Designing For Jedi

http://theferrett.livejournal.com/1534590.html

by angusgr • 16 years ago

54 37 16 years ago

theferrett.livejournal.com

jacoblyles7• 16 years ago

Let's make a deal, you guys refrain from pop-psychoanalyzing those of us with libertarian leanings and I won't submit right-wing essays that diagnose socialists with megalomania and delusions of grandeur.

Impugning your opponent's motivations is the lowest form of rhetoric.

angusgr• 16 years ago

It seems the post has wounded your ego, and I guess that's fair enough given it makes such sweeping generalisations (and "pop-psychoanalysis", as it were.)

However, I'd be really interested to hear your comments on some of the other points he makes, or the other threads of his argument (particularly, comparisons to history.)

(FWIW, I didn't submit the article because I whole-heartedly agree with it, I just thought it was quite well-written and interesting, and I thought it might generate some enlightening responses.)

jacoblyles7• 16 years ago

It hasn't wounded my ego, rather I find the article insulting. It caricatures people of my political beliefs as having nasty motivations and abundant personal failings. It reads like an op-ed in a high school Marxist newsletter and is about as balanced. I am fine with reading political articles on Hacker News but I would hope they have a little more respect for their audience.

Any Capitalist would make the rejoinder that society sucked so much in the Victorian era because society was so much poorer in aggregate. You could tax the rich at 90% and it wouldn't have stretched very far.

In the long run, the wages of labor are determined by labor productivity. Laws, unions, regulations, and other beloved institutions of the left can tinker with that ever so slightly at the margin but not by much. It is only through the accumulation of capital goods and the advancement of technology that a middle class arose. You can legislate all you want before that happens and you aren't going to do a ton of good. You can declare free unicorns for everyone but if you ain't got no unicorns then you'll leave people disappointed.

And after a capital stock is accumulated, labor becomes more productive, wages increase and life gets better of course ideologues of all stripes will claim credit for it.

jerf2• 16 years ago

There's two ways to view somebody's political views; one can look at the direction they wish to take a given system, and one can look at the destination they wish to end up at. We tend to classify people by their direction, "right" or "left" or "liberal" or "conservative", but it is a grave error to mistake the direction for the destination. I drive south to get to work but it is not in fact my intention to get to the South Pole every time I do so; I arrive at my destination and stop, and in fact if I pass it, I will turn around to get there. (It would be absurd in ideological terms to then call me a hypocrite for going from being a Southist to a Northist.)

And it's hard to get past that fundamental error to have some sort of "discussion". I am a libertarian right now, but the caricature in the post is so absurd I can't even take offense. Because I think an entity so utterly absurdly monstrous that its yearly budgetary overruns are measured in the trillions of dollars a year and it's unfunded liabilities measure in the hundreds of trillions should be cut down to size before it takes the entire world over a cliff, I want to see child labor laws repealed? It doesn't even make sense. There's not much to "counter".

In fact I actually consider myself a "Classical Liberal", which today makes you a "conservative" in terms of direction, but my destination isn't "anarchy". Just something much smaller, much more focused, much less resource intensive, and much less likely to crash the economy because there's every incentive to spend and no incentive to stop. (Which I actually consider the fundamental failure of liberalism, it in fact has become a direction and not a destination in practice. If you can identify some principle being used to decide when we have spent enough money on something, I'm all ears. And I mean a principle in use by the government, not some hypothetical principle that could be used by somebody, sometime.) If that's so unreasonable, well, I hope you enjoy the blasted remnants of the economy that results.

Part of the reason I want to see our government cut down to size is that when we crash the system, we will lose welfare and child labor laws and potentially civil order itself. I understand the impulse to circle the wagons and defend the government, but the simple fiscal reality is that if you really do like the results of a strong government capable of protecting its citizens, you really need to help me refocus it on those tasks or you'll be left with a government that can do nothing. Can you seriously imagine child labor laws being repealed in the US? I mean, seriously? This isn't even remotely a threat; economic collapse on the other hand at this point due to an overextended government is more like "can we avoid it or is it too late already?" Probability of a repeal of child labor laws is virtually zero; probability of a government without any ability to pay anyone to enforce them, rather greater than zero even if I am not yet panicking.

widgetycrank• 16 years ago

>Impugning your opponent's motivations is the lowest form of rhetoric.

I tend to agree with you, then I thought Dr. Strangelove. This seems like a difficult line to draw.

trickjarrett2• 16 years ago

It's odd to know Ferrett from the Magic community and then see his link on the tech related site.

While very well written and an enjoyable read, my problem with his opinion and the people who think Libertarians = Anarcho-capitalists is that they take it to the complete extreme. Democrats aren't Socialists, etc. My #1 desire with Libertarianism is for a smaller government, not a destroyed government.

DannoHung• 16 years ago

What's the easiest way to make an organization get smaller?

russellallen2• 16 years ago

Outside pressure. Actually, that's the only way.

nhebb• 16 years ago

Unpopularity.

ajuc• 16 years ago

Introduce fees.

jacoblyles7• 16 years ago

What's wrong with anarcho-capitalists? They don't believe in chaos. They believe society would function better if laws were provided in a market and consumers had choices of law providers. They may be wrong, but the position is not a priori laughable.

Have you read "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman or other pieces of anarcho-capitalist literature? If not, then what gives you the right to dismiss it so easily?

trickjarrett2• 16 years ago

I have not, and I did not mean to sound dismissive of the Anarcho-Capitalist beliefs. I simply meant that the term is not analogous to Libertarianism.

moultano2• 16 years ago

I'm tired of the crazy libertarians spoiling it for the rest of us. I would like to have something to call myself that includes removing corn subsidies and capping medicare, but also retaining fiat currency and instituting a carbon tax.

kiba2• 16 years ago

They are just libertarians who take the position to the logical extreme. It's why some libertarian opponents sometime said libertarianism is very consistent.

Being a moderate is nice because you get to be vague and stuff.

However, being a crazy radical actually does have a perk. It make me very open to technologies in a way that's just not possible with other political philosophy.

jbooth9• 16 years ago

I'd suggest "Democrat" :)

We might not agree with libertarians 100% of the time, but we're not lunatics, we're with you on social issues, not actually that far economically, and we approach problems with the intention of solving/ameliorating them, rather than using them as social dog whistles.

It beats hearing rhetoric about small gov't and then getting Medicare Part D (absolute budget disaster - and obamacare reduces the projected medicare deficit, for those keeping score at home)

epochwolf• 16 years ago

I'm tried of religion being spoiled for the rest of us by a few fanatics.

What is it with religion/politics/"science" that makes person urn their brains off?

8ren• 16 years ago

The "Jedi" idea is related to John Rawls "original position": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_.22orig...

As for laissez faire, I think every government has already concluded that it doesn't work very well.

One might think that with modern labour-saving technology (and the consequential age of leisure) that this might change. One theoretical counter-argument is that people seem to love to have "inferiors" - it makes them feel better about themselves - which probably comes from our innate sense of pecking order/dominance hierarchy etc. Being a part of human nature, changing that is a hard one. Evidence in support of this is how some US citizens treat illegal immigrant workers who don't enjoy the protection of labour laws etc - it is laissez faire in action, right now. Another example is how US corporations treat labour in developing countries (such as China), and detainees from other countries. Whoa, that's getting political.

OTOH, we must remember that trade - like language, law and religion - are created spontaneously by human communities. Our current society didn't just create it; it appears to be innate. However, the specific ideas of trade and civic structures that we have today are informed by centuries of experience and thought, and constitute a tremendous cultural refinement of the innate concept of trade. Unlike the foregoing, it seems that civilization is not quite innate in humans - we have to work at it.

philwelch• 16 years ago

Reading the Hacker News guidelines, it seems terribly odd that "please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them" is only suggested for comments, because many submissions have this problem as well. (And no, "life was miserable in the era of the robber barons, therefore libertarianism is wrong" isn't anything genuinely new to say, nor is "libertarians secretly imagine themselves to be the robber barons instead of the tenement-dwelling wage slaves".)

kiba2• 16 years ago

I also thought it was a flamebait article. Nonetheless , it did generate interesting discussion.

jbooth9• 16 years ago

It's election season, and as far as propagandizing, the republicans* have probably had an edge in it on HN. Not that I'm suggesting anything organized on anyone's part, it's just topical right now. It'll drift off the front page soon enough, and all will settle down after Tuesday.

*during the fall of even numbered years, you're either a D or an R unless you actually vote third party

russellallen2• 16 years ago

Even during the fall of even numbered years, I'm neither a D nor an R. That is because I am an Australian.

Edit: and its Spring now, anyway.

pandafood• 16 years ago

Is wanting a social net because you think it will benefit you somehow more moral than not wanting one because you think it won't?

Designing For Jedi

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