private property, enforcement of contracts and common law.
- Building and maintaining public institutions.
- Public works that included a stable currency, standard weights and measures and building and upkeep of roads, canals, harbors, railways, communications and postal services."
So this is classical liberalism. It is exactly what we have today. You seem to be against much of this though, because the government has to take "your" wealth to do it all. For future reference, you should not misrepresent yourself as a classical liberal. You are not.
"In the mid-20th century, right-libertarian[15][18][22][23] ideologies such as anarcho-capitalism and minarchism co-opted[8][24] the term libertarian to advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources.[25] The latter is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States,[23] where it advocates civil liberties,[26] natural law,[27] free-market capitalism[28][29] and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.[30]"
Ah, here you are. The doctrine of "biting the hand that feeds you." Anarcho-capitalism...that sounds a lot like what you're saying. Would you say that term sounds like something pleasant? You might.
Anywho, this where I could go into a long diatribe on the practical and philosophical poverty of libertarianism. How it is self-contradictory and pointedly ignores obvious but inconvenient facts. How no one would actually want to live in the world that it envisions - watch The Running Man sometime and imagine yourself as anyone except Arnold. I could do all this, but you won't listen to any of it. Libertarians expressly avoid taking responsibility for anything, including their own ideas.
You are wrong. About almost everything. Your ideas are dangerous and if they ever become the norm, that society will be hell on Earth. I really wish there were something I could say that would help you and make a difference. Talk to a counselor or something. Unless you really are a sociopath there has to be some way for you to see value in something other than your own selfish interests. Just try.
There is net social utility in adamantly rejecting perverse and dangerous ideologies and being seen doing it. We need to make marginalizing people like this a social norm again. It is possible for people to just be wrong. Every idea does not have equal merit. Some need to be removed root and branch.
This particular formulation is a stain on American life right now. These people are stooges for their corporate overlords who want them to continue to destabilize public discourse and politics so they can continue to rape the populace without intervention. It is on par with Nazism as a backward and exceedingly dangerous anti-human ideology. I will denounce at any and every opportunity.
The problem with expressions like these, is that you are using them in a situation where it is not appropriate to verbally attack another individual simply because you do not agree with them. I repeat, we do not live - yet - in times where "marginalizing people like that should be the norm".
I find it disingenuous, if not dishonorable, to disguise the simple desire to keep one's possessions from others by platitudes about limiting the power of government. Why not be honest about one's selfishness? My money, my property, my rights--what could be a more self-centered view of our place in the world?
In a perfect world everyone would be responsible and cooperate for mutual benefit. But it’s not a perfect world and those with an advantage take advantage and typically do whatever it takes to keep their advantage. People also tend to be shortsighted and unwilling to make sacrifices for those outside of their family, friends, tribe, or nation, and much less for people who don’t even exist yet.
Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that with freedom comes responsibility.
I don't know; why are you?
I did. What you are doing now is special pleading.
I'll bite the bullet on this one. It is my property. It is my rights, and it is my money. These things are hugely important. It's not just about me though - I apply that standard to everyone. And if you don't you're kind of a monster, no offense. If you don't view other people's money, property, or rights seriously then you are at best immature and ignorant and at worst a monster.
This is not only desperation but blind stubbornness. You did not answer Banno's questions, you did not even engage his argument, which amounts to the total negation of your position. This is not the way serious or intelligent thinkers proceed. If he was not making a point, or demonstrated some kind of intellectual incompetence or irrelevancy, then you could attempt a justification at evasion, but this is not the case. He took the premise from your own hand and threw it back in your face... seems you didn't like it very much once it was inverted. Interact with his questions and see what happens to your position.
My family is all Native American. No lie here, my grandfather was a full blooded warrior. You want to talk about property and rights?
You have a legitimate claim here. I am not dismissing your claim. If the government or the white man or whoever takes your property and violates your rights that is a massive injustice and compensation makes sense. I'll say nothing more about the issue because I don't know the specifics, but I apply my principles universally. Everyone gets held to the same standards.
I would hate to be in a position to look into the minds of many people and see what they are looking for. But I would venture to say, they are not looking for people beaten up, or raped, or robbed, or killed. They are looking for equality, solidarity, and all kinds of ~ity. But they know the road is long to achieve that, and many things must be laid down for the paving of that road: education, not just formal, but about the human nature. Eradicating illicit drug trade. Eradicating extreme exploitation (slavery). etc.
What I suggest for you to learn how a privileged lady in the upper echelons of society can be motivated to preach tolerance, is to read the book "Les Miserables" in your language, I am sure it's been translated into that from French. In it, a man gets out of prison; wonders down the road, and gets overnight stay in a wealthy man's home. He gets up at night, steals a silver candle-holder, and takes off. The cops get him, take him to the rich old man's house. The rich old man immediately sizes up the situation, and says, "My good man, you forgot to take the other silver candle-holder to go with the one I gifted you with!" And to the bufflement of the cops, they need to release him, and he wonders away now with two silver candle-holders.
Another suggestion for you, seeing your attitude has been established, and i can't change it any way I try, is for you to join the Hitlerjugend that has probably sprung up in your country and you find solace and understanding with your personal views shared by many there.
I don't think we can leave empathy out of it. Because the idea of caring for the unfortunate ones can only be born out of empathy. There is no other emotional motivation to care for the downtrodden but empathy. Or maybe I am wrong. What other emotional motivation do you think could make one want to bring people out of poverty, in a strict sense, or out of suffering, in a broader sense? Please list them, because I can't think of any, but am willing to hear and learn.
So you claim that some people among us, with Spina Bifida and/or cystic fibrosis have come from other origins than society. Are they aliens, or self-developed abiogenetic people? Or some are abiogenetic, and others are aliens from outer space? That is the decision you have to make, and then convince us of that theory's truth, if you want us to accept that some properties and qualities of humans today have NOT come from society.
This is VERY true. It is also true that with slavery comes responsibility, and any position on the slavery-liberty spectrum comes with responsibility.
In fact, one could argue that since responisbibilty is an outcome of a coventant, and freedom is the loss of restrictions, that with freedom one loses his responsibilities.
I think Eleanor Roosevelt was dead on wrong with this statement, from a philosophical point of view.
In fact, I think Americans will believe anything their Presidents have ever said (until DT came along) without any or much analytical thought or criticism.
Eleanor Roosevelt was never an American president.
What responsibilities does a slave have?
You think the fact you recognize other have rights, money and property renders your insistence on having your own rights, money and property unselfish? I don't think that works.
Regardless, unless you find honesty disagreeable, I don't understand why you would object to my suggestion that we should honestly say that we don't want government taking or using our money to help others for what are essentially selfish reasons. Nor do I understand why you think that suggestion makes me a monster.
It's true, of course, that we and our objections to government doing so would in that case seem far less admirable or worthy than some might like, and perhaps even sordid if we have far more money and property than we could need, but that's often the price of honesty; particularly self-honesty. Nor would our honesty in this respect imply that that our money and property are unimportant. They obviously are very important--to us, not to others.
I value freedom. Not wealth necessarily. I know there's no way of getting this message across, because you seem to have already decided I must be a terrible person for having different ideas.
One can be selfless without having to be forced by government.
I'll leave it at that.
Friend, you have already been utterly refuted by Banno. This is not just an opinion, it's a fact. It's why you didn't answer his valid questions.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Quoting JerseyFlight
Quoting JerseyFlight
Quoting JerseyFlight
You don't win arguments by repetition.
Here they are again:
Do you like the idea of their being penalties for other folk? Or do you think we should leave it up to other people to decide for themselves the utility of following traffic rules?
Do you support the removal of penalties so that we may each decide how to behave on the road?
Or do you think that we ought coerce other people - not you - into stopping at red lights?
More generally, are you happy for other people to also be guided by your principle: Quoting Tzeentch
Are you happy to have other people follow the traffic rules only when it is useful to them?
I hope that in answering the questions you might think about the issue in a slightly different way.
The argument I was referencing belonged to Banno. In none of the post you quoted was I making an argument.
Quoting Pro Hominem
That's what you keep telling yourself.
The truth is I hit the nail on the head in my original posts, and you know it. You have difficulty swallowing that pill, so your reaction is to get angry, misrepresent my point and demonize me so you can tell yourself you don't have to listen to my ideas.
Here, I'll repeat them for you:
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Finally, and most importantly:
Quoting Tzeentch
Now, that last sentence obviously didn't make it into a discussion about socialism by accident. That sentence is exactly about you.
Everything you've provided so far shows you have a great deal of trouble accepting the fact that people have different views than you, and that you would happily use coercion to force them to act in accordance to your beliefs. You're little tyrants, masquerading as philanthropists.
I like to think philosophy and psychology go hand in hand, and the gaggle of angry socialists on this forum being shown a mirror never fails to provide some interesting cases.
Now go on and reflect, as will I. I'm done conversing with you three.
I had the exact opposite experience. I was raised in a dirt poor home (but didn't realize it at the time), picked up libertarian ideals from friends on the internet and my own teenage anti-authoritarianism, thought that I was the smart capable straight-A student who was going to knock life out of the park... and then fell flat on my face upon reaching adulthood, blamed myself, blamed personal (non-systematic) bad luck like the crappy 20 year old beater cars (which were "normal" cars as far as my upbringing had taught me) constantly breaking down and needing to be replaced (because a replacement cost less than the repair), I thought I was just an unlucky "kid" who wasn't awesome enough to overcome that misfortune.
It wasn't until I was about in my 30s that I started researching why my life was such a failure compared to "everyone else" and discovered... that I had never in my life been below the median income, much less the poverty line. That the majority of people in the country had even more shitty lives than me. That didn't mean that my life had in fact been charmed and easy, it was still shit, I was still renting bedrooms in other people's houses and driving ancient hunks of junk and so on, but the statistics said that most people were even worse off than that; that my meager slow savings toward escaping that life were amazing richest compared to the zero savings that almost everybody else had. Eventually I graduated to owning my own... tiny 400sqft trailer in a run-down trailer park, thanks to finally making "fantastic" money better than 75% of the country... yet still, only the average (mean) personal income for America.
That's when I started to realize that the problem wasn't me, that I wasn't a fuck-up or just running on bad personal luck, I was beating the hell out of the odds, considering my background, and how the entire system is stacked against everybody. I was making more money and managing it better than the vast majority of the country, but still trailer trash with barely a sliver of hope of someday not being that. That's a sign that there are major systemic problems, not just a bunch of personal failures.
What about Banno's argument, are you going to get to it?
Do I like the idea of coercion? No. That much should be clear.
I do appreciate that, as I have stated earlier, it can be a necessary evil at times.
Quoting Banno
I guess not, though I am mainly undecided. I could consider this the type of protection against direct physical harm a part of the 'minimum' a state should provide, much like how the state protects people against other forms of physical violence to them or their property.
However, don't most people follow traffic rules because they are convinced of the usefulness of doing so, rather than the penalty for not following them? I don't stop at a red light when there's no traffic to be seen, and I have no issue with people using their own judgement to do the same.
Quoting Banno
Generally, yes. Though, there are exceptions, mostly pertaining to direct physical violence, and we can talk about those exceptions.
Quoting Banno
I was promised some ultimate refutation of my position.
And to clarify, that position can best be summarized as:
Quoting Tzeentch
And therefore:
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Ideology is a pretty central to issues of law and culture - see Law and Ideology for a bit of background. Of special interest is the move from the Marxist idea that one participates in an ideology unwillingly, to Zizek's description of wilful participation.
For our purposes here it might be worth first seeing ideology not as something one possess, as you suggest, but rather as a way of seeing; a looking-glass through which one interprets and understands social practices.
Doubtless there are those who will deny that they have an ideology. I'd consider that an inability to see themselves as embedded in a society. My critique of Tzeentch follows that line.
You'll have seen this:
Can you see the faces?
Suppose you come across someone who denies that there are faces in the drawing.
You point to various parts of the tree, saying "Look, here is an eye, there, a nose...", but to no avail. "That's just branches. There's no faces there".
Can yo offer an ultimate refutation of their position?
Probably not.
But discourse such as this:
Quoting JerseyFlight
Quoting Banno
Would get one's hopes up.
I didn't expect that. :lol: :lol: :rofl:
Ouch.
Quoting Banno
:rofl: :rofl:
Well done.
Let's be frank. You assumed my position was something other than it actually was, but you're now so deep into chest-bumping with your goons that you cannot back off anymore.
If there's any bite to your bark, I'll be waiting.
No, by saying that I "bite the bullet" on that one it means I accept your premise; I just don't view it as a negative. I'm fine accepting that there's a selfish component to my worldview: I value my property, money, and rights. In fact, I'd even go further and say that this quality is actually a positive. If you don't value your own, how are you going to value others stuff or rights?
I was just responding to what seemed be your negative implication towards selfishness or self-centeredness.
This is fine by me. What I was implying with the phrase "ideologically possessed" is the idea that ideas possess people. It's interesting to think about. I understand that we all have lenses through which we view the world through, but some of these lenses just don't allow any flexibility and are strongly dogmatic. Some of these lenses are all encompassing and completely grip the subject. That's what I mean by ideological possession. I just don't think it's fair to say a fanatical Nazi and your average, pragmatic non-political American are equally "ideologically possessed."
They would rather have been tortured than rely on the state. They looked down on those that relied on the state, there was a stigma to being on the social in those days. This attitude of self reliance has held me in good stead for a lifetime, i have not asked for help from anyone.
The more you give, the more dependancy you foster. Having said that, some people need help, some long term. Nothing is simple.
Make of that what you will. I have only voted socialist once in my life, when i was young.
Good point.
Quoting Tzeentch
That’s irresponsible because, if you look at driving like a skill, it forms a bad habit that puts yourself and other motorists at risk. Much of the mundane tasks in our lives are done on autopilot, so you’re basically training yourself (and your ‘autopilot’) badly. Again that’s irresponsible, which indicates an abuse of your freedom, and suggests that you’re not worthy of it.
Also, as I initially touched on, there’s the issue of who pays for the traffic lights, roadways, the land they occupy, etc. If they’re not paid for with taxation then you would have to pay a private party or parties in order to travel. Either way you have to pay.
I have no problem trusting in my own judgement. If you have trouble trusting in yours, then that problem lies with you. I encourage everyone to think for themselves and make their own decisions, rather than slavishly obey the rules without second thought.
Calling me unworthy of freedom based on the minimal interaction we've had seems rather silly, and it's hardly a decent way to start a conversation. Your earlier comment seemed reasonable enough, so why not continue in that way?
Quoting praxis
The issue doesn't lie with things or services costing money, the issue lies with forcing people to pay for them. It is easy to think of examples which are universally useful, like roads, a justice system, etc., but what of some counter examples? Where I live, a part of one's tax money goes to maintaining the properties of the royal family. Why is that normal? Or why is it normal to be forced to pay for the wars one's government decides to partake in?
I value freedom as well.
Government can certainly restrict freedom. I think it's improper for it to do so in some cases. I also think that government should not spend money or resources it may acquire from us (e.g. through taxes) for certain purposes. As a rule (which is to say subject to certain exceptions), government shouldn't restrict our ability to, e.g., think, to communicate, to be religious or irreligious, to assemble, to travel. As a rule, government shouldn't spend money to, e.g., wage unjust wars, to oppress civil liberties. What government does can be objectionable, and should be opposed in that case.
I don't think it can be reasonably maintained, however, that government action to care for its citizens who don't have the financial resources to obtain essential medical services or are impoverished is objectionable in the same sense that government restricting the freedoms I mentioned or waging unjust wars is objectionable. So, I think that those who object to government taking such action (which as a practical matter would involve devoting resources obtained from some citizens to furthering such action) can't legitimately claim that they object to it to preserve civil liberties, freedom or prevent government from acting improperly.
No doubt there are those who think that the impoverished have only themselves to blame for their condition and governments should not assist them for that reason, but that's different from saying that it should not do so because it will restrict freedoms or violate claimed rights.
The only "right" which would be violated by such government action is a "right" to have and retain money and property, and the only "freedom" which would be restricted would be the "freedom" to keep others from sharing a part of it.
I'm not adverse to private property. I don't think all resources should be owned and controlled by the state. Neither do I think that government assistance to the impoverished is wrong, or that those that possess money and resources far beyond what they could need to live well and comfortably should in no case be required to contribute to such action by the government.
I think that those who claim they shouldn't be required to do so must accept, if they're honest, that they aren't engaged in a quest to ensure freedom and liberty. They're merely sanctioning a form of governance which will inevitably result in a substantial number of citizens being impoverished, and a far less substantial number who are wealthy. I understand that seems perfectly appropriate to some. I just think they shouldn't fool themselves by thinking that's the way it must be in a free society.
At first glance, one would think a maximally libertarian society would be one in which there were no claims at all (because every claim is a limit on someone else's liberty), and no powers at all (because powers at that point could only serve to increase claims, and so to limit liberties). But that would leave nobody with any claims against others using violence to establish authority in practice even if not in the abstract rules of justice, and no claims to hold anybody to their promises either making reliable cooperation nigh impossible. So it is necessary that liberties be limited at least by claims against such violence, and that people not be immune from the power to establish mutually agreed-upon obligations between each other in contracts.
But those claims and powers could themselves be abused, with those who violate the claim against such violence using that claim to protect themselves from those who would stop them, and those who would like for contracts not to require mutual agreement to leverage practical power over others to establish broader deontic power over them. So too those claims to property and powers to contract, which limit the unrestricted liberty and immunity that one would at first think would prevail in a maximally libertarian society, must themselves be limited as described above in order to better preserve that liberty.
Thanks for sharing your story.
I will say that for those who work within the system - that is, have a normal 9-5 job, pay rent, average salary, not much savings - my prognosis is poor. I've never trusted the system to magically help these people and boost them into the upper classes. I think of the system as more than just capitalism though, so we might differ there. In any case, the system doesn't reward you for saving. I wouldn't even count on the system to reward you for hard work at your 9-5, but who knows maybe it might for some people.
I've been in kind of an interesting place because while I was raised and grew up UMC, for the past 5-6 years I've been working with people from either poor, lower middle class, or maybe just normal middle class backgrounds. It's sometimes hard for me to tell the difference between normal middle class and lower middle class. I've always hidden my own background from my co-workers. No need to bring that up. It's been a super interesting experience though and I will say I've become more class conscious.
I know we've talked about your own personal situation before, and you know my advice if you want to live more comfortably. I'm not going to rehash it. Someone could honestly be pulling 6 figures and still be struggling in certain areas of the country, especially with debt. I do hope all is well with your situation though.
You were talking about a dangerous (to yourself and others) habit and for the meager benefit of arriving at your destination a few seconds or minutes early. There's nothing silly about that.
Living in society requires cooperation. Ideally, the cooperation is mutually beneficial. In order for the cooperation to be mutually beneficial, the more autonomous a citizen is the more responsible they would have to be. If a citizen just wants to freeload and take advantage of the cooperative nature of a society they can be as irresponsible as they like, at least until their freedom is curtailed.
I fail to understand how using one's own eyes to see is a dangerous habit. I wish more people would engage in it.
Quoting praxis
Okay, I am mostly on board with this. Freedom requires individuals to take personal responsibility, sure. In view of this, how do you look at the fact that individuals do not choose the society they are born in, nor do they choose to be born in the first place?
In modern society, one of the jobs of the government is to stop people from stamping all over your ability to live freely. I'm not going to tell you all that you already know, you are able to imagine how other individuals, businesses, groups or whathaveyou can infringe upon your rights in such a way that you mightn't have the resources to do anything about by yourself. Assuming you can agree with that, the question becomes whether poverty and protection from poverty don't fall under a similar category.
Socialism (within democracy/capitalism) are outcome-based protections of many liberties. To contextualise the need for protection in the first place, I have to refer to the non-government forces within our society that are simply bigger than the average citizen by such a magnitude that they really don't have any choices to be making in the first place. The biggest of which is capitalism itself, which certainly coerces you into working, decides your worth and whether you're even valuable enough to be
getting paid in the first place.
Poverty itself deprives the individual of freedom, one's options are limited down to a point where they don't have options. Maybe that wouldn't be the case for you, for whatever reason, but surely you can see it being that way for others.
The other side of things is that as just an individual, without the government, your options don't make any difference on the level of how capitalism functions. You are totally helpless to anything to challenge the system by yourself. If the system itself is unjust, your only option is to just live with it. There are strong arguments that can be made for how that is already the case today but actually the government isn't doing much about it and we can clearly see that you have absolutely no way to do anything about it by yourself - as with the rest of us. Thus your only recourse is to use something like the government if you wish to challenge that system.
In other words, you are certainly going to be coerced either way. Capitalism doesn't coerce you by forcing you to do something, it coerces you by restricting you to such few options that to say you aren't be coerced into choosing one of them seems like semantics. In a sense, freedom is afforded to you based on your success within capitalism, socialism is about recognising a universal human right to such freedoms. Do you not see yourself as being stuck within two bad situations?
I won't argue the point other than to show the results of a two-minute search. Study shows more than two people are killed every day by red light running.
I apologize for my earlier tactlessness, by the way.
Quoting Tzeentch
I can't tell what the point of the question is. I'll say that we're a social species and as such are born with moral intuitions. We're also largely shaped by whatever society we happen to be raised in and part of that shaping is developing a moral framework, which is based on our moral intuitions. There are moral frameworks, for example, that prioritize the moral intuition of liberty vs oppression, such as Libertarianism. Other frameworks favor other moral intuitions.
When discussing the responsibilities we may or may not have towards society, I think it is an essential question to ask how we ended up in that position.
Considering the fact that we do not choose the society we live in, what responsibilities towards it can we truly be said to have, other than the ones we take up voluntarily?
Quoting Judaka
If we look at a dictionary, coercion is the use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance. Something needs a mind to be able to coerce - people can coerce, government can coerce. An animal could coerce.
If we were to plane crash onto an island with fruits and natural resources we'd likely want to survive, but the island isn't coercing us into gathering those resources in order to survive. You can choose to lay down and die or beg from others.
Quoting Judaka
While I don't agree with your use of the word coercion here, I get what you're saying here. I agree with the gist of your argument, but I feel like your real target is poverty and not capitalism. Poor people under Marxism are just as limited, if not more. Plenty of capitalists support a universal basic income or some sort of welfare requirement, myself included. Capitalism doesn't demand no government compensation for anyone at any time. Milton Friedman, one of the major capitalist thinkers in recent history, supported a universal basic income.
I wonder, was Banno's assertion regarding your ignorance accurate? His claim was that you could not see the fact that you had been refuted. How could we prove whether this was the case?
See the tree example above. Has a view been refuted when its protagonist still adheres to it? Has it been refuted when most folk reject it? Has it been refuted only if there is a proof that it is erroneous? Then what is to count as proof?
It's a mistake to suppose that such issues can be settled. If you can't see the faces, then they are not there. The best you might do is to pretend to see them in order to appease the delusional folk who can see them.
That's the path a sociopath takes when pretending to care.
I suspect many of us were able to follow your argument and clear refutation of Tzeentch's position. My point in raising this question to Tzeentch, is to get him to move beyond the ignorance you reference by having him more carefully consider your position. He is continuing to argue a position that has been clearly refuted using the postion's own premises.
If he sees it then the issue becomes one of psychology rather than philosophy. He's nailed his flag, and will stand by it. Further conversation is pointless.
If he can't see it, then perhaps further conversation will reveal it to him. But that is a rare thing.
If a young person were trying to develop their reasoning skills and learn to think philosophically and I wanted to show them a counterexample, a mind clouded by dogma, this post would do nicely. "Government = bad". The end. That's all you've got. The difference between what I and others are saying and what you are saying is that we actually have articulable reasons for our beiiefs. I can cite history, law, science, ethical theory, and a whole range of other fields to support the general claims I'm making. You have not, because you cannot. You just believe what you believe because it easier to do that than to think, and because its easier to whine about "your" money than to acknowledge that people who enjoy the benefits of a community have a responsibility to that community.
I knew talking sense to you was a waste of time, but I have just enough optimism left to hope that maybe there's some way to reach people like you. It certainly didn't happen here, but who knows? Maybe one day you will see something that makes the coin drop and you'll become a better person. Let's all hope so.
I've taken the liberty to modify your question a bit. Hope you don't mind.
We could liken the individual faces in Banno's face/tree to moral intuitions. Some may stand out, like liberty/oppression, and others like care/harm, fairness/cheating or loyalty/betrayal may fade into the background, and I suppose that we can't take responsibility for what we deny.
These scare quotes prompted me to think: perhaps a fruitful approach would be to ask him what exactly is it that makes his money HIS (or anybody’s anything THEIRS). I think he would be surprised to learn that socialists are very much in favor of people keeping what is rightfully theirs and not having it taken from them by force. They just have a deeper understanding of what rightfully belong to whom, and a broader understanding of what constitutes force, such that it is the capitalists who are taking things that rightfully belong to people by force, and state redistribution of wealth is rough restitution of those many widespread crimes, in lieu of actually being able to prevent them from happening.
I wouldn't have called capitalism my "target" because I have no interest in dismantling capitalism and I am not supporting communism or marxism. It's just a matter of recognising that the government needs to be a counterforce to the natural tendencies of capitalism if you want to avoid hell on Earth. Socialism is just one kind of counterforce, alongside worker protections, protecting the rights of businesses, intellectual property and etc.
I think whether nature can "coerce" is actually an interesting debate but it doesn't really matter too much. It is pointless to point out that you are being forced to drink water to survive but if you refuse to do it, you will be met with violence, just violence of a different kind. People are definitely coerced by capitalism, which doesn't require popular support to survive because if you don't play by the rules then you just starve right? Someone born into a city without a plot of land doesn't even have the option to "live off the land". That's not part of the argument I made, consider it a tangent, I am not opposed to capitalism because it coerces you. I am just saying that if your position is "I hate people interfering with my business", don't neglect how non-government forces are definitely going to interfere with your life and the government is actually the only thing stopping it from being a disaster in many cases.
Justice, fairness, human rights, freedom - that's how I think of socialism. I certainly look for that within capitalism and I view attempts to dismantle capitalism as reckless and unrealistic. Maybe in the future things will be different, new technology and circumstances but not right now.
There's a fine line between personal responsibility and recognising systemic issues. If you spend outside of your means, you don't save money, you don't try to maximise your income and so on - there are consequences for that. People shouldn't try to totally blame capitalism because even with socialism, you are still going to experience financial troubles if you are financially irresponsible. I think it's even okay to have an inherently contradictory position here. To argue for both personal responsibility and systemic change, to say it's both your fault as well as not your fault. That's just kind of how nuance works right? I think we agree on this?
Let's go. I'm waiting for you to put your money where your mouth is, and if it were to result in a refutation of my position then I am genuinely interested.
But what I think happened is you mistook my position as anarchist or 'all coercion is unjustifiable'. Or, as put it:
Quoting Pro Hominem
Nobody could mistake you for an anarchist, and that’s the problem. Anarchists support violence (if at all) only in defense against the imposition of power over others. In supporting capitalism, you must support violence in defense of existing power structures (e.g. in keeping property concentrated in the hands of those who own more than they need to use, against those who need to use more than they own).
Interesting, I have a few questions about what socialism constitutes for you.
Under socialism, would someone be able to start their own independent business, say, without the approval of a council of workers? How does investment work under socialism? Can someone just day trade for a living? What does socialism say about speculators? What if someone doesn't want to get a "real" job under socialism, what happens then? Certainly this didn't fly in the USSR.
Personally, I'm just fundamentally opposed to any system which forces you into a normal job in the name of social cohesion. I've never been entirely sure what socialism says about entrepreneurship or side hustles.
I stipulated that I was talking about socialism within democratic capitalism, I thought you knew that given you were talking about UBI and welfare. It is funny though, socialism is such a stupid word to have two such separate meanings that are both talked about in similar contexts. I would never say such kind words about socialism as an alternative to capitalism.
Ok, this might just be a cultural difference (you're Australian, right?) In the States, as far as I can tell, socialism is pretty much always used as an alternative to capitalism. It means dismantling capitalism. If you want to go more to the left you'd just say "we need more social programs" or "we need stronger social programs."
I don't consider UBI or welfare "socialism." I think true socialism is ownership by the proletariat.
Apparently you do, at least in the case of practicing good driving habits.
I believe I just mixed up my terms, I think you are simply correct here and my use is inappropriate.
You seem to be completely hung up on this driving thing, huh?
Well then, practice your slavish obedience.
It’s a handy example and I think neatly illustrates the differences in our views or moral frameworks. I wouldn’t say that one is better than the other, to be clear.
Anarchism is a form of socialism (the original form, actually), so I already answered that for the most part. The difference between anarchism and statist forms of socialism is just the state, which thinks it’s the only one who gets to use violence and that it is justified in using violence to prevent anyone else from doing so, or from otherwise disobeying it.
If we consider capitalism a form of violence, surely governments that take the belongings of their subjects as a means of achieving their goals can be considered violent, no?
This is the very foundation of high level thought. What it manifests, above all else, is that one is overcoming the limitations imposed by the psychological self. It stands as a far greater challenge than any syllogism.
In your anarchy-land why will people form governments?
Taking things from people is violent, sure, but it's that "belongings" that does all the important work here.
Alice comes along and takes something from Bob (by force, because Bob doesn't want to give it up) to give it to Charlie. That is unquestionably an act of violence. But is it good, legitimate violence (if we accept, which you and I both seem to, that there is such a thing), or is it bad, illegitimate violence?
Well, if the thing belonged to Charlie, then Alice was righting a wrong: Bob was withholding Charlie's property from him, and Alice made him give it back. That is good, legitimate violence.
On the other hand, if the thing belonged to Bob, then Alice was committing a wrong: Bob was using his own property when Alice wrongly took it and gave it to Charlie. That's bad, illegitimate violence.
Saying what belongs to who is basically another way of saying who has what rights to what, and so what violence is justified (if any is) in the defense of those rights.
The dispute between capitalists and socialists isn't overall about whether using violence is ever legitimate, but about what rightfully belongs to whom, and so which violence is legitimate and which is illegitimate.
Socialists generally say that capital rightly belongs to those who use it, so houses belong to people who live in them, businesses belong to the people who operate them, etc; and anyone else, who doesn't live or work or otherwise use that capital, claiming the right to exclude the people who do live and work and otherwise use it, and thus the right to use force to do so, are committing bad, illegitimate violence, against which other violence is therefore good and legitimate, as an act of defense.
Capitalists, of course, disagree, and think that one can legitimately own someone else's home or place or work etc, and that attempts to prevent that owner from excluding people from it as he pleases are bad, illegitimate acts of violence, while the enforcement of that exclusion is good, legitimate violence.
Boy, was I ever stupid. I don't know the first name of Prez Roosevelt. Dwight? Milhouse? And who was this Eleanor person? the private educator of Helen Keller?
I am ignorant, but I may not be stupid.
Slaves have responsibilities. They need to do their jobs. They need to follow orders. They need to do what they are told.I think slaves have the most stringent and binding responsibilities of all.
Here's the full quote:
Quoting Banno
The bolding is for you.
Quoting Pfhorrest
In the Privilege thread there was mention of The Origins of “Privilege”, and interview with Peggy McIntosh. McIntosh talks of Tal Fortgang not wanting to see himself systemically. It's an interesting analysis, and one I think we can apply here. Tzeentch does not see that wealth and property are social entities. He speaks as if they were somehow inherent, inalienable characteristics of his self, when they are better described as things that others allow him. As points out, Tzeentch fetishises the myth of the individual.
Not long ago the forums had an infestation of Christians. We seem now to have become a nest for sovereign citizens... a term they use for themselves entirely without awareness of its irony. There are reasons sovereign citizens are almost exclusively white middle class males; these are the people who have the least capacity to see themselves in ideological terms.
The way to progress the discussion is not to talk to Tzeentch, but to talk about Tzeentch.
Don't be too hard on yourself, trolling isn't as easy as most seem to think. I have faith in you though, so dust yourself off, stand up straight, and go get 'em, tiger!
Quoting god must be atheist
Are they free to not do what they're told?
So we have established that governance is coercion, or 'violence', if you will.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I'm not so sure there is something as legitimate violence. I consider all types of violence to be undesirable and inherently problematic. But it seems sometimes some amount of violence is better than the alternative. I wouldn't go so far as to say that legitimizes it.
Violence is about forcing one's will upon others (or hurting others; this is why I prefer the term 'coercion'), and there is no just basis for that. My will is no better than yours. The will of the group is no better than the will of the individual. A government's will no better than that of their subjects.
A political system that cannot recognize this, and instead sees violence as instrumental; a tool to be used to achieve it's goals based on it's own conceptions of right and wrong, I can only consider as tyrannical and deeply flawed.
Before you mention it, I am not saying capitalism is any better. In fact, all '-isms' seems to be deeply concerned with telling other people what to do.
Maybe you take "legitimizes" more deeply than I do. I agree that non-violence is always preferable where possible. But you seem to agree that it is sometimes, lets say, warranted, or called for. Like, if someone tries to take something that belongs to you, you don't just have to let them, right? (Is that itself violence/coercion, them taking something from you?) It's okay for you to stop them, right? Is it okay for someone else to help you stop them? Or for there to be an organized force of people who help people stop people from doing things like that, taking things that belong to others?
I wrote the preceding post on the impression that you answer "yes" to all of this. The remaining question is then "what rightly belongs to whom?" Which then gives an answer to when it's okay to stop people from taking things from others, and consequently what even constitutes "taking something from someone" rather than "hanging on to what's mine".
Quoting Tzeentch
Not even to stop them from forcing their will upon you? I get the impression you think defense is okay, but that's still violent coercion: you're not letting the attacker do what he wants to you, you're forcing him to stop. Which is okay, because you belong to yourself, and he doesn't get to decide what's okay to do to you, you do. But it gets fuzzier when people disagree about who gets to do what to property rather than person; that depends entirely on who that property rightly belongs to.
Quoting Tzeentch
I agree.
Quoting Tzeentch
The only political system that completely rejects any such thing as legitimate violence is anarcho-pacifism, which is completely vulnerable to the first person who doesn't agree with its principles and decides to use violence against the people who think it's not okay to use violence in return.
I get the impression that's not what you're arguing for.
I look at self-defense as follows;
First, there is no question to whom one's physical body belongs. It unequivocally belongs to the individual. The individual and their body cannot be seperated.
Second, the essence of self-defense is preventing oneself from being violently coerced, and there is an element of necessity (perhaps linked to the protection of that which belongs unequivocally to you) and involuntariness (which intuitively seems to be the key here). I would not consider blocking a strike to be an act of violence, for example. As long as the act of self-defense continues in that same spirit, I think there is a distinct difference, though this is certainly a good question. When elements of retribution or revenge are added, I think it turns clearly into an act of violent coercion in its own right.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Hmm...
I am not sure I would consider stealing an act of violence or coercion. When done consciously I certainly find it immoral. It seems linked to coercion, yet distinctly different. If objection to the theft is met with reprisal, then it is clearly coercion. Without that last element, I am not so sure.
It is exactly the element of reprisal that makes governments coercive. Do not pay taxes and one gets fined, or worse, thrown in jail.
When something was taken from you without objection, does one still possess the right to take it back by force? I'm not so sure.
When something was taken through coercion, does that make a counteractive act of coercion justified? In other words, do two wrongs make a right? I'm not so sure either.
Then there's the issue of determining what rightfully belongs to whom, which our hypothetical situation has already shown to be in contention. Who should determine this, if it can be determined at all? Who or what can be trusted with arbitration of such things? These are great obstacles for me, since humans are fallible, governments prone to corruption over time.
Certainly this produces a lot of food for thought.
Facts are - a lot of the kids of the refugees becomes criminal and carries a deep hate for people living in the receiving country. But still, those people may escape from an early death in their home countries.
(I feel my English got a bit Scandinavian here but i hope i was reasonably clear...)
would hate to be in a position to look into the minds of many people and see what they are looking for. But I would venture to say, they are not looking for people beaten up, or raped, or robbed, or killed. They are looking for equality, solidarity, and all kinds of ~ity. But they know the road is long to achieve that, and many things must be laid down for the paving of that road: education, not just formal, but about the human nature. Eradicating illicit drug trade. Eradicating extreme exploitation (slavery). etc.
What I suggest for you to learn how a privileged lady in the upper echelons of society can be motivated to preach tolerance, is to read the book "Les Miserables" in your language, I am sure it's been translated into that from French. In it, a man gets out of prison; wonders down the road, and gets overnight stay in a wealthy man's home. He gets up at night, steals a silver candle-holder, and takes off. The cops get him, take him to the rich old man's house. The rich old man immediately sizes up the situation, and says, "My good man, you forgot to take the other silver candle-holder to go with the one I gifted you with!" And to the bufflement of the cops, they need to release him, and he wonders away now with two silver candle-holders.
Another suggestion for you, seeing your attitude has been established, and i can't change it any way I try, is for you to join the Hitlerjugend that has probably sprung up in your country and you find solace and understanding with your personal views shared by many there.
I answer
First of all, thank you for a reply I really do appreciate!
Second: the sad thing in my home country, I think you can guess which, the small nazi-like party that used to have very few followers now is almost the biggest party in my country. Stories about kids of refugees attacking totally unknown "white" kids, beating them, urinating on them even raping them along with a tremendous lot of shootings among criminal gangs of kids of immigrants have created a racism far greater than I experienced growing up during the later decades of the last millenia.
Our government is mainly social democrats and people there have had a very permissive attitude to immigration. They do get a tremendous lot of shit for the situation, but those guys have really tried to cope with being a country of empathy but at the same time get a decent assimilation.
The guys really not having any borders are eg a lot of my facebook friends, that i have due to my class journey, marriage and interest in humanities. People from wealthy academical homes that still say "we cannot wait for assimilation we have to let all suffering people come here"l. Like - do you have a brain??? - i do not of course answer that because of eg family friendship. But listen, If it gets total chaos here - It is really near that, even the big socialist newspapers admit it on their home pages, other western countries will hear about this. Will they be prone to receive refugees???
Maybe reading that book will make me understand how these people think. I cannot discuss it directly with them.
Third: May I guess that you grew up in a prosperous, academical background? Your initial post suggests that the empathy was the main reason to go left. What one as a guy from poorer backgrounds that really do not understand his new neighbourhood then asks is - Is is conceptually like the guys with empathy becomes left and the guys without become right? This is of course stupid, but can you - if you are from academic background - elaborate on the process of selecting view here?
My mom started her life as the daughter of an extemely wealthy land user. Her father started drinking, debauching and gambling, and by the time she was ten years of age, he had seen the bottom of his money, and my mom's mother had to leave her husband in disgrace. The entire family was sent to Auschwitz, and only my mom and her two cousins came back. She had been courted by my father before the war. He was only tolerated in her upper-echelon family because the family figured that he, being an RC, could save her life. In the ghetto where they were sent, before deportation, my dirt-poor parental Christian grandmother stole in food for them, otherwise they would have starved to death.
This is my background. Do what you can with it.
Now I will check your stories of immigrants beating up local kids, raping them and urinating on them; how often that happens; and what happens to the perpetrators of such crimes. I will also check your stories on drug use and related crimes in your Scandinavian country. I assume it's either Norway, Sweden or Finland. Estonia, Latvia and LIthuania are considered Baltic countries; I don't know if Denmark is counted as Baltic, Scandinavian or simply just Northern European.
Are the slaves free to not do what they are told?
What does freedom have to do anything with responsibility? Please explain why freedom is a prerequisite for acting responsibly.
That's A. B. is that slaves have a choice too, whether to carry out a task they are told to do. They can opt to carry out the task, or else opt for punishment. That's not a good freedom, but a degree of freedom of choice nevertheless.
And C. is that not every slave, historically, has been subjected to constant supervision. A slave may have been charged to take a flock of sheep to meadow and return them back home for the night. He was unsupervised during the grazing. So he WAS responsible for his work to be done properly.
I agree completely. Retributive "justice" is injustice.
Quoting Tzeentch
Agreed.
Do you agree that evicting someone from their home for failure to pay someone else is likewise coercive: "Give me money, or get out, or else"? Or someone "evicting" someone from their workplace for similar reasons: if workers in a business decide not to hand the money that customers paid them over to the owner, so that the owner can give them a small fraction of it back, but instead keep it all for themselves, and the owner says "then get out, or else", is that not coercive? Usually, it's a government enforcing the "or else" there in those situations, but even if there nominally is no government, if the owners themselves can get away with enforcing that "or else" themselves, then they effectively are a government themselves.
That's the kind of coercion that socialists are opposed to. The original socialists, libertarian socialists aka anarchists, think we just need to stop there being governments that do that kind of stuff, or any other kind of coercive stuff, in the first place. State socialists in contrast think we need a powerful monopolistic government (a "state" in the usual terminology) in order to keep private owners from effectively becoming little warlord states of their own, or else using their influence to corrupt a nominally democratic state.
(I see the motive behind the state socialists there, but I think, as I expect you'll agree, that authority inevitably breeds inequality, so having a state inevitably foils the socialist objective. But I also think, and I wonder if you would agree, that inequality just as inevitably breeds authority, so allowing inequality to fester inevitably foils the libertarian objective. We can only move toward either objective by embracing the other as well, stopping the reinforcement of capital and state, and then withering both away together).
Quoting Tzeentch
I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised with how open-minded you've been about all of this in this discussion. I hadn't been paying close attention to you before, but I had the impression that you were the usual right-libertarian capitalism apologist. So far, you seem much better than that, and I'm enjoying our conversations.
Its Sweden, to make your checkup easier.
Take my word for it, I am NOT a coverup racist who goes looking for arguments to create bad publicity. I have worked multinatioally for decades and love people from different cultures, and do find soulmates from all over the world. What really hurts me is, first of all the suffering and hate between us indigenous and the newcomers. And we do make an extremely bad example for immigration.
If you want to, I can send you articles. Or you can check any of the big newspapers. Aftonbladet.se is free, the closest to social democracy.
Sartres mother was rather the opposite, frightened to subordination, but Sartre himself was spoiled beyond comprehension, if one believes what Sartre himself recites. OK, he was the opposite of DeBeauvoir, little lord Fauntleroy with no father , but still, mo authority, no consequeces if you did bad.
Thats as far as I have come in Le Mots. Extremely well written, and I really looking forward to the further adventures of you g Jean-Paul, and hopefully some answers to my questions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden
It's really good, informative, I believe what it says.
What it basically says is as follows:
- all immigrants, recent immigrants, commit crimes more per capita than the indigenous. The ratio is about 2:1, but the more hineous the crime, the higher the ratio. (number of crimes committed by immigrant criminals divided by total number of immigrants) divided by (number fo crimes committed by the indigenous divided by the total number of the indigenous.) In shoplifting, libel, plagiarism, jaywalking and littering, the immigrants lead by a narrow margin. Come to murder and rape, they do it about four times more often as a body than the indigenous. The ratio averages to two times only, because there are much more many shoplifters in both groups than murderers. Car thefts, leaving a restaurant without paying for the meal, and resisting arrest are about 2:1.
The only thing I can bring against your accusation of immigrants is that immigrants commit crimes against themselves much more often than against the indigenous. Of course when a Black man, god forbid, rapes a blonde 12-year-old triplet, the blood in the eyes of the Arians is going to form. But it happens, and I am sorry to say this so coolly and clinically, because my heart goes out to all rape victims, only a fraction of the times compared how often it happens by immigrants to immigrants, and by Arians to Arians. Black on white is just really newsworthy, because it sells newspapers, to inflate the crimes of the immigrants against the Arians. Most newspapers are in the business of selling newspapers, and the reporting is skewed for this reason, althogh they won't outright lie, but they do select and give more exposure to those stories that tickle people's fancy.
The statistics are all there in this article I quoted.
On the other hand, the sad truth is that most perpetrators of immigrant-committing crimes are uneducated, don't speak the langauge, are unfamiliar with the expectations of normal behaviour by the locals, and they are distrustful of it, and are not willing to meld in. However, when their children, or their children's children go to university in Sweden, and come out with a medical degree, they still insist on the old ways, but the grandchild wont' give a damn.
I believe that the immigrants will acclimatize to adjust to Swedish society not within a generation, but two generations hence. They may even drop their religion or change it. This is the way for every large immigrant group in a new country.
I am here in Canada from Hungary. I have seen this happen in the Hungarian community: the community was strong and stuck together due to language barrier and other societal barriers; but the first generation that grew up here, hardly spoke the old country's language, and the next, not at all. I don't have statistics on crime frequency of Hungarian immigrants, but that could be looked up, too. I know from hear-say that Hungarian kids who immigrated as children, had the reputation among their peers that they stole easily, without any apparent conscience or feeling of guilt. That I can see how it happened: In Hungary during its Socialist regime, everyone stole from work, whatever they could lift, because there was no sense of "private property" since the workplace was said to be owned by the state. The state in most people's opinion then was not a person, so you did not offend it by stealing from it -- hence the country of thieves.
To wit, there were 125 cases of rape in Sweden in a given period after 2015, and 85 of them were committed by immigrants. Not all the immigrants' victims were indigenous. And as in every other country, only a fractoin of the rapes was reported, and of that fraction, only a fraction ended in conviction.
If you’re struggling to say that there are degrees of freedom I doubt anyone will dispute this profound insight. There are people more free than me, for instance, and I can only hope that they’re more responsible than I am.
An important element that I think needs to be considered here is whether the supposed coercion is not the result of a voluntary agreement that has taken place in the past.
When someone pays a landlord so they can live on their property, it is implied in the agreement that whenever they can no longer pay the landlord, they can no longer live on their property. Presumably, they know the terms of the agreement beforehand, and voluntarily choose to go ahead with it.
The same seems to be true for the workplace example. One makes a voluntary agreement with the workplace owner to do labour in exchange for wages.
In these cases, it seems both sides should be able to end the agreement, should either side fail to meet their end of the deal. After all, it also seems normal that a worker should not have to work if their boss does not pay them.
So I don't think these examples are strictly coercive, even though I could think of many ways such situations can become coercive or immoral. For example, if a side alters the terms of the agreement knowing the other side is in no position to object. Or if one side acts with the foreknowledge that the other side will not be able to fulfill their end of the deal.
Note that in the case of government, there never was any such agreement. One is born involuntarily and made part of a state without one's consent.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think this is true.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Until humanity loses its desire to force its will upon others (a distant, distant utopia), I think anarchy can achieve only chaos until the power vacuum is inevitably filled up and new governments are formed.
However, powerful governments are something I am strongly opposed to (unless it is somehow based on strict consensuality between it and its subjects!). As we've discussed, while I can accept governments as a necessary evil in the absence of a better alternative, I see their power as illegitimate. Power has a tendency to consolidate, grow and corrupt; none of these things I wish to see happen to something I find undesirable in the first place.
Furthermore, a look at history warns us of the dangers of powerful governments. We tend to forget that when we say much blood has been spilled in the name of religion and ideology, all of those wars have a common denominator.
The choice between coercion by the individual and coercion by government is an interesting one, but there's not a doubt in my mind that the evils committed by individuals are utterly dwarfed by the evils committed by governments.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think this is true, but I also think it is a very interesting discussion in its own right. This reply is already getting a bit more lengthy than I had intended, but maybe we can come back to this at some later point.
Quoting Pfhorrest
That feeling is mutual!
This is interesting but unclear what exactly what you mean. Could you elaborate?
I'm talking about wars, atrocities, that sort of thing.
Okay war, I just looked up some quick estimates and it looks like there were over 16k reported murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases in the U.S. in 2018. 15 Americans were killed in the Afgan war in 2018. What am I missing?
If you look at the 20th century the numbers killed by government are beyond enormous - more than even the worst murderers could dream of. I think that's what Tzeentch means.
@Tzeentch I've always found the phrase "necessary evil" a little puzzling. Evil is really a religious word, and if you examine it religiously it really can never be necessary. Like if a doctor needs to cut off a man's arm because otherwise he'd die due to frostbite we might reflexively call this a "necessary evil" but there's really nothing evil about it - it's entirely necessary. If on the other hand the doctor just randomly cut off the man's arm for no apparent reason, yes, we'd call that evil. The evil lies in the complete lack of sense or necessity. Just something to think about.
So is there any actual data to back up this claim? And are we talking about all governments everywhere? If so, what exactly constitutes a government?
Do we really need to bring in the numbers killed by Stalin and Mao? Hitler?
The true voluntariety of these agreements is something that socialists generally dispute, as there generally is not a reasonable alternative for many people besides to accept one of several largely indistinguishable bad deals. I don't want to rent from anybody, for instance, but my only practical options are to rent a house from somebody, or rent money from the bank with which to mortgage a house from somebody. I don't want to do any of those things, but I don't have enough money to do none of them, so I pick the one that sucks the least. "Your money or your life" is still a choice, but "your life" is not a reasonable choice, which is what makes that "choice" actually coercion.
There's also a question of what kind of agreements (contracts) should be valid to begin with. Presumably you would object to an agreement to do whatever somebody else tells you to in perpetuity, i.e. a contract selling oneself into slavery. Unlike most socialists, who reject property and contracts entirely, this is the approach that I take, to reconcile both of those with socialism and equality. I think that there are exceptions to the power to contract, just like there are exceptions to the claim against aggression, in both cases in the reflexive case: the claim against aggression has an exception for people who are themselves aggressing -- I can't attack you and then claim you have no right to fight me off -- and the power to contract has an exception for contracts regarding contractual terms, such as the agreement to do whatever you tell me to in the future, or an agreement to allow you to do something with me or my property (which, being my property, I have a right to exclude you from) whether I like it or not in the future. That last bit means that, among other things, contracts of rent (including interest, which is rent on money) are invalid: "I'll let you use my property" isn't a thing that can be a term of a contract, so you can't contractually owe me money for that "service".
That does mean I can kick you out of the house I was letting you live in... but it also means I have no use for that house that I'm not living in, since I can't contractually obligate anyone to pay me to live there, since I can't legally owe them the right to live there... without just making it their property, that is. So in lieu of being able to rent it out, I would have no better choice but to sell it... and nobody else will be buying it for a rental property, since they can't rent it out either... so I can only manage to sell it on terms that people who would otherwise be renters could afford.
I think that that revision to which contracts are valid would have far-reaching effects that basically incentivize people not to own things besides for their own use, and so achieve socialist ends -- the owners of things are the users of things -- without actually having to directly reassign ownership.
Typical site user, praxis. I am not struggling with what you claim I struggle with. You, like almost all other users on this site, like to paraphrase my statements into making the argument entirely Strawman.
I am struggling with the question "why and how is freedom a necessary part of being responsible?" This is my question to you, as you claim that the lack of freedom removes the burden of responsibility. I can't answer this question; you can, since you outright insinuated the necessity of freedom in resposible behaviour.
Praxis, it is always easy to attribute to your argumenting opposition something he or she did not say, and then defeat that Strawman or make fun of it.
I suggest you stop doing that. Of course you don't have to stop doing that only because I say so. You have the freedom to say whatever occurs to you.
I like this.
Evil causes suffering. (So does God, but let's not get sidetracked.) Hence, any suffering is caused by evil. (Other than the ones caused by God.) Getting frostbitten or frozen to the point of needing to amputate an arm, is evil. Evil = bad.
One might say bad is only evil if there is intent behind it, or done with malice aforethought. Bad is only evil, when one has a freedom of choice to not cause suffering, yet one does. Well, frostbites are done with malice aforethought. If creation did not include frostbites caused by cold weather, then there would be no frosbites. Therefore the thought that preceded the frostbite and caused it was the part of creation, which I assume is a conscious act by God.
With a little mental muscle-work, all bad things can be proven to be evil. And yes, if you believe that there is evil, then you subscribe to religious views, as evil is a term of religious ideation.
I am mostly on board with this, however I think there's a large grey area between what is unreasonable and what people find personally undesirable. Furthermore, we can have a discussion about what the remedy should be.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I struggle to understand why a contract that is voluntarily agreed upon by two mentally capable individuals would be deemed invalid, except for perhaps contracts that result in direct physical harm (or are made under threat thereof). Is this to protect individuals from their own bad decisions?
Such pre-emptive actions are a slippery slope for me.
And what of my involuntary contract with my government? This type of stance must have some implications for that too.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Maybe you could elaborate a bit further on this, because I don't think I fully understand what you mean. Should everything I have no use for then belong to someone who does have a use for it?
I used the term rather liberally here to describe something which is undesirable but necessary to prevent a worse situation from occuring.
Sticking with your analogy though, it is worth considering whether the doctor's actions can be considered evil when made without the consent (or perhaps with express objection) of the man. The doctor may think he knows what is best for the man, but if the man disagrees then on what basis should his arm be cut off anyway?
Good point, if the mods screened all my posts for logical fallacies and deleted any they found then I wouldn’t have the choice of be being irresponsible in that way. However, they do allow a margin of freedom, in fact, so it is up to us to be responsible.
Does this example help you understand?
So apparently we are talking about all governments everywhere. So what qualifies as a government? Is a corporation a kind of government? A drug cartel? Organized crime? Any organization with a governing body?
I'm just talking about states here. I'm not including drug cartels, organized crime, or corporations in this count.
It’s basically a matter of one’s power to contract (or not) being inalienable. Nobody has the power to agree to agree (or not) to any change of rights or ownership, such as by agreeing not to enter into other contracts (as in non-compete agreements), or agreeing to accept whatever terms the other party later dictates (as in selling oneself into slavery, or as in the "social contract" sometimes held to justify a state's right to rule), or agreeing to grant someone a temporary liberty upon certain conditions ("selling" someone the temporary use of your property, as in contracts of rent or interest; letting someone do something is not itself doing something).
In short, the power to contract must be limited to the simple trade of goods and services, and cannot create second-order obligations between people that place one person in a position of ongoing power over another person.
Quoting Tzeentch
Both the usual type of socialist and I say yes. The differences between us are in how that comes about. The usual type of socialist says basically that use just is ownership, so something you’re not using just doesn’t belong to you.
I say instead that the legal framework ought to be such that there is no incentive to own things you aren’t using, i.e. there should be no way to profit simply from ownership, leaving the most profit you can get from it as just the proceeds from the sale of it. And since nobody else has motive to buy something they’re not going to use themselves, the market you would have to sell to would only be people who have a use for it. So making absentee ownership not profitable encourages the voluntary transfer of property from those who have more than they need for their own use to those who have less than they need for their own use.
Okay, just the sates and just American deaths by war vs individuals in the 20th century.
Roughly half a million Americans were killed in war during the 20th century.
Say there are only 10k murders per year in the states during the 20th century, that comes to one million and twice the number of those killed in war.
What am I missing?
We need to expand our discussion outside of the US. We're lucky to be living in the US, at least compared to other nations. Other states are not so kind.
Stalin killed around 1 million of his own citizens in the span of a year or two during the purges of the late 30s. There were other purges too. We're talking in the tens of millions killed by both Stalin and Mao and that's only over the course of their regimes - around 25-30 years each. The craziest individual murderers aren't remotely capable of setting up a vast secret police force that can abduct anyone in the middle of the night because they're an acquaintance of a suspected traitor or cut off the food supply to an entire region that they suspect could become disloyal.
Because this is a very serious humanitarian issue, the question for you is, how were they able to accomplish this?
That's a good question and I can't give a detailed answer because I'm not a historian but there are plenty of good books on it. I think the short answer is that with Stalin at least he'd murder anyone even remotely suspected of disloyalty. He was the state and he completely consolidated power. I wish I knew more about the specifics.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Thinking about how to explain this more clearly helped me come up with a... well, a clearer way of explaining it, which is very useful for me for my philosophy book where I write about this stuff, so thanks again for this conversation.
This explanation depends on the precise technical terms used in a Hohfeldian analysis of rights, so I'll quote an earlier post from myself in this thread first, where I summarize those:
Quoting Pfhorrest
The limitation on the claim to property is already well-understood and I think agreed upon here: you can't call foul when someone else coerces you into not coercing someone, as in if they're fighting back against you attacking them; your claim against trespass upon your body is waived to the extent necessary to stop you from trespassing upon someone else's.
It's the analogous limit on the power to contract that's at issue here, and the clearer explanation of that that I just came up with is:
Those limits have far-reaching implications on many kinds of things, but their specific implication on rent and interest is that you don't have to power to take on an obligation to permit someone to use your property -- so long as it is your property, you have the right to decide whether or not someone is permitted to use it, and you can't take on an obligation to permit it, except by making it no longer your property, and therefore not subject to your permission at all. Since you can't take on an obligation to permit the use of your property, you can't sell such an obligation to someone; which means you can't rent out your property. You can allow someone to use your property, and they can give you money, but they can't validly buy a right to use your property against your future will, which makes the whole institution of rent completely insecure and unfeasible as a widespread economic instrument.
The natural alternatives to it in a free market have the socialist consequences already explained earlier.
This might possibly have been the situation in 2017(statistics for crimes among immigrants is a politically hot potato) but sadly, things have been worsening since then. The number of robberies where immigrant kids rob ”indigneous” kids have doubled and are now nearing 2000 every year. The robberies are getting more and more brutal too, urinating, beating and even raping. This is highly alarming. ”Indigneous” kids who do not have parents that can arrange for special schools are also systematically bullied by immigrant kids. Bombs exploded in houses where many people lives is also something that do not affect only the intended targets, member of rivalling gangs.
Believe me, the situation is very very bad, has worsen dramatically last years.
So the evils committed by individuals are not utterly dwarfed by the evils committed by governments.
Could you elaborate? If we're going by the combined death toll of the Maoist government, Stalinist government, and Nazi regime you're gonna need quite a few Ted Bundies to reach those levels. Criminals/murderers don't come anywhere close.
Many nations are unlike the regimes that you mention, therefore it can't be said that the evils committed by individuals are utterly dwarfed by the evils committed by governments.
Good governance don't cancel out evil, it's like if you had a dad who's a good guy like 95% of the time but the other 5% he's a genocidal maniac and kills millions. It would be stupid to say "oh well he's mostly good therefore we can excuse the rest." Again, I'm not saying that all states are evil but if we do an actual body count of the numbers killed by states and the numbers killed by non-states it's not even close. I'm not saying every state is bad, just that the state - with its centralization of power - is a major, major vulnerability if it falls into the wrong hands.
Remember that you are talking to Americans and for them a bad crime situation is something totally else than in Sweden as there bad crime areas are really bad (if the US homicide rate is about 5, in Chicago it's 23).
Notice where the US and Sweden are on this statistics:
Crime levels are 28% higher in the US than Sweden (see here) The rape statistics and overall crime rate seems to be higher, but I would take these stats with a grain of salt as the stats may be not well comparable. Especially the rape statistics:
Understand what? I thought it had been ME who had been trying make you understand something.
LIttle wonder neither of us has any understanding of the other's point. We've both been speaking without listening. (I speak for myself and for myself only... you got into the two immediately previous sentences as collateral damage.)
I attended a rape case in court where the man was convicted because he did not pull out of his wife when she complained of pain. No means no in Canada.
Also, minors are statutory rape in the USA, in Canada it's a convoluted issue; if both are under 18, then the man is not allowed to be three years or more older than the woman, under 14 it's an absolute no-no, if the man is 18 or over, the woman can't be a minor, if the consent is given under influence of drugs or alcohol or threat or beating or threat of getting excommunicated by a priest, clergyman or ~woman, a spiritual guide, a dervish, an imam, a rabbi, the Dalai Lama, and/or a shaman midwife, tombstone ripper, or seance leader, (a medium), then it's invalid. Furthermore, aside from intercourse, for the purposes of rape, there are more positions (non-intercoursual) defined than in the Kama Sutra. A person who has sex with a person who is in a dependent position, such as a patient, a student, a subordinate at work, a son, a daughter, a grandson, a granddaughter, a charge, a foster kid, is not always rape, but draw severe penalties, such as losing a licence or getting expelled from a professional position. (Hookers (i.e. in a professional position) are generally very exempt of this.)
Then they did away with rape, and called it sexual assault.
Interstingly, the only reverse sexual assault cases that come up are when a female teacher loses her head and takes on a male student of hers as lover. Only 0.00000000001% of those ever get to court, as 99.9999999999991% of these instances are never reported. (I, myself, passed third year calculus only via excessively fantasizing about my calculus teacher. To her credit (an mine, obviously) she never knew about the issue.)
If it falls into the hands of the wrong individuals. This is why democracy is the best form of government for the people because it tends to be resistant to the concentration of power.
The example that illustrates the relationship between freedom and responsibility.
I agree with you on the democracy part.
You're kind of arguing more in line with a perspective associated with the right/libertarian side of the coin here when you describe events more as individuals acting as opposed to groups/organizations. I'm not saying that you're wrong; anyone can describe events in various different ways.
If I were to get audited by the IRS I could describe it that way or I could say "John B. Smith audited me today." Neither is wrong per se.
It is worth noting that Stalin, and likely Mao and also Hitler, didn't personally murder anyone. With Stalin at least it was often done through lists which were then passed down through the ranks, and yes, while the actual executioner was often some low level security forces member it seems a little superficial to me - but not technically wrong - to describe, say, the execution of a Stalinist purge victim as, say, "Yuri Bogdanov, KGB sergeant, shot X, Y, and Z in the basement of a KGB office." Yes it's true but there's no description of the system behind it - the list concocted by Stalin, the show trials by the legal system, etc. etc.
Don't get me wrong, I love attributing things to individuals and I'm a firm believer in individual responsibility. Maybe this is the beginning of my slow progression to leftism.
I don't see how. My understanding is that those on the right generally believe that government is prone to corruption and not good at managing the economy, so it should be kept as small as possible. The problem with this is that individuals not in government, who have economic power, take advantage of their power at the expense of those without power. They monopolize, pollute, don't practice fair labor standards, etc, etc.
Labor only has collective power and ideally, the government facilitates their collective power. If the government favors capital, as it does now in the States, labor loses power and the rich get richer, the rate of environmental degradation increases, and the economy becomes less stable.
In my opinion, the more educated tend to lean left because their priorities are different compared to those who hold more conservative views. For example, academics are less likely to own or manage businesses directly, so they are less concerned with having lower taxes and less regulations that would make it easier to start and sustain a business.
This is very old data. Death by shootings has increased dramatically. But what really make people jam into the nazi-root nationalist party(SD) is the robberys, harrassment, explosions committed by immigrant root people. The political situation is terrible.
Having spent last 20 year in the nicer part of towns and with substantial contact with people from different "better" families, actually married into such a family(which one may say, I should have had this conversation done with years ago but... my new relatives do not want to talk about it. Their leftness is God given...) , it is definitely more sublime. Neighbours that run their own businesses, resents immigrants and taxes are highly scolared, and can take part in any intellectual discussion.
No. This is more sublime. Something like after the enlightment and the french revolution, when the Romanticism flourished. There is something Che Guevarish about especially young people. No one wants solutions. As for immigrants, Much like what God Must Be Atheist kind of says above, "maybe it will get better in 50 years..." and for environmental matters its like "we must find a new lifestyle". There is always something romantic. And not only with the young people. Especially ladys who had their hey days around 68 are spamming facebook flows with "open our hearts" and "find new lifestyle" while the guys going to SD, our semi-nazi party are constantly posting liks to newspaper with crimes committed by immigrant root people and do like the ostrich when CO2 emissions are mentioned.
People seem not to want to acknowledge problems as problems. And bloody difficult problems. Problems that need solutions. And problems where it is wise to go about carefully. As a person that absolutely hate SD, the nationalistic party I would NEVER say that a generous admittance of refugees or immigrants should be allowed, integration MUST work. And I would never say that "there is no CO2 threat, there are scientists saying otherwise bla bla". The romantic left disappeared when the yuppie years arrived and were happily gone until last 10-15 year or so. Now there are posh "activists" all over the place. I feel no need for activism. I feel need for difficult problems handled in a careful manner. General rule - keep the daytime working classes in a position where they feel reasonably safe. And you can do a lot. But those guys don't want revolutions. Che was a medical student...
"Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish: [?t?e ?e??a?a];[3] 14 June 1928[4] – 9 October 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has bome a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.[5]
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed...."
Our social democrat Prime Minister(Stadsminister) Olof Palme, murdered 1986, the deed, committed on a Stockholm street shocked everyone has the same story. From the noblesse, spent his summers in a castle close to where my blackmith grandfather spent his summer in the standard the working class workers from town spent their summers, in a shed that the fishermen rented to the workers of the town.
Palme, a good social democrat traveled eg the USA and saw people who were even worse off than the Swedish workers(who had few "under them") . Palme did NOT become a revolutionary, but during the 68 movement he spoke highly of the revolutionarys around the world, and he is kind of the archetype for swedish activists. Greta is just another one. Good oratory skills (you learn that in a posh family), ends to which almost all in principle agrees to, but no plan for how to accomplish the ends, a fuzzy wish for a revolution, and a deeply romantic aura... This does not seem like something that would attract an intelligent youngster from a scolared family. One should think that people like that would appreciate the complexity of a problem, and act with the care and political delicacy. Yes, CO2 emissions levels are bad. Yes, its bad that people are stuck in conflicts in the middle east, Somalia. But what to do about it?
And most important - how do a person from a well-to-do academic family end up being left leaning? The guys that happen to take a journey to poor mans land? Still a mystery, and noone want to give an answer. I don't buy "the good guys".
What makes the Swedish system so terrible is the fact that this hugely popular nationalist party has it founding members were neonazis, and hence all the other parties flatly reject the party and have nothing to do with it. This might sound great, but isn't. If the populist cause and criticism against the lax immigration policies of is only driven by one "fringe" party, it obviously makes things worse.
Here I have to say that luckily Finland has avoided this inability trap, at least for now. Here the "True Finns" rose to popularity and did join the previous administration and got ministerial posts, starting from the position of foreign minister and defence minister. And then came the European Migrant Crisis. Once Sweden started to shut down it's borders, then a wave of immigrants landed in Finland from Sweden. I can just guess what would have politically happened if the True Finns party wouldn't have been in the government back then, but in the opposition and the administration had been made of a leftist-centrist government: even if the policies would have been exactly the same, the public outcry would have been naturally worse. Still, just being in the government at this crucial time made the True Finns to divide into two, with the old leadership starting a new party, which ended in disaster for them in the next elections for them. Yet unlike in Sweden (I guess), the anti-immigrant agenda wasn't treated as outrageous and totally politically-incorrect discourse by other parties from the start, even with the Social Democratic Party accepting that there have to be limitations on immigration and immigration had negative consequences.
Quoting praxis
I was just commenting on your tendency to try to reduce organizations (the state in this case) to the level of the individual. This is a common theme for libertarians, although they tend to do with society and not so much the state, though I suppose the state is possible. Many libertarians, in principle, are against monopolies, pollution and unfair treatment of labor it's just a matter of how best to resolve these things. I don't really feel like getting into a debate on libertarianism here I was more just commenting on something I find a little interesting.
Ssu, I guess we are neighbours on the world map. Your post is most intereresting. And what you say is in line with my observations from the other coast of the Baltic Sea.
To connect to the subject: It is not only in the immigration question Finland has outperformed Sweden this millenia. Also in handling of education, schools, teachers appreciation Finland is famous for its good education while Sweden goes down the drain PISA result wise.
Finland is supposedly doing things right there too. The schools are also a hot potato in Sweden, but in this case both the left and the right are accusing each other. And in both cases one can see elite projects stemming from people being born in upper class academical families.
Schooling is surprisingly rightist in a sense here in Sweden compared to other European countries. Private schools are allowed and get state funding. Schools that are allowed to make profit. Sweden had Right wing government during the 00-s and some really neo-liberal projects were launched.
I can see the same tendency here as I see in stuff like immigration and Global warming discussion. Young people from well-to-do academical families pushing for things where most people generally agree that this is a serious matter, but they push very hard, and in a romantic fashion. One get the picture of kids growing up in omnipotence - not having had to cope with consequences, treating serious questions as a means to give an answer to the eternal upper class question - "what do I want to do with my life". Very seldom the answer is - Get a daytime job and make sure I take responsibility for myself. WhiIch is the message my life as a lower, non-academic, middle class had as a must. Noone asked for goals in life. Does this makes sense?
Let's remember that the first huge wave of immigrants and migrant workers that Sweden endured came from here and something well over half a million or so people in Sweden are of Finnish heritage. I've always have thought that the Swedish acceptance to an open doors policy came from this era as influx of foreigners, many of whom spoke Swedish as their mother tongue, didn't create huge social problems, but was great for the economy. Only the last decade with the European migrant crisis that open door policy was changed.
How Sweden changed it's policies:
As there are totally open borders between the Nordic countries (if I would move to Stockholm, the only thing I would have to change my address) you can see that once there aren't huge difference in prosperity among countries, immigration is not in any way a problem and there's not hostility against other Nordic people.
Finnish school system was great few years ago, to the surprise of even of those in charge of the schooling system, but the PISA results has gone down now. The cause is mainly because of budget cutbacks. An interesting thing (noted by a green party member of Parliament) is that the PISA data is gathered only from schools that have also foreign born students, and not all of Finnish origin. Still, if you would look at only schools the capital area, the results would be somewhere close to the Singapore level.
Quoting Ansiktsburk
Well, still Sweden is the land of European social democracy, where the socialists are happy to milk the cow of capitalism and while they do that keeping the cow in a leash, they do also take care of it that it doesn't die. Right wing rule for some time doesn't change the institutions. It is something that Americans have a trouble to understand, because it's basically what the Bernie Sander's version democratic socialism (a.k.a. social democracy) would be about. It wouldn't result in Venezuela, but Swedenization of the US. Pro's and con's with that alternative, objectives achieved for some, horror for others.
”What I like about my madness is that it has protected me from the very beginning against the charms of the "elite": never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a "talent"; my sole concern has been to save myself—nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeve—by work and faith. As a result, my pure choice did not raise me above anyone. Without equipment, without tools, I set allofmetoworkinordertosaveallofme.If I relegate impossible Salvation to the proproom, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any”
This gives som clues , after all.
Hey Jean-Paul! Being brought up at the Schweizers you ARE elite, and will never be anything else. Sitting in cafés daytime weekdays people from humbler backgrounds seldom do.
And hey, If you have talent or not - you will never know. Living in a house with a personal library and only attending an elite school in Paris...
what I should want to know - the years in La Rochelle, and the years as a teacher - what did that contribute with. A bit like Wittgenstein after having solved all earthly problems and heading for the alps. I sincerely believe Sartre was a h*ll of a much better teacher. But what do they know about having talent and being raised in a daytime job area?
I think, their greatest hommage should be to those kids. But what Sartre was striving for was a country where the talented kids from the villages and banlieus had as much hell as possible. And his own elite free space to fulfil their dreams.