Psychopolitik 2.0

John Quiggin: “I will ignore evidence to the contrary & say libertarianism = Objectivism.  Going Galt is a ripoff, so settle for living among Republicans in the suburbs”

Jim Henley: “I dunno about that.  But…too bad the popularity of limiting gov’t, let alone doing away with it, tracks with irrational fear of waves of Undeserving Darky.”

dL: “Um…Jim?  Last I checked, writing off chunks of the populace as cockroaches led to calling the Orkin men, not ‘let us leave them be’…”

Yes, this conversation still exists.  A key to why it’s still so persistent is that John & his peers seem to take everyone who says they want “less gov’t” seriously, regardless of how incoherent they end up when asked to clarify.  What those suburban Republicans really end up saying when you scratch the surface is “don’t mess with ME, mess with THEM!!”, with the obligatory finger-pointing.  The lifestyle that he cites as a better deal than “going Galt” is only so because said Republicans are heavily subsidized.  “Red” states are on average tax-eaters (meaning they get more money from the federal government than they pay into the system); within a state, “red” areas act similarly, with regard to tax revenue vs spending, compared to the generally more HippieLibrulSocialist cities.

In other words: Wannabe Galts aren’t paying the market rate.

Want to know why they aren’t?  dL has that covered…

About all the inevitable campaign ads, with candidates proclaiming their “independence” from Washington D.C., how “I’m not of The Beltway” and whatnot:

I hear a great way to make sure that you don’t become a member of a group is to not attempt to join it.  Sounds crazy, but I’ve tested it out for myself, and it works!  There was this local group, and I didn’t want to join it, so I made it a point to not enter their meeting place and sign up.  I even went so far as to not bother to find out where they met, and that helped a lot.

Ask, and you shall receive: Kevin Carson answers that question rather well.  Read the whole thing.

Since the whole thing with BP & the $20 billion escrow is turning out to be a bigger issue than expected, I have this to say about it:

While for obvious reason I don’t buy into the whole narrative of that coming about due to Obama’s threat to buttrape Tony Hayward negotiation prowess, say hypothetically a group of private citizens from the most immediately affected area had gotten access to BP management & expressed the kind of view — “pay this or else” — that various rightwing commentators are falsely attributing to Black Reagan.  Still a problem?

Considering the situation involves the misuse of property that was artificially granted via the State, and fallout from cutting corners in the process, to me the tort claim is firm.  Those people have commonly held property (the waters of the gulf), that property was fouled, ergo BP fucking owes them.  So, if Obama HAD done what Limbaugh & the like claim, the problem would not be what he did, but the fact that HE — an agent of the State — did it, and not someone who had moral standing to.

I don’t anticipate anguished screaming to this, but if you have any, go ahead.  This is due to my personal understanding of what defines property.   IMO, to say the act I describe is wrong beyond the context of who does it is, effectively, to say that the people of the gulf region are owed jack shit.

+3…

Thoreau questions whether he’s a libertarian.  Read the whole thing, I’m not going to even attempt to break that up.

There’s a lot of people out there, people that get way more attention than they deserve, who claim libertarianism yet have no real philosophical grounding to it (and no, selfishness does not count; you’re thinking Objectivism, not libertarianism).  That the term started out as in effect a euphemism for anarchy has to be kept in mind when discussing it: anyone who can’t imagine some form of time-line the end of which would mean people could live in the absence of concentrated authority (not perfectly, I’m not talking utopia, but in a way that would be clearly worth maintaining compared to what came before) is not a libertarian.  This doesn’t mean you have to be all Smash The State tomorrow, or even within the next few years, just that somewhere in your mind you can think about no central control & say “yeah, we could do that”.

I get the sense that Thoreau holds such a view.  You pretty much have to in order to attach such a name to your own words.  In contrast, most of the people catching hell over “libertarianism” do not.  Merely wanting your central source of order to be something not considered a State — say, religious authority, big business, or some sort of throwback to old-world aristocracy — is not libertarian.

On one hand, we have an acknowledgment and criticism of regulatory capture.  On the other, we have someone calling token criticism of a business that engages in it (a foreign owned one, at that) “UnAmerican”.  Which one is closer to what casual observers imagine when they hear “libertarian”?

Whatever anyone thinks about this, and with the obvious caveat that no, I do not support him, or any other politician, I just have this to say concerning the question at hand:

To me, it has seemed like there’s an undercurrent behind some of the inevitable critique of statements like Paul’s that equality is as simple as being let into other people’s places.  My interpretation, even before I had much of a philosophical view of anything else, has been that true equality is having your own.  Further, the reason why “public” accommodations were such a big deal in the first place was because bigoted whites smashed any decent alternatives that sprouted up.  Leaning on politics for that kind of thing is much less stable than commonly acknowledged.

*awaits misinterpretation & anguished screaming*

Edits:

-there is a point here, I’ll admit, w/r/t the enforcement angle.   That said, this goes back to the problem with government in general, how their functional purpose is to override the interests of most sane people.  Mainstream political opinion thinks of the State & imagines such goals as combating bigotry & feeding the needy, I think of it & imagine massive corporate bailouts & organized murder in countries many of us can’t find on a map.  These clearly don’t go together, yet the US government not only operates as if they do, but ignores any suggestions to stop the 2nd part while it sucks at doing the 1st.  Why is that?

-Roderick Long also has something to say about this.  Also, Ioz points out the weapon left cold and unfired on the table during this discussion.

-Bruce Bartlett, after initially laying at the feet of libertarianism the entirety of institutional racism in the US (BTW: what makes this whole thing all the more amusing is that Rand is even less of a credible “libertarian” than his father), stumbled backwards blindly into a good point.  To shorter it: “Why the hell would someone make an anarchist argument on civil rights when they clearly reject anarchist arguments on anything else?”

-As I’ve previously stated, it’s a curious standard to follow that suggests a political system deserves loyalty on the basis of inches of movement away from an injustice the process of which amounted to pulling teeth.  Minorities should be thankful for a legal system that would willingly enforce segregated restaurants in the first place to the same extent we should be eager to patronize a forcibly de-segregated restaurant where the owner would love nothing more than to piss in our morning coffee.

Political philosophy quizzes: there’s a bunch.  Now the C4ss has one.

As it’s the 1.0 version, they’re taking feedback about it here.   I gave it a turn, and posted the result in that comments thread.

Funny enough, as I type this according to the result I’m the least socially liberal one to try it.   Being “most conservative” in a crowd of left-wing anarchists though is like being the cleanest hog farmer though, so no biggie.

Bryan Caplan, on cloning himself:

I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally. Not only do they insult the identical twin sons I already have; they insult a son I hope I live to meet. Yes, I wish to clone myself and raise the baby as my son. Seriously. I want to experience the sublime bond I’m sure we’d share. I’m confident that he’d be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me. I’m not pushing others to clone themselves. I’m not asking anyone else to pay for my dream. I just want government to leave me and the cloning business alone. Is that too much to ask?

No, it isn’t.  None of my business if you do.  That said, here’s two cents:

-I can’t recall seeing anyone take the you’re-born-that-way side of the Nature vs Nurture argument so staunchly before.  Ever.  Completely dismissing the influence of your upbringing is a curious tack, especially when the context is wanting to literally raise yourself.  If he’s correct, then nothing he does will matter; if he’s not, then other than physically cloning means squat.

-I wouldn’t want to deal with myself as a kid, and I doubt my clone would be able to stand me as his “father”.  Another me in this world would be a humongous drag for both of us.  Hell, I can barely stand other people’s kids!

Props.

Short take: John Holbo needs to meet more reasonable libertarians.  Now to elaborate on that…

He’s expanding on the previous discussion into libertarian views on self-ownership — or, at least, the views on such he’s encountered from self-identified libertarians.  As for those views…hoo boy:

Libertarians – propertarians, anyway – rather notoriously maintain that you really ought to be able to sell yourself into slavery, if you want to. After all, you’re your property. You should be able to dispose of yourself as you see fit. (Some libertarians don’t go so far but many do. Nozick, for example. I think it’s pretty hard to resist this conclusion, in princpled fashion, once you’ve bought the strong self-ownership principle.)

To answer a very awkward question: No, you cannot sell yourself into slavery.  Being a slave means that you are someone else’s property, & not your own.  The second the “sale” was finalized you would forfeit the ability to do anything else, while your “owner” could dispose of you as property — literally.  This is why though there had been mentions of “indentured servants” during the era of slavery there was no meaningful difference in practice: sure, you could’ve drawn up a contract and everything, but all the power was in the hands of your “owner”, who could change your arrangement at will anyway.  When any other form of property is exchanged under false pretenses, we treat the sale as void, and selling yourself as a slave is inherently a transaction that cannot be fulfilled.

I suspect there’ll be arguments that this is wrong, that you can sell yourself like you would sell anything else.  Two things to say to that:

First, re-read the above again.  If you say slavery, you should mean slavery, otherwise use another word.

Second, not being able to truly sell yourself doesn’t mean you can’t rent.  In fact, this is what most people do.  Instead of a tenant or borrower, we call our clients by other names: managers, supervisors, foremen, bosses, etc.  This arrangement is so common because of deliberate decisions over time which have had the effect of limiting ways of making a living without such submission.  Outside of farming, self-employment or syndicalist-style labor organization, your options are effectively rent yourself out or starve.

It’s an interesting thing to observe the concept of self-ownership being used to argue willing enslavement, primarily because I see it completely different: the story of labor has actually been a fight for recognition of self-ownership, as owning yourself is what makes you NOT a slave.   I get the feeling this is an alien concept to the crowd than John has been dealing with…