Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
If I told you that an evil action became less evil with increasing numbers of participants, you would think me either mad or morally retarded; after all, we tend to view the actions of criminal gangs with, if anything, even more horror than the crimes of individuals. But the truth is that most people subscribe to a repugnant form of moral relativism in which evil actions, no matter how reprehensible, magically become “good” once those actions are agreed upon by “authorities” and sanctified by some ceremony involving sacred rituals, holy words, blessed costumes and (most importantly) baptism under euphemisms that cloak their true character.
Nearly everyone who isn’t a sociopath would agree that an individual who harms another commits a wrong; most of us also accept the existence of certain mitigating circumstances which might excuse such a wrongful action, such as killing in self-defense. And most of us would probably also agree that the violence was still regrettable, and therefore a thing to be avoided without serious provocation; the wrongful action never becomes actually good, but it can become a defensible, acceptable or even necessary evil. In any case, the factor which moderates the act is the motive, not the number of people who commit it: a crime committed by two people, ten people, forty thousand people or three hundred million people is still a crime, even if a majority of them agree to commit it; only a vital need can ameliorate the evil. No motive, however pure, and no consensus, however large, can fully transform an evil act into a good one; the best we can hope for is that nobody involved could see a better alternative at the time.
Some people wish to deny that this is so; they claim that if a majority of the inhabitants of a place agree that an evil action isn’t evil, then it isn’t. The trouble with this argument is that those who make it never really believe it. They won’t declare that slavery was right and good through most of human history, or that it’s moral to slaughter those who won’t agree to follow a conqueror’s religion, or that heretics and homosexuals should be burned at the stake and deformed babies set out to die…even though all of those ideas (and many others equally abominable) were accepted by majorities, often overwhelming majorities, in the cultures which practiced them. If you’re going to argue that confiscation of the property of unpopular citizens, or the abduction and enslavement of others, or the abrogation of some people’s rights, or the overruling of some people’s choices, are OK for the “greater good”, you had better also be prepared to sign off on enslavement, torture, purges, lynchings, pogroms and genocide, all of which were sanitized by the same monstrous excuse in many times and places over the past 12 millennia.
It’s fascinating in a train-wreck sort of way to watch the spastic mental dance people perform in order to get around this grim equation; they declare that “democracy” excuses collectively-committed crimes (except of course for those committed by other people’s “democracies”), ignoring the fact that our ancestors assigned the same divine right to their kings that moderns assign to the majority. Or they make childish pronouncements about “The Law”, as though it had been handed down by an omniscient sky-deity on stone tablets in full view of assembled Humanity and was renewed unchanged and inviolate in every generation since we climbed down from the trees. Some of them will even enthusiastically condemn any and every social grouping – families, gangs, fraternities, corporations, religions, political parties and even local governments – for their sins and abuses, yet declare their national government (or, even more bizarrely, the United Nations) a positive good.
A government is just a group of people, selected by some arbitrary means according to some arbitrary rules agreed upon by some group powerful enough to impose its own views on the rest of the population without instantly triggering revolution. That’s all it is, and it doesn’t have any special Divine Right to make decisions for everybody else. As Washington pointed out, a government has no power to enforce its decrees except via threat of violence, and that automatically makes it an evil no matter what the motivations of those who control it. This does not mean Mankind can do wholly without government at this stage in our evolution; far from it. One would have to be a naive fool to believe that a completely anarchistic society could long survive without degenerating into chaos; however, it would be equally foolish to declare that dressing thugs in interesting costumes and giving them fancy titles makes them anything but thugs, and that calling “might makes right” by euphemisms such as “law enforcement” and “the justice system” somehow makes it moral.
My point is not that we should abolish government entirely; it is that our love affair with it, and our passive acceptance of the lie that it is good and holy, endanger every living thing on Earth and imperil the continued survival of Western culture. Oncologists and cancer patients are under no illusion about the destructiveness of chemotherapy; they recognize it as a poisonous, dangerous procedure only slightly better than the illness it treats. I daresay nearly everyone would be happy to abandon it as an obsolete barbarity were there a better and less destructive therapy available, and I cannot imagine any sane physician’s enthusiastically supporting the use of it for other diseases, especially not non-terminal ones. But with government it’s the exact opposite; many people seem to consider it the solution for every problem, and deny its danger despite ample evidence to the contrary. We would rightfully distrust a physician who lied about the danger of chemotherapy, who insisted on giving the patient as many sessions as possible whether necessary or not, and who prescribed it for every ailment from bullet wounds to insomnia; yet, we accept the word of career politicians who make the same sort of claims about government. Right now, government is the most widely-accepted way to secure individual rights and prevent oppression of the weak by the strong, just as chemotherapy is the most widely-accepted means of combating cancer. But neither of them is a good solution, and until we can find something better both must be used as warily and sparingly as possible lest they inflict more harm than the ailments they were intended to remedy.
One Year Ago Today
“Their Lips are Moving” presents examples of the lies police tell against whores and clients, including a short-lived attempt to blame the Long Island killings on the members of an escort review board.
We agree on the end goal, you and I, just not the path to getting there. I too believe in a small government. And I’m a socialist.
i believe that there ought be a list of core human rights that are inviolate- If a society holds anything sacred, let it be that. And then the rest of society ought to be constructed around those rights.
I don’t believe we ought have unfettered capitalism. In school, I learned plenty about the industrial revolution, and saw how that worked for working people. I suspect that’s exactly the situation deregulation, capitalism over all is taking us back to.
But I don’t want a large government. Instead, let’s see employee or cooperative ownership of most business. (I’m not totally opposed to private ownership. If a business depends the knowledge or talent of a single person, or employs only one person, then I’m fine with private ownership.Examples would be doctors, lawyers, prostitutes.)
The problem I see with focusing all on government is that so much of our lives is controlled by non-government, non-elected forces, that have power because they have wealth. We must deal with that to achieve freedom too.
The bottom line of it all is never trust anyone else to have power over you. For most of my life I was able to live that way. Now I’m not, and I sorely miss it.
I agree; allowing anyone else to have power over oneself, and granting any “authority” the power to overrule personal decisions, is at the core of all modern forms of tyranny. Wealth is dangerous only because in our system it allows the purchase of power; if any use of force by one individual or group over another could be legally barred, amassed wealth wouldn’t allow the rich to manipulate anyone in a global economy because there are always competitors. It’s the unholy union of money and political power that is so very dangerous, and that’s what we have now; it’s called “fascism” and it’s a contender for the title of “worst form of government ever conceived”.
>if any use of force by one individual or group over another could be legally barred, amassed wealth wouldn’t allow the rich to manipulate anyone in a global economy because there are always competitors.
History has shown us that there’s also always collusion among the wealthy and powerful that stymies competition. Look at the trusts and monopolies that existed in the USA around 1900.
It’s much worse now. But the fact of the matter is that the problem is a violation of the public trust on the part of the governors, a violation our constitution lacked adequate safeguards to prevent.
Much of the evil of the industrial revolution was made possible by the Enclosures Acts, which took away villagers’ rights in partly-communal land and gave it to the gentry in the name of economic efficiency.
Why don’t we see more worker-owned businesses? I would guess they have a steep disadvantage in tax and/or liability, thanks to … uh, must be the libertarians!
I’ll believe “unfettered capitalism” exists when I see new small banks and insurance companies proliferate like airlines and breweries did in the USA after 1980.
Maggie, I can’t think of anyone who writes more eloquently on civil rights for sex workers – but, at the same time – when you get your “Libertarian” on – it’s as good as ANYONE gets! I really enjoy it when you write like this because it shows a different side of your intellect – which I’m envious of.
I’m not sure what the solution to this problem is – we’ve grown government so big that what we’re left with is a struggle between the left and the right to control it for their own ends. Even the people who claim to be for “smaller government” do NOTHING but grow it. I got into a pretty fierce debate with a friend of mine last week who was complaining that Blacks are “slaves” to the Democratic party even though the Democrats have never done a thing to improve the conditions of Blacks. I laughed and told him that Conservatives were slaves to the Republican party because, for 50 years or more – Conservatives have gone to the polls to vote straight line GOP hoping to get smaller government – but getting exactly the opposite.
We can complain about Obama running up the debt with ObamaCare – but I saw a story yesterday that said Bush’s unfunded Medicare Part D entitlement will at $14.3 TRILLION to the US’s long term entitlement deficit.
But maybe we should be thankful for that? At some point this all has to come crashing down and maybe we can rebuild it the way it should be.
O/T Interesting story in NY Daily …
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/war-women-article-1.1065172
Thank you, Krulac; they really aren’t separate issues, though the Powers That Be try to make them appear so. People have the right to own and control our own bodies, thoughts and immediate surroundings; the third secures the other two. Attempts to split those rights into separate political beliefs are merely a case of “divide and conquer”. The Republicans claim to be for smaller government (even though they aren’t) in order to win the support of libertarians for whom property rights are more important; the Democrats claim to be for civil rights (even though they aren’t) in order to win the support of libertarians for whom personal rights are more important. Thus they collaborate to split the votes of those who oppose their control of the country and everyone in it. The only solution is for libertarians to unify enough to start winning offices, thereby breaking the two-faced one-party fascist system which has controlled this country since the Second World War.
Excellent article Maggie.
“government is the most widely-accepted way to secure individual rights and prevent oppression of the weak by the strong”
The problem is, most people don’t want to prevent oppression of the weak. They just want to prevent the oppression of themselves and others like them. Oppressing everyone else is not a problem, unless it somehow comes back to bite them.
Perhaps one step towards limiting government overreach would be to force every person who takes public office to strictly live on a state pension and state provided housing equivalent to the nation’s median income level after their term ends. i.e. no contributions from “friends”, spouses, or relatives, whatsoever, and with no legal immunity from acts performed during the time of office.
Maggie,
Did you get a chance to read “Adventures in Legal Land” by Marc Stevens yet?
Oh, yeah, I finished it last autumn. I even borrowed one of his phrases in this column (“interesting costumes”). It really didn’t break any new ground for me, because I’ve been of the same mind as him for years. However, I’m honestly not sure what he’s trying to accomplish with his tactics; is he just looking for personal, intellectual victory? Because even if a judge or prosecutor is totally in the moral wrong (as they so often are), he still has an army of armed thugs and lawyers at his disposal and can destroy the life of just about anyone he likes, and the fact that he had no right to do it doesn’t restore wealth, health, reputation or liberty.
For Stevens it’s about damage control. Once they get their claws in you, you’ve already lost. Even if you ‘win’ you’ve still wasted a lot of productive energy defending yourself. What he does for his clients is help them minimize the damage chiefly by getting them to leave you alone.
I have used his techniques successfully in being left alone for a few years now from a certain alphabet agency.
In court what it comes down to is getting one of two outcomes: 1) Getting them to leave you alone (by dismissal, appeal or stalemate) or 2) Getting them to drop any pretense of fairness and revealing themselves to be the psychopaths that they are.
In my own case I stopped making arguments and started asking simple questions, which has turned things into a nice stalemate which has lasted for a few years now. True, they may decide to come after me, but let’s be honest in the NDAA world we live in now, any troublesome nail is a target for the hammer now.
This article of yours was eloquently written. It was one of your best. Individual human rights, individual human liberty, and the restraint of government so they don’t violate human rights and human liberty are important. It affects more than just prostitution or even other forms of sex work such as stripping in the USA or hostessing in South Korea etc.
Last night, Fox Cable News host, Bill O’Reilly, of The Factor News program had a segment about how there are forces within the USA who are using the U.S. Secret Service scandal to decriminalize and legalize prostitution in the USA. Bill O’Reilly spoke to Sienna Baskin who is a lawyer working for some prostitution group I can’t remember the name for and Fox Cable News’ very own John Stossel whom you gave good mention a few days ago along with many others. I will try to summarize, and I hope all of you can find the segment on the internet or cable tv if you haven’t already seen it. Bill O’Reilly admitted that if prostitution were legalized that it would lead to harm reduction, but it diminishes the individual who practices this, it would send the wrong message and it is bad for THE CHILDREN. Sienna Baskin refused to be drawn into whether prostitution diminishes the individual because she can’t know each whore’s mind, stated that Colombian whores unlike American whores are able to achieve justice as well as police protection because their rights are the same as non-whores, and that she is simply advocating for human rights as well as noting that nearly all whores do prostitution work because it is the only way for most of these women to support themselves at worst or the best way for women to support themselves at best. O’Reilly said women could do other work and mentioned low paying jobs to start, but Baskin refuted him from an economic standpoint. John Stossel stated that as a father of a daughter that he wouldn’t want her to become a whore because he believes it does diminish the individual, but that 1)prohibition of prostitution makes a bad situation much worse just like prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s USA, 2) government governs best when it governs least, 3) the goal of laws should be to prevent individuals from harming eachother or redressing those grievances, 4) it is extremely difficult if not outright impossible to legislate morality in and of itself, 5) government can not fix all that is wrong with the world and usually makes things worse, 6) if you try to legislate for morality or to fix all that is wrong with the world then the government and you usually make things much worse than before, and 7) advocating for individual human rights as well as individual human liberty is the best course of action to take because even though it will not achieve perfection nor correct all wrongs that it is better than anything else.
Both Baskin and Stossel did well. Baskin was smart enough to avoid whether prostitution diminishes people or not saying she is for human rights as well as mention the real reason: economics or money to pay for it all. Baskin was wonderfully perceptive and honest to mention how difficult it is to pay for all things and this is why most whores are whores. I fully agree with Stossel as usual, and he was brilliant. I even agreed with Stossel that I wouldn’t want a daughter if I had a daughter to do prostitution work, but that prohibition of prostitution would make a hypothetical daughter’s life or any woman’s life who does prostitution work much worse. When prostitution is legalized, it reduces harm. Coercion and trafficing decrease. The whores and johns are safer because they are treated as what they are like everyone else, are treated like every other merchant and customer relationship, and have individual human rights and individual human liberty. The thing is the rest of society even those who abhor such things or would never do such things are safer too. Individual human rights and individual human liberty works best and causes the least amount of harm. Prohibition of individual human rights and individual human liberty causes more harm in the long run than anything else. The evidence is clear, and it takes a person who commits evil or commits insanity to believe otherwise.
I was invited to be on that show opposite O’Reilly, but I couldn’t agree to show my face on television and O’Reilly wanted someone he could show, which I totally understand. I’m glad they got someone else who was able to stand up to O’Reilly at least as well as I could’ve, and maybe better.
I am curious as to why not show your face. Is it to do with your current line of work, family, community, your husband….? Or is there another privacy issue (being a press target would be enough of a deterrent I guess). I say this because Brooke Magnanti became a much stronger voice on sex issues when she went public.
My husband’s family and work wouldn’t understand. If our income ever becomes independent we’re going to have the conversation again, though. It’s not a unique issue; lots of current and former whores have it. Most of those who are public were forcibly outed one way or another.
Didn’t watch it but I read some “quotes” from the segment and it appears BOR kept coming back to the old saw of women “selling their bodies”.
And – he kept saying that legalization would send a message from society that “this is okay, when it’s not okay”. So here again is at least a “semi-conservative” who will bitch about liberals forcing standards of conduct on HIM – but he has no problem forcing them on hookers.
To the question … “is prostitution diminishing?” What job is potentially NOT “diminishing”? I saw a Sailor so dissatisfied with his life in the Navy that he jumped off the back of a cruiser – would you say that guy somehow got “diminished”? What about combat? When you pick your buddies up off the field in pieces – is that not diminishing?
It just comes down to whether or not a person is capable of handling a certain occupation.
And, as to whether or not I’d want my daughters to be prostitutes. It’s like this – firstly, they don’t have a “normal” Dad. They have a Dad who would rip the spleen out of any many who harmed them. I’ll gladly serve a life term in the “pen” or “fry” – whatever … so that’s the first thing they’d have to deal with (of course, they deal with that now don’t they?).
Second – I want them to be happy. If they are one of those people who will be “diminished” by the experience, I don’t want them doing it. But if it’s for the right reasons – I’m fine with it. Actually, I’d encourage them to get ahold of Maggie and talk to her about it before making a final decision. I really don’t understand the “stigma” that people assign to sex work. I wouldn’t love my daughters any less. I wouldn’t try to “hide” them or “disown” them.
In fact, I once fell in love with a “whore” … I was utterly destroyed when I lost her. I had already determined to make her the mother of any kids I had and to spend a lifetime with her. It didn’t work out – but I viewed her as far superior to any other woman I had met up to that time. She had probably been with hundreds of men and, I’m sure she was with other men before and after I visited her (almost every weekend). But love, for me at least, wasn’t based on just the sex – it was based on a much deeper connection, mentally – between the two of us. I didn’t consider her “diminished” and, if she was – it was in the fact that she may have been “jaded” and unable to recognize that I was serious, or she couldn’t fathom how two people from utterly different backgrounds could make a relationship work. She told me many times that if we got married my family would find out what her occupation had been – and that, when I saw their reaction I would change my mind about her. I told her she was fucking clueless – but she never believed me.
But her opinion on the matter was based on the unfortunate realities of the stupid opinions of OTHER PEOPLE. She was never a woman who walked with her head down, that is for sure.
Krulac, like you I never understood the “but would you want your son or daughter to do [fill in the blank]” style of arguing. No, my dream is not that my daughter become a stripper, a porn star or (if legal) a prostitute, but then I don’t want her to be a lawyer either and I’ve been practicing law for over 20 years. There are many jobs I don’t want my children to enter because I see more downside than up, but if they disagree I won’t disown them or feel any less for them. The fact that I don’t want to do something, or would prefer my children not do it is not a valid reason for any proscription. Face it if my will prevailed then it would be illegal to be a Democrat and there would be strict licensing of Republicans. The growth and complexity of government over the last several decades is simply stunning and of course all done for our own good, except we’ve managed to criminalize almost every deviation from some perceived norm. Like William Roper, both sides, when they have the upper hand, will cut through every limitation on government to catch their current devil, and then are surprised when things turn around on them and there’s nowhere to hide. The moment you think “that ought to be against the law” you should stop, go home, have a drink and go to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.
Our ideas of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ have changed over the ages, of course; it is only too easy to criticise those in the past using today’s values. The burning of heretics was believed to purify them through the actions of the flames; believed by those who did the burning. Sounds very strange to us, but it was the ‘received wisdom’ then. And if exposing children sounds bad, well one explanation was that it sorted the men from the boys. Eugenics by another name. And don’t forget the history of the foundling hospitals, where hardly any kids actually survived; a form of tolerated infanticide. Or you could get the kindly old dear in the village to do it for you. Then there’s gender-specific abortion…plus ça change.
(There are examples of anti-cancer drugs having wider applications — check out methotrexate; it doesn’t detract from your argument though. I’m just being empirical as usual.)
After reading your polemic, I’m more than ever certain that I don’t want to meet you in the debating equivalent of a dark alley at midnight — or even in broad daylight 😉
Yeah, I do tend to be fairly ruthless; my philosophy of debate is “why use a blowgun when a shotgun is quicker?”
I think the argument from morality (consistently applied) is the only argument that is, ultimately, ever going to succeed, because all the other arguments descend eventually into a quagmire of analysis and statistics, and are much easier for people who want to irrationally hold onto their beliefs to dismiss.
It’s also the only argument that can succeed because it’s also the main weapon in the statist’s arsenal, along with their version of it argument from emotion (“For the children, you’re not against children are you?”). Oh, sure they’ll trot out the studies and the statistics, but that alone wouldn’t be enough to support the government religion. The statists, like priests, know that most of the time and in most things we are moral people and value morality, and they prey on that, by making us believe we aren’t, and that we need them.
I agree that the world isn’t ready for a stateless society, but the first step in solving a problem is to admit you have one. And it’s not politicians that we need to admit this, it’s the rest of us. En masse.
We’re the state. The politicians are just the figure heads.
James Madison had it right–a system of checks and balances to prevent the overreach of any branch of government or other political entity.
What most of us forget, is that in Madison’s day, economics was called “political economy,” and was part and parcel of the political equation.
Madison and Jefferson both wanted to see corporations neutered, surviving only long enough to achieve a specific purpose, and then dying. The immortal entities we have now violate the spirit of the American Revolution, which was started more because of the Parliament granted monopoly of the British East Indies Company than any other cause.
Probably your best article yet in my opinion. Society and culture are moving incredibly fast right now. As Alan Moore once said, eventually culture will turn to steam. Our government is already showing signs of being left behind, In two hundred years, we probably won’t even need a federal government. At least one in its current form.
[…] A Necessary Evil (maggiemcneill.wordpress.com) […]
I agree with you that “everybody does it” does not make an action right. However, if everybody believes something, it *is* a lot less likely to be wrong or unreasonable than if only one or a few believe it.
This is why democracy (somewhat) protects liberty, and thus is worth having, despite going wrong sometimes.
The current push, helped by the president, for class and/or race warfare is an important exception. The USSR and post-Revolution France have shown what lies down that path; I hope we can still avoid going there.
There is indeed class warfare going on. It was here before anybody heard of Obama, and the “upper” class is winning. For all his eloquent words, Obama isn’t doing much to either end the war or change its outcome.
Borrowed your George Washington quote for my FB status update. And boy, do I believe it. Never call the cops unless it is absolutely necessary.
I’d go a step farther and say it’s never necessary; there have been too many cases in the past few years (some reported herein) of cops beating, arresting or murdering people who called them for “help”.
I’ve heard that the evidence of Washington’s ever saying that is poor.
Eloquent and beautiful.
And for your edificaiton:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/taslima/2012/04/09/sexual-slavery-must-be-abolished/
Stella Mar is all over this one.
She actually plainly states that trafficking and prostitution should be conflated.
That blog backfired on its author and her (few) supporters; not only did the comment thread attract a number of sex workers and others pointing out that the author was not remotely employing anything like free thought, it also inspired several rebuttal columns on the site.
Taslima Nasrin is a big-time feminist from South Asia (Bangladesh, I believe). She’s fought off no end of very dangerous Muslim fanatics. She’s big time international feminist activism.
I’m disappointed she’s turned out to be a de-rigeur Mackinnonite; unreformed and unthoughtful, married to the Big State. Disappointing.
The problem with “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is that it only lasts until the common enemy is defeated. I prefer an honest multi-player competition to an artificial dichotomy which, as libertarians have discovered, always results in division or marginalization for the smaller factions which “ally” themselves with the big ones.
Hey! I’m new to reading your blog, and I think it is one of the best I have ever been exposed to. Even when I don’t really agree with a philosophical idea, I have no doubt of the validity of your own opinions, and of course, your facts are always true. I’m young and a girl and an Engineer, and I have found your blog to be extremely helpful in developing my own personal morality.
I have a point to bring up about the nature of government and why, at least in my experience, opinions about it are so polarized.
In my experience, there are some people who want to give up their freedoms so that they can also absolve themselves of responsibility. It is the same reason why so many people find ‘comfort’ in religion; its because they no longer need to take responsibility for their own lives.
Then there are people who, on absolutely no account, want to surrender control or responsibility for their own actions. They trust their own judgment over that of others, and they use the opinions and moral judgements of others not to replace their own, but to develop them into something more robust and, in the end, more effective.
The problem with human society, and by extension, government, is that in any group of people larger than one there is a mix of these types of people, and the same rules/laws cannot be applied to both types of people. Those who are ‘Alpha minded’ try to impose responsibility on those who are ‘Omega minded’, and those who are ‘Omega minded’ impose their desire for freedom from responsibility on the ‘Alpha minded’. The problem is worsened when you have people who display traits of both kinds of mentality, and when you take into account that, at least in the majority of western cultures, it is considered a filthy thing to be anything other than a self possessed ‘Alpha’.
So, relating directly to your post, there is something inherently poisonous about any type of government because Alpha types and Omega types both want different things from it, and government is required to use the same set of rules for both. This is true even if you could separate a powerful entity’s/person’s desire for power, which is something I still don’t have an real opinion on as far as human nature and/or morality is concerned.
I’m waiting for a system that allows individuals to stay free if they want, and to indenture themselves to the government if they want, and for any grey in between, and for both choices to be equally safe and beneficial to the society as a whole. I’ll probably die waiting.
I’m waiting for that, too. But as you say, it’s unlikely any of us here today will live to see it.
Thank you so much for reading, and for the compliments!
Most arguments I hear for libertarianism take place with the broad framework of the Enlightenment: they deal with issues of power and tyranny, natural rights, and other aspects of the human compact as negotiated among humans. These issues are eternally valid.
But there are post-enlightenment discoveries that introduce other considerations into the picture, when we are considering how to construct a society which is both just and sustainable.
One such post-Enlightenment domain of knowledge is environmental consciousness broadly defined. The concept of a land ethic was put forth first and most eloquently by Aldo Leopold in the 1940s. But the concept is more than aesthetics–there is hard physical science and social science to back it up. One example is our hard-won discovery of externalities–the ability to push costs onto third parties outside the immediate transaction. Another is our discovery of the Tragedy of the Commons–the tendency for rational self-interest to lead inexorably to the destruction of any common resource.
A second post-Enlightenment domain of knowledge information theory. How free are contracts, and what does consent mean, when there are vast asymmetries of information between the contracting parties–for example, as is presently the case between individuals and multinational corporations?
I’m not aware of a libertarian literature which grapples seriously with these post-Enlightenment issues. Since these issues concern me greatly, the silence of libertarianism toward them is a real barrier to my taking it very seriously. If some one can direct me to a libertarian literature on these issues I will engage with an open mind.
My experience of libertarians outside of Maggie is that they are so caught up in “government is EVIL!!” that they are incapable of seeing that it is ever necessary, much less that it can ever, ever be useful. Any notion of “the environment” or “the commons” is dismissed as “collectivist propaganda” that only “sheeple” will except as having any validity. They also seem unable to see that anything OTHER than government can be evil; if it’s evil, it’s because of government, and if it isn’t government, then it’s at most an annoyance or quite likely good. In particular, the idea that government can be used to deal with any of these other evils is heresy, because it’s basically recommending a pact with Satan to deal with an annoyance.
When a question is asked like, “what about the poor, the disabled, the sick, the unlucky?” you either get some faux-tough declaration that the weak deserve to suffer, or the libertarian falls into the same mistake the Marxists did: that if you just get the Devil out of the way, people’s better nature will emerge and people will just naturally take care of the unlucky (which is bullshit), or else they intone that their great system will insure that nobody is ever unlucky (which is also bullshit).
At this point I fully expect Maggie and others to tell me that libertarians aren’t like that, that they are much more reasonable and much less dogmatic. At which point I will say that just a whole lot are indeed like that, and that I don’t know if the noisy ones are exceptions or the norm, if the more reasonable/less dogmatic are the real deal or if you have just let yourself become enamored of True Scotsmen. Either way, if the weirdos are all that the world ever sees of libertarianism, then libertarianism as a whole will get exactly the respect that the weirdos deserve.
“True Believers” can adopt libertarian philosophy as their Bible as well as they can adopt anything else. But that doesn’t make them libertarian thinkers any more than it makes the typical Bible-beater a Jesuit. Nor is this a “No True Scotsman” dodge; there are plenty of real libertarians writing on the web, but if you rely on the media or self-avowed “liberals” to point them out to you, you’ll be waiting a long time. The Agitator and Reason magazine are excellent places to start if you want to understand what genuine libertarian thought is like.
I do skim articles in Reason from time to time, but I find it really, really lacking on environmental issues–click “environment” on the “Topics” list on their Website and you’ll find a lot of shallow ideological hand-waving, little of substance.
I have read a number of much more serious libertarian attempts to wrestle with externalities. Most invoke Ronald Coase’s work as an argument that Pigovian taxation is unnecessary. But most of these “Coasian” models seem to me to have basic issues of scale– they barely work even for a very simplified scenario (like a single point polluter of a river and a single point river user–say, an Indian tribe with fishing rights). Against a real world problem like carbon emissions they just fall apart.
Thoughtful libertarians, like this fellow, seem to concede that this is a significant issue for them:
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/12/28/a-third-kind-of-green-libertarians-should-care-about/
I have yet to read a really good solution to these issues within the libertarian framework, hence my appeal for tips.
I’ll tell you where I find my libertarians: space boards. Every time I go on some discussion board dedicated to the future of human activity in space, I find a bunch of people saying things like “NASA spends billions of taxpayer dollars every year to keep the rest of us out of space!” When asked why NASA would want to do that, they throw out a lot of pre-packaged verbiage that boils down to “because NASA is government and government is EVIL!!” I ask what NASA should be doing instead of what they are doing, and the only answer they have is “get out of the way and let private enterprise take over” because private enterprise is always better at everything all the time without exception ever. EVER!!
It isn’t Dennis Kucinich and Rachel Maddow leading me to these people; they present themselves just fine. And they commonly identify themselves as “Libertarians” or “Libertarian-leaning Republicans.”
Maybe these strange people aren’t out in much of the rest of the world in any kind of force and it’s only space cadets like me who have to put up with them (though they DO exist elsewhere, maybe they only make noise instead of predominate though sheer numbers).
I hang out in those circles too, Sailor, and I share your pain.
{hugs}
My first encounter with a Libertarian was on a space board circa 1978; he kept saying “it’s inefficient!” in a way that made me think (much later, after I knew some less cartoony libertarians) that he misunderstood the definition of economic efficiency.
I could not disagree more. The modern environmental movement consists of: (1) rich bad guys who want you and me to believe they’re “saving the planet” when they block development near their homes in order to enrich themselves and keep those places race-segregated; (2) alleged scientists who lie because their funding and careers depend on the goodwill of the EPA and its allies; (3) “watermelons” who would rather be the bosses of Ecotopia than allow our comfortable, cheap-energy world to continue (and if it doesn’t, they’re the only reason why); and (4) dupes.
The truth, of course, is that the earth has never been in any danger, and that expanding wealth helps, not hurts (look at the relative levels of pollution in some rich and poor countries if you doubt this). Read the works of Julian Simon, especially “The Ultimate Resource”. Then send the green plague packing!
Well, there you go. Anybody wanting to stand in the way of The Market, in way, shape, or form, is either a liar or a fool. Probably both. If environmental concerns are real, the philosophy is imperfect, and since THAT isn’t possible, the scientists are all conspiring.
My sister is a masters student at MIT and she numbers among those researchers you have carte blanche called liars.
She genuinely cares about researching better ways to produce energy to help the environment, and as a ‘green movement’ critic myself I can attest that she has never worked on anything that was not simply stating the facts. Those ‘lies’ you are exposed to are the bastardization of the studies that politicians use to further their agenda’s which is by no means indicative that there are no environmental issues; all it proves is that the politicians are being idiotic and/or counter productive about solving the problem.
I can give you numerous examples, such as the blatant favoritism, unwarranted, to the corn industry http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-ethanol-scam-20110323 but that is besides the point here. Its not the actual subject that is the problem, its the way facts are distorted to obfuscate the truth in order to further one agenda or another, regardless of its validity.
Wow! A true libertine libertarian librarian. Take a bow for a well done tome MM
LOL! Nice alliteration! 😀
[…] Como bem resumiu Maggie McNeill, chega a ser patética a ginástica mental de certas pessoas (muitos liberais aí incluídos) na tentativa de justificar o injustificável. Elas entendem que a democracia, como num passe de mágica, absolve quase todos os crimes e injustiças cometidos coletivamente, do mesmo modo que nossos antepassados atribuíam um certo direito divino a seus monarcas e imperadores. Alguns chegam a fazer pronunciamentos apologéticos sobre o poder da lei votada democraticamente, como se esta tivesse sido ditada por uma divindade celestial e gravada em pedra. […]
[…] Como bem resumiu Maggie McNeill, chega a ser patética a ginástica mental de certas pessoas (muitos liberais aí incluídos) na tentativa de justificar o injustificável. Elas entendem que a democracia, como num passe de mágica, absolve quase todos os crimes e injustiças cometidos coletivamente, do mesmo modo que nossos antepassados atribuíam um certo direito divino a seus monarcas e imperadores. Alguns chegam a fazer pronunciamentos apologéticos sobre o poder da lei votada democraticamente, como se esta tivesse sido ditada por uma divindade celestial e gravada em pedra. […]
I was loving your blog but none of the Libertarian stuff sits well with me a tall. I guess you haven’t defined exactly what branch of “Libertarian” you subscribe to(Classic Liberalism and modern Libertarianism aren’t necessarily the same thing) but as a transwoman I can’t sympathise with modern libertarian causes at all as they are often thinly veiled conservative ones – middle class to rich white men complaining about others telling them what to do, and trying to convince people like you and me that their cause benefits us, when most of their policies do not.
My head is swimming too much to get into the good and evils and government. You say that wealth is only dangerous because it allows purchase of power, in some ways I think government is only dangerous because of the presence of wealth.
As a transwoman I have felt far more discrimination from private entities than public ones. Now – I consider myself a Libertarian of a sort – but of course a socialist libertarian – I believe in maximising individual liberty as a central principle but I think that when people tend towards viewing the state as the only oppressor it’s because they’re not really all that oppressed – or – have been sweet talked by those who have not. Which is perhaps a little insulting, but it is simply how I feel it. Most world governments are horribly corrupt but it’s a mistake assuming the alternate – less government, and thus more room for big business.
I believe in some tenets of classical anarchism, in terms of ALL power structures must be questioned from the ground up. And right now in our world it is big business, corporations doing more damage than governments and many governments are effectively a front for big business in the first place – not that this is necessary for them to do what they do either. It’s much more important to be that we dismantle capitalism before we dismantle/rethink the state.
I feel like these Libertarian views may be largely in reaction to a branch of feminism which tends to be critical of sex work etc. under the guise of “but is that REALLY the decision you want to make? is there some other factor here?” and it’s important to be critical about these things.
There’s no point in discussing anything with someone who believes we need to “dismantle capitalism”. Sex workers are the ultimate capitalists; I suspect from the rest of this that you actually mean fascism, which is a form of statism…which libertarians are against. Methinks you are arguing against straw men set up by other kinds of statists, which I have no time to dissect.
I also find it highly insulting (and more than a little absurd) that you seem to think my mind is so narrow that I form my views on human freedom “in reaction” to something which had no effect on me until I was over 30 years old…yet ignore the motivations of your own situation on YOUR rather selfish and poorly-considered political views.
UPDATE: I was taking you as merely an ignorant or misguided person until I went to reply to your third comment. In it, you dismissed Reason magazine as “right wing” because one of the topics you saw upon first visiting the website was marijuana legalization, which you dismissed as a “rich white man’s issue” despite the fact that the drug war victimizes minorities in general, and young black men in particular, so disproportionately it has been called “The New Jim Crow“. This disgusting denial of institutional racism to support your statism goes beyond mere sophistry into the kind of vile apologia for racism and fascism that makes me want to throw up; you are a troll at best, and at worst the kind of spineless bootlicker that has enabled the degeneration of this country into a police state. I have deleted your other comments; you are not welcome here. Congratulations; only about 3 or 4 other people have ever earned a total ban so quickly.
There was stuff in Leigh Walsh’s post that I disagreed with, for instance dismantling capitalism isn’t really a good idea when we have nothing better with which to replace it. It also seemed to me that there were some germs or seeds in there which might’ve been interesting to follow up on.
I do thank you though for saving me the time and effort of cutting loose on her about marijuana legalization being a “rich white man’s issue.” I don’t think that I personally know any rich men, white or otherwise. I have known people who smoked pot, and for all I know some of them might still. Some of them were men, and some of them were white, but some of them have never been either, and not a single one of them has ever been rich.