Assuming I’m not missing any sarcasm, that wasn’t my intent. I merely wanted to clarify that Scylla believes that those Republicans who attempt to get anti-gay legislation passed are not following true conservative values (by his reckoning), and asking how he would characterize those politicians on the political spectrum.
Let me take a stab at an ‘overview’ of libertarianism/conservatism:
Bear in mind that I’m going to give you the ‘idealized’ view at first, so the descriptions don’t get bogged down with exceptions and side topics. I’m going to break this into two parts - economics, and social conservatism.
First, economics:
The Free Market is Just
The free market is the most democratic way to organize human affairs, in the truest sense of the word. In a representative democracy, you vote for representatives, and then hope that they do the kinds of things you like. At best, it is an approximation, because no candidates will always support everything you support. And there is the tyranny of the majority, in which one side loses and becomes subservient to the wishes of the other side, at least until the next election cycle. Modern political systems have evolved various ways of dealing with this and ensuring fair representation, but none of them are perfect. In some cases, people are permanently disenfranchised. Minorities, small populations divorced from the mainstream, etc.
But in a market, every time you purchase something you cast a ‘vote’. You are making a choice, and that choice counts. Purchase a Ford instead of a Chevy, and you have directly contributed to the health of Ford. You have sent the marketplace a message telling it what you like. We make dozens of decisions like this daily. The type of soft drink we like, where we choose to live, what clothes we want to wear. All our choices are transmitted back to the marketplace and affect the direction in which it moves. In addition, the market is not either-or. There is room for many different choices. You like Nike, I like Reebok. Rather than the government mandating one-shoe-for-all, the market provides shares to different companies based on percentages. It is more flexible, and again more democratic.
We also do this in macro ways, by investing in companies we think will be successful, starting our own companies, etc. The mass of society pushes and tugs the market where THEY want it to go. The producers of goods are merely responding to the demands of people that would buy them. This is the ‘invisible hand’ of Adam Smith - the notion that when people want to get ahead in a free market, they only way they can do so is by offering things that other people want to have. Guided, “As if by an invisible hand”. In this way, the market is self-regulating. It is nothing more or less than the expression of the will of the people.
It is an important insight to recognize that economic freedom is intertwined with political freedom. My right to earn my own money and spend it as I choose is at least as important as my right to say what I want and go where I want to go.
Most liberals would agree that if a government restricted travel arbitrarily and only allowed people to move between cities with a permit, it would be wrong, and a violation of civil liberties. But you can achieve the same thing by taxing gasoline and roads so high that people can’t afford to travel on them. In Chile in the 1970’s, they had a ‘free press’ - but newsprint was taxed by the government so heavily that no one could afford to buy it. Of course, newspapers that stuck to the government line could get tax exemptions…
These are extreme examples, but we live under many examples like this. Canada has seen sharp reductions in smoking because of punitive cigarette taxes. In some countries, guns are suppressed through highly expensive registration fees. Tariffs are designed to force people on the margin to buy products they otherwise wouldn’t. Subsidies to farmers and special industries allow them to undercut competitors and force them out of business.
Anything that distorts the market and causes people to act in ways other than what they woould choose if left to their own devices represents a loss of freedom. And the biggest most obvious one - here in Canada, “Tax Freedom Day” is now almost halfway through the year. That means for the first five months of the year, I am essentially a slave to society. The fruit of my labor is taken from me by force and distributed to places where I do not choose for it to go. Now, most conservatives have no problem with funding things that all of society benefits from - defense, courts, roads, education. But whenever my money is taken from me and given to someone else who is ‘special’, it makes me a serf. That means subsidies to the arts, farm subsidies, welfare, grants to sports stadiums, etc. ad nauseum. Now, libertarians would say that all of this is wrong. My opinion is more nuanced - for example, I support minimal levels of welfare and medical coverage (about what we have today), because I recognize that it is in all our interests to have a society where the bottom rung of the ladder is not so desperate as to be a breeding ground for hatred and crime. Plus, it’s just the right thing to do. We are wealthy enough that we can look after our poorest. But there is a caveat here, which I’ll cover in the next message.
When the U.S. founding fathers wrote that the people have the right to the ‘pursuit of happiness’, they were making a radical statement. Before that time, people were seen as chattels, and their lives belonged to king and country, or to god. They could be sacrificed at will for the good of the state. But the founding fathers saw a different role for the state - that as an organizing force to protect the commonweal, provide order and security, and settle disputes objectively, so that people could live their own lives, for their own sake. Modern liberalism goes against this philosophy, and sees the mass of society as a resource to be taxed, controlled, influenced and regulated not to provide maximum liberty for the citizenry, but to reshape the choices of people into a mold that someone else thinks is ‘better’.
The Free market is efficient
Why is the market better than government directed action? A prime reason is information transmission. The Law of Unintended Consequences is a result of inadequate information and finite resources. A government action causes ripple effects throughout the economy, and those ripples are unpredictable. The bigger the action, the bigger the ripples. These ripples distort prices, cause shortages and surpluses, and change human behaviour. Again, in unpredictable ways.
The primary characteristic of a free market is that it is driven from the bottom up, in a negative feedback loop. This is the most efficient, most stable way to manage the goods and resources of a country.
A command economy is unstable - the lack of information causes inaccurate inputs, which cause instability, which must be corrected with more inputs, which cause different instabilities, etc. Ad nauseum. Think of a pencil balancing on your finger. Make a change, and the pencil tips. You must constantly react to keep it balanced.
Now consider a pencil hanging from your fingers. Push it out of equilibrium, and forces rise up naturally to push it back in the most efficient way possible.
This is the way the market works. Consider a shock to the market - say, a new product appears, a new manufacturing method is created, or a crisis happens. How does the market respond? Through feedback. Let’s say a new process suddenly causes plastic to be cheaper than steel for a certain application. What happens? Well, a glut of steel, first of all. This glut causes steel prices to fall. This stimulates demand for steel in other applications, helping to pick up the lost market. In the meantime, the lower price means steel manufacturing will begin to cut back. At the same time, there is a short-term run up in plastic prices. This reduces demand in some areas, and stimulates more production.
Now, when production of plastic is increased, it increases demand for plastic molds and machinery. That information gets transmitted to the manufacturers of those products. They are made of steel. Now suddenly there’s a slighly increased demand for steel for that application. That information ripples through the price system, and prices adjust and fluctuate until everything is in equilibrium once again and stability sets in.
Now consider the other way of doing it. Let’s say the government decides that plastic should replace steel. So they mandate a change. But suddenly there is a shortage of plastic. So they mandate increased production in the plastic industry. But now there’s a tool shortage. In the meantime, the displaced steel workers clamor for benefits. Taxes are raised to pay for them, which depresses other industries. And so it goes. Without a market, government can never keep up.
This is the fundamental flaw with communism and socialism, and it is non-correctable. You can NEVER have enough information to make top-down command decisions, in part because a lot of the information is hidden. Let’s say two people request some steel, but there is only enough for one. Who gets it? You can bet that both of them will say their need is critical, and maybe both believe it. But without being an expert in both fields AND having perfect information about the market, you can’t make an accurate decision. In the market, this doesn’t happen because prices will fluctuate and cause both people to weigh their own costs against advantages and make optimal decisions.
Now, you might say that we’re not talking about communism - we’re talking about progressive Democratic values. But the differences are in degree, and not kind. Liberal programs like minimum wage laws, CAFE standards, safety standards, etc. are command decisions. They cause exactly the same kinds of distortions and inefficiencies as communism does, but limited to a smaller area of the economy.
Remember Hillary’s health care system? It was going to be streamlined and efficient. It was going to be a ‘better, smarter’ way of delivering health care than the market could provide. But once they got into the details, and the interactions and complexities reared their heads, the regulatory mess grew. And grew. And grew. By the time the notion was scuttled, they had thousands of pages of regulations in their draft proposal. And it wouldn’t have survived the first day in the market without other unforseen consequences cropping up.
Now, the libertarian position is that these reasons are sufficient to say that the government should NEVER meddle in the market. My position is more nuanced than that. I say that every government decision should be weighed with these factors in mind, and that there must be a very compelling reason for govermnent action, because I start from the default assumption that the government fiat is a very distant second when it comes to economic choices. The liabilities are so huge that the need must be great before I’ll condone a government program. But show me a clear market failure, and you can win me over.
Failures of Government
The standard argument for foes of the market is that the market doesn’t work. It doesn’t provide social justice. It results in inequity. It is coarse, brutal, unfair. I don’t believe this, and hopefully I’ve shown why. But it’s important to remember that government also fails, and not just because it is inefficient. Let’s consider some of the ways government activism fails:
Government Lacks Information and Incentives to be Efficient
Lack of information I already covered, but lack of incentive is also important. Milton Friedman wrote an excellent essay in which he described it this way:
There are three major modes of economic control:
- Spending money you earned, for your own benefit,
- Spending your money for someone else’s benefit, and
- Spending someone else’s money for someone else’s benefit.
Mode 1 is the typical mode for market transactions, and in this mode you have a strong incentive to spend as little as possible, for the best product possible. This is an efficient transaction.
Mode 2 would be gifts, charity, etc. In this case, you have strong incentive to spend as little as possible, but somewhat less incentive to ensure that full value is gained for the recipients.
Mode 3 is worst of all, and this is regime that government operates in. When spending someone else’s money, with the benefits going to a 3rd party, there is little incentive to cut costs or ensure value. In a democracy, the only way we have of controlling this inefficiency is through government oversight committees, auditors, ombudsmen, etc. But clearly, government is horrible at this, witness the billions of dollars per year that are wasted on pork.
This is yet another reason to be distrustful of government solutions. How inefficient will health care choices be if it’s government that decides how much should be spent on a procedure, and can raise taxes to pay for it?
Regulatory Capture
This is the effect of regulated industries eventually twisting the very regulations that were meant to control them into a means for them to control the marketplace. The reason for this is similar to a ‘market failure’. It is a ‘government failure’. This is the way it works: New regulations are typically proposed by special interest groups, to protect consumers. Once the regulations pass and the industry falls under them, social pressure fades, and activists stop paying attention. But the businesses live under these regulations every day. So they hire lobbyists, fund campaigns, and in general put continual pressure on regulators to make small changes that benefit them. If you pay close attention to things like building codes, you’ll often find regulations that make no sense other than that they keep people employed. Sometimes you’ll find regulations that can be traced back to the benefit they have for an individual company. Sometimes a company will propose a regulation that actually imposes a cost on it, but which imposes an even higher cost on its competitors. These are all ways in which companies use regulation to benefit themselves at the expense of consumers, even if the regulation itself is advertised as a boon to consumers.
Lack of cost-benefit analysis
This is an endemic failure of government. In the marketplace, decisions are always made by weighing costs against benefits. This is a rational, logical way to approach economic decisions.
Take the example of drugs. A free market decision to put a drug on the market, assuming the market is working efficiently, is to look at the potential cost of failure (human lives and damages, as expressed by insurance costs, lawsuits, etc) and to weigh it against potential benefits. But consider a bureaucrat in the FDA making the decision to allow a company’s product to go to market. The only thing that bureaucrat sees is cost - the cost of releasing a drug that can do harm. But the benefits don’t matter. If a bureaucrat squashes a drug that can save 1,000 lives, no one will ever know, and his job is safe. But if he approves a drug that kills 1,000 people, there will be hell to pay. Because of this, bureaucracies develop a cover-your-ass mindset that becomes resistent to change and overly cautious. Especially in today’s world of rapid change, this is a significant drag on progress. For example, Beta Blockers were withheld from the American market by the FDA for years after they were available elsewhere in the world. That decision was responsible for thousands of deaths. But we don’t hear about that. Instead, we hear about the failures when an approved drug turns out to be dangerous. This distorted view of government action leads to bad decisions.
Government can not be stopped when no longer needed
How many companies go out of business each year? Thousands. How many markets have dried up and vanished? Lots. The free market adapts. It changes with the needs of society. But with government, change is only one way. You can create new government departments and initiatives, but once you have created them, they are almost impossible to kill. The Rural Electrification Administration was created to bring electricity to the farms of the country. At the time, less than 5% of rural farms had power. Today, over 99% of rural farms have electricity. So you’d the think the REA would have gotten a ‘job well done!’ and disbanded, right? Wrong. The REA’s budget continues to expand. Its mission has creeped in scope, and it has found new ways to justify its existence. It cannot be killed. Here in Alberta, there is a school district with an administration, but no schools. Demographic changes caused the schools to close, but the administration stayed.
For this reason, conservatives are very, very leery of creating new government. It’s a one-way street. It takes a flexible, adaptable part of the economy, and makes it inflexible. This is not to say all government is bad, but conservatives resist the knee-jerk notion that if you see a problem in society, the solution is more government. It is a very dangerous road to travel.
Government Destroys the Social Fabric of Society
Bear in mind that I’m not a ‘social conservative’, and I don’t agree with everything they stand for. But I believe I understand the argument, so let me describe it:
Before there were myriad government programs for retirees, the poor, the disabled, etc., how did society cope with these problems? After all, people didn’t starve in the streets before 1930, even during the depression. And there weren’t old people lying in gutters because they couldn’t work.
Society adapted to these needs primarily through the family, and community. How did you plan for your retirement? You had children, and it was expected that those children would care for you. If you didn’t have children, you saved money. If you couldn’t save money and had no children, the community or church would often look after you.
My grandmother got a great education. She went to a one-room school, staffed by a single young woman who was hired by the town. This young woman had a lot of social pressure on her to give the kids a good education. There was a sense of community involvement. People worked together. Parents helped out. It was personal.
My grandmother’s education also continued at home. HER grandparents lived with the family. They taught her things. They had the free time to spend with the children to help raise them.
This was the pattern of society. Family, community, church, work. People who lost their jobs would be helped out, but in return they were expected to help others, and to show gratitude for the help by working hard and looking for work. People DID feel gratitude for the help, and it made them better for it. ‘Pay it forward’ was a common phrase.
Along comes the government. Social security means that the elderly no longer need to live with their children. The extended family takes a blow. Welfare and unemployment insurance take over from community charity. The neighbor down the block is replaced with a faceless bureaucracy.
Children are plucked from this comforting web of community and family, and placed in large, state-run educational institutions. Because it is now law that they be educated, and there are ‘standards’ set by the government, parental oversight is no longer required, and begins to lessen in importance. Welfare creates a giant underclass of people who are ‘entitled’ to a lifestyle, and without having a reciprical obligation. Without the strength of community, crime starts to rise. Institutionalized poverty leads to a permanent underclass that feels angry and disenfranchised.
In the end, social conservatives believe that great harm has been done to society. It has broken apart families, lessened the need for marriages, disconnected children from their grandparents, made communities faceless (how many people know their neighbors anymore)? The list goes on.
Now, in my opinion the blame for the changes we see can not all be laid at the foot of government - part of it (a LARGE part) is the result of the demise of the agrarian society towardss a large, urban, industrial society. But clearly government has an effect.
Question: How many of you would save more money and make more effort to stay out of debt if you knew that there was no social security to fall back on when you retire? And if you did that, don’t you think you might just be a more responsible citizen? By removing personal responsibility, government has done damage to important aspects of citizenship.
Conservatism comes out pretty firmly on the rights and responsibilities of the individual.
Homophobia is not consistent with rational conservative thought. In fact, the conservative movement has a tradittion (one that has largely fallen by the wayside sadly,) of standing up for gay rights.
The founder of modern conservatism Barry Goldwater is very clear on gay rights going back to the 60s and 70s long before it was fashionable.
He of course cited the long tradittional military history of gays, which is a truly distinguished history, and argued for their overt acceptance in the military.
On any list of the collosal badasses of history, the Sacred Band of Thebes has to rank high.
To oversimplify, The Sacred Band was a gay army. You fought beside your “spouse.” The ones you loved above all we’re right their beside you. Their devotion and ferocity in combat, their unequalled tactics are still taught today, and they instituted many modern tactical ideals and their training, discipline and methodology marked the founding of the first modern army, in many eyes.
Everything about them is still taught today at in of military history. They are a lesson to be emulated, and their lessons are taught. Everything about them… Except that they were gay. Usually that doesn’t get mentioned.
So, no. The Log Cabin Republicans have no ideological conflict.
They do have a conflict though.
A powerful component of the recent conservative movement are social conservatives.
They are unfortunaely, not as far on the fringes as they should be.
The social conservatives are the rabid homophobes, the abortion bombers, the fundamentalist religious fanatics, and others who latch onto the “preservation of the status quo” and forget that it is only a default position (or else they just use that as an excuse.) They are those that wish to inflict their restrictive brand of morality on others.
They are a poweful and informally aligned group, and while they are well-entrenched within the Republican/Conservative movement, it woudl be a mistake to think they belong to it.
Perhaps the most egregious piece of homophobic shameful bigotry to ever be ever passed into law was DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.
This hateful little huckleberry enjoyed wondrous bipartisan support.
Shamefully that support was stronger on the Republican side of the fence.
I’m trying to say this openly and without partisan bickering in describing what I think is shameful behavior.
Does it make me feel a little better to know that Clinton signed that sucker as well as the horrible “don’t ask, don’t tell,” bigotrty appeasement?
Not really. It shows the strength of these intolerant types that they must be courted and appeased by both sides of the fence.
I look forward to the coming day when the reasonable and tolerant middle comes together and disenfranchises these motherfuckers.
So what can I say? I’m not going to claim the true Scotsman fallacy and say these social conservatives aren’t “true conservatives.”
They share a lot in common with mainstream conservatism. They are distinguishible mainly by their fundamentalist rigidity and their intolerance.
I think conservatism is a very smart reasonalbe and workable way to think and run a society. In fact, I think that far and away it works best.
But social conservatives make me ashamed by their association.
Failures of the Free Market
Market Failures
For a market to function, you need several things - you need a reasonably large base of consumers, you need more than one supplier, and you need costs and benefits of decisions to be knowable and have impact on the parties involved. In a large economy, this is almost always the case. But there are some things that clearly don’t function very well in the market - primarily areas where benefits can accrue to an individual or small group, but where costs are dispersed widely. The classic example is pollution. A plant has a direct benefit from not emitting pollutants, while the cost of those emissions is spread over so many people that no individual has an economic incentive to do anything about it. And, the costs are usually borne by people other than the consumers of the plant’s products. Some libertarians argue that social pressure is enough to curtail this - boycotts, marketing campaigns, etc. These help, but I’m not convinced they are enough. So I would accept some government intervention in this area. There are other market failures, but far, far fewer than most liberals think.
Unless you’re a dogmatic libertarian, you must be open to the idea that there are market failures that need to be corrected through government action. But the burden of proof should be on the government to show that it is necessary and that no other alternatives exist. These failures do not include things like local job losses due to changing market conditions, or poor wages for some workers with political clout. They must be honest-to-god failures of information transmittal or the blockage of costs from reaching the people doing the transactions.
Income Inequity
Studies have shown that in any random population, a disproportionate amount of productivity will come from a small group of people. This group will therefore earn the most money. In any collection of people, some will work harder, some will be smarter, and some will be just plain lucky. Over a long period of time, this will create differences between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. If that difference grows large enough, it can effect the fabric of society by causing massive unrest.
Now, this effect is over-stated, because any static analysis of wealth between different segments of the population ignores the fact that in a free economy there is significant income mobility.
It is also important to remember that there is only one cure for this, and that is to tax your most productive members of society. This acts as a disincentive. So in short, the only way to reduce income inequality is to reduce the overall wealth of the country. The conservative argument here would be ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’, and that by allowing the most productive people to remain productive, or even encouraging them, will result in a better standard of life for all, even if the gap between them grows wider. After all, would you rather have a $30,000 income knowing that some people are making $300,000, or would you rather have a $20,000 income, knowing that no one makes more than $100,000?
Here in Canada, we diverged from the U.S. and tried to offer more social justice to the people. Free medical care, subsidized day care, higher welfare and unemployment benefits, and a higher minimum wage. For a while, this raised our standard of living. But over time, we have seen capital flight, brain drains, and in general have underperformed the United States. As a result, our standard of living has fallen as compared to the U.S.
It is critically important to remember that the root source of economic well-being is the creation of wealth, and that is totally in the domain of the free market. Governments do not create wealth. They do not create jobs. They can only destroy jobs in one area and move them to another. They can only take wealth from one person and give it to another. Government is a zero-sum game. The free market is open-ended, with economic growth providing a better life for everyone.
Conclusion
There is a large role for goverment in society. Maintaining the peace, protecting us from outside coercion, Providing a sovereign entity that can objectively settle disputes through courts of law. Those are the classical ‘libertarian’ functions of government.
I would go a bit farther. I would argue that government can smooth the rough edges of the market. It can prevent stress on society by taking care of the worst injustices. It can help correct market failures. It can organize large public investments that the market can’t or won’t do, such as an interstate highway system.
But my position is that government already does this, and much, much more. It should be scaled back drastically. Regulations should all be ‘sunsetted’ if they can no longer be justified. Government is the action of last resort. It is not a great tool, but a necessary one in rare circumstances.
Please refrain from telling me what I am arguing, or I shall commence to tell you what conservatism is, what you believe, and what you think. “I will endeavor to return the favors that I ask” Deal?
I am not swayed by your semantic sophistry. The word industry in my usage is a collective term for all the individuals engaged in a certain line of work. But don’t take my word for it, look in the dictionary. This is a perfectly acceptable definition which is used all the time. A hammer cannot be held to accountability, but an industry sure as hell can, and should.
When an individual’s economic interest endangers the public safety or security, I damn well expect him to choose the public interest over his own. Can you not see this as a moral choice, not merely an economic one? If you are truly speaking for all conservatives, this just proves my point that conservatives are incapable of economic sacrifice for the public good.
Actually, I can agree with your objective, but implementation is problematic. Simple laws, while desirable, are also ambiguous; and an ambiguous law provides much more wiggle room than an unambiguous one. If we extend your stockbroker example to the processed food industry (oops, I mean the individuals managing the food industry!), would it suffice to say, “do not endanger the public health with adulterated food”? Probably not, because it is impossible to mass produce processed food with absolutely no rat hairs or insect parts, and the processed food industry would collapse. Thus, we have unambiguous regulations detailing how many rat hairs and insect parts are allowable per ton of Cheerios[sup]®[/sup]. The only alternative is to trust “the individuals who manage the processed food industry” to do the right thing, which sometimes means setting aside an opportunity for economic gain in order to protect the public safety. I have no such confidence. I would rather not have to react when an “individual who manages the processed food industry” makes an immoral choice, and children die. Not even the Fist of God can bring back dead children.
Gratuitous insults are so unbecoming of you Scylla. 
It may surprise you, but yes it does. I find much to disagree with, but you are coming through loud and clear.
Scylla said
“If GE dumps toxic waste into the gulf, how do you punish Ge as a person?
You can’t. If you fine GE a billion dollars for the crime you have committed a meaningless act.
Who have you hurt? Just the stockholders, really, and perhaps some low level employees who get cut.
What did they do wrong?
The person you want to punish is the person responsible. The person that made the decision to dump the waste. The people who let him do it with overt, or tacit agreement, whatever.
Those are the people who should be punished”
So: how do you decide who these people are?
How long do you suppose it takes to scrape the gold letters saying “J.Worthington Foulfellow, CEO and Chairman of the Board” off the door and hang a cardboard sign saying “Johnny Foulfellow, 3rd Assistant Janitor? What do you do then?
As for the stockholders, ISTM that anyone who profits from an illegal act bears some responsibility. Maybe if the stockholders are hit in the pocketbook, they will be more likely to pressure the company to clean up its act.
Sure, it’s a moral choice. And if someone chooses to recklessly endanger the public, and commits some crime in doing so, punish him with Scylla’s Fist of God. If he does nothing we’ve defined as a crime, then leave the selfish jackass alone; each person should have the right to make his or her own moral choices, even if they’re choices we disagree with.
Oh, poppycock. The person who does something wrong, and the people who asked him to do it, they are the people responsible; the people who have done nothing wrong cannot possibly be expected to bear responsibility. Frankly, punishing X for something that Y did violates every moral principle we should, as human beings, hold dear.
Fear itself:
My apologies. I stand corrected.
Hmmm. You’re right but you’re wrong, I think. I concede that for certain matters of convenience, you can refer to industry as an entity. “The cheese industry uses 2 billion tons of milk a week,” or somesuch. But, I don’t see how you could hold an industry responsible for something, or expect it to be responsible.
It seems to me that all you can do is hold the individuals responsible. Anything else is irrational. But maybe I’m wrong. How do you hold an industry accountable?
I’m going to have to take this next part a sentence at a time:
I believe that is an unrealistic expectation. Do you truly expect that literally everybody will both recognize the moral choice and make the correct one?
I don’t think you do. I think you’re just giving me a hard time. The reason I think that is because you directly contradict this statement just a paragraph or so later: “The only alternative is to trust “the individuals who manage the processed food industry” to do the right thing, which sometimes means setting aside an opportunity for economic gain in order to protect the public safety. I have no such confidence.”
Which is it? You can’t have it both ways. Either you have the expectation or you don’t.
I wish you hadn’t have used that to take a cheap shot at conservatives.
I expect that if there is a way to further self-interest somebody is going to do it. I expect that not everybody is going to make the correct moral choice.
I see it as a clear moral choice. I believe I would not do such a thing. Strong conservative ethics would preclude a person from doing such a thing. Strong liberal ethics would also preclude him. Respect for fellow man would preclude him.
Human nature though, says it’s going to happen. Given the opportunity and the motive of self-interest, somebody will exploit it. And, you seem to agree (so why are you giving me a hard time about it?)
Exactly wrong. I don’t speak for all conservatives, and, I’m speaking generally.
Conservatism directs people to make clear moral choices. It also expects that not everybody will do so.
I haven’t spoken about the individual’s responsibility to society and other individuals yet. Maybe I need to.
Suffice it to say that the willingness to make a sacrifice for the common good is a matter of personal responsibility, and a conservative ethic.
I just don’t expect everybody to live up to it.
Do you really beleive and expect that everybody will?
If you don’t and you do beleive that some people will take advantage of the ability to exploit others for their own good, than you’ll need a rational political/economic/moral system that will deal with the sad fact of human nature that not everybody is good.
Excellent point. Yes, it does. But there’s a flip side to that that can be advantageous from the lawmaking point of view. You can choose where you place the ambiguity.
Then why would you choose to phrase the law in an impossible and unreasonable way.
Hopefully, it went without saying that you would have to frame a reasonable law.
But not bird poop. What good is it to have Cheerios government certified 98% rat free if they’re full of bird shit?
A more basic inclusive law would be a better idea than counting rat hairs. You really can’t make up a law to deal with every possibility, can you? If you do, how do you expect everybody to understand and comply with this encyclopedic set of directions.
A law needs to be simple and inclusive. How about “Due diligence must be exercised in minimizing unavoidable animal contamination of foodstuffs.”
What’s wrong with that?
Me too. I want to set the responsibility on the heads of those involved, so that it is in their clear and unambiguous self-interest to make sure that no such thing occurs.
Do you think counting rat hairs will make food safe? Do you think you can possibly codify all the potential dangers?
My way places the burden of ambiguity on the person responsible.
Under your system it doesn’t matter how careless and stupid people are in making food, just so long as the end product complies with your expectations of danger. Can you codify or minimize every single conceivable risk?
The ambiguity you fear still exists. You are dealing with it by placing the burden of this ambiguity on the government. You are expecting the government to recognize and codify every risk down to the last rat hair.
I think the burden of the ambiguity shouldn’t be placed on the government. It should be placed on the responsible for the food. Doesn’t that make sense?
Scylla, your comments on Fear Itself’s use of ‘expect’ lead me to think you are misinterpreting him. Expect can be used both predictively and prescriptively. “I expect it to rain this afternoon” would be a case of the former, while “I expect you to bring my daughter home by 11pm” is a case of the latter. I believe, when Fear Itself says he expects people to make the moral choice, he is prescribing a course of action, not predicting that people will take that course.
Gorsnak:
Ok. I see that my point got across in spite of that error, though.
Clearly not everybody is going to do the right thing even though we want them to.
I will explain this trivial point exactly one more time, after which if you continue to belabor it, I will assume you are being deliberately obtuse.
I use the word industry as short hand for the phrase “the individuals who manage industry”, simply so that sentences don’t collapse under their own weight. I thought I cunningly parodied this in my last post when I kept using the awkward phrase “the individuals who manage industry” over and over again, but I can see that any clever subtlety is lost on you, so I will have to spell it out using 8x10 color glossy pictures, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one.
The next time you see the word industry in one of my posts, I want a little bell to go off in your head, and you will think, “ Fear Itself really means ‘the individuals who manage industry’, and I don’t have to pretend to be clueless about why he is saying industry instead of individuals, because now I know it is the same thing.
So when I say I want regulations that will hold industry responsible for their actions that endanger the health or security of the public, you will hear, ”Ding!! Fear Itself wants regulations that will hold ‘the individuals that manage industry’ responsible for their actions that endanger the health or security of the public.”
Am I being clear now? If not, I invite you to keep it to yourself, as I am formally declaring this is no longer a valid point of discussion.
You have stumbled over my impossibly convoluted vocabulary once again. I did not use the word ‘expect’ to mean ‘anticipate’. Here is the Cliff’s Notes version of that statement, just for you, Scylla:
I noticed that Gorsnak managed to understand my statement without explanation, so I don’t think it is that difficult; you are just not trying very hard Scylla. Please keep up.
Because you don’t want any regulations that would punish the behavior! What do you expect us to do, just shake our heads, cluck our tongues and say “Your ethics should have precluded that behavior”? I want regulations on industry (Ding!) that make it possible to fine and/or imprison individuals who, in their capacity as management of a corporation, endangered the health or security of the public. Without regulations, your ethics are meaningless, and do nothing to prevent industry (Ding!) from choosing their own economic interests over the public good.
Because experts in the field of Cheerio production have identified rat hair and insect parts as the most likely contaminants. According to industry data, the likelihood of bird poop rising to a level in Cheerios that is dangerous to the public is vanishingly small, about even with meteorites, Teletubby toenails or a sequel to Gigli. (Please don’t ask me for a cite, this is all hypothetical data to make a point). Is it remotely possible that little Johnny could open a box of Cheerios and find it chock full of bird poo? Of course, but it is not a large threat to public safety, and in the exceedingly small chance that it actually occurs, it will be dealt with through the appropriate channels on a case by case basis. But it is not feasible, or reasonable to handle every threat to public safety this way, so we need regulations.
I don’t pretend that we can regulate all possible threats to public safety, only those that are recognized as the most likely to cause problems. Intractable obstinacy in a debate springs to mind.
It is too ambiguous, and would open industry (Ding!) up to unfair prosecution by overzealous prosecutors. DA Jack Ashcroft finds a box of Cheerios with a half of a rat hair which he considers avoidable, and decides this is evidence that the company did not exercise due diligence. By what standard is a judge supposed to render a decision? The companies good intentions, or the DA’s? Why is your law any less impossible or unreasonable than mine?
Safer, yes.
There is no such thing as a safe world, but that is no reason not to try to improve it, even just a little bit. I never said it was a great system; but I do believe it is way ahead of whatever is in second place.
And what, they just have to guess at what point the Fist of God comes crashing down on their heads? Under your system, the Cheerios company would go out of business, because they can’t take the risk that there is no acceptable level of rat hair, yet they cannot devise a production method the eliminates all of it. Now you are persecuting business, and I am defending it! The world is upside down!
No it does not. Laws can be unambiguous without being all inclusive or applicable to any conceivable threat. There is no contradiction here. When rat hair is a continuing, common threat, the occasional bird turd is irrelevant.
This society isn’t evolved. This society hasn’t been around for twenty years; it hasn’t had time to evolve. The rate of technological and cultural turnover passed the “once per lifetime” mark quite some time ago (some claim in the '60s), and it’s been accelerating since.
Even when fundamental change took place rarely, societies only existed for a few hundred years at most in the relatively recent past. Ancient Egypt remained somewhat stable for a few thousand years, and it was a constantly shifting melange of religions and rulers. To find true stability, you’d have to go back at least eight thousand years, before agriculture was developed, and humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Humans are physically and psychologically evolved to live in such a society, and archoleogy suggests that almost everything humans have done since that point has been an unintended consequence of our first, blind experiments with growing food and remaining in one place.
The only thing this thread has demonstrated to me is that people who strongly identify themselves with labels like “conservative” and “liberal” are too deluded or stupid to realize that those terms ceased being politically meaningfully decades ago. Instead, they seem to devote themselves to illogical, unreasonable ideologies that they’d realize are nearly identical if they only stopped to compare them to anything but each other.
Tribal instincts were not designed to work in these circumstances. Stop applying them, or you’ll invalidate the manufacturer’s warranty!
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fear Itself *
Am I being clear now? If not, I invite you to keep it to yourself, as I am formally declaring this is no longer a valid point of discussion.
So much for returning courtesy. Take your formal declarations and go play elsewhere.
You cannot return what you never had.
That’s true. But your not returning the courtesy I’m giving you. You’re being insulting, demonstrating bad faith, and being fundamentally irrational.
I will show you.
Concerning the word “expect,” it was I used it, and clearly in the context of a prediction.
You deliberately misconstrued it as a moral imperative so that you could use that false context to tell me why you hate conservatives.
I responded to this slam nicely, staying within my original context to demonstrate what you had done.
I even politely accepted it when Gorsnak said that I was misconstruing your context.
I was being poilte and courteous rather than attacking you for your little false attribution. This is rather generous of me since your false attribution was nothing more than a bald lie.
Now, if you were returning courtesy what you would have done was simply acknowledge to a semantic misunderstanding. If you were actually being decent you would confess that the whole thing was actually your fault.
But I didn’t expect (note the context) that from you. Courtesy would have been enough.
Instead, what you did was insult me for missing your context.
I do not like to have my courtesy used to insult me.
Secondly you are being fundamentally irrational.
I have gone into great detail to show why a minutiae of laws as government activism is unworkable.
You are simply maintaining that a law or regulation to exactly cover every possible contingency is the way to go.
One of the basic purposes of this thread is to show why that is stupid, unworkable and doomed to failure.
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The LUC says government activism needs to be minimized. Covering every possible contingency in minute detail is hardly minimal.
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Personal freedom - we are not robots to have our every step controlled.
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Personal responsibility - A minutiae of laws is simply a web under which personal responsibility can be avoided.
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It is ridiculous and impossible on it’s face. Nobody is smart enough to cover every possible contingency in regulations. Possibilities are infinite. Do you propose infinite laws?
Supposing you could cover every possibility? What would such a book of regulations look like? Who could remember and comply with something so large?
- Individuals can make their own decisions better than the government.
Your rat hair example is a particularly good example of a stupid law of minutiae, and the LUC in action.
There is actually nothing inherently dangerous about a hair in food.
Why then is there a law that limits the number of rat hairs in food?
I’ll answer that. Somebody decided that rat hairs were a good indicator for general sanitation.
What we want is good sanitation, right?
What we’ve chosen as our indicator is rat hairs, and we’ve insisted that everybody comply.
Good sanitation is hard. Getting rid of rats is easier.
The actual effect of what you’ve just done is made it overtly legal to manufacture foods in horribly unsanitary conditions as long as you use lots of rat poisoning.
I went to great lengths to give you an example of the fallacy of this kind of government activism.
You cannot in good faith and rationally just argue for more regulations and simply ignore all the previous logic and arguments that have been shown to you.
I have shown you why a minutiae of laws is bad starting with basic principles.
If you wish to counter it you need to counter those principles or find a logical hole.
I expect (note context) that like Lissener, when push comes to shove you will not be willing to invest the work or intellection necessary to address it honestly and rationally.
You seem to be comfortable in your prejudices.
If you’re not sincerly interested in honest inquiry, than there’s no money in wasting my time with your rudeness and bad faith.
Contrary to Sam Stone’s claims, the market is not the most democratic way to organize human affairs. Democracy incorporates the concept of equality. A system where I get twenty votes, he gets ten and she gets 2 is not as democratic as a system where all of us have an equal vote. With markets there is no equality. The choices of those with more wealth have more effect than those of everyone wealth. A planned economy would be more democratic, if less efficient, than the market so long as it was run by a popularly elected government.
In general we should be suspicious of those who employ the specious argument of “tyranny of the majority”. While the appellation may be useful in the discussion of specific areas of policy it can not be used to make useful distinctions between forms of goverment. If it is tyranny for the majority to impose its will on the minority then all forms of government are tyrannical because no decision is unanimous. All policies must be imposed on some dissentors. Defining majority rule as tyranny instead conceales substansive differences in policy making, that is- whether government action requires broad, slim, or any popular support. “Tyranny of the majority” used broadly delegitimizes all government and as such should only be deployed by anarchists.
I have made my case, and I will stand on it. I will leave it to the readers to decide which of us is being dishonest or irrational. Your personal opinion of me or my arguments means less and less to me each time we take issue. But, for the record, with regard to this debate, you are my biatch.