Fighting Ebola with Freedom

[Razgovory]

I wouldn't want my relative or friend to catch libertarianism.

Like any other -ism, libertarianism can be carried too far, but the concept of placing liberty as the highest value isn't a bad one.  I'd say the libertarians like Smith and Locke ended up with far more coherent and human (and, ultimately, influential) political-economic theories than the non-libertarians like Rousseau and Mun.

As far as I can tell placing liberty as the highest value is not what Libertarianism is about.  No more then Communism or Socialism is about freedom or equality.  What libertarianism seems to be about is reducing or even eliminating government altogether.  That's not really the same thing as placing liberty as the highest value.

Depends on how willing you are to ignore the guaranteed unintended consequences of your ideology.

Well the underlying assumption in libertarianism is that if you reduce government, you are increasing freedom.  However this doesn't actually seem to be the case.  Places were government has collapsed are often less free then places that have functioning governments.  Freedom can be restricted by non-governmental actors and often is.  I have strong suspicions that these predatory non-governmental actors or people who aspire to be one of these predatory non-governmental actors lean libertarian for precisely that reason.

[DGuller]

Well the underlying assumption in libertarianism is that if you reduce government, you are increasing freedom.  However this doesn't actually seem to be the case.  Places were government has collapsed are often less free then places that have functioning governments.  Freedom can be restricted by non-governmental actors and often is.  I have strong suspicions that these predatory non-governmental actors or people who aspire to be one of these predatory non-governmental actors lean libertarian for precisely that reason.

I think that libertarians can largely be divided into two groups:  those that are full of shit, and those that have shit for brains. 

The full of shit libertarians don't really value liberty, they just disagree with how governments restrict them personally, and would have no trouble with the concept of strong government if it oppressed on their behalf.  In US, they tend to be amoral plutocrats or bigots.  The shit for brain libertarians are genuine idealists that simply fail to realize that government is not the only source of oppression, and often its oppression actually protects people from greater injustice.  In US, these tend to be young naive people who are always at an increased risk of falling for an extreme ideology due to their reduced tolerance for ideological compromise. 

Often full of shit libertarians use the shit for brain libertarians as useful idiots.

[Barrister]

I wouldn't want my relative or friend to catch libertarianism.

Like any other -ism, libertarianism can be carried too far, but the concept of placing liberty as the highest value isn't a bad one.  I'd say the libertarians like Smith and Locke ended up with far more coherent and human (and, ultimately, influential) political-economic theories than the non-libertarians like Rousseau and Mun.

Personally, I think the approach of placing a single given value as "the highest" will inevitably lead to problems. Instead, I think acknowledging that freedom, justice, equality, and material well being are all very important values (and others as well) and attempting to maximizing them while responding to conflicts between them given context and the desires of the populace is a better approach.

I think the problem is in starting with a blank slate - deciding your ideology without reference to the real world.  So libertarianism (to pick on it, although it works for most other -isms) starts with the ideal of liberty, and designs it's ideal world around maximizing liberty, all with little or no reference to what actually works, or doesn't work, in the real world.

[Jacob]

I think the problem is in starting with a blank slate - deciding your ideology without reference to the real world.  So libertarianism (to pick on it, although it works for most other -isms) starts with the ideal of liberty, and designs it's ideal world around maximizing liberty, all with little or no reference to what actually works, or doesn't work, in the real world.

Well put.

[grumbler]

Personally, I think the approach of placing a single given value as "the highest" will inevitably lead to problems. Instead, I think acknowledging that freedom, justice, equality, and material well being are all very important values (and others as well) and attempting to maximizing them while responding to conflicts between them given context and the desires of the populace is a better approach.

Unfortunately, what you propose isn't an 'approach" at all, but an avoidance of an approach.  Saying that everything is important is saying that nothing is important.  You cannot maximize everything.  Something has to be your measure of effectiveness, and an MOE cannot be everything.

It is attractive to want to maximize everything you think is good, but being attractive doesn't make it possible.  That's why there is no philosophy of maximizing everything good.

It is true that saying anything is more valuable than something will "inevitably lead to problems."  So will not saying that anything is more valuable that something else.  We will "inevitably [have] problems" so we shouldn't shy away from solutions that still have problems.

[DGuller]

Personally, I think the approach of placing a single given value as "the highest" will inevitably lead to problems. Instead, I think acknowledging that freedom, justice, equality, and material well being are all very important values (and others as well) and attempting to maximizing them while responding to conflicts between them given context and the desires of the populace is a better approach.

Unfortunately, what you propose isn't an 'approach" at all, but an avoidance of an approach.  Saying that everything is important is saying that nothing is important.  You cannot maximize everything.  Something has to be your measure of effectiveness, and an MOE cannot be everything.

It is attractive to want to maximize everything you think is good, but being attractive doesn't make it possible.  That's why there is no philosophy of maximizing everything good.

It is true that saying anything is more valuable than something will "inevitably lead to problems."  So will not saying that anything is more valuable that something else.  We will "inevitably [have] problems" so we shouldn't shy away from solutions that still have problems.

I don't think Jake said that everything should be maximized.  He said that multiple values should be taken together and maximized in unison, taking into account some inherent incompatibilities and alleviating them in the best way possible.  It is true that it's either to maximize something you can easily quantify, and the kind of compromise Jake proposed is almost never easily quantified.  However, the alternative approach of just ignoring what you can't quantify is almost always disastrous.

[grumbler]

I think the problem is in starting with a blank slate - deciding your ideology without reference to the real world.  So libertarianism (to pick on it, although it works for most other -isms) starts with the ideal of liberty, and designs it's ideal world around maximizing liberty, all with little or no reference to what actually works, or doesn't work, in the real world.

Ah.  Are you sure that other libertarians agree with your definition?  I don't think that Adam Smith, for example, started with the idea of liberty and designed his ideal world around it.  I think he started with the world as he saw it, and described how it could be made better.

The anti-libertarians, like Rousseau, were IMO the ones who took a single idea and "with little or no reference to what actually works, or doesn't work, in the real world."

Now, if you were referring to -isms like Catholicism or Islamism, then I'd agree with your assessment, but I think we must expressly exclude religions from the discussion, as they are not suppose to be rational.  Ditto, pretty much, for the romantic -isms like communism and fascism.  But, other than those, I think you will find that there are far more -isms based on logic and the real world, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

[grumbler]

I don't think Jake said that everything should be maximized.  He said that multiple values should be taken together and maximized in unison, taking into account some inherent incompatibilities and alleviating them in the best way possible.  It is true that it's either to maximize something you can easily quantify, and the kind of compromise Jake proposed is almost never easily quantified.  However, the alternative approach of just ignoring what you can't quantify is almost always disastrous.

I don't see why you wouldn't maximize everything good (not "everything") if you are setting out to maximize many variables simultaneously.  Beside, Jake himself named four goods he would simultaneously and also noted that there were "others as well."  I don't think the alternative to maximizing all the good things is to "ignore what you cannot quantify;" that's a false dichotomy.  Besides, i don't see how it could possibly be easier to quantify "liberty" than to quantify any of the other values he mentions.

[DGuller]

I don't see why you wouldn't maximize everything good (not "everything") if you are setting out to maximize many variables simultaneously. 

Optimizing many variables simultaneously is not equivalent to maximizing all those variables in isolation if the variables are not independent.

[Jacob]

Unfortunately, what you propose isn't an 'approach" at all, but an avoidance of an approach.  Saying that everything is important is saying that nothing is important.  You cannot maximize everything.  Something has to be your measure of effectiveness, and an MOE cannot be everything.

It is attractive to want to maximize everything you think is good, but being attractive doesn't make it possible.  That's why there is no philosophy of maximizing everything good.

It is true that saying anything is more valuable than something will "inevitably lead to problems."  So will not saying that anything is more valuable that something else.  We will "inevitably [have] problems" so we shouldn't shy away from solutions that still have problems.

Yeah, muddling through it is not the most philosophically coherent approach - you can even call it a "non approach" and I won't argue. I still prefer it, though. As you said, it's possible to take libertarianism too far; and I think that's true for other basic principles we can frame - be it justice, equality, material welfare, etc. They have to be modulated by practical concerns and other basic principles that are worthwhile.

[PJL]

It is attractive to want to maximize everything you think is good, but being attractive doesn't make it possible.  That's why there is no philosophy of maximizing everything good.

Yes there is, it's called Utilitarianism

[grumbler]

Yeah, muddling through it is not the most philosophically coherent approach - you can even call it a "non approach" and I won't argue. I still prefer it, though. As you said, it's possible to take libertarianism too far; and I think that's true for other basic principles we can frame - be it justice, equality, material welfare, etc. They have to be modulated by practical concerns and other basic principles that are worthwhile.

The problem with muddling through, though, is that it tends to create dogmatism as a reaction.  Personally, I also definitely favor pragmatism over almost any other -ism, with the caveat that the pragmatism be based on the long-range outlook.  I do reject the idea of "maximizing everything good," because that's impossible, and I can accept the idea that liberty is one of the key MOEs of any policy (along with its opposite, justice).  Thus, I think it useful to see policies weighed by how much liberty they trade for justice, and vice-versa.

[grumbler]

It is attractive to want to maximize everything you think is good, but being attractive doesn't make it possible.  That's why there is no philosophy of maximizing everything good.

Yes there is, it's called Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism isn't a philosophy, it's a theory of normative ethics.

[Jacob]

I don't see why you wouldn't maximize everything good (not "everything") if you are setting out to maximize many variables simultaneously. 

Optimizing many variables simultaneously is not equivalent to maximizing all those variables in isolation if the variables are not independent.

Yeah, exactly.

And yeah, though quantifying this stuff is basically impossible, for the sake of argument I think something like:

Freedom = 0.7; Equality = 0.65; Justice = 0.8; General Material Welfare = 0.75

is superior to

Freedom = 1.0; Equality = 0.02; Justice = 0.2; General Material Welfare = 0.4.

It's super abstract, of course, and leaves out all sorts of different social goods but it illustrates the main point.

Now, if libertarianism means something like "let's weigh the value of the 'Freedom' score to be worth 1.3 points of Equality, and 1.1 points of Justice and General Material Welfare while striving for the highest possible score" then that's fine (and the same with, say, some sort of "Social Welfare" philosophy that posits "1 General Material Welfare = 1 Equality = 1.2 Justice = 1.3 Freedom; let's drive up the aggregate score").

As long as the other values are considered worthwhile in themselves, we can have endless and possibly constructive arguments about how to balance that out and how to apply it (not to mention about exactly what we mean by General Material Welfare or Freedom).

But once we get to arguments that "we have to get Freedom as close to 1 as possible, without regard to any of the other values" then I think we're looking at something very counterproductive, to say the least; even more so if we get into "we should push Equality as close to 0 as we can, rather than 1" or "I actually prefer Justice at around 0.5, because [members of group X] does not deserve Justice, only people like me". And lest this is taken to be specifically about libertarianism, I feel the same way about any approach that places one value as the pinnacle of philosophical ideals at the cost of all others.

[Jacob]

Yeah, muddling through it is not the most philosophically coherent approach - you can even call it a "non approach" and I won't argue. I still prefer it, though. As you said, it's possible to take libertarianism too far; and I think that's true for other basic principles we can frame - be it justice, equality, material welfare, etc. They have to be modulated by practical concerns and other basic principles that are worthwhile.

The problem with muddling through, though, is that it tends to create dogmatism as a reaction.  Personally, I also definitely favor pragmatism over almost any other -ism, with the caveat that the pragmatism be based on the long-range outlook.  I do reject the idea of "maximizing everything good," because that's impossible, and I can accept the idea that liberty is one of the key MOEs of any policy (along with its opposite, justice).  Thus, I think it useful to see policies weighed by how much liberty they trade for justice, and vice-versa.

Okay, that I can agree to

It's not like I think "muddling through" is a brilliant coherent and fail proof approach either.