WAE: *As I said, the question is, do you feel you need to appeal to national self-interest, or can you justify anti-poverty programs with morality alone? *
But why is that the question? As I said when you first brought it up, it seems to me entirely irrelevant, because the fact is that anti-poverty programs are not being justified with “morality alone”. I thought you wanted to talk about morality and tax policy as it currently exists. You seem instead to be saying “Let’s consider the hypothetical case in which anti-poverty programs are being promoted only for explicitly moral reasons and not at all on the grounds of economic self-interest. Now, do you consider that to be valid or not?” And I continue to be baffled as to why you’re even interested in the answer to that question, because as I said, it’s completely divorced from the reality of the situation.
Recapping again: actual tax policy is always fundamentally involved with moral considerations and never involved only with moral considerations. Why do you want to consider hypothetical cases that ignore those realities?
*You don’t seem to understand the difference between moral, immoral, and amoral. *
No, I think I do: the point I’m trying to make is that your ideal of what you think would be an “amoral” government policy is itself very strongly anchored in a particular moral vision. In other words, you’re trying to articulate an amoral policy, but you’re not succeeding.
You seem to be saying that when I advocate that government policy in re poverty should be amoral, that I am advocating that something should be forced on someone.
Close, but not quite: I’m saying that when you advocate that government policy in re poverty should be amoral, you’re begging the question and asking for the impossible. Deciding what government should do about policy is a profoundly moral issue, and cannot be removed from questions of morality, no matter what policy you come up with. As I said, declaring that “the government should work to relieve poverty and everyone should have to contribute to that via taxes” is no more and no less a moral position than declaring that “the government should not work to relieve poverty and nobody should have to contribute to that via taxes.”
So I ask you, if I were successful, and the government did not force people to contribute to anti-poverty programs, but let them decide for themselves whether or not to do this, as their own consciences dictated, who exactly would be getting forced to do what?
All the citizens would be forced to live in a society where government was prohibited from using its resources to alleviate poverty. That is the enforcement of a particular moral vision about the role of government. In the same way, the separation of church and state enforces a particular moral vision of governmental neutrality in religion, which forces all its citizens to live in a society where government is prohibited from using its resources to promote religion. Does that analogy help clarify the point?—I made it a couple of posts ago in response to your question about forcing people to go to church, but I don’t think you responded to it.
See, I think the fundamental point that I (and about six other posters) have been trying to make here is that your notion of “amorality” in governmental policy of this sort is flawed and superficial. As I said, you seem to be stuck on this libertarian reflex that assumes that advocating more government action is somehow intrinsically more enmeshed with moral assumptions than advocating less government action. It isn’t. The two positions do depend on different moral assumptions, but you can’t advocate more government or less government without invoking some moral assumption about what government “ought” to be.
I still find it offensive, but looking back I feel my response to it may have been too much, so I apologize for it.
Thank you, and I apologize for the “condescending tone” in my post that offended you. Most of it was actually trying to be funny, in an attempt to sort of gently point out that you seemed to be almost wilfully refusing to see the argument I was making. I won’t attempt that sort of thing again without putting in smilies, I promise. (And in particular, I certainly didn’t mean any insult with the “selfish schizophrenic child molesters” crack: I chose that expression precisely because it was so ridiculous that I felt sure that nobody could imagine that I meant anything by it except to protest against making contrafactual assumptions. BTW, it happens to be “Ms.” Kimstu.)
If these reiterations, and the similar remarks from several other posters, don’t get the point across, I think I will have to despair of making it clearer. So as not to waste the whole debate AFAIC, I have distilled the basic thesis into the following haiku for readers’ amusement.
Yes, of course it affects them; I admitted as much myself. What I’m trying to say is that to me there’s a significant difference between affecting someone and forcing something upon them. Perhaps I’m the only person who sees it that way, but I just don’t understand how one can say that the two are equivalent. If I force my next door neighbor to take a $10 bill from me, I’ve both affected him and imposed something upon him (not, mind you, that he’d complain), whereas if I give him the option of taking a $10 bill from me, I’ve affected him without forcing him to do anything. Surely those two are different?
Yes, I’ll freely grant that whether one feels the difference is critical or not depends on context; however, IMO, that there exists a distinction at all is what is important in this case. It seemed to me that people were saying that making a moral decision that affects someone else is AUTOMATICALLY imposing your morality upon them, and I can’t agree with that statement. To me, forcing my morality on other people means that either
a) I’m saying that if they want to make a moral decision, they have to use MY moral code rather than their own, or
b) I’m prohibiting them from making the moral decision in the first place, because I’ve already made it for them.
To say that in applying my moral code to making a decision which affects other people without hindering their ability to make a decision, I’m imposing my morality on other people seems perverse.
Kimstu’s point, however, clears up what I think people mean when they say that what WAE wants is still forcing a particular moral vision on the other citizens. I’m not sure I buy it yet (I’ll have to give it some thought), but at least I think I know what you’re saying now.
Well, in any scenario in which government is actually a viable active agent, “without hindering their ability to make a decision” becomes an extremely difficult standard to support. I am not at all convinced that any legislation with positive utility can meet that standard. I think you are again left with anarchy.
Again, I don’t mind discussing whether anarchy is the most moral form of government possible, but I am reasonably certain that was not the intent of the OP.
Ok, I said I was gonna take the weekend off from this thread, but technically where I live it is now Monday morning…early Monday morning. Also, I know I shouldn’t just grab this particular statement before I’ve responded to the others, but in this case I couldn’t help myself:
Not true, not here or in any other free country. People can come and go as they please, no one is forced to live here.
So I reiterate, who exactly would be getting forced to do what?
WAE: *“All the citizens would be forced to live in a society where government was prohibited from using its resources to alleviate poverty.”
Not true, not here or in any other free country. People can come and go as they please, no one is forced to live here.*
!!! Well, that response applies precisely as much to the situation you object to in the OP! Nobody is being “forced to live” in a society where we do tax for poverty relief, either, so we’re not “enforcing morality” on anybody: so much for that. Way to completely destroy whatever semblance of an argument you had built up, Al!!
I agree they are different; as to how a governmetn would function like this I’m not sure. IMO, I always have the ability to take your $10 bill, whether you give me permission or not. A government that actively guides society must do one of two things: it must outlaw certain behavior or extremeties of behavior, or it must outlaw everything but a form of behavior. The governmental equivalent, in this neighborly example, of non-coercion would be to do nothing about anything, and merely suggest that people do certain things. Now, as much as I’d like to believe we could get along like that doesn’t change the fact that the government wouldn’t have the power to do anything then. As soon as it acts it does so with some moral prejudice in mind.
Such as: your government can’t do anything?
This is like, “If you don’t want an abortion dont have one.” Or, the pro-life equivalent translation, “If you don’t like killing defenseless people, then don’t do it.” This is a very clear instance of making a moral decision which affects people. Would you say there is still no force involved? To some pro-lifers, I’m sure, abortion clinics are little concentration camps (albeit with the racial element removed). If you don’t like (non-racial) concentration camps, don’t work in 'em/buy their products/sell them yours/etc.
I do agree there is a difference here; I don’t agree that one is necessarily better than the other.
Kimstu’s point, however, clears up what I think people mean when they say that what WAE wants is still forcing a particular moral vision on the other citizens. I’m not sure I buy it yet (I’ll have to give it some thought), but at least I think I know what you’re saying now. **
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Granted. As I said in one of my earlier posts, I think it’s foolish to insist that the government NOT impose morality in some form, for precisely these concerns. I was trying to understand the point you people were making, but certainly NOT trying to argue for anarchy. I suppose, in a way, what I wanted to understand was how even anarchy was forcing a moral standard on other people.
Beats the heck out of me! But I didn’t want to use the example of me beating up my neighbor and looting his home, you see.
Yes, absolutely. Active legislation is going to inevitably involve a moral prejudice; what I was trying to see was how a lack of legislation did likewise.
wince Well, actually, yes. I’m probably frustrating all hell out of you, but if I say “if you don’t like X, don’t do X” how exactly is force involved? Suppose I tell other people something like “If you think eating meat is wrong, don’t eat meat.” Surely that is at best a suggestion that they are free to ignore or not as they see fit? If the people I’m talking to don’t think eating meat is wrong, the statement doesn’t even apply to them. If they do, they’re likely to have already reached the decision to, in fact, not eat meat, but even if they haven’t, they are quite free to ignore my advice. Where did I lose you?
I think that there is perhaps a distinction between an individual interaction and a societal one. I believe I see what you people have been saying about even prohibiting the government from making moral decisions is imposing morality on others, but I think that it rests on the fact that by prohibiting the government from making moral decisions, I’m also prohibiting it from fulfilling the expectations of other citizens. Okay, that makes sense; I stand convinced. But what I don’t see is how my making ANY moral decision is imposing my morality on others, certainly not in the sense that I understood it a few posts back.
gr8guy: *I think that there is perhaps a distinction between an individual interaction and a societal one. […] But what I don’t see is how my making ANY moral decision is imposing my morality on others, certainly not in the sense that I understood it a few posts back. *
I think you nailed the problem in your last sentence with your first sentence, gr8guy. I think that you’re absolutely right that it’s possible for individuals to pursue different moral priorities without imposing them on each other. (It’s not always possible, of course; some people’s personal moral codes do require them to impose them on others insofar as they can, and sometimes circumstances make it impossible for people with different moral priorities to avoid affecting one another.) But the government is not just another individual; it represents our collective self as a society, and any actions it takes are taken in the name of all of us and legally apply to all of us. Whatever underlying moral principle informs the government’s social policies is thus effectively imposed on all of us.
Because, in the example I gave, you are forcing some people to be subjected to legal murder. It doesn’t matter that they don’t practice it; they have to live with it. “My neighbor is a murderer that can walk around free as a bird.” The connotation here is that of mental, or maybe psychological, coercion as opposed to physical: “Killing babies is legal, and you had better get used to it.”
Of course, I could just be picking nits. My concern is one that a citizen cannot ignore the implications of government action/inaction, whereas I can freely ignore the guy two states over (in all but very extreme cases) because we don’t interact at all.
Going back to the linear response system, but with a twist…I am going to respond to each poster in order (if it kills me) but for each new poster I come to, I am going to respond to that post, and each subsequent post by that poster (if they were addressing me that is). Hopefully this will work a bit better.
So:
You have mapped out, in the above paragraphs, quite an interesting concept. You are not the only one to have done so (not by a long stretch) so I am going to respond to it in an “omnibus” post, possibly in a new thread, which I think the idea deserves. However, it seems to me that, for the purposes of our discussion in this thread, your answer to my first question is “yes”, seeing as how you seem to believe that everything the state does, or refrains from doing, constitutes an enforcement of morality, and you do clearly want the state to do things, including anti-poverty programs.
No, I don’t. In fact, I have read over the above paragraph several times over the weekend. I know what the words mean, and they appear to be combined in a way that is grammatically correct, but I haven’t got a clue what you are trying to say here.
I don’t think saying “but that’s just silly” is much of a debate technique. I have resisted the very powerful temptation to say it myself to some of these ideas I have encountered here, not just because I think it is bad form, but because you never know, I might be wrong.
What I am trying to do here is make a simplifying assuption. Economists do it all the time. Making this assumption for the sake of argument is not the same as conceding that it is true. If you just can’t bring yourself to do it though, we will just have to part ways right there.
Reading over this, it would seem that that the key difference is the phrase “is relevant”. What else is “relevant” to “determining what rights actually exist” besides “judicial consensus”, which phrase I think could be taken to mean “what judges say is ok”, as opposed to “a judge”?
Yes, this is a fine statement of fact. I fail to see how it logically derives from the first sentence in the paragraph.
So, the state’s attempts to enforce morality are restricted by a moral principle? Like I said, I am going to address this concept in an “omnibus” post.
Sooo…if a “judicial consensus” emerges…then that will make it legitimate…for you to impose your moral position that the state should not prohibit sodomy…on persons who want the state to prohibit it. Is this correct? I am honestly trying to understand you here…I don’t agree with you, but I want to make sure I am not misinterpreting anyone on this very…interesting…concept of morality.
Why do birds fly? Why do wings take dream? It’s my question, I made it up. Answer it or don’t, whatever you want, but that is the question.
Indulge me. Or don’t. Like I said, whatever you want.
Like I said, it’s a simplifying assumption. We make a simplifying assumption when we use Newtonian Physics to, oh I don’t know…go to the moon, and ignore all that weird relativity stuff. Making simplifying assumptions can be useful sometimes. Of course if you don’t agree, you are perfectly free to simply not answer.
Ahhhh…perhaps the misconception here is what is causing me such a headache in this thread. If you will do me the courtesy of rereading the OP, you will see that I was not in fact stating an objection to any situation. I wasn’t making an argument either, so there is no possible way that I could destroy any semblance of it. I was simply asking some questions. I didn’t explicitly say “…enforced on persons living in the society”…this was merely implied. I suppose I should have made it explicit. Mea Culpa. Please consider it so made.
One more thing, a reply to someone other than Kimstu, but appropriate to put here:
The fact that you must live either here or someplace else is not something being forced on you by any individual or group of individuals (society, the state, whatever). It is a simple fact of existence. You might as well talk about being “forced” to obey the law of gravity. If you are religious, you could say God is “forcing” you…but that is for another thread.
Fine, fine. You’ve answered the first question, and seem to agree with Kimstu’s ideas about government and morality. Do you wish to answer the other questions in the OP? Totally up to you, of course.
Yeah…this is going on my list of things that I am going to respond to with an uber post…a list of statements I am going to save permanently, as well. You seem to have a conception of “morality” similar to that of Kimstu et al, but different from my own.
Believe me, the feeling is mutual. I do think this is going to be a thread of its own.
Like I said in the last post, another thread. We have opened a fascinating can of worms here…
Churchill.
My Libertarian Utopia[sup]tm[/sup] is still under construction. Completion is scheduled for Fall 2003, although we have had to push that date back before, so stay tuned. I would think, though, that in it anyone could “decide which programs are ‘moral/immoral’ and which are ‘amoral’”. You can make whatever decisions you want, it’s your actions we would be concerned about.
There is an argument to be made for this, but that will be yet another thread, in the far, far future at the rate I am going here…
Well…I really don’t want to get into this too much here, like I keep saying, another thread, however, I would think it would not be a question of whether we all agreed that something was in our self interest, but whether or not the attempt to justify a given expenditure was made on that basis. I realize, of course, that you seem to think there can be no clear dividing line between these two things.
Okay, that makes you, Kimstu, mandelstam, erislover, at least 2 or 3 others…who am I missing? If you guys could all get together on this come up with one general statement of this philosophy, that would be great.
Anyway, as I’ve said to some of the others, I am going to infer from all this that your answer to the first question in my OP was yes, given, as I understand it, that you believe as the others do that everything the state does is an “enforcement of morality” of some type. Do you wish to answer the other questions?
Simplifying assumptions are all well and good, but when you make simplifying assumptions in physics, for example, it is very important to make them in a consistent way. For example, if you carry out a complex calculation to get an answer to second order in x, but somewhere along the way, you don’t bother to compute a particular term out to second order (or what corresponds to second order in the final result), then your result will be an answer where the second order coefficient is utterly wrong. (This, by the way, really happens!!! I know of a recent example from my work.)
I think this is a good analogy to what you are doing. E.g., you are basing an argument on the simplifying assumptions that you can set up a morality-free taxation method without antipoverty programs (zeroth order in x) and then saying that those who add antipoverty programs to this (and assuming they are doing so only for “moral” reasons) are imposing morality. It is not a “simplifying assumption”…It is utterly wrong.
If you want me to grant you that in a world where one can justify a certain taxation scheme with no moral assumptions then adding taxation to pay for antipoverty programs would be imposing my morality on you, I will be happy to do so. I also will grant you that if them moon were made of cream cheese and you could subsist on cream cheese alone, then you would be able to survive by eating the moon. Are you happy now?
Question: Should the state seek to enforce anyone’s morality through the tax code and/or other economic policy?
Answer: Yes, because it is impossible not to; those who propose not to are doing so by concealing their own morality (that they are enforcing) as being morally neutral. It is not.
Question: If so, who decides what morality is enforced?
Answer: It is decided through the democratic political process.
Question: Would this be in any way fundamentally different from enforcing morality in non-economic areas, say by forbidding certain sexual practices?
Answer: Well, one way in which it is different is that it is possible for the government to essentially stay out of regulating your sexual practices but it is not possible for the government to stay out of issues of how the money we use collectively through the government to run aspects of our society is spent. I believe there may be other distinctions that may have been pointed out by others already in this thread, but I will not hunt them down right now.
Yes I do, as a simplifying assumption, as I have pointed out to others. Nothing more. Conceding this point for the sake of argument is not the same as admitting that it is true. In fact I will cheerfully concede that it probably isn’t.
Once again, the idea that anti-poverty programs have no economic rationale is not, repeat not a “hypothesis” that I am trying “prove”. For heavens sake, if I had been trying to prove this, I would have offered up some evidence of it…give me some credit.
Boy howdy, there’s an understatement. But [boilerplate] as I have said to the others, we can deal with this in another thread[/boilerplate].
Ahhhh, score a point for you sir (I assume it is “sir”). My essay question was worded sloppily. I should have said, “…can be used to describe any action taken by any human being, ever in the real world…”
This is not what I asked in the OP, although if you wanted to address this I guess you could.
That is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, as long as you are not assuming something that you are setting out to prove.
I honestly admit, I am quite unprepared to answer these questions. I do keep talking about starting another thread on this…I have some ideas about what I want to address in it, but they are still half-baked.
Ahhhh…there’s my headache coming back. I dismiss “proof” that my “central claim” is false because that is not my central claim…in fact it is not my claim at all…in fact in the OP I made no claims period. I only asked questions. They were modified a bit in subsequent posts.
I apologize for the sloppiness of the essay question. I amended it 1 or 2 posts ago. Please see that one.
Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. I concede none of this of course, but as I said, I am far from equipped at this time to attempt to prove you wrong.
So, once again, I assume your answer is yes, as I assume you want the gov. to continue to function.
I would appreciate a clarification of that last answer. Not seen by whom?
(And in particular, I certainly didn’t mean any insult with the “selfish schizophrenic child molesters” crack: I chose that expression precisely because it was so ridiculous that I felt sure that nobody could imagine that I meant anything by it except to protest against making contrafactual assumptions. BTW, it happens to be “Ms.” Kimstu.)