The Problem with Libertarians...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by obiwan18
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.

Got to disagree.

Self sacrifice is not positive and is in many ways the moral equivalent to suicide. It is just as evil as the act of murder.

By allowing yourself to be murdered you have eliminated your future ability to do good. By eliminating a murderer you have eliminated his threat and ability to do evil in the future.

[Agathon]

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

You are making me laugh...

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

I made two claims - both about Libertarianism when applied to the real world. Hence two posts. I see you had no decent response to the first.

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

No - the reason we have these sanctions is because the social sanctions are simply not sufficient to stop free riding behaviour. This is especially true in large urban environments where I don't see the same people every day. Prove that social sanctions are enough - I suppose you think these fines and rules exist because of the whim of government, when they are clearly designed to bolster your beloved social sanctions.

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

Air pollution (which is what I was really talking about) is notoriously difficult to quantify and is thus a prime candidate for market failure. Trying to build a compensation model for air pollution so company X pays Y dollars to each person would be too unwieldy. Pollution is thus a "tragedy of the commons" (something which Libertarians are just as vulnerable to as those they criticise). I don't say that pollution is on the LP platform; just that it is a consequence of lassez faire policy.

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

But how are we going to sort out who's air pollution has affected whom? It would be too unwieldy and inefficient not to say pretty much impossible to monitor how much company X has affected my life in order to pay me compensation.

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.

Excuse me, who owns the air?

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

Again - can you imagine the logistical nightmare in prosecuting this case against all the polluters?

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

That is, without doubt, the only reasonable suggestion you have made in the whole thread.

Free rider "problems" are related to people who don't pay taxes for services they receive like police/military, not polluters.

You are talking about something else. In my discussion "free riders" are those who attempt to take advantage of PD situations. I'm not one of those stupid people who thinks that every expression has one use and one only.

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.

Well we all know what thought thought.

You really ought to read more carefully. Stealing library books was an example of PD situation - to introduce the notion for interested readers (it happens to be my stock example). Are you disagreeing that it is, or not. It seems plainly a PD situation to me. Why would I have bothered talking about private policing next if your interpretation is true.

Look - all of this is beside the point anyway.

The general argument is this: Libertarian theory requires that we substitute voluntary exchange for coerced taxation. My argument is that this creates a prisoner's dilemma situation because it is not in the rational interest of each person to contribute, but to hope that everyone else does. For everyone to agree to pay for, say, an army, we all have to trust each other to pay, since the army will confer benefits onto non-payers as well.

You have then said that social sanctions would ensure everyone pays. The problem is that they don't seem to be very effective at compelling people to make unselfish choices right this moment, which is why we have government and instutionally backed sanctions. Look at the amount of petty tax avoidance that goes on - it's a reasonable assumption to think that it would get worse if taxation was completely voluntary. Why would I pay if I can't be certain that everyone else is going to pay? I don't want to end up paying for everyone else. As long as I can't trust them it is in my interest to withhold payment.

Even if social sanctions were more effective than they are (and I suggest you look at the amount of litter on any city street to see how effective they really are) the rational thing to do would be to join a clique of other non-payers to trade with. The problem is that almost everyone will try do this - so the tax take will take a huge dip (Of course there will always be some community minded people who will do the decent thing, but unselfish people are a small minority as the fall of the Soviet Union proved).

Look here's pretty much why Libertarianism won't work. In every election campaign I have ever witnessed the voters are all enthusiastic to increase public spending but opposed to tax increases. That's because they are all hoping to free ride (they want someone else to pay the extra tax). You are trying, just as the communists did, to base a whole social and political system, to in effect gamble with civilisation, by hoping that the vast majority of human beings are deep down decent and unselfish people.

So you prove to me that social sanctions will work and not be beset with free riders, despite the evidence of everyday life where such sanctions have proved ineffective.

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 what does a man living alone in the woods have to do with the problems faced by most of us, who by economic necessity, have to live in large communities?

BTW it's a quote from Hobbes - whose ideas I have borrowed from quite heavily in this thread.

[Ben Kenobi]

"Self sacrifice is not positive and is in many ways the moral equivalent to suicide. It is just as evil as the act of murder."

Agreed, Ogie. Self-sacrifice is not 'positive' in that we still end up one person short. But it is far from suicide. Suicide is taking one's own life, not giving up one's life for someone else.

As for who deals with the murderer, if he kills me, he loses his hostage and can be dealt with through non-lethal methods.

I don't know how long I have to live. I have to do the best with the time I have, and I can't keep worrying about the good that I can do in the future.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by obiwan18

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.

The problem is in this case not choosing ensures the death of the five.

Someone says to you, "Obiwan18, unless you shoot this man, I'm going to shoot these other five men."

If you say I choose neither, it's still choosing not to shoot since the only logically possible way a person able to can avoid choosing shooting is by choosing not to shoot.

bummer, eh?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe

Great name!

I love Slap Shot (I have my own copy).

But why would anyone choose the name of a child molesting hockey goon with a bad afro?



Favourite pieces of dialogue from Slap Shot: "I'm going to go right out there and wiggle it at 'em"

"they brought their F***** toys!"

"get off the ice Dunlop, ya old fart!"

[Ramo]

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

Depends on what you mean by anti-drug policies. If they are involuntary and enforced by the state, they are by definition specifically of the government. If they are voluntary, they are by definition specifically of 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.

I don't like crack traffickers, and I don't think we should spend so much money to defend crack traffickers' merchandise, but other than that, I see no problem with the situation. McDonalds should be free to sell crack, and the Chinese should be free to buy crack if they choose.

Of course, I do see problems if the US gov't attacks or enforces economic sanctions on China in response, as the Brits did, or as we did to Thailand when they didn't like American companies trafficking our extremely dangerous and adictive drug of choice, tobacco, in '89.

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

The gunboat diplomacy/Western rape aspect of the Opium Wars was when western states forced China to accept one-sided trade agreements, thus enabling Western businesses to thrive while China became an economic backwater.

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.

Yes, sometimes revolutions require revolutionary ideas to set them off. Is this supposed to be suprising?

Did you know Lenin actually wasn't an Orthodox Christian?

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.

It wasn't a single complex event, it was a long history of complex events. But all of them boiled down to the impoverishment of the Chinese people. And the Emperor and other elements of state were the main causes of poverty. Even if famine, mostly due to natural disaster and Western influence, exacerbated the situation, it was ultimately the harsh taxes on the peasantry that took away relative peasant prosperity permanently (as the peasants were robbed of their land by the aristocracy, they had to collectively continue bearing the same burden of Imperial taxes in addition to paying their landlords, causing the cycle to repeat until they had no land left).

Note that the series of peasant rebellions started well prior to the major famines in China. There was a widespread peasant rebellion in 1774 comparable to the Taiping rebellion, and the peasant rebellions continued up to 1850. In fact, in order to secure his regime from this instability, the Emperor in 1772 started burning literature that might've made not so loyal remarks regarding the Manchu regime.

[Ned]

Agathon, I think you have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Libertarianism is irrational if one assumes that man is inherently selfish. I have tended to be Libertarian myself. I will reassess.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Ramo

Depends on what you mean by anti-drug policies. If they are involuntary and enforced by the state, they are by definition specifically of the government. If they are voluntary, they are by definition specifically of the people.

In our own case, we are a representative government of the people. Recent attempts at legalizing marijuana, for example, were shot down by the people. The Libertarian though would probably disagree and say something along the lines of freedom, liberty, etc. I believe we are representative of the people while the Libertarian does not. But I believe the people of this country have made their decision.

McDonalds should be free to sell crack, and the Chinese should be free to buy crack if they choose.

Well I guess that is the heart of the matter then. The whole free markets debate. Personally I would see that as one of the most outrageous and destructive ideas I've heard.

I believe we have the right to ban and control things that will damage our society as a whole.

The gunboat diplomacy/Western rape aspect of the Opium Wars was when western states forced China to accept one-sided trade agreements, thus enabling Western businesses to thrive while China became an economic backwater.

I agree with this, but with the addendum, that the Opium deals were part of those agreements, and Opium was often lumped together with what we would considered "normal" goods.

That's why the Chinese had some much trouble and why it led to confrontation, because the boats they went after had other things on them in addition to the Opium on board.

Yes, sometimes revolutions require revolutionary ideas to set them off. Is this supposed to be suprising?

It wasn't a single complex event, it was a long history of complex events. But all of them boiled down to the impoverishment of the Chinese people. And the Emperor and other elements of state were the main causes of poverty. Even if famine, mostly due to natural disaster and Western influence, exacerbated the situation, it was ultimately the harsh taxes on the peasantry that took away relative peasant prosperity permanently (as the peasants were robbed of their land by the aristocracy, they had to collectively continue bearing the same burden of Imperial taxes in addition to paying their landlords, causing the cycle to repeat until they had no land left).

I agree, as I've said, the Emperor was not an angel (though remember we are judging him by 2003 standards, and during this same time in America, we practiced institutionalized slavery) and was on his way out. However, the point I was trying to make was this particular revolution failed because more people side with the Emperor than against him. The specific error by the revolutionary armies was to attack Confucianism, which was an attack on the average Chinese. Later, chegitz's people, many inspired by the Taiping Rebellion, succeeded in taking over the country.

Western influence and meddling only made the situation much worse and difficult to deal with. What happened in the 19th century still greatly affects Chinese policy to this day. Christians, for example, are treated with suspicion. Personally I don't blame them.

I just don't see how having a nation with 2 million addicts strung out is a good thing.

[Ben Kenobi]

If the person is talking to me, I should at least be able to offer the switch. Your thought experiment as worded does not preclude this possibility

If he rejects my proposal 5 people die, and there is nothing I can do about that. However, now the shooter not only shot his hostages, but refused a face-saving compromise.

This is still better than shooting the hostage-taker in that he now has an option he did not have before, a way out. I can't bring him back if I shoot him.

It still sucks if he refuses. I can't think of anyway to prevent 5 people from dying in this situation.

[Ted Striker]

One final thing, is that Opium abuse was across all classes, not just poor peasants.

[MRT144]

"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"

thats what i was trying to say bezerker, you myopic topekan

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Ned
Agathon, I think you have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Libertarianism is irrational if one assumes that man is inherently selfish. I have tended to be Libertarian myself. I will reassess.

Wow, this is the first ideology shift I have ever witnessed here at Apolyton. Kudos for the open mind Ned.

[David Floyd]

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.

All right, I understand the concept of "lesser of two evils". And when one is deciding something relevant to themselves only, I agree with its application.

However, in our example, my decision affects other people, in fact, other innocent people. If I can save five innocent people by murdering one innocent person, I wouldn't do it - murder is wrong. Look at it like this (and I'll get to your war example in a minute, let's finish up this example).

Let's say a would-be killer calls you up. You are 100% certain of the fact that he is a killer, and the fact that he will kill. Let's say he gives you an ultimatum - he says that he has five innocent hostages, and that he will kill them unless you pick up a handgun, walk out to the park, and shoot someone at random. What would your response be to that ultimatum?

Here's what I would do. I would know that I am not responsible for his actions. I would further know that if I don't kill the one innocent person, I will not be held legally responsible. I also know that if I agree, and kill an innocent person, I WILL be held legally accountable.

Therefore, I don't kill anyone. If the killer ends up killing the five people, that is a terrible tragedy, but EVEN THOUGH he gave me a chance to prevent it, I am not morally responsible for the deaths of those five people. Only the trigger man is (or, I suppose, the person who ordered it, etc. - we're both intelligent enough to know what I mean, so let's leave it at that). Objectively speaking, five deaths are indeed worse than one death, and if I can prevent those deaths - ANY of them - in a moral way, I should.

I have no way to act morally and at the same time prevent the deaths of five people. However, I DO have a way to act morally and prevent the deaths of one person. Therefore, I am morally obligated to prevent that one person from being murdered, and that's exactly what I would do.

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.

I understand what you're saying, but we aren't talking about preserving my rights over those of anyone else, we are talking about me making a decision about whether or not to murder someone.

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

Granted.

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.

If you knew as much about Libertarianism as you purport to know, you would know that Libertarians (and especially Objectivists) don't believe in the concepts of societal rights, the common good, etc. Likewise, we don't believe in a concept of "net morality" or "net liberty". We simply believe that the rights of individuals should be respected, and that we should do nothing to violate those rights. If someone else infringes upon a person's liberty, then that person should certainly be punished or restrained in some way, but I myself cannot infringe upon the liberty of another in the pursuit of some "common good" that I don't even believe in.

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's not my position at all. My position is more of something like this: I value liberty, and as such I will not knowingly violate the liberty of any individual, even if it means someone else violates the liberty of other individuals. [b]I cannot control the actions of others, only my own, and I have an obligation to behave morally]/b]. That is the crux of my position, with regards to that example.

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.

There's another mistake. War is not that simple. Every major war the United States has ever fought has been, in some way, the result of the United States behaving immorally or wrongly in its foreign policy.

I can give examples and explain myself if you like, but the point is that if the United States did not behave so aggressively, and if it did not piss people off, then we wouldn't be at war - wars don't just come out of nowhere.

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

Wrong. I committed murder, which is by definition unjustified. If you want to justify killing an innocent person, you're not going to be able to use the word "murder", because murder is NEVER justified. But killing an innocent person IS murder, so I'm not quite sure how you can reconcile that.

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.

No, all that is is an attempt by someone else to shift responsibility for their actions onto you. Since they are responsible for their own actions, and you for yours, if they kill the five people and claim you could have stopped it by committing murder, they are full of ****. If you committed murder, you would have been just as in the wrong as they are.

The situations described bring these principles into conflict

There is no conflict. If I desire no/few murders, I must not commit murder. If someone else commits murder, they should be punished in some form as to discourage murder. We should not ENCOURAGE murder by murdering one to save five - that will only result in more murders, in the long run, because it opens the door to any psycopath who can kidnap people.

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

I'm sorry, you are incorrect again. If I murder someone, the "amount of evil in the world", even as you define it, by definition increases, because murder is an evil act. If someone else murders five people, the "amount of evil in the world" also goes up. But those are two separate acts, and by not murdering anyone, I am doing my part to keep down the "evil rate", if you want to think of it in those terms.

If that was possible in my case you would be right, but in my case it isn't.

True, you can set up any contrived, outlandish scenario that you want.

The bombing case is quite plausible given recent events, I think you owe an answer.

See above.

Again, how many more deaths than one will it take for you to admit that it would be worse?

I've already granted that, objectively speaking, five deaths are "worse" than just one. But that doesn't give me the right to commit murder.

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

Wrong. I can't make a difference to the outcome. Only the person holding the innocent people hostage can make the difference, by either murdering them or not. He can base his decisions on what I do or don't do, if he wants, but that doesn't mean anyone is responsible but him. I've also pointed out that if I go ahead and kill the one person, and use your justification to escape punishment, it'll just happen again and again. Sure, lot's of single people will die to "prevent" five others from being killed, but once we hit the sixth person who is killed, doesn't that, by your logic, outweigh the five at once? And, also according to your logic, if I had simply "allowed" the five to die the first time, the situation probably would not have arisen again, and thus there would be a greater "level of morality" in the world.

Using your logic, you're wrong. Using my logic, you're also wrong. Conclusion: Killing one person to save five is NOT moral.

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.

Uh, yes I would, or at least I damn well should be.

I don't think it is that clear.

How is it not clear that only the "trigger man" bears final responsibility for someone's death?

It seems that 2 is correct because it is bad that people die even when no one is responsible for it

I'm not sure I'd say that. Death is a fact of life. It can be tragic, and it can also be a good thing for the person. If one has a disease, or is in a lot of pain, sometimes death is preferable. But don't try to morally equate death with murder.

You can ask, but I ain't telling - yet.

OK. I was just curious. Personally, I've had one undergrad level political philosophy course, and done a lot of independent thinking.

Let's say I'd be willing to wager that it's more than you and I'm certain it's more than Berzerker.

As for me, I'm certain you have. As for Berzerker, I have no idea.

[David Floyd]

The problem is in this case not choosing ensures the death of the five.

Wrong. The death of five is ensured by the person who pulls the trigger. Again, don't try to shift responsibility onto me for the actions of others.

And by the way, in a Libertarian society, the government would not need very much income in order to pay for its very limited functions. The problem is to find a way to provide this limited source of income WITHOUT involuntary taxation.

In some cases, user fees will suffice. National lotteries and various other contests can make up some of the difference. I wouldn't have a major problem with government run casinos (at least none that I can think of off the top of my head).

The point is, there are various and plenty non-coercive methods to fund a government, PROVIDING that government is acting in a very limited capacity, thus requiring little income.

[Ned]

Originally posted by David Floyd

My position is more of something like this: I value liberty, and as such I will not knowingly violate the liberty of any individual, even if it means someone else violates the liberty of other individuals. I cannot control the actions of others, only my own, and I have an obligation to behave morally.

The above illustrates a flaw in Libertarianism. It assumes that lack of action against the immoral is moral.