Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by August Spies
LP:
Ah paying for protection, oh for the days of the mafia.

Big difference--with the mafia you are paying for protection from them rather than the bad guys.

Really though, how does this compare to insurance? Insurance companies DO NOTHING until after an accident. So that is fine, you go afterwords and collect.

Correct--and police normally do nothing until a crime is committed or is suspected of being committed.

Police are supposed to stop crimes before they happen or in progress. How does this work? When someone is about to rob me I quickly call my police company? if another company's cop was around he would just walk away?

As I said, it can't handle patrol situations very well yet. (You would probably see some cooperation in patrolling--you help my clients if I help yours.) Thus I don't think society is quite ready for it yet.

August Spies

to quote gurdur;

Autonemesis

I assure you, my libertarian-bashing is always sensible.

Funny, that's my take on your gaffe. Imagine that. Let's see if we can figure out who really is confused.

Strictly speaking, we don't consider falsehoods to be facts. Once falsified, we regard incorrect data as errors, not as "false facts." Your choice of words "actual reality" also gives me a little chuckle, in the same way that the phrase "true facts" does. Is there any other kind of reality, besides the actual reality? Is there any other kind of fact, besides the true fact? I don't think so.

I value precision when discussing these matters. One of the things I notice often about writings in defense of libertarianism, is this sort of lack of precision. Of course, I note that about a lot of writing in defense of a lot of things, but libertarians seem to take liberty (tee-hee) with word meanings in a more obvious (ham-handed?) way than some other propagandists do.

There are civilizations in history that have used numbering systems that had no concept of zero. Since you put the Objective Morality in the same class of concepts as the Zero, then the conclusion I must draw from that is that objective morality - according to your concept of it - is not necessary for a correct morality, any more than the zero is necessary for a correct numbering system. Do you agree? Or do you wish to modify your comparison?

The word used in your list of principles was "perceive" not "pursue" one's own happiness. That changes the meaning of that principle a lot, to switch the words like you did just now. Do libertarians feel free to take liberty with language, too?

But are not these questions the basic problems for which morality was conceived to provide the answers for? If these basic questions are entirely subjective, then your objective morality can hardly address them. Some moral system this is - all the difficult questions just get "un-asked!" That seems to me to be the thrust of libertarianism: "un-asking" all the big, difficult questions facing a complex society.

But nowhere in your list of principles is any of this addressed. There is no way I can discern to figure out what is reasonable and what is not, given just the principles you listed. So I submit that you have just admitted that your libertarian principles are not a sufficient basis to govern society.

Why not? If global warming occurs as a result of the actions of a moral agent - a person - then what does the timescale by which the consequences play out have to do with whether harm has been done, and reparations are called for?

If I launch a rocket and deflect a small asteroid to strike your property five hundred years from now, am I off scot-free because the harm isn't immediate, and may be reparable before it occurs? What if you can't afford to launch a rocket of your own to deflect the asteroid somewhere else? You won't suffer any harm from my actions during your lifetime. The asteroid won't hit for another half millenium. How is this imaginary situation any different from the global warming problem, with respect to property rights, and definitions of harm under your libertarian principles?

What if they simply like to be cruel? What if they enjoy watching others suffer? What if they make enough profit off of the few who pony up for a little bit of the food, to make up for the costs of producing all of the food, even though most of it goes to waste? Who are you to question whether they are wise or not to waste their food? It's their food, mind your own business.... right?

But according to your libertarian principles, there is no call for me to be rational. There is only the call for me to exercise my property rights. You mention guarding my food takes resources. Are you suggesting that maybe my libertarian fellow-citizens might not respect my property rights if I use them to show cruelty? I thought these rights were objective?

There is no call for reasonableness in your list of principles. Not all of us are reasonable. Very many of us are quite often not reasonable at all. Of course, "being reasonable" is a matter of subjective opinion, isn't it? So a large part of what would make your objective libertarian principles work, depends on the subjective interpretation of how far to take those principles by the members of the society living under them.

So much for objectivity. How is this any different from what we live with now? We in the USA have a Constitution which spells out how far is too far, but this constitution is subject to interpretation. I submit your libertarian principles are subject to the same treatment by any society that adopts them, and so they are no more objective than the current interpretatiion by the courts, same as with the Constitution.

This is a totally unsubstantiated figure. I believe it would turn out to be quite a bit more than 1 percent. I don't have anything to back up this hunch, but then we're on the same footing, so no foul.

But you have already agreed that interference with trade or the use of one's property may be perpetrated by a person or a group under certain conditions. The decision on when those conditions have obtained depend on people being "reasonable" in the application and exercise of their rights.

The question leads back again and again to "what is reasonable" but your list of principles offers no guidance on this point. You leave it up to people to be reasonable, but how can this be anything but subjective, or even arbitrary?

But according to this doctrine, society could decide that less force will be needed to contain crime to a tolerable level, if the working citizens are taxed to provide food and shelter to the poor, thereby removing the need for many criminals to initiate force to obtain the means to survive. And there is nothing in your libertarian principles that argues against that.

Once again, I fail to see how libertarian principles of yours are necessarily more or less correct than any other set of principles for governing society.

Really? It is up for debate whether people need food to live? I must have missed that thread. Are we unable to medically determine when a person is malnourished? People cannot satisfy themselves on a collective basis? This is a surprise to me. I guess large-scale farming and HMOs were both a bad idea after all. Maybe we should go back to a hunter-gatherer society?

John Hancock

I've been offline for a few days, catching up with posts that I hadn't read, found such a jungle gym of semantics. I've been compelled to go book marking my Webster's. Many thanks to August Spies for all ready posting definitions that I'd have to have start this post with.

Real objects must exist outside of an individuals mind. They can well be contained within the enviormental mind of a specie. "Survival of the species" would be the objective moral basis upon which all goverments need to be based in order to form a "moral contract" with their subjects.

This "moral contract" would be the subjective laws as formulated via intersubjective input.

Of course a less reasoning goverment could be form by a more porcine "individuals are get all they can; to hell with the rest" concept which of course would invalidate the concept of "moral contract". Our nation's corporate shopping mall is such a goverment and leads me to conclude that human extinction won't take more 500 years time. Libertarianism only appears to be an excerbating fact in the mankind's headlong rush into oblivion.
:banghead:
Martin Buber

99Percent

Kind Bud: Its a pleasure answering to you

To strict subjectivists there is no such thing as a "true" fact. Absolute truth is a freightening thought for them.This is a discussion board. I do not take hours to respond and make very precise and thoughtful replies sometimes. Don't be such a precisionist here. We are not a peer review lets-see-who-gets-the-noble-prize group.You would have to agree that a zero based numbering system makes mathematics a lot more simpler. Likewise objectively derived ethics makes civilization much more rewarding and fruitful. Just because not everyone can understand the principle of objective morality does it mean that objective morality does not exist. It simply requires a higher level of consciousness and understanding (I can already predict the rolleye responses). For example, for millenia Eistein's theory of relativity was completely even remotely unthinkable, yet some guy thought of it and now its practically established science. Likewise with libertarian principles, for 99.99% of humankind's existence (August Spies figures here) we lived in a tribal, communal existence yet it wasn't even 200+ years ago that the principles of libertarian government were discovered and tried to be implemented with the U.S. constitution.

The lack of timeness of the ideas does in no way discard their validity.

I fail to see how it changes the principles. Humans both can only individually perceive and pursue their happiness. I perceive a bit of desperate nickpickiness on your part. I hope, for the sake of this discussion, I am wrong in this respect.No, because the objective morality I am addressing of which I think some of the major players of this discussion have not seen, is that which pertains to societal concerns. There is also individual morality of which is an entirely different problem altogether. In individual ethics, its up to the individual to resolve them of course, but we are talking about a political system, and therefore objective morality of which a political system must be based upon. This is a much broader issue where the concerns of individual free will must be taken into account in the first place. In other words what is objective is not individual values, but the conceptual fact that individuals have the choice to choose individual values!They must be objectively be deternible. Global warming is a phenomenom that cannot be done so, unfortunately, and therefore outside the realm of government because government can only and exclusively act upon objectivity or else its just a circus or a pretext for favoritism, mercantilism and nepotism at best and blatant corruption at worst.This is a problem of identifying intentionality of crime. Much like plotting to murder your enemy. This can still be objectively determined by courts of law. No mystery here, regardless of the time frame.Right. Unfortunately for your scenario, irrationality is not productive. Those who simply like to be cruel, would be quickly stamped out by those who like to make a decent profit, even if marginal. You need to make cold assessment of our human nature. If we were as cruel as you portray we are then we would not have survived this long. We are a social animal after all. Its simply that our social nature cannot be institutionalized without corrupting it because our socialness is subjective, it cannot be objectively identified and/or forced into laws and governement despite our noble pretensions.For example. "Cruelty" itself is entirely subjective. When I discipline my son, he perceives it as cruelty in his subjective state, but in my own subjective interpretation I am making him stronger for his own good. Who the heck is to establish what is "cruel" in societal relationships?The escape clause is that irrationality by its nature cannot survive. It self destructs, like trying to find the square root of a negative number.Society does not and cannot determine what is good or what is "need". Only the individual can. Its an important thing to understand.No, it really is up for debate, and only the individual can decide really is how much food is needed to live. And also how much shelter, how much entertainment, how much education, how much health, how much security, etc. This is because all these matters are entirely subjective, and that is an objective reality.

August Spies

you can say that again. :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

99Percent

Sorry August, I take that back - I should have said days, instead of hours, dammit, days, days to respond.

Autonemesis

Several of the questions I raised are straying far off topic, so let me apologize and try to stay closer to the libertarian principles you listed. It seems to me that you are trying to claim that those principles, or the objective morality they are based on, are true in the same sense that mathematical theorems are true, or that they exist, or they are a fact of nature, in the same sense that the number zero exists or is a fact of mathematics. I was trying to figure out if you were actually claiming that sort of thing, and after re-reading your reply and previous posts, it seems to me that you are.

Einstein's theory applied to atoms and photons and spacetime even before he thought of it, in the sense that it described the universe as it existed even before Einstein discovered the theory. In your view, does objective morality and libertarian principles apply to relations in human societies in the same way? If so, then I think that's a pretty extraordinary claim, so forgive my incredulity.

I get that part. But I am not so sure the ancient Egyptians, or Babylonians, or even Greeks would have a clue. This is why I don't agree that your objective morality is at all objective in the way you claim it to be.

August Spies

99percent:

do you believe that libertarinism would have worked at almost every point in history? that it would have worked in tribal societies? In ancient grease? in France and Germany during the industrial revolution after Britian had got ahead? in Tsarist russia?

If you do not believe it would have worked in every instance I dont' believe you can call the theory objective, unless you want to claim it is the last step in the evolution of human society.

Feather

It always amuses me when philosophers of any sort attempt to lend credibility to their arguments by making the (false) analogy to the evolution of understanding of physics and science in general.

Noting that the sciences use logic to understand observation and then reversing the process (using logic to determine reality) does not a good philosophy make.

One can make any number of perfectly valid logic arguments. If the arguments don't "stand up" under the fire of actual observation, though, they're meaningless. Libertarians are guilty of making many meaningless arguments (the "invisible hand" which they've bastardized being one of the most obvious and overused arguments of theirs).