The Problem with Libertarians...

[Drogue]

Originally posted by MRT144
Worse than slavery? you mean like selling them into a family of clowns?

I think it means prostitution, but I could be wrong.

[Berzerker]

Ted - What's wrong? Can't debate the issue at hand so you change the subject? Where did I say opium could not be hazardous? Oh yeah, I didn't. Ben Franklin used opium, do you think he would have been party to government bans on the drug? I have Iranian friends in LA who smoke opium and shared it with me a few times. My experience, and what I saw from them doesn't come close to what you've posted. As my friend explained it, they used it occasionally to relax after a hard day's work. I can quote government officials who claimed pot turns people into psychotic murderers, big deal. Many Chinese miners in Gold Rush California used opium and they were quite happy to let the white miners who were boozing it up believe the opium gave the whites an advantage over the Chinese.

You are the first person I've ever heard mention this Chinese slave state.

Well, live and learn. You're the first person I've ever seen argue that Chinese emporers didn't enslave people. That is your position, true?

Secondly, that's a flawed argument. Normally people into vices or doing illegal things of course aren't going to complain about it! Duh! "Hey! I'm doing something illegal! **** this, we need to stop my actions!"

Gee whiz, I merely pointed out who was doing the complaining and who wasn't. You cite a bureaucrat serving a dictator, will you now repeat what Goebels said about Jews and what Stalin said about Ukrainian farmers?

Thirdly, I can guarantee you that there was a large chunk of the population complaining about it. Just as today we have a large portion of the population in the US that complain about drug use.

And you think Chinese peasants had the emporer's ear? Did they get to vote for emporer?

Go outside and do an informal survey and see what people say about it.

Why? The opinions of people who've been brainwashed by decades of propaganda aren't valid. Two centuries ago that informal survey might have returned as an endorsement of slavery.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
I think it actually says that on the job description. Now please show me proof that people that disobeyed were killed.

That's pretty much how it was. The system was so arbitrary that officials could have peasants killed on a whim.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by David Floyd

Well, we can talk about degrees of right and wrong, or we can talk about right and wrong. We can both agree that murder is wrong, I assume. Since murder is wrong, you are in the wrong if you murder one person or ten people, so I'm not sure I see the relevance of debating whether one is worse than the other?

All you need to accept my argument is that the phrase, "lesser of two evils", makes sense. If you want to say that it is senseless then you owe some explanation.

OK, but when you put yourself into a situation it ceases to be an impartial view.

In no way does the moral point of view ever cease to be impartial for Libertarians because it is for them by definition impartial. All "impartial" means in this context is that it is wrong for me to assign additional weight to the preservation of my rights over anyone else's.

You are never responsible for the actions of others, but rather for your own action. Thus, if someone commits an immoral act such as murder, you aren't morally responsible for that act - the person who committed it is.

This isn't always true; there are counterexamples: e.g. I misinform someone who then does something bad; or I place someone under duress.

I didn't say that you were blameworthy or punishable in the strict sense. My claim is very simple; it is this: if Libertarians think that Liberty is a good thing, and those who value a thing in this way think that there should be more of it rather than less, it therefore seems contradictory that they would settle for less liberty.

In a nutshell your position is that you value liberty but don't mind seeing less of it in the world than there might otherwise have been. That seems a bizarre position to hold. What it I said that I thought suffering was a terrible thing and refused to inflict it in war which then ended up causing more suffering? It's the same thing.

If the only way to stop someone from killing five people is to kill one innocent person (and I struggle to see the real world application of even this example, which is more realistic than your original one), you can look at it two ways.

It is fine as a real world example in any case where the rights of the few come into conflict with the rights of the many. Here's a good example: I am a bomber pilot during a war whose mission is to bomb a plant that contributes to the making nuclear weapons for the enemy. The product of the plant can also be given civilian uses but it is clear that it is being used to supply the military. Our side has very good reason to believe that if the enemy acquires nuclear weapons he will use them to obliterate New York, causing massive casualties. It so happens that the enemy has situated his plant in a civilian area so that civilian casualties cannot be avoided (a few hundred or so).

According to you we would refrain from bombing and let New York be obliterated.

First, your way: Murder is bad, and more murder is worse. Thus, five murders are worse than one murder. If I can stop five murders by committing one myself, then I acted morally and properly.

Yes you did; you made the best of a bad situation.

But that thought process does not take into account the idea of personal accountability. You cannot control what someone else does - only they can. This leads to thought process number two:

Murder is bad, no matter how many people are killed. Therefore, I should not commit murder. Because I should not commit murder, it is not OK for me to murder one person to stop someone else from murdering five people.

Yes you cannot control what other people do and when they do bad things like put a weapons plant in a civilian area or ask you to kill one to save five, you have to face a choice between two bads. You have a seeming choice between two values:

(1) that I never commit murder.

and

(2) that there be as few murders as possible, preferably none.

The situations described bring these principles into conflict; so one of them has to go. I say it is (1) that must go because you can't provide me a reason to believe that a murder committed by you is worse ceterus paribus from the moral point of view, than a murder committed by someone else. Is the point of morality to bolster your conscience, or is it to lower the amount of evil in the world?

But even that does not leave you without options. Assuming you KNOW that five murders are going to take place, you have the option to alert the police, alert the victims, or be there yourself to try to defend the people being murdered. You also have the option to do nothing, although I would think that any decent person would choose to try to stop the murder in a moral way.

If that was possible in my case you would be right, but in my case it isn't. What you are doing is changing the example; this misses the point of the example. If you want to avoid my conclusion you have to show me that such conflicts of principle CAN NEVER HAPPEN, EVER. You need to show me that it there will never, ever arise a case in which there will be rights conflicts like the ones I described. The bombing case is quite plausible given recent events, I think you owe an answer.

The key, though, is that you are not committing an immoral act yourself - immoral acts do not balance themselves out, and there is no such thing as "net morality", ie, the immorality of killing one person is more than offset by the morality of saving five. That just doesn't wash, at least not with me.

Why not? Again, how many more deaths than one will it take for you to admit that it would be worse?

But as I pointed out above, even this example is contrived, and has little bearing on reality. Come up with a more realistic example (I could, but why should I - it's your argument), and we'll talk about that.

The basic principle has much bearing on reality - sometimes rights claims conflict. Use the bomb example if you like.

Then I hope the above convinced you.

A vain hope it seems.

It is? Granted, it's a TAD more plausible than yours (given that what few smithies exist in the world today do not stockpile modern weapons), but it still isn't very likely.

The existence of smithies isn't relevant to the point of the example which is that principles like (1) and (2) above conflict in many situations.

That's correct. I have an obligation to act morally, and killing innocent people is NOT acting morally.

Again - if you could choose between acting morally and having a morally worse overall situation and acting imorally and making things better, it seems perverse not to do the latter or you seem to have no unselfish reason for behaving morally in the first place.

I wasn't aware my conscience was killing anyone - I thought it was the guy who pulled the trigger.

But you can make a difference to the outcome - that's all that matters.

That's blatantly false. If, in our outlandishly contrived scenario, I walked down the street, randomly shot someone, and claimed (rightly or wrongly) that by doing so I saved five people, I would be laughed out of court and thrown in prison. And rightly so.

But that isn't the case you described. If you went to court having actually saved five people by killing one, or being in a situation that you reasonably believed that you would save five people, you would not be found guilty.

Again, you are oversimplifying the situation. I am not responsible for the deaths of five, but I am responsible if I kill one person.

I don't think it is that clear. It doesn't matter to me anyway, all that I am claiming is that in these situations you can make a difference to the outcome.

I would think that's obvious, but if you need to ask why murder is wrong, this discussion is pointless.

Not really: working out why you think murder is wrong would tell me why you think it is OK to countenance five instead of one. Here's two options:

(1) Is it bad because of the murderer's action?

or

(2) Is it bad because of the result?

It seems that 2 is correct because it is bad that people die even when no one is responsible for it - murder is bad because it causes people to die, dying is not bad becase it is caused by murderers.


That's enough for now. This is the core of the dispute - the rest just follows if the premise is acknowledged.

And, to change the subject a bit, may I ask what your experience is in either Libertarianism or political philosophy in general?

You can ask, but I ain't telling - yet. Let's say I'd be willing to wager that it's more than you and I'm certain it's more than Berzerker.

[Ramo]

Berzerker et al. are absolutely correct. It was the moralism of the Chinese bureaucracy and to a lesser extent aristocracy that opposed the opium trade, not the peasantry. And yes, the Emperor, the bureaucracy, and the aristocracy, had total control of the peasantry, who had few legal protections.

The British East India Company had done plenty of atrocious things in its day, but running the opium trade, while certainly wrong, wasn't something the Chinese gov't should have forcefully put an end to. Opium smoking was a symptom of the Chinese emperor's lecherous policies against the peasantry. At a time when peasants were facing hard times, as the rural population exploded and individual peasants had less and less land, the Chinese emperor continued demanding harsh taxes from them, causing their land to be consolidated by the untaxed aristocracy. Opium smoking was only a natural response to this poverty and suffering, so blaming the Brits for the opium smoking when other competetitors would be just as happy to supply the drug, instead of the Chinese gov't is hardly accurate.

[Agathon]

Berzerker

I'm not going to bother to respond to most of your comments because they are assertions rather than arguments - they have no inferential structure. One or two of them don't make grammatical sense either. Thankfully for the Libertarian side David Lloyd understands how to debate the point - I disagree with him, but it's self evident that he understands how to argue.

I'd like to point out that your eschewal of any example that does not describe something that actually happened would prohibit us from making informed hypotheses on missions to mars and nuclear holocaust among countless others.

It seems that you aren't familiar with thought experiments and in particular their use in philosophy and political science. This leads me to think that you have never done these things at a university or anywhere else (though that is not required to understand them). For God's sake Libertarian thinkers use them. The most famous Libertarian argument ever, Robert Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain" argument is a good example.

Come on, Berzerker, you are being thrashed on all sides. It would be good manners to admit it.

"Optimum results" are in the eye of the beholder and used as an excuse by one group of people to trample others. The "Invisible Hand" deals with economics and how an economy based on freedom and the multitude of decisions consumers and producers make every day is a better system than controlled economies where a group of elites try to make all those decisions for everyone (I believe).

The point of "prisoner's dilemma" situations is to show the sort of case in which the "invisible hand" fails.

A good way to identify such cases is to look at the various fines and punishments that are imposed to dissuade people from littering and polluting and stealing books. These are the cases in which social sanctions by and large fail.

Here's an example: companies that pollute in order to lower costs.

I own a company in a Libertarian society I am confronted with the following decision matrix.

(1) I pollute, no one else pollutes. Result: everyone else goes out of business.

(2) I don't pollute, everyone else else pollutes. Result: I go out of busniess.

(3) Everyone pollutes: result: everyone still in business; pollution unbearable.

(4) No one pollutes: result: everyone still in business.

Self interested rationality requires that I pollute. So will everyone else. You might want to say that everyone will force us not to pollute by social sanctions - this will encourage secret polluting. Besides the notion of social sanctions will bring its own prisoner's dilemma as the companies will attempt to buy off the boycotters.

The boycotter's dilemma:

(1) I don't boycott, everyone else boycotts. Result for me: I am bought off, pollution is lowered.

(2) I boycott, no one else does. Result for me: pollution stays the same.

(3) Everyone boycotts. Result for me: pollution is lowered.

(4) No one boycotts; Result for me: I am bought off pollution stays the same.

1 is best for me and 2 is worst. But since 1 is better than 3 and 4 is better than 2 everyone has an incentive not to boycott even though 3 is the best overall situation for everyone (even though it is second best for us individually).

This is why we need a state to step in and impose regulations and fines. If we don't free rider problems will lead to a life which is "nasty, brutish and short".

[Berzerker]

Ramo -

Opium smoking was a symptom of the Chinese emperor's lecherous policies against the peasantry. At a time when peasants were facing hard times, as the rural population exploded and individual peasants had less and less land, the Chinese emperor continued demanding harsh taxes from them, causing their land to be consolidated by the untaxed aristocracy.

Yup, and we know what happened in the 1850's, the Taiping Rebellion. Hardly a bunch of happy campers in China under the emperors.

Agathon - The first part of your post was nothing more than chest thumping after the opponent who decked you has walked away. Round 2?

The point of "prisoner's dilemma" situations is to show the sort of case in which the "invisible hand" fails.

Hmm...I thought it was your proof that libertarian principles are contradictory. Wasn't that your original claim?

A good way to identify such cases is to look at the various fines and punishments that are imposed to dissuade people from littering and polluting and stealing books. These are the cases in which social sanctions by and large fail.

They aren't social sanctions, they are government sanctions. Are you equating the two?

Here's an example: companies that pollute in order to lower costs.

I own a company in a Libertarian society I am confronted with the following decision matrix.

(1) I pollute, no one else pollutes. Result: everyone else goes out of business.

(2) I don't pollute, everyone else else pollutes. Result: I go out of busniess.

(3) Everyone pollutes: result: everyone still in business; pollution unbearable.

(4) No one pollutes: result: everyone still in business.

Self interested rationality requires that I pollute.

Why would unrestrained pollution be legal in a libertarian system? Where in the LP platform did you see a clause for legalising all pollution?

You might want to say that everyone will force us not to pollute by social sanctions - this will encourage secret polluting.

Not social sanctions, judicial sanctions. No libertarian would argue for a right to pollute.

Besides the notion of social sanctions will bring its own prisoner's dilemma as the companies will attempt to buy off the boycotters.

Do I have the right to dump my trash on your lawn? Frankly, your claim about knowing what libertarianism is about is dubious given the "PD's" you are coming up with.

The boycotter's dilemma:

(1) I don't boycott, everyone else boycotts. Result for me: I am bought off, pollution is lowered.

(2) I boycott, no one else does. Result for me: pollution stays the same.

(3) Everyone boycotts. Result for me: pollution is lowered.

(4) No one boycotts; Result for me: I am bought off pollution stays the same.

Boycotting polluters? Try suing them for property damage instead, sheesh. Boycotts are my primary solution to free riders, not polluters.

This is why we need a state to step in and impose regulations and fines.

No kidding, but I'd send some of these flagrant polluters to prison, not hand them a fine they can pass along to consumers.

If we don't free rider problems will lead to a life which is "nasty, brutish and short".

Free rider "problems" are related to people who don't pay taxes for services they receive like police/military, not polluters. Your insults are hilarious. You are amazingly ignorant of libertarianism given all your name dropping. First you claim stolen library books is proof that libertarianism is contradictory, now it's polluters. I thought you were going to come up with a legal behavior/PD to prove libertarianism is contradictory.

If we don't free rider problems will lead to a life which is "nasty, brutish and short".

This deserves another response. If some guy in the woods living off his land doesn't pay a tax to support the police, how does that make life "nasty, brutish and short" for all the people who are supporting the police?
And you complain about assertions?

[Ted Striker]

you change the subject?

I like your style Berzerker.

1) Change subject, whine to opponent to prove changed subject
2) Blame opponent for changing subject and then call him a hypocrite

Ben Franklin used opium

As did alot of people in the early 19th century. As I pointed out several times, it wasn't just the Chinese that recognized the danger, it was most every major country in the world. Later in the 19th Century, most countries recognized the dangers of Opium in the smoked form and either regulated it or banned it. And again, George Washington owned slaves. Does that make it right though?

I have Iranian friends in LA who smoke opium

We are talking about 19th Century China, not your Iranian friends. I have current Iranian friends in LA and I don't know any that smoke Opium. My experience is different from yours. So should we take a limited personal experience and create a blanket experience out of it?

-->Yet we have countless historical documents referring to the Opium problem as a menace to China. Now tell me, did all of these writers come to these conclusions independently of the Emperor?

You cite a bureaucrat serving a dictator,

Wrong. I cited every single government in charge from 1729 through 2002. All of them are wrong? Every last one of them? Not only that, major governments around the world recognizing the dangers of opium and enacting law and regulation to deal with the problem. Are all of these world governments doing so against the will of the people?

Certainly the Emperor was no angel, however your attempt to frame the government as oppressive and therefore throw out anything it did as valid, fails, since we have other governments where terrible things (like slavery in the US, native explotaition in the British Empire) are going on at the same time. So does that also invalidate anything the US or Britain did?

Why? The opinions of people who've been brainwashed by decades of propaganda aren't valid.

Nice dodge. Or maybe they have come to conclusions themselves through their own experiences?


But again, speaking of hypocrits, you pointed out to us that even though corporations did things like child labor, they still did more good than not by employing people. How come they get a break but the Emperor does not?

You still haven't supplied any numbers regarding 19th century American drug usage by the way. And haven't explained to me how government intervention caused the Dust Bowl either. But speaking of changing the subject.

Ramo,

Are modern anti-drug policies the product specifically of the government and not the people?

Secondly, the equivalent of what the East India tea company was doing, was basically, if McDonald's decided to sell crack to China. McDonald's sends over a tanker full of crack, and sometimes they even do this under protection of the US Navy! Not only that, when the Chinese confront the tankers in the harbor, and ask McDonald's to empty their stores of crack, the US Navy refuses to allow them to do so.

That is gunboat diplomacy! You guys are completely ignoring the Western rape of China!

[Ted Striker]

Might I also add that 2 of the 3 Taiping Rebellions were by Muslims.

The Taiping army also fanatically opposed Confucianism, the cornerstone of Chinese society. Sounds like an army of the people right. Leader Hong Xiuquan was a Christian who believed he was the younger son of Jesus and had a vision (from a mental illness) to lead his people against the establishment. Also China had been weakened by natural disaster and western influence.

Certainly there was abuse in China, and the Emperor was on his way out. But way to sum up a complex event by blaming it on one person.

[Berzerker]

Ted -

I like your style Berzerker.

1) Change subject, whine to opponent to prove changed subject

2) Blame opponent for changing subject and then call him a hypocrite

First, where in that post did I call you a hypocrite? Is that why you don't use quotes? Second, you did change the subject, we were talking about the validity of the emperor's motives for wanting opium banned. You seem to think it's because he was such a caring person and I think it's because he didn't want the people under his thumb slacking off. Now you want to debate whether or not opium can be harmful. That's changing the subject...

We are talking about 19th Century China, not your Iranian friends. I have current Iranian friends in LA and I don't know any that smoke Opium. My experience is different from yours. So should we take a limited personal experience and create a blanket experience out of it?

You and your friends have no experience with it, my friends and I do. So I'll take what we know rather than what you don't know.

Wrong. I cited every single government in charge from 1729 through 2002.

I was talking about the bureaucrat you quoted. So you want to quote other Chinese bureaucrats doing the bidding of the dictators they served, whoopie.

All of them are wrong? Every last one of them?

Immoral, and pawns of dictators who helped enslave millions.

Not only that, major governments around the world recognizing the dangers of opium and enacting law and regulation to deal with the problem.

Some did, so what? Some of those major governments committed atrocities, why are they now the source of morality?

Nice dodge.

Do you deny the American people have been subjected to decades of propaganda about drugs? If you pay any attention to politics, you'd see that whatever the media/government reports on becomes a priority for Americans. If the media starts reporting carjackings, then carjackings become the big scare for the moment until the media/government scares people with some other crisis.

Or maybe they have come to conclusions themselves through their own experiences?

You and your friends in LA have no experience.

But again, speaking of hypocrits, you pointed out to us that even though corporations did things like child labor, they still did more good than not by employing people. How come they get a break but the Emperor does not?

Spare me your accusations, I never mentioned corporations deserving a pass for everything or anything because they employed people. That's your BS. No wonder you don't use quotes.

You still haven't supplied any numbers regarding 19th century drug usage by the way.

And I won't a$$hole. That's what you get for complaining about me asking Strangelove for a link and then telling me to look up links to support your arguments. NO LINK FOR YOU! COME BACK...1 YEAR!

[Berzerker]

Might I also add that 2 of the 3 Taiping Rebellions were by Muslims.

And the one from 1851-1864 was led by a Chinese man who mixed protestantism with another belief system, so what? There weren't Chinese muslims?

The Taiping army also fanatically opposed Confucianism, the cornerstone of Chinese society.

So? They wanted to abolish slavery too, but you seem to think there wasn't any, correct? If Confucianism was so great when it was the cornerstone of a dictatorship practicing slavery and God knows what else, then it should have been overthrown.

Sounds like an army of the people right.

Who said it was? But they sure had plenty of support from those beloved peasants under the emperor.

Leader Hong Xiuquan was a Christian who believed he was the younger son of Jesus and had a vision (from a mental illness) to lead his people against the establishment. Also China had been weakened by natural disaster and western influence.

Yeah, everything but those beloved emperors.

Certainly there was abuse in China, and the Emperor was on his way out. But way to sum up a complex event by blaming it on one person.

Quite an understatement. Can you believe this guy, Ramo?

[Ted Striker]

You seem to think it's because he was such a caring person I think it's because he didn't want the people under his thumb slacking off.

Caring may or may not have anything to do with it. Even the most cold rulers also understand practicality. "Slacking off?" So you understand and acknowledge one of the damages that occurs when a couple of million people get strung out. Excellent work, you're learning.

You and your friends have no experience with it, my friends and I do. So I'll take what we know rather than what you don't know.

You and your friends in LA have no experience.

Or maybe they understand the dangers of using a destructive drug by witnessing its effects firsthand. That's pretty solid knowledge I'd say. I've seen firsthand so many people **** up their lives permanently from drug use.

Legalization would lead to the situation Doc mentioned, which is exactly what happened in China. I can't wait to see an entire drug market backed by corporations like McDonalds or Pepsi! (No doubt you have already mentioned the example of Coca-cola, which had cocaine removed from it).

Immoral, and pawns of dictators who helped enslave millions.

So, every single government that has come through, even though several of them ideaologically are natural enemies, have, through an experienced judgement, come up with a conclusion that opium usage should be banned in China, and that doesn't mean anything to you?

The fact that most major nations on earth got together and decided that Opium usage was destructive, their judgement means nothing to you? Every last one of them are making these decisions why?

Do you deny the American people have been subjected to decades of propaganda about drugs?

By the same token, I seem to recall the American people being subjected to propaganda from the tobacco and alchohol industry. Sure, the government runs anti-drug ads. And I support them. My anti-drug bias comes not from those ads but by witnessing people **** up their lives.

Doc has better experience than all of us, seeing people come in through the ER, but that's another story and I won't speak for him, just relaying what I remember him saying.

That's what you get for complaining about me asking Strangelove for a link and then telling me to look up links to support your arguments.

Link?

I never complained about you asking Doc for anything by the way. But speaking of quotes.


19th century American drug use numbers please

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Berzerker


And the one from 1851-1864 was led by a Chinese man who mixed protestantism with another belief system, so what? There weren't Chinese muslims?

So? They wanted to abolish slavery too, but you seem to think there wasn't any, correct? If Confucianism was so great when it was the cornerstone of a dictatorship practicing slavery and God knows what else, then it should have been overthrown.

Who said it was? But they sure had plenty of support from those beloved peasants under the emperor.

Yeah, everything but those beloved emperors.

The point here is that you are pinning the rebellions singly on the oppression of one person, and it's just not that simple. The reason I mention the Muslims, and the religious groups, is that a big part of their problem with the establishment was an ideaological and religious difference.

Also I bring up again Western merchant armies that were all exploiting the system along with some natural disasters that weakend the country and left it open for rebellion.

One of the reasons the rebellion failed is because they attacked Confucianism heavily, which was a cornerstone of Chinese society.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
19th century American drug use numbers please

Coke used to have coke in it if that will give you an idea of the numbers.

Now for a libertarian question that has been on my mind for sometime now, "Would thalidomide have been banned in a libertarian state in an action similar to what the FDA took?"

[Ben Kenobi]

"You're not qualified to tell us about morality."
-Berzerker, to Speer

I've found a new sig!

Agathon - good question to ask, but you don't need to brag about how good you are. Just type, and people will pick up on your style.

"Is the point of morality to bolster your conscience, or is it to lower the amount of evil in the world?"

Referring to your moral problem where one has a choice of killing one person in order to save the life of five, I will choose neither.

"Most people believe in God, that effects how they behave."
-Berzerker.

Even if I choose the moral equivalency test of killing one person, I have still done wrong. Indeed, allowing five people to be killed is worse than shooting one person, but neither is a positive contribution. You are still one person short of where you started.

There is only one 'positive' solution and that is to offer oneself up for the five hostages, ie, trade my life for theirs. This way, five still live, and I am not responsible for the deaths of any other person.

The point of morality is not to 'remove evil,' but to produce virtue. If I offer myself to switch places and this is refused, then I have done my duty. Nothing more can be asked.