bdp@ptsfa.UUCP (Barbara Petersen) (12/20/84)
From: ..!ucbvax!bashinsk%ucbcory (J. Bashinski) > From: faustus@ucbcad.UUCP > > What is good for society as a whole is what is good for most of the members. > I guess that this isn't always a useful definition, but I am not trying > to claim that society has any sort of existence apart from its members. > You could say that society is a set of epiphenomena of social interactions, > properties that cannot be said to belong to any of the members but belong > to the whole. It is pretty easy, in theory, to decide what is good for > society -- whatever leads to the greatest good, in the long run, for > the most individuals. > The problem with talking about "the greatest good of the greatest number" is that it involves maximizing two dependent variables at once. If you want to maximize something like a product "GOOD * NUMBER", you'll have to come up with a way to quantify "GOOD". Have fun. Even if you could come up with some expression for "the good of society" in quantitative terms, it might not be right to maximize it. Suppose you have incontrovertible proof that sacrificing unwilling virgins to the great lizard-god is the only way to preserve the lives of others. Do you have a right to perform the sacrifice? Moral philosophies differ here, but I think not. > > > I can't think of a single example of something that would be good for > > EVERYBODY, at least not if each person were permitted to decide for > > him/herself what's good for her/him. > > Well, neither can I, but just because people don't always know what's good > for them doesn't mean that they are right. > If they're not right, then who is? And who's to decide who is? > > National defense: > > > > I can think of at least three private solutions to the problem of > > national defense. The first is to ignore it entirely. A nation without > > armed forces would present no threat to other nations. It would therefore > > be a less tempting target for attack. If the citizens of that nation > > were known to be well-armed as individuals, an attack would still threaten > > heavy losses for the attacking force. Since traditional techniques of > > military conquest involve taking over the government apparatus already > > in place, a libertarian nation would be difficult to take and still more > > difficult to hold. > > A nation with a large military is a temping target for attack? I don't > understand that one. A threat, maybe, but I think that a rich economy > is a much better motivation to try to take over a country than a big > army. > A big army is a much better motivation to try to *destroy a country outright* than is a rich economy. The idea is to "get them before they get us". Another good reason to try to take over a country is the existence of a robust government apparatus that can be used to keep it subjugated. After all, people who are already oppressed probably won't care about a change of oppressors. When you invade a country successfully, you usually destroy its economy. While it's true that those who plan invasions may not understand this too clearly, I hardly think that this makes a rich economy an incentive for a takeover. This is especially true if there are no barriers keeping you (as a government) or your citizens from trading in that economy. > > The private alternative to publically supported education already > > exists; it's called the private school. Under a libertarian system, all > > schools would be private schools. Parents would be free to send their > > children to the school of their choice. The children of the poor would go > > to schools operated by private charities, or would be taught by their > > parents. > > Parents would also be free no completely neglect their children's > educations, which I think would be more common. Do you think that a > poor unmaried mother would have the time and motivation (not to > mention education) to teach her children herself? You have to consider > the rights of the children to an education also, not only the rights > of the parents to do whatever they want with their children. Frankly, I doubt that complete neglect for children's education would be terribly common. If the poor unmarried mother didn't have time or knowledge to educate her child, the child could go to a charity school. Who would operate charity schools? Churches and other private organizations have been operating schools and other youth programs for years. Furthermore, as proponents of public education are so quick to point out, a modern industrialized economy can't operate with an uneducated work force. It would therefore benefit firms who need educated workers to support schools. It would be difficult to imagine such a system working much worse than the present one. I went to the best public schools in the local district (Oakland, California). Many of my fellow graduates were, in my opinion, functionally illiterate. Once having learned to read, I learned essentially nothing in classes, since they were paced for the least motivated students. A few "special" classes were still incredibly boring. I don't ascribe much validity to IQ tests, but it's interesting to note that my measured IQ *dropped* by thirty points between first grade and high-school graduation. Parents don't have a right to "do what they want with their children". *My* opinion is that parents hold their children's rights to property in their own bodies in trust, and that it should be fairly easy to arrange reversion of that trust. If a child's parents are not educating him/her properly, I feel that the child has a right to seek education elsewhere. The child does NOT, however, have a RIGHT to education itself, however likely that child is to find it in a libertarian society. > > I think that most of the people who have been defending libertarianism > are really defending anarchism, including Mr. Bashinsk. As I understand > it, libertarians (real Libertarians, that is) don't believe in a society > with no government at all, but rather one with a minimal government. If > people want to argue that all government is evil, they should identify > themselves as anarchists, not libertarians. > > Wayne > A libertarian (my personal definition, which seems to be fairly well accepted) is a person who believes: 1) That individuals heve the right to control their own bodies and the products of their labor, and therefore in private property. 2) That the initiation of force or fraud is wrong, but that force may legitimately be used to counteract force initiated by others. These are the essentials. There are other propositions, but I think that these two are sufficient for as good an axiomatic development of libertarianism as can be had for any political philosophy. An anarchist is a person who believes that government should be abolished (more on the definition of government later). Libertarianism and anarchism are related, but independent. It is possible to be a libertarian with or without being an anarchist. This month's newsletter from my local Libertarian party organization indicates that there are both anarchist and "minarchist" factions within the party. It is possible also to be an anarchist without being a libertarian; many anarchists reject the concept of private property. I consider myself a libertarian. I remain undecided on the anarchist/ minarchist question, though I lean philosophically toward anarchy. I apologize to minarchist libertarians if I have defended any intrinsically anarchistic ideas as simply libertarian. I think that a possible source of confusion, at least in my own postings, has been the use of the word "government" without definition and in possibly inconsistent ways. In many places I have used "government" to mean "nonlibertarian government" or "government as it is presently practiced". To avoid future confusion, I propose the following definitions, which I'll use myself from now on: A GOVERNMENT is an entity which reserves all use of force to itself, and which uses force to prevent others from using force without its authorization. A LIBERTARIAN GOVERNMENT is a government which uses force only in response to the use of force or fraud by others, and which recognizes that it draws its right to use force from the right of the victim of the original force or fraud to redress. If anyone can show me something substantially wrong with these definitions, I'll willingly change them. J. Bashinsk>i< ...!ucbvax!bashinsk%ucbcory Please respond to this address.
edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall) (12/22/84)
> Even if you could come up with some expression for "the good of society" > in quantitative terms, it might not be right to maximize it. Suppose you > have incontrovertible proof that sacrificing unwilling virgins to the great > lizard-god is the only way to preserve the lives of others. Do you have a right > to perform the sacrifice? Moral philosophies differ here, but I think not. > > J. Bashinsk>i< This is a straw-man argument. As a libertarian, I suspect you believe in a rational world in which an ungoverned order is inherently fair to individuals. I doubt that the existance of a lizard-god fits into your view of the world--or in the view of the people here you are arguing with. Use more real-world examples if you want your argument to hold water. Generally accepted examples of the good of the many overiding the good of the few are incarceration of criminals, military defense against an invader, and other cases in which ``the good of society'' is considered. (These things have been amply argued here, I might add, and haven't seemed to yield any ``easy'' answers.) Let's re-write the ``formula'' a bit. maximize <The good of individuals>+<The good of society> In other words, there is something which I call ``society'' that needs to have its ``good'' considered as well as that of individuals; this is that part of the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. To use a metaphor, we are all part of a ``body'' comprised of individuals. Culture, language, and, yes, government, all form the interrelationships that constitute this ``body''. When I speak of the good of society, I'm speaking of this UNITY, and not the simple sum of the PARTS that make it up. Extreme libertarians want to focus solely on the individual, and not consider society in any separate way at all. Extreme socialists want to focus on society, and not consider the individual at all. My own feeling is that a middle course is by far the best (though like anything balanced between two extremes, it is more complex and difficult to define). What J. Bashinski seems to be arguing is that since good is hard to quantify, and since the good of the ``many'' is even harder to quantify, that we should forget about ever considering it at all. Excuse me, but that's a coward's line of reasoning (or perhaps that of someone so caught up in the quantization of the world as to not see that much of it is not quantifiable). We shouldn't let the difficulty of a problem force a false solution. I find libertarianism attractive because of its simplicity, but then again, socialism is simple, too... And neither has the balance needed to further the cause of civilization, in my view. -Ed Hall decvax!randvax!edhall
faustus@ucbcad.UUCP (12/22/84)
> The problem with talking about "the greatest good of the greatest number" > is that it involves maximizing two dependent variables at once. If you want > to maximize something like a product "GOOD * NUMBER", you'll have to come up > with a way to quantify "GOOD". Have fun. You don't really need a definition of good, because most people will agree on what is good and what is not. I think that the best you can do is to try to formulate a definition that conforms well to what people think. Not an easy task, but it is not necessary. > A big army is a much better motivation to try to *destroy a country > outright* than is a rich economy. The idea is to "get them before they > get us". Another good reason to try to take over a country is the existence > of a robust government apparatus that can be used to keep it subjugated. > After all, people who are already oppressed probably won't care about a > change of oppressors. > > When you invade a country successfully, you usually destroy its > economy. While it's true that those who plan invasions may not understand > this too clearly, I hardly think that this makes a rich economy an > incentive for a takeover. This is especially true if there are no barriers > keeping you (as a government) or your citizens from trading in that > economy. I can think of a lot of reasons why the Soviets, for instance, wouldn't mind invading the US if we had no military -- to get our technology (remember what they did to the East Germans after WW2), to add to their power in the world (having all of North America would make them more of a threat to China and Western Europe), to gain control of the people (I doubt that we would be as much of a challenge as the Afghanistanis), and so forth. > Frankly, I doubt that complete neglect for children's education > would be terribly common. If the poor unmarried mother didn't have time > or knowledge to educate her child, the child could go to a charity school. > Who would operate charity schools? Churches and other private organizations > have been operating schools and other youth programs for years. Furthermore, > as proponents of public education are so quick to point out, a modern > industrialized economy can't operate with an uneducated work force. It > would therefore benefit firms who need educated workers to support schools. How many small children do you know who would go to school if the government and their parents didn't force them to? When I was five years old, I probably wouldn't have. > It would be difficult to imagine such a system working much worse than > the present one. I went to the best public schools in the local district > (Oakland, California). Many of my fellow graduates were, in my opinion, > functionally illiterate. Once having learned to read, I learned essentially > nothing in classes, since they were paced for the least motivated students. > A few "special" classes were still incredibly boring. I don't ascribe much > validity to IQ tests, but it's interesting to note that my measured IQ > *dropped* by thirty points between first grade and high-school graduation. I will agree with you here -- many public schools (including the ones in Oakland) aren't very good. But you can't deny that they are better than nothing... > Parents don't have a right to "do what they want with their children". > *My* opinion is that parents hold their children's rights to property in > their own bodies in trust, and that it should be fairly easy to arrange > reversion of that trust. If a child's parents are not educating him/her > properly, I feel that the child has a right to seek education elsewhere. > The child does NOT, however, have a RIGHT to education itself, however > likely that child is to find it in a libertarian society. Children are NOT just little adults, who think just like adults do and are capable of being responsible for the same things. They won't seek education elsewhere, they will just sit around and never realize what they are missing. They certainly won't end up libertarians -- a lack of education will just make them more susceptible to government propaganda (more so than they would be listening to a bit in school). > A libertarian (my personal definition, which seems to be fairly well > accepted) is a person who believes: > > 1) That individuals heve the right to control their own bodies > and the products of their labor, and therefore in private property. > > 2) That the initiation of force or fraud is wrong, but that force > may legitimately be used to counteract force initiated by others. > > These are the essentials. There are other propositions, but I think that > these two are sufficient for as good an axiomatic development of > libertarianism as can be had for any political philosophy. They sound reasonable, but as always, their validity must be decided after looking at what kind of system they give rise to. If, as it seems, they imply that people who cannot be responsible for something because they don't understand it must be responsible anyway, I think that they alone are unacceptable axioms. I think they are a good start, though. > I think that a possible source of confusion, at least in my own > postings, has been the use of the word "government" without definition > and in possibly inconsistent ways. In many places I have used "government" > to mean "nonlibertarian government" or "government as it is presently > practiced". To avoid future confusion, I propose the following definitions, > which I'll use myself from now on: > > A GOVERNMENT is an entity which reserves all use of force to itself, > and which uses force to prevent others from using force without > its authorization. > > A LIBERTARIAN GOVERNMENT is a government which uses force only in > response to the use of force or fraud by others, and which > recognizes that it draws its right to use force from the > right of the victim of the original force or fraud to redress. > > If anyone can show me something substantially wrong with these > definitions, I'll willingly change them. You seem, as most libertarians, to be obsessed with the use of force by governments. How about this one: A "good" government is an entity which, with the consent and support of the majority of the people it governs, regulates interactions between individuals for the "common good", and regulates the actions of those people who are incapable of being responsible for themselves. I am not going to define "common good", because I think it is a reasonably clear idea, and exactly what it includes depends upon the people who are being governed. Also, there is nothing in this definition about regulating things that responsible people do -- if anybody wants to take drugs and kill himself, just as long as he isn't a minor that is perfectly ok. As for the use of force, clearly excessive use of force is not for the common good as it leads people to react with force and increase civil strife. Wayne
mroddy@enmasse.UUCP (Mark Roddy) (12/23/84)
> When you invade a country successfully, you usually destroy its > economy. While it's true that those who plan invasions may not understand > this too clearly, I hardly think that this makes a rich economy an > incentive for a takeover. This is especially true if there are no barriers > keeping you (as a government) or your citizens from trading in that > economy. > As long as a libertarian society existed in a hostile/authortarian/ militaristic world it would require a national defense system. > > It would be difficult to imagine such a system working much worse than > the present one. I went to the best public schools in the local district > (Oakland, California). Many of my fellow graduates were, in my opinion, > functionally illiterate. Once having learned to read, I learned essentially > nothing in classes, since they were paced for the least motivated students. > A few "special" classes were still incredibly boring. I don't ascribe much > validity to IQ tests, but it's interesting to note that my measured IQ > *dropped* by thirty points between first grade and high-school graduation. > Amen. What on earth makes people think that "education" is what the public "school" system is for? It is just a place to park kids. > An anarchist is a person who believes that government should be > abolished (more on the definition of government later). > > Libertarianism and anarchism are related, but independent. It is > possible to be a libertarian with or without being an anarchist. This > month's newsletter from my local Libertarian party organization indicates > that there are both anarchist and "minarchist" factions within the party. > > It is possible also to be an anarchist without being a libertarian; > many anarchists reject the concept of private property. > I couldn't agree less. The difference between anarchism and libertarianism has much more to do with the libertarians peculiar reluctance to admit that corporate organizations are just as much a part of out non-libertarian government as are the traditional state institutions. It is a traditional distortion of anarchist theory to state that anarchists want to abolish government, immediately, like NOW. We just want to wither it away, peacefully, let it die of neglect. But government and concentrated capitalism are two faces of the same beast. *** REPLACE THIS SYSTEM WITH YOUR SELF ***
strig@ucla-cs.UUCP (12/28/84)
>You don't really need a definition of good, because most people will agree >on what is good and what is not. This is not correct, at least when people talk not about 'good' in abstract, but about practical choices and priorities: the fact that we use elections (in democratic countries) to decide proves that people disagree. For this discussion, this implies that every decision by the government will require some people to do, or pay for, something they consider (ethically or practically) wrong. This compulsion causes animosities among citizens, conflicts between moral and political obligations, etc, that are therefore necessary evil effects of any increase in the power of a government. (I am not drawing any general conclusions: just stating one of the many facts that need to be considered in this kind of discussions). Lorenzo Strigini ...!{ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!strig or strig@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA
js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag) (12/28/84)
>> Even if you could come up with some expression for "the good of society" > > in quantitative terms, it might not be right to maximize it. Suppose you > > have incontrovertible proof that sacrificing unwilling virgins to the great > > lizard-god is the only way to preserve the lives of others. Do you have a > >right to perform the sacrifice? Moral philosophies differ here, but I think > > not. > > J. Bashinsk>i< > This is a straw-man argument. As a libertarian, I suspect you believe > in a rational world in which an ungoverned order is inherently fair to > individuals. I doubt that the existance of a lizard-god fits into your > view of the world--or in the view of the people here you are arguing > with. Use more real-world examples if you want your argument to hold > water. Generally accepted examples of the good of the many overiding > the good of the few are incarceration of criminals, military defense > against an invader, and other cases in which ``the good of society'' > is considered. > Ed Hall Notice that both examples that Ed Hall gives of 'the good of the many over- riding the good of the few' are examples where 'the few' are NOT innocent, which is not what J. Bashinski was talking about (apparently). Well, if you must have a concrete, real life example, (BTW, why do some people, when considering what would be moral in a certain situation, demand an example which really happens? It seems to me that an individual should be able to decide what he thinks is a moral action in a given situation WITHOUT actually being in that situation.) how about graduated income tax. This is a real-life example where our current government has decided that the good of a few (those with large incomes) can be sacrificed in order to help many. Notice that 'the few' aren't really very happy with this arrangement. But, enough of our society thinks that this is o.k. to continue doing it. Where do you draw the line? We are willing to sacrifice the earnings of a few to the many. Historically, some societies have decided to sacrifice the possessions of a few to the many. Some have decided to sacrifice the lives of a few to the many (although it is unclear that this actually benefitted the many.) Someone, (I forget who) once wrote a very short story called "The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas". Omelas was a city whose people were happy and healthy and prosperous, but that prosperity was all somehow dependant on the forced poverty and degradation of ONE innocent person. The story merely states that once in awhile, in the middle of the night, a person would leave Omelas, never to return. Why is it that it is always 'the many' who decide that it's alright to sacrifice the good of 'the few' for 'the many'? It sounds as though 'the good of society' is usually used as an excuse to justify whatever 'the many' think they can get away with. Jeff Sonntag ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j May I never benefit from the use of force on an innocent person.
jack@vu44.UUCP (Jack Jansen) (12/29/84)
> From: bdp@ptsfa.UUCP (Barbara Petersen) > A libertarian (my personal definition, which seems to be fairly well > accepted) is a person who believes: > > 1) That individuals heve the right to control their own bodies > and the products of their labor, and therefore in private property. ^ *THIS* is where libertarians go wrong. They pretend to be a kind of anarchists who believe in private property, but the whole reasoning they use to defend the right to private property is *WRONG*! I (being an anarchist, by the way) agree with everything before the comma, but the rest of the sentence is wrong. Libertarianism allows you to do anything you like with your own property, for instance, give it away to your kids. While I can, to some extent, see that the founder of a big company could be granted some privileges (although I think these should be given to him by the companies employees, and should not be enforced by a government, or by the man himself), I think his heirs have *no right whatsoever* to these privileges. The problem with libertarianism is that it accounts for the fact that a goverment should allow a greater amount of freedom for the individual when the individuals are getting better educated, but, on the other hand, they want to make one exception, PROPERTY. Thus, while anarchy is a simple and beautiful theory (although unattainable in the near future), libertarianism is a complicated (and, in my opinion, rather messy) theory, because they have to make numerous exceptions to the overall phylosophy to make sure that the notion of 'private property' is retained. -- Jack Jansen, {seismo|philabs|decvax}!mcvax!vu44!jack or ...!vu44!htsa!jack If *this* is my opinion, I wasn't sober at the time.
jhull@spp2.UUCP (01/09/85)
In article <2207@randvax.UUCP> edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall) writes: >... >What J. Bashinski seems to be arguing is that since good is hard to >quantify, and since the good of the ``many'' is even harder to quantify, >that we should forget about ever considering it at all. Excuse me, but >that's a coward's line of reasoning (or perhaps that of someone so >caught up in the quantization of the world as to not see that much of >it is not quantifiable).... > > -Ed Hall On the topic of analysis and quantifying things, Albert Einstein (you remember him. One of those people who DID understand this world better than the rest of us :-) ) said, "Insofar as mathematics is precise, it does not describe the (real) world. Insofar as mathematics describes the world, it is not precise." I think there is a lesson in there ... somewhere. -- Blessed Be, Jeff Hull ihnp4!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!jhull 13817 Yukon Ave. Hawthorne, CA 90250
jhull@spp2.UUCP (01/09/85)
In article <33@ucbcad.UUCP> faustus@ucbcad.UUCP writes: > > A "good" government is an entity which, with the consent and > support of the majority of the people it governs, regulates > interactions between individuals for the "common good", and > regulates the actions of those people who are incapable of > being responsible for themselves. > Over and over I read "of the majority" and I get terribly disturbed by the implication that the minority have no right to contest the will of the majority. Could we have some discussion of additional criteria? For example, Robert Heinlein, in "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress," offers for consideration a constitution which provides for 75% of the vote to pass a law but only 25% to repeal it (the percentages may be wrong, but the idea is correctly presented). The point is, what is really fair? -- Blessed Be, Jeff Hull ihnp4!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!jhull 13817 Yukon Ave. Hawthorne, CA 90250