shlevy:

The thing is, while I agree with @voximperatoris‘s objection that it’s just oh-so-convenient when people claim that altruism and egoism line up perfectly, in practice committed thoughtful altruists and committed thoughtful egoists make a lot of the same choices/value a lot of the same things? Like, it’s certainly not identical, and you can point to cases where they differ, but day-to-day they’re going to largely overlap.

I’m not sure how much of this is just due to the basic requirements of effective goal pursuit as a human and how much of this is one side unknowingly smuggling in the standards of the other, but there you are.

Usually, one can choose from a large variety of actions, but only a small proportion of them is helpful for achieving a goal, and only a small proportion of those increase welfare (whether one’s own or that of others). So an agent who’s seriously and consistently trying to increase welfare is operating in a small section of action space, so whether they’re egoists or, e.g., utilitarian EAs, they look similar compared to normal human inconsistency or pursuing goals where welfare isn’t the primary priority.

Also, it seems that societies that are better at aligning self-interest and public benefit tend to be more successful - this is one of the major strengths of capitalism.

Tags: ethics egoism

eccentric-opinion:

Some of you may have already seen it in your reblogs, but this is a formal announcement that @fatpinocchio is my side blog, dedicated to my ramblings and other content that doesn’t belong on eccentric-opinion.

Tags: self-reblog

eccentric-opinion:

The far left’s radical critique of Columbus Day rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But the facts are on their side. Columbus was not just a brutal slaver; he was a pioneer of slavery. I flipped through a dozen books on Columbus and slavery in the library today, and none of them disputes this - though the hagiographies generally omit “slavery” from the index.

Can you condemn a man just for being a slaver? Of course. It’s almost as bad as you can get.

- Bryan Caplan

collapsedsquid:

eccentric-opinion:

(cutting out reblogs)

I don’t think we can say that libertarianism is unreachable purely based on the fact that we were closer to it (by the way, when?) and backed down. Everything that’s ever been established had been not established at some point - for example, a revolution can fail in one year and succeed in another. But even if ideal libertarianism is unreachable for some reason, we can move closer to it, and enjoy the benefits of being at least somewhat freer. In another sense, every ideology is unreachable because there’s basically nothing we can do to establish it. All we can do is talk about their merits.
I think the moral of the Russian experience is “don’t be a kleptocracy”. You could have the best policies in the world (I’m not saying that Russia did) but if your institutions can’t enforce rule of law (and are a large part of the problem themselves), there’s only so much you can do. I agree that some libertarians make the mistake of claiming that policies are more libertarian than they really are, and there’s a more general problem that people judge policies by their stated content than by how they’re enforced.

Your definition of socialism still includes Christian Democracy - and arguably even the current American economic system. I think the “common good” aspect leaves too much to intentions and not enough to how economic activity is actually organized. I would suggest “an economic system in which most or all capital is owned by the state, general public, and/or workers”. I know arguing about definitions can be frustrating, but it’s not nearly as bad as the vagueness and equivocation of the alternative.

You’re not talking about enforcement of property rights, you’re describing a clear violation of them. Libertarians don’t advocate for anyone who can pass their system off as “defending property rights”, they advocate for actual defense of property rights. Some people lie or are self-deceived about their dedication to property rights - I don’t see why libertarians should have to answer for them, or why this would make libertarianism unfalsifiable.

The force thing is basically this problem.  If you’re system has no “aggression,“ but your system end up in more pain and death than my “aggressive“ social democracy, is it better?

That’s a completely different question. It’s conceivable that some system with more aggression could have less pain and death than a system without any. But how is this related to the problem you were talking about earlier, which seems to have been that libertarians apparently pretend that their system doesn’t use force?

Institutions enforcing the rule of law is sort of the point.  I don’t think in a libertarian system you can have institutions capable of doing that because that’s “big government.“  And I am skeptical because of the pain we’ve gotten when we get too close, but that’s me.

And yeah, I’m considering socialism a scale, not a binary.  Your description also describes a libertarian system in that people own things.  We all seem to have a general idea of what socialist and libertarian ideology look like so I’m not sure it’s a good use of time.

Alright, so the unfalsifiability thing is this.  let’s say you have a libertarian system.  Then one day, one of the rich guys takes over a region, kills a bunch of people, institutes a bunch of rules. You can say “Oh, this isn’t a libertarian state anymore, libertarian states don’t allow that.“  I will say, it’s the result of the concentration of power and lack of central authority in a libertarian state so what does it matter?  Libertarian ideals got you there. 

That’s where the unfalsifiability comes in.  You yourself just said that libertarianism shouldn’t answer for it, I’m saying then what good is setting up a libertarian system if that’ll immediately happen.  Assessments of political systems need to be based on likely consequences of that system, not just the stated rules, otherwise it’s meaningless. You can argue that this won’t happen, but you need to actually argue that rather than say it’s against the rules.

I could argue that secret police and other forms of violence are inconsistent with socialist ideals so all those countries “aren’t socialist.“  I don’t think you would be convinced, although I could be wrong, I know most people won’t.  The point used against socialism is generally that socialism inevitably leads to this stuff.

I’m saying that when landowners own the land and give peasants the chance to farm their land or starve, that’s force to begin with, but compatible with libertarian ideals. When people protest and form groups to contest that ownership, what will the landowner do?  That’s basically every peasant group that turned into a left-wing insurgency ever, and generally ends in the aforementioned village massacres, incompatible with pure libertarian ideas but occurring as a result of them.

There’s nothing unlibertarian about effective institutions, nor inherently “big government” about rule of law. If anything, it’s closer to the opposite.

To be honest, due to these kinds of mistaken assertions and other uncharitable statements I’m not interested in continuing this discussion.

(via collapsedsquid)

(cutting out reblogs)

I don’t think we can say that libertarianism is unreachable purely based on the fact that we were closer to it (by the way, when?) and backed down. Everything that’s ever been established had been not established at some point - for example, a revolution can fail in one year and succeed in another. But even if ideal libertarianism is unreachable for some reason, we can move closer to it, and enjoy the benefits of being at least somewhat freer. In another sense, every ideology is unreachable because there’s basically nothing we can do to establish it. All we can do is talk about their merits.
I think the moral of the Russian experience is “don’t be a kleptocracy”. You could have the best policies in the world (I’m not saying that Russia did) but if your institutions can’t enforce rule of law (and are a large part of the problem themselves), there’s only so much you can do. I agree that some libertarians make the mistake of claiming that policies are more libertarian than they really are, and there’s a more general problem that people judge policies by their stated content than by how they’re enforced.

Your definition of socialism still includes Christian Democracy - and arguably even the current American economic system. I think the “common good” aspect leaves too much to intentions and not enough to how economic activity is actually organized. I would suggest “an economic system in which most or all capital is owned by the state, general public, and/or workers”. I know arguing about definitions can be frustrating, but it’s not nearly as bad as the vagueness and equivocation of the alternative.

You’re not talking about enforcement of property rights, you’re describing a clear violation of them. Libertarians don’t advocate for anyone who can pass their system off as “defending property rights”, they advocate for actual defense of property rights. Some people lie or are self-deceived about their dedication to property rights - I don’t see why libertarians should have to answer for them, or why this would make libertarianism unfalsifiable.

The force thing is basically this problem.  If you’re system has no “aggression,“ but your system end up in more pain and death than my “aggressive“ social democracy, is it better?

That’s a completely different question. It’s conceivable that some system with more aggression could have less pain and death than a system without any. But how is this related to the problem you were talking about earlier, which seems to have been that libertarians apparently pretend that their system doesn’t use force?

(Source: collapsedsquid, via collapsedsquid)

collapsedsquid:

eccentric-opinion:

collapsedsquid:

So, in today’s “things that annoy me.” and possibly why I’ve gotten so short with some people.  Sorry about that.

In this grand comparison of markets vs governments, socialism vs capitalism, there are recurring themes and arguments.

One of them is “look at North Korea and Venezuela.“  And that’s a fair point.  I would like to point out some Libertarian societies that failed.  But I can’t, and there’s a reason for that.

Basically, “socialism” as a word can mean nothing more than the idea that the government has a role to play in the economy, and should make sure the worst off are taken care of.  That’s a vague criterion.  We can argue over whether something is “true socialism,“ nobody’s opinion will be changed, it’s meaningless.

Libertarianism is different.  It’s a set of rules on what is and is not allowed.  It’s not like it’s totally definitive, some people could argue that a minarchist state is libertarian, some would demand full anarcho-capitalism.  But in principle, it’s based on a few rules.

The thing about a libertarian society is that, as is argued and asserted here, by an actual libertarian, it has not been tried. There’s a bunch of discussion there, but I think there’s a crucial reason for that.

That reason is that it’s unstable, and anyone who actually tries it gives up.  Libertarianism fails in such a way that it’s easy to call the results non-libertarian. If you try to enforce a regime based on strict property rights, I will predict one of two results.  You could get overthrown, in which case it didn’t count, libertarianism wasn’t given a chance.  Or you could get repressive, in which case it’s not libertarian because the government is oppressing people.  Either way, the libertarians can say it “doesn’t count.“  It can’t fail, it can only be failed etc.

So, I want to say this.  If your political theory fails in such a way that failures can be defined as not “true“ versions of your political system, you’ve got a problem.  You have established an unfalsifiable position.

And just as I finished writing it, I find this blog post that says basically the same thing. Oh well, I’m posting it anyways.

EDIT: and to be clear, when I counted Saudi Arabia or the antebellum US south as “libertarian,” what I’m doing is basically trying to put them on the same page as “socialism”  Both are based on the primacy of property rights.

There are a number of other explanations for the absence of libertarian societies - public choice problems, anti-market views in the voting public, etc - most of which add up to there not being enough political power to
try establishing libertarianism. So we’ve never gotten to the point at which it could fail in the way you describe - not only have we not tried it, we haven’t even tried to try it.

If socialists want to provide principles that define it more restrictively, like libertarianism is, they’re welcome to do so, even if it excludes currently existing regimes that call themselves socialist. I can’t speak for others, but I’m open to “socialism has never been tried” arguments. Then they could be vulnerable to a “socialism is unstable” argument similar to yours, but on the other hand it’d give them an out to the “actual socialist regimes are terrible” argument.

Nor is an ideology unfalsifiable because there aren’t any instances of it in practice. We can analyze the arguments for and against the position, look at the real-world instances of practices similar to those the ideology advocates using more broadly (and maybe somewhat differently), and so on. Arguments against socialism are older than socialist failures, and there are many arguments against libertarianism that aren’t reliant on evidence from actual libertarian societies.

This argument also proves too much. A country could try to establish any ideology until whoever controls the tanks says “We’re not doing that anymore, (but maybe we’re still going to say we’re practicing it)”. I don’t think the mere possibility of this happening is a strong mark against an ideology, because it could happen to almost all of them. For example, “socialism is bad because the CIA is likely to overthrow it” would be a bad argument. Or an attempt to establish an ideology might end early because it proves unpopular among the general public, but that obviously doesn’t mean it’s bad - the public could be wrong. The unpopularity of an ideology is a very weak reason to reject it.

The lack of political power to establish libertarianism is the point.  It’s basically vulgar marxism to say that those that are rich will rig the rules in their favor, and I’ve seen libertarians actually blame the fact that we aren’t libertarian on the rich for rigging the rules.  What do you expect them do to?  We can’t even get there is the point.  The public choice problems still exist!

I don’t want to define socialism more restrictively, because definitions don’t an economic and political system make.  I’m fine with “socialism is the idea that economic decisions should be based on the idea of the common good“ and “libertarianism is based on the inviolability of private property.“  Those work fine.

The unfalsifiability is not about it not existing right now.  It’s about how when, for instance, a rich property-owner hires a death squad to kill a rebellious village, you can say “that’s not libertarianism so it doesn’t count“ even though that’s the type of things that have been used to defend a strict property-rights system.  In a system where the socialist people’s police do it, I can’t say “it’s not socialism.“

The unpopularity is to point out the fact that you have to enforce it by force.  There’s this whole “we’re not like the statists, we don’t initiate force“ thing that I always see, and I don’t think you can enforce a strict property rights regime without a lot of force, it’s just that you can maybe call it “non-aggression“ because maybe you can justify it with property rights and contracts.

Why would the lack of political power in favor of an ideology be an argument against it? First, everything that’s ever been tried hadn’t been tried at some point. If you went back in time to the 17th century, would you tell advocates of representative democracy that they’re wrong because there’s too much political power against them? Second, even if we never succeed in even trying to establish libertarianism, why would that be a problem with the ideology? If it’s correct, then it’s more of a problem with whomever is trying to prevent it.

Your definition of socialism is both extremely inclusive (some think that libertarianism is the best way to promote the common good, and it’s also common among anti-socialist conservative Catholics) and nebulous (it’s too easy to say “that’s not the common good”). It’s useful to have restrictive definitions because then you can defend an actual position instead of a vague cluster that claims the same label as you, and limits your opponents’ ability to bring in irrelevant arguments.

Regarding the unfalsifiability point, I’m not sure I understand your example. Killing a rebellious village is usually strongly contrary to strict property rights, so how is it defending a strict property-rights system?  I may be saying that it’s not libertarianism and it doesn’t count - but it really isn’t libertarianism, so what do you expect me to say? And, back to the original point, how does this make libertarianism unfalsifiable? I might see what you’re saying if you think libertarians claim that even a single private violation of libertarian principles that isn’t punished makes the whole system non-libertarian, but no one believes that.

Nor does anyone dispute that libertarianism must be backed by force - it’s not pacifism. That’s not an unpopular revelation but a commonly accepted fact. But as you allude to, there’s a difference between force and aggression. If someone attacks me on the street, that’s aggression, but if I defend myself, it isn’t, but both use force. There’s no contradiction in saying “We don’t initiate force” while still using it to protect your property - it’s exactly like saying “I don’t attack people” while being willing to defend yourself.

(via collapsedsquid)

collapsedsquid:

So, in today’s “things that annoy me.” and possibly why I’ve gotten so short with some people.  Sorry about that.

In this grand comparison of markets vs governments, socialism vs capitalism, there are recurring themes and arguments.

One of them is “look at North Korea and Venezuela.“  And that’s a fair point.  I would like to point out some Libertarian societies that failed.  But I can’t, and there’s a reason for that.

Basically, “socialism” as a word can mean nothing more than the idea that the government has a role to play in the economy, and should make sure the worst off are taken care of.  That’s a vague criterion.  We can argue over whether something is “true socialism,“ nobody’s opinion will be changed, it’s meaningless.

Libertarianism is different.  It’s a set of rules on what is and is not allowed.  It’s not like it’s totally definitive, some people could argue that a minarchist state is libertarian, some would demand full anarcho-capitalism.  But in principle, it’s based on a few rules.

The thing about a libertarian society is that, as is argued and asserted here, by an actual libertarian, it has not been tried. There’s a bunch of discussion there, but I think there’s a crucial reason for that.

That reason is that it’s unstable, and anyone who actually tries it gives up.  Libertarianism fails in such a way that it’s easy to call the results non-libertarian. If you try to enforce a regime based on strict property rights, I will predict one of two results.  You could get overthrown, in which case it didn’t count, libertarianism wasn’t given a chance.  Or you could get repressive, in which case it’s not libertarian because the government is oppressing people.  Either way, the libertarians can say it “doesn’t count.“  It can’t fail, it can only be failed etc.

So, I want to say this.  If your political theory fails in such a way that failures can be defined as not “true“ versions of your political system, you’ve got a problem.  You have established an unfalsifiable position.

And just as I finished writing it, I find this blog post that says basically the same thing. Oh well, I’m posting it anyways.

EDIT: and to be clear, when I counted Saudi Arabia or the antebellum US south as “libertarian,” what I’m doing is basically trying to put them on the same page as “socialism”  Both are based on the primacy of property rights.

There are a number of other explanations for the absence of libertarian societies - public choice problems, anti-market views in the voting public, etc - most of which add up to there not being enough political power to
try establishing libertarianism. So we’ve never gotten to the point at which it could fail in the way you describe - not only have we not tried it, we haven’t even tried to try it.

If socialists want to provide principles that define it more restrictively, like libertarianism is, they’re welcome to do so, even if it excludes currently existing regimes that call themselves socialist. I can’t speak for others, but I’m open to “socialism has never been tried” arguments. Then they could be vulnerable to a “socialism is unstable” argument similar to yours, but on the other hand it’d give them an out to the “actual socialist regimes are terrible” argument.

Nor is an ideology unfalsifiable because there aren’t any instances of it in practice. We can analyze the arguments for and against the position, look at the real-world instances of practices similar to those the ideology advocates using more broadly (and maybe somewhat differently), and so on. Arguments against socialism are older than socialist failures, and there are many arguments against libertarianism that aren’t reliant on evidence from actual libertarian societies.

This argument also proves too much. A country could try to establish any ideology until whoever controls the tanks says “We’re not doing that anymore, (but maybe we’re still going to say we’re practicing it)”. I don’t think the mere possibility of this happening is a strong mark against an ideology, because it could happen to almost all of them. For example, “socialism is bad because the CIA is likely to overthrow it” would be a bad argument. Or an attempt to establish an ideology might end early because it proves unpopular among the general public, but that obviously doesn’t mean it’s bad - the public could be wrong. The unpopularity of an ideology is a very weak reason to reject it.

America, with its growing web of laws, regulations, licenses and inspectors imposed by elected officials or by referenda, is abandoning its own traditions of limited government in favor of this unfortunate trend toward democratically imposed intolerance and conformity.

Fortunately, not all of us feel bound to obey the illiberal will of the majority; some people remain wedded to the idea that they have a right to run their own lives no matter what happens at the ballot box. These people are Edward Snowden. They’re stubborn restaurant owners who ignore foie gras bans. They’re tech company owners who shut their doors rather than collaborate with the surveillance state. They're jurors who free defendants who violated laws that shouldn’t exist. Separately and together, these dissenters do their best to thwart democratic tyranny.

Anonymous asked: "I think a moral voter would prefer that the ambulance driver goes to the big accident. I also think that a moral ambulance driver would prefer to go to their own house." How can it be moral for one person to want another to do something immoral? Unless morality is entirely subjective, so what's moral for one person could be immoral for another. Is that your view?

ronyyaya:

sadoeconomist:

mugasofer:

sadoeconomist:

I certainly wouldn’t call that ‘entirely’ subjective, I’m not an ethical subjectivist; I’m an egoist. But yes, what’s moral for one person could be immoral for another. I think everybody tied to the tracks in the trolley problem should, as a matter of morality, be doing their best to plead for their own lives, for example, even though they’d be urging the lever-puller to make mutually contradictory choices, and perhaps choices that might be objectively immoral ones for the puller to make, or choices that a detached observer would never advocate.

Like, imagine if an paramedic had the choice of going to one of three burning buildings and saving everyone inside: building A is an orphanage with a dozen kids inside, building B is the paramedic’s house with her two children inside, and building C just has one guy in it. A detached observer along with the orphans should want her to go to A, she and her kids should want her to go to B, and the guy in C should want her to go to C and save him. I think there’s something wrong with any morality that would demand she go to A, and something very wrong with any morality that would demand she go to C. I also think there’s something wrong with any morality that demands that anyone in any of the burning buildings urge the paramedic to go to a different building.

Morality is there to answer the question of ‘how should I live.’ If you do the math and it comes back with ‘you shouldn’t,’ then clearly you forgot to carry a one somewhere.

I think everybody tied to the tracks in the trolley problem should, as a matter of morality, be doing their best to plead for their own lives

It may be supererogatory, but I think the best choice in that situation is obviously to sacrifice yourself/tell the lever-puller that you don’t blame them?

Family members you can make a case for, but there’s no way trying to save your own life at the expense of five other people can be construed as anything but selfish.* What moral drive is pushing you to do this? That’s the exact action a sociopath would make in that situation.

Any system of morality that argues self-sacrifice for the benefit of others is inherently wrong is not morality.

Oh, it’s morality, it’s just not altruist morality. Demanding that someone choose death rather than be ‘selfish’ is what sounds sociopathic to me. If you actually have empathy then you empathize with yourself first and empathize with others who do the same. Believing everyone should follow altruist morality means having pathological self-hatred and projecting it onto everyone else. It’s really a profound hatred of all of humanity in its most developed state.

The fundamental question that drives me to altruism is simply: “what makes me special?”. That is, I don’t see why my value should supercede that of others. Of course as a selfish flawed being I WANT to prioritize myself, but ultimately I assume that most people are worth at least a significant fraction of myself. Considering how highly I value myself, of course I value others highly as well.

The other issue I have with an egotistical morality is that it not only can, but must be inconsistant. If two perfectly moral people with all the information about a situation will always disagree, that seems paradoxical.

Value simpliciter - that is, intrinsic value that is independent of a particular mind’s evaluation - isn’t an actually existing property. So in this context it’s erroneous to ask how much someone or something is worth (if you mean it literally and not as shorthand for something else), because it doesn’t correspond to anything. What does exist is value-for-a-valuer, but this means that there can be as many different valuations as there are minds capable of assigning them.

So, to answer the question “What makes me special?”. Intrinsically/externally, nothing, but value isn’t intrinsic/external. But from your subjective point of view, you’re special to yourself, because it’s your point of view.

As for the charge of inconsistency, I don’t think egoism is inconsistent in this way. Suppose there’s something we both want and only one of us can get. If each of us said “I should ultimately get it”, then that would be an inconsistency, but that’s not what egoism would have us say - it would have us acknowledge that it’s good-for-me and bad-for-the-other for each of us to get it, and that each of us should try to get it, but nothing about who should end up with it. So I’d acknowledge that you should try to get it, but I wouldn’t want you to succeed. Compare to a chess match, where I may know the move you should make and still hope that you don’t make it.

Anonymous asked: "I think a moral voter would prefer that the ambulance driver goes to the big accident. I also think that a moral ambulance driver would prefer to go to their own house." How can it be moral for one person to want another to do something immoral? Unless morality is entirely subjective, so what's moral for one person could be immoral for another. Is that your view?

sadoeconomist:

I certainly wouldn’t call that ‘entirely’ subjective, I’m not an ethical subjectivist; I’m an egoist. But yes, what’s moral for one person could be immoral for another. I think everybody tied to the tracks in the trolley problem should, as a matter of morality, be doing their best to plead for their own lives, for example, even though they’d be urging the lever-puller to make mutually contradictory choices, and perhaps choices that might be objectively immoral ones for the puller to make, or choices that a detached observer would never advocate.

Like, imagine if an paramedic had the choice of going to one of three burning buildings and saving everyone inside: building A is an orphanage with a dozen kids inside, building B is the paramedic’s house with her two children inside, and building C just has one guy in it. A detached observer along with the orphans should want her to go to A, she and her kids should want her to go to B, and the guy in C should want her to go to C and save him. I think there’s something wrong with any morality that would demand she go to A, and something very wrong with any morality that would demand she go to C. I also think there’s something wrong with any morality that demands that anyone in any of the burning buildings urge the paramedic to go to a different building.

Morality is there to answer the question of ‘how should I live.’ If you do the math and it comes back with ‘you shouldn’t,’ then clearly you forgot to carry a one somewhere.

collapsedsquid:

There’s something that bugs me about the discourse of libertarianism, on this site and elsewhere.

Libertarians tend to argue that positions are supported by economics.  I can’t speak to the truth of reality, but I can say that most economists disagree with this. So when everyone acts like libertarian and especially Austrian economics are the incontrovertible truth of the universe, I end up going WTF???  Really?

I mean, I can argue that socialist positions are supported by marxist principles and nobody gives a fuck.  But when libertarians can say this is supported by “Economics“ I always feel like there’s some level of bad faith arguing there.

While most mainstream economists (not Austrians) are indeed not libertarians, they’re considerably more libertarian than the general public (see here, for example). It has been said that Paul Krugman is more pro-market than the average Republican, despite the rhetoric to the contrary. As a rough estimate, acceptance of mainstream economics will get you at least 75% of the way to libertarianism.

While there are some good economic arguments against libertarianism, they’re often misinterpreted by the public as proving more than they really do - in most cases, even if they succeed, the resulting system would still be what some would call neoliberal. The more significant reason why economists aren’t libertarians is because of their normative views - they generally share the egalitarian views common to academics. Tribal associations are also a factor: while economists may have reservations in supporting Democrats, for some of them voting for the Republican would be like voting for a dog - out of the question, even if the dog has some good policies.

[S]uppose Bob works at fast-food chain McBurger in a competitive market economy where he gets paid his marginal product, $1/hr. Suppose that he therefore qualifies for government assistance.. Many on the Left would say that the government thereby “subsidizes” McBurger, because McBurger pays Bob less than it takes to keep him living well, and the government pays the difference. But this presupposes that if you hire someone for, say, 40 hours a week, you owe him enough money for him to lead a decent life…

Imagine you argued for the following principle: “If you hire someone full-time, you have to pay that person enough to lead a decent life (defined as follows…), even if that person is so unproductive that you lose money by hiring him.“ That kind of moral codes gives potential employers of the unproductive two options: 1) hire unproductive people at a financial loss, or 2) refuse to hire unproductive people. It forbids the middle ground - help out unproductive people (perhaps even, in the process, helping to make them more productive) by paying them what their labor is actually worth.

- Jason Brennan

advicefromsurvivors:

It seems to me that a lot of people think that “good parenting” is just the default behavior for parents, and that unhealthy/toxic/abusive parents make an active, conscious choice to deviate from the “good parent” norm.

From my observations, the opposite of that is true. Many of the behaviors that are widely praised and supported are unhelpful at their best and outright harmful at their worst. Think of the support for parents who punish their children in ways that are harmful (destruction of the child’s property, humiliation, violence) and parents who micromanage and overtax their children (a half-dozen extracurriculars, meticulously managed schedules, “parent monitored” social media for teenagers who are nearing legal adulthood), just to name a few examples. Even though social attitudes are in the process of evolving, current social attitudes lead to a lot of unhealthy or downright abusive behaviors being seen as a normal part of parenting.

Good parents are the ones who choose to actively stray from the cultural mandates and to seek cooperative approaches to parenting rather than authoritarian ones.

(via dagothcares)

unknought:

It’s not true that people who argue uncharitably never have anything worthwhile to say.

It’s not true that people who lash out and do a lot of unnecessary damage never have legitimate grievances.

It’s not true that you and your friends have a uniquely enlightened moral or intellectual standpoint beyond the ken of the rest of the world.

If someone describes their beliefs or positions or experiences using different vocabulary or a different rhetorical style from what you’re used to, you shouldn’t assume that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

If someone’s arguing from a different set of values, you shouldn’t assume that this makes their concerns completely irrelevant.

If someone tells you they share one of your concerns or values but they disagree with you about how to address it, you shouldn’t assume that they’re lying and that they actually don’t care.

Stop making excuses not to listen to people.

Stop making excuses not to listen to people.

“Never” is too strong, but if someone argues uncharitably, they’re in effect not engaging in truth-seeking, people who lash out are more likely to have poorly considered positions (see “The Mellow Heuristic”), and if someone is arguing from a different set of values, what they say is less likely to be relevant to me (should I care about what Clippy has to say about the best way to manufacture paperclips?).

Also, once you’ve had enough arguments with a certain kind of person, you can usually predict what kinds of things they’re going to say, and are unlikely to learn anything new from them. It’s why I don’t engage with, say, generic communists or generic Christian apologists.

Keep Sturgeon’s Law in mind. A randomly selected person has relatively little to say that’s worth listening to - and it’s even worse if they’re angry or uncharitable. That’s not to say that one should be closed to opposing viewpoints, but it’s best to figure out a way to filter out the typically bad 95%.

Tags: discourse

gcu-sovereign:

fatpinocchio:

Is there any established term for people in the following cluster? (If not, suggestions are welcome.)

  • Belief that crime/unemployment/etc are worse now than they typically were in the past.
  • General pessimism about the future - they expect the above trends to continue.
  • A strong belief that many of our problems come from corporations/“the rich” bribing politicians.
  • Predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories.
  • Anti-GMO.
  • Disdain for lowbrow entertainment (e.g. “If you watch American Idol instead of paying attention to politics, you’re what’s wrong with the country”).

I think I’d call them progressive fatalists?

I can think of one, wretched person I know on facebook who fits this generally.  If I were to place them on that Competitive-Cooperative/Optimistic-Pessimistic graph of SSC’s, they would fall in Competitive/Pessimistic with ‘full communism’

Their opposition to GMO isn’t so much a principled stand against the methods as another spectre of the corporate fist. 

Though come to think of it, this may much closer fit the ‘Alex Jones libertarian’, especially one who enjoys converting the unemployment numbers to 50+ year old standards of macroeconomic measurement.

These people tend to be adjacent to Alex Jones libertarians and sometimes consume the same media, but they tend to be much more statist - often, more statist than even many progressives. Some among them consider a maximum wage to be a good policy.

Tags: politics