Heteronomous ethics is an oxymoron.
See here.
Well, I judge things based on the results not on the intention of the actor. And apparently, I can’t judge people based on the means they use because they are rational if the person thinks they are. But I can judge the ends. But I don’t care about moralism or ethics, what I’m concerned with is results. Apparently, the results tell us nothing about the means in terms of rationality, only in terms of effectiveness or ineffectiveness. So technically, a murderer is rational in that he kills because that’s what he wants to do and perhaps he’s even effective at his task, he’s just being unethical. But what if he thinks he was being ethical? Then murder becomes a gray area. Unless there’s a god who can authoritatively say that certain things are objectively right and wrong. But there’s no God, so it’s all fuzziness and gray. This is what makes me nervous.
we would have to hear his arguments in trying to state his case. this would involve him in a performative contradiction, and then we can put aside his claim to an alternate ethics and he will be understood to have performed an evil act.
Unless you think that a God is necessary for the possibility of rational argumentation then God is not necessary for interpersonal norms. i.e. ethics.
Why not incorporate both?
How does that mean you can’t judge people based on the means they use?
In an economic sense.
Yes.
What if someone thinks that 2 + 2 = 5?
Non sequitur.
“State or government is the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion. It has the monopoly of violent action. No individual is free to use violence or the threat of violence if the government has not accorded this right to him. The state is essentially an institution for the preservation of peaceful interhuman relations. However, for the preservation of peace it must be prepared to crush the onslaughts of peace-breakers.”
Exactly what I think.
“Liberalism realizes that the rulers, who are always a minority, cannot lastingly remain in office if not supported by the consent of the majority of those ruled. Whatever the system of government may be, the foundation upon which it is built and rests is always the opinion of those ruled that to obey and to be loyal to this government better serves their own interests than insurrection and the establishment of another regime.”
Agreed.
“Democracy is therefore not a revolutionary institution. On the contrary, it is the very means of preventing revolutions and civil wars. It provides a method for the peaceful adjustment of government to the will of the majority. When the men in office and their policies no longer please the majority of the nation, they will?–in the next election?–be eliminated and replaced by other men espousing different policies.”
Agreed.
“But they believe that a man’s ability to rule proves itself better by convincing his fellow-citizens than by using force upon them. There is, of course, no guarantee that the voters will entrust office to the most competent candidate. But no other system could offer such a guarantee. If the majority of the nation is committed to unsound principles and prefers unworthy office-seekers, there is no remedy other than to try to change their mind by expounding more reasonable principles and recommending better men. A minority will never win lasting success by other means.”
Agreed.
You go from trying to link action and ethics together, and then you essentially say that ethics necessitates determinism.
I hope you can atleast figure out the error in thinking here.
No, what I’m saying is that ethics must be relative if human action is relative. Because we have no objective way to view either one.
“All varieties of collectivist creeds are united in their implacable hostility to the fundamental political institutions of the liberal system: majority rule, tolerance of dissenting views, freedom of thought, speech, and the press, equality of all men under the law.”
But then he says:
“Today even many of those favoring democratic institutions ignore these ideas. The arguments they bring forward for the justification of freedom and democracy are tainted with collectivist errors; their doctrines are rather a distortion than an endorsement of true liberalism. In their eyes majorities are always right simply because they have the power to crush any opposition; majority rule is the dictatorial rule of the most numerous party, and the ruling majority is not bound to restrain itself in the exercise of its power and in the conduct of political affairs. As soon as a faction has succeeded in winning the support of the majority of citizens and thereby attained control of the government machine, it is free to deny to the minority all those democratic rights by means of which it itself has previously carried on its own struggle for supremacy.”
I don’t think this is necessarily true, but basically he says the desired ends of democracy are good but the actual ends of democracy can be bad. So how do we judge democracy? By its desired ends or its actual ends?
"Liberalism, in its 19th century sense, is a political doctrine. It is not a theory, but an application of the theories developed by praxeology [p. 154] and especially by economics to definite problems of human action within society.
As a political doctrine liberalism is not neutral with regard to values and the ultimate ends sought by action. It assumes that all men or at least the majority of people are intent upon attaining certain goals. It gives them information about the means suitable to the realization of their plans. The champions of liberal doctrines are fully aware of the fact that their teachings are valid only for people who are committed to these valuational principles."
This is what I’m saying.
“Liberalism is rationalistic. It maintains that it is possible to convince the immense majority that peaceful cooperation within the framework of society better serves their rightly understood interests than mutual battling and social disintegration. It has full confidence in man’s reason. It may be that this optimism is unfounded and that the liberals have erred. But then there is no hope left for mankind’s future.”
“Convince the majority” but not everyone, As he says earlier, the state must exist to eliminate or at least use physical coercion against those who would oppose peaceful cooperation etc. This is why I’m a minarchist.
I’m not sure that you can go as far as to claim that the concept of “democracy” desires any particular end. There may be a number of individuals who believe that “democracy” leads to a better government, and for the short-run they are probably correct, but over the long-run democracies tend to turn into totalitarian regimes because the mechanism by which they work allows for this to occur. That is what that quote seems to be saying.
I’m not sure how you came to such a conclusion. Why is this so? If an individual who does not support liberalism does not have a monopoly on force, how can he efficiently deny me my liberty? When there is a State there is, by necessity, an entity which monopolizes force. Only this entity can efficiently deny me my liberty, so it would follow that the State is not the best possible method by which to protect liberty. In an anarchic society, where defense is privatized and localized, nobody has a monopoly on force and therefore nobody can efficiently coerce somebody else (in general, of course).
-
No.
-
Yes. The point is that the decision was rational at the instant it was made. Obviously, after the fact, he may regret his decision, but this may be because he has new information. Here is one example: say you want to pick up a girl at a bar. What is the best strategy to do it? What ever strategy you choose, as long as you think it will get you the girl, is rational. After the fact, you may realize that telling her that you want to make love to her right off the bat is perhaps not the best strategy. Then, you try a new strategy, perhaps, buying a few long islands.
-
I understand he’s saying that democracies can degenerate into totalitarian regimes. That doesn’t mean they always do. And ours hasn’t yet. It can be turned around by voting the right people into office. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing: getting the right people voted into office.
-
In my mind, the small amount of liberty you lose by having to obey a certain amount of majoritarian decided rules is worth that sacrifice because it pays off for all of us in the long run. However, there is a certain point where too much liberty is denied and at that point, we have to stand up and fight to have new people put in charge. That’s what I’m saying the libertarian party needs to do. And I don’t trust PDAs so I’d rather deny you a little liberty than take the risk of having everything denied by feudalistic governments take over. There is no way in the world that anyone could convince me that a private army would be safer than a public one. The public one hasn’t attacked me yet without just cause. If they do, I’ll become an anarchist.
Again, I ask you: does not the same apply to disagreeing with one thing about the state?
Mises was a Jewish too. So is Walter Block.
I don’t think so, I disagree with a lot of things about the current state but I don’t want to see the state abolished, I want to see it wound down.
But according to you guys, this means I’m not representing the true libertarian platform. Which means I shouldn’t be a part of the Libertarian Party.
You have stated that you believe the objective way is a god; however, ethics and action don’t belong anywhere near theological determinism. Unfortunately you ignored what I specifically referred to in the link, and have veered off into democracy junction.
Well, whether the United States has ever been totalitarian or not is arguable. You could make the case that the Roosevelt regime was fairly totalitarian, although to a degree the balance of powers did work (the Supreme Court did consider the NRA unconstitutional, although it would still uphold many of the other tyrannical New Deal programs, such as social security, labor laws and the Wagner Act of 1936). Although the government still operated behind the veneer of democracy, the Roosevelt administration was hardly democratic. The entire voting system was corrupted through the use of tax money, and none of the New Deal programs were ever put to vote (and had they been put to a popular vote they would have most definitely failed, because they hurtthe common man the most).
Similarly, although perhaps to a lesser degree, the current Bush administration is another example of the expansion of government powers and the movement towards totalitarianism (I am not claiming Bush was totalitarian). This is manifested through the Patriot Act.
You say:
It can be turned around by voting the right people into office. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing: getting the right people voted into office.
But, that is exactly the problem, as stated by what you originally quoted. Our democracy, by definition, is rule by majority (and, even less so in our representative democracy, where demographically this representation is distorted, so you can actually have a minority and pass legislation), and furthermore, many things are no longer put to vote, allowing the State a greater degree of freedom to impose their tyranny (an ironic statement). In any case, in rule by majority the minority are necessarily oppressed. This is where democracy has failed historically.
Prior to modern democracies (1940s+), it is not difficult to find a vast array of democracies and republics which turned totalitarian.
How do you substantiate such a claim?
What about the countless historical examples of the military being used to coerce the public? These exist, even in modern American history. I rather trust a PDA, which suffers from competitive factors, than trust a military which has a monopoly on force.
In regards to the idea of exchanging leadership, I think history can prove that notion naïve.
What about anarcho-capitalism do you disagree with? I think libertarians and an-caps should welcome anyone into the “camp” who wants a much smaller government, which means you. Btw, this is the first time anyone brings up the LP.
I read the thing about ethics too.
Alright, time for a break, my head hurts, I’ll be back later.
I don’t think that being a minarchist should bar anybody from joining the libertarian party, or helping the libertarian cause. Smaller government is better than larger government, and working towards making government smaller is something that all libertarians should be doing, even if they are anarchists. Whether you are a “true” libertarian, in this case, is irrelevant (in my opinion). These differences should not be resolved by marginalizing non-anarchists libertarian, as they are mostly intellectual differences. Pragmatically, politically the goals of the anarchists and the minarchists are the same (at least, over the short-run) because introducing anarchy can currently be considered farfetched.
For the record, I am an anarchist only when admitting that it is the best possible form of society. I am a minarchist because I believe that in anarchy human action tends to lead to the development of the State. I have been thinking of starting a thread on this topic, but I feel that I should probably read a bit more anarchist literature before presenting a serious opinion on the matter. My original opinion is summed up here (not very eloquently, mind you): Inevitability of Government. Some opinions have changed since then, but I still agree with the basic premise. I would love to read some books on the topic, but my current reading schedule is full (and, I used to finish books within a week, but now I’ve been reading very slowly).