EIT, can you redirect your critique to instead focus on the video, and its message, rather than a general attack on Molyneux. I’m having a hard time following you.
I like it as far as he does identify a likely explanation for why people in societies with lower productivity (e.g. tribal societies) have greater personal freedom even though they have less material means than those who live in societies with greater productivity and should, in theory, have greater freedom because they have more material prosperity at their disposal with which to achieve their ends.
However, the one thing I dislike about the state:farm comparison is that it is implicitly aggrandizing of the state. The government is just a bunch of thugs, nothing more, nothing less. Characterizing the distinction between the masses and their overlords as similar to the distinction between cattle and the ranchers is overstating the case in a way that can contribute to a sense of powerlessness that ultimately plays into the hands of the state. All such metaphors are useful for dissecting the anatomy of the state in metaphorical language that is easier to digest for those still trapped in the statist system. But the dangerous flip-side is that these metaphors can also strike fear into our hearts. Machiavelli said it is best for the Prince’s interests that he be loved by his people - but he must often settle for being feared and not hated. If the government are our ranchers, maybe we can’t hate them for that since it’s always been that way. But if I’m a cow and they’re a rancher then, yeah, I should be scared of them.
Clayton -
He has lots of experience to draw from. /sarcasm He has no clue about the subject.
When was the last time you made a post with facts? I’d like to see this. I have a very good long term memory. I see the pattern in your posts from the time you arrived. I can’t think of any non-banned member in the history of this forum that has a worse proportion of posts that do nothing but smear.
Amongst other things, no way a “grand theory of history” can be stated at all, much less so simply; the Whigs were wrong, the Marxists were wrong, Molyneux is wrong.
Also, “philosophy and reason are the opposite of ideology and will set you free”, what?
However, the one thing I dislike about the state:farm comparison is that it is implicitly aggrandizing of the state. The government is just a bunch of thugs, nothing more, nothing less. Characterizing the distinction between the masses and their overlords as similar to the distinction between cattle and the ranchers is overstating the case in a way that can contribute to a sense of powerlessness that ultimately plays into the hands of the state. All such metaphors are useful for dissecting the anatomy of the state in metaphorical language that is easier to digest for those still trapped in the statist system. But the dangerous flip-side is that these metaphors can also strike fear into our hearts. Machiavelli said it is best for the Prince’s interests that he be loved by his people - but he must often settle for being feared and not hated. If the government are our ranchers, maybe we can’t hate them for that since it’s always been that way. But if I’m a cow and they’re a rancher then, yeah, I should be scared of them.
Clayton -Well, perhaps such comparisons are not entirely misplaced. Just ask yourself: if we only knew that, say, 0.8% of the population will be ‘ranchers’ and the rest ‘cattle’, and we went around just randomly selecting that 0.8%, would that state survive?
I believe it has everything to do with who is ruling, hence the distinction between rulers and ruled is not entirely unjustified.
If Molyneux is wrong, it is not by much.
Assuming what you set out to prove.
Stefan is probably addressing people who are in support of the status quo for historical reasons. You have to show context.
If you have a coherant definition of “government”, it does make sense.
If the state supports you, you are well payed because the base case without a state is unemployment. And of course he means court-intellectuals…
Probably because of political, non-market forces.
I thought he did agree that science is a necessary but insufficient condition for economic growth. He points to impoverished countries, who have access to technological knowledge, but are unable to implement it due to a lack of saving.
When they agree that government has a right to steal, kidnap, and murder them.
Because some governments are democracies, whos leaders cannot plan long term.
I guess you could compare the productivity of slaves to hired farm hands.
What’s wrong with his psychology? His factual innacuracies are more factual omissions; but of course, no one can include all the facts. I don’t know why you think his definitions are arbitrary. AFAIK, his conspiracism on 9-11 is relatively sound, even if it does not match my own opinion.
Haters gonna hate?
filc, I actually typed my post up whilst watching the video, I watched once over in its entirety then another time with pauses to write up the points I made as they came to my mind, if you’d like you can tell me what you want me to clarify and I’ll go over the video once more to make things clear.
When was the last time you made a post with facts? I’d like to see this. I have a very good long term memory. I see the pattern in your posts from the time you arrived. I can’t think of any non-banned member in the history of this forum that has a worse proportion of posts that do nothing but smear.
I wouldn’t need long-term memory to comfortably say the same about you. More seriously though, if you believe that than ignore my posts, to be quite honest, I think it’d be a welfare improvement. As a matter of fact, I lead a relatively busy life that doesn’t allow me to spend hours on an internet discussion board, so sometimes I think I’ll have to bail on discussion that hinge on generally accepted or difficult to interpret facts.
player, I really don’t want to be offensive here, you look like you put a lot of thought into your posts and you seem well intentioned and generally patient, but I can’t help but see your view of history as really, really cranky and that’s not an argument I want to get into right now, so I’ll try to answer the points you make that don’t get into any of the conspiracy stuff (and note to readers, when possible I’ll lump my answers to Sieben and Player together).
I don’t want to get into a discussion of whether or not this is true, I don’t think it is but this kind of stuff is just too messy to even bother with. I’d just like to point out that all of the above could well be true, but this doesn’t rule out the possibility that some form of government is welfare maximising. This is the point I was making, SM’s argument goes somewhere along the lines of “people believe the government improves our lives, as a historical fact government agents have always been self interested/ evil/ sadistic “farmers”, therefore the government serve some sort of good”. All I was saying is that the conclusion doesn’t follow, the government could very well be loaded with lots of “bad” people, but you still need to prove that it isn’t good for us in spite of this.
Possibly, but that’s not how I read his argument. Perhaps it’s just me, but when people talk of government “serving” us, I tend to interpret that as being somewhere along the lines of “government is welfare maximising” or more simply “government makes our lives better” as opposed to any ideals of government employees literally being our servants (which I don’t think anybody actually believes).
Intellectuals in a few fields are very well paid in the US, my father is PhD economist and worked for a while in academia, so I’d like to think I know a little about this. As regards the few hours and freedom of research, both of those are somewhat untrue (and to the extent they are true, it comes at the expense of other perks such as pay and prestige). Most economists find themselves working in some area that they’ve had “recommended” to them by their advisor or in areas that are currently in fashion, and moreover, if they want to get anywhere they have to use various standard tools and techniques. As regards the few hours, granted, the spend relatively little time teaching (although, time spent teaching is inversely related to rank of school) but there’s also advising, meetings, office hours and all that. Finally, there’s research, which even at lower ranked places ends up taking up a lot of time and can be pretty stressful.
Granted, they do have (relatively) secure jobs, but even this isn’t entirely true. The faculty can do a lot to make your life difficult even if you have tenure, and tenure isn’t at all easy to get (in America it can require high publishing standards and in Europe there’s a lot of bureaucratic bullshit). Ultimately, the justification most academics give for their line of employment is the fact that they enjoy research, which makes a lot of sense and cuts directly against SM’s original point.
Sieben, even if make the incredulous assumption that no form of academia would exist without the state and discount the admittedly irrelevant private colleges, there’s still a lot of employment for all sorts of academics. For economists there are private firms, consultancy work and financial sector work and I don’t think I need to point out possible private sector employment for engineers, physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, doctors, lawyers and the like, although maybe the same case can’t be made for students of gender studies.
See, as far as I can SM says we have various freedoms because we’re granted them by our “overlords”, I think it’s most closer to the truth to say that we don’t have certain freedoms because they haven’t been taken from us. At this point, the question becomes is there any justification for further freedoms to be “taken” (I don’t like this language) or for other freedoms to be granted. In other words, I just don’t see the justification for thinking in terms of governments as overlords, at least not in the developed world.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but from what I’ve gleaned from your posting you seem to view government as far loss overarching than that of SM. In the sense that you view the outcome of government policy as the result of various compromises and trade offs between different interests. If I’m right about your thinking then your post makes sense, and it’s actually something I’d agree with. But my impression from the video I watched and others by SM is that he views government as being far more monolithic than it actually is, in which case I think my question still poses problems for his argument.
Right, but this already suffices for my point. Namely, government policy employees (which?) maximise given certain constraints, one of which is public opinion and preferences. Once one grants that government employees and beneficiaries are self interested as opposed to malevolent one begins to say that policy is the result of various interests, not some overarching plan by some small elite.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the argument was true to an extent, namely, demoralization leads to lower productivity. But, I don’t feel comfortable with his armchair psychology and I don’t think it’s the main factor. I feel far more comfortable putting it in terms of economics, namely, under certain regimes the incentives and institutions aren’t in place to assure productivity.
I don’t remember seeing it, but granted, I may have been a little pedantic there.
Well, in that case, isn’t it voluntary?
If some sort of monolithic elite does exist, which both Hoppe (as far as I’m aware, could be wrong) and SM purport, then this argument has a lot less force than you or Hoppe think it does.
His psychology has very little scientific basis, it’s Freudian bullshit for the most and his own armchair musings for the rest. If he wants to bring some sort of scientific basis to any of this, I’d be glad to see it. As for his definitions? Libertarianism and philosophy as the opposite of ideology, really?
Your posts were aimed at Molyneux specifically, not about his video. Do I need to quote you?
EDIT
I will any ways for the humor of it.
What does that have to do with the video and its message?
Your posts were aimed at Molyneux specifically, not about his video. Do I need to quote you?
Some were, most weren’t. Like I said, if you want clarification, by all means quote me.
I’d have to ask you to re-write your whole critique. Something smaller and more concise to a point we can actually discuss. Focus on the video, not on Molyneux.
Economist, I am under crazy time constraints, and I have decided to prioritize my school work. What little time I have for forums has to be rationed for serving keynesians on my other forum. They’re trying to compare Norway to the USA, when 30% of the Norwegian government revenue is from oil. Seriously wtf. So you don’t get a full reply.
My basic point is that Stefan is highly rhetorical and theatrical. To me, it is mostly entertaining, and beneath it I think he does a good job at articulating the bare essential economic and political theory of greater thinkers.
With respect to special interests, illuminati etc, I do think that there are many entrenched interests that shape and influence policy. I seriously doubt that the pharmaceutical industry has much to do with the military industrial complex, but financial conglomerates make it possible for these interests to become strung together. For me, its enough to say that special interests have hijacked it. The “monolithic” model of special interests is appropriate insofar as they are all united against the common man.
With regards to intellectuals, yes I do agree that many intellectuals would have a place on a free market. I do think there would be significantly fewer economists who make a living preaching statist apology… maybe there would be a lot of economists doing econometrics and modeling for companies, I don’t know. But the former is the kind of intellectual SM is talking about.
I agree. Everyone should ignore your posts.
His psychology has very little scientific basis, it’s Freudian bullshit for the most and his own armchair musings for the rest. If he wants to bring some sort of scientific basis to any of this, I’d be glad to see it. As for his definitions? Libertarianism and philosophy as the opposite of ideology, really?
To add to this, mixing (bad) ad hoc psychology (particularly “therapeutic” kinds) with any of the social sciences, particularly in such an informal manner ought to throw out a bajillion and a half red flags. Even more dubious than that is to be using such an approach (psychology/therapeutic) on a “philosophy” site where the majority of the audience is under the age of 25 And Molyneux is WITHOUT PEER REVIEW is absolutely irresponsible and grotesque. This only complicates itself when the man has to continually be an apologist for his own intentions.
Look if you need to go make a Molyneux bashing thread to expose his fallacies I understand. But I don’t see how his science, or any science in general, has anything to do with the metaphor presented in the video.
If I’m right about your thinking then your post makes sense, and it’s actually something I’d agree with. But my impression from the video I watched and others by SM is that he views government as being far more monolithic than it actually is, in which case I think my question still poses problems for his argument.
Yes, one can look at all government as farms, or whatever. The problem is, one can not sate that sociologically speaking. It can not be done, there is perhaps as low as 0 evidence that before the 17/18th century any case could be made that any culture in civilization had this line of thinking. In so much as the facts are known to us, it is outside of much of histories custom or culture to use or think in such terms. It is not a sociological or historical statement, it is a modern day aesthetic.
William, would you be so kind as to post specific cases showing what you say?
Sociology cannot be verified empirically William.
And I can not look or speak for anybody’s psychology in history that isn’t clearly stated, nor could I make sociological assumptions based off such an analysis
William, would you be so kind as to post specific cases showing what you say?
If I understand you correctly, how can I post a case when I say there isn’t one?