There is no shortage of poorly informed rants against libertarianism; similarly, it's easy to find silly screeds against atheism. Dinesh D'Souza, however, has achieved the unusual distinction of combining these two genres in a single column. Let's start with the part about libertarians:
Many libertarians are basically conservatives who are either gay or druggies or people who generally find the conservative moral agenda too restrictive. So they flee from the conservative to the libertarian camp where much wider parameters of personal behavior are embraced.
It is true that most libertarians oppose parts of "the conservative moral agenda" (at least to the extent that that agenda is to be enforced by the state). The rest of the above is hogwash. The vast majority of libertarians are neither gay, nor "druggies," nor even people with unusual personal lives of any kind. And there are very few libertarians who have "fled" from conservatism, because most libertarians were never conservative to begin with. There are many prominent libertarian thinkers who are former liberals or socialists, such as Hayek, Friedman, Richard Epstein, and quite a few others. Very few if any were former conservatives of any kind - much less ones who fled because they were gay or wanted to use drugs. To top it off, D'Souza also commits the common mistake of conflating libertarian opposition to state regulation of "personal behavior" with "embracing" such behavior (more sophisticated conservative critics of libertarianism, such as Kay Hymowitz often make the same mistake).
The anti-atheist part of D'Souza's screed is even sillier. He starts by suggesting that Christopher Hitchens' fondness for alcohol (and possibly that of other atheists who drink a lot) is somehow related to his rejection of religion (as if there aren't plenty of theists who drink to excess). He ends with this:
I agree that many nominal Christians have also forgotten the message of Christmas. Even so I wonder: what's the atheist equivalent of Christmas? Darwin's birthday? For many libertarians I suppose it's the day they get their tax refunds.
Here, D'Souza makes the common but foolish mistake of conflating atheism with the theory of evolution. In reality, you can be an atheist and reject that theory (as the Soviet government to a large extent did under Stalin) or be a theist and accept it (as the Catholic Church now does). And, as Radley Balko points out, D'Souza is seriously misinformed if he thinks that libertarians celebrate tax refunds as opposed to decrying them as a part of the government's deceptive scheme to extract what are effectively coercive interest-free loans from the taxpayers.
As for the "atheist equivalent of Christmas," atheists no more need an equivalent of Christmas than we need an equivalent of Ramadan or Yom Kippur. Part of the point of atheism is that we do not believe in the need for holidays that honor deities. Obviously, there are atheists who celebrate theistic holidays for cultural or family reasons or just to have a good time. But atheism as such has no need for "equivalents" of religious holidays. Indeed, since atheism is not a comprehensive belief system but merely a rejection of the existence of God, it has no need of any holidays at all. Rather, individual atheists will choose to celebrate particular holidays for ethnic, historical, or philosophical reasons that generally have no connection to atheism itself. Just as atheism is compatible with a variety of different moral and political views, it is also compatible with a variety of different holidays.
There once was a time when Dinesh D'Souza was a reasonably serious public intellectual. I didn't always agree with him then, but his writings were at least worth considering. This column, coming on the heels of his book arguing that we should sacrifice many of our freedoms in order to allay the anger of Muslim fundamentalists, suggests that those days are gone. There are weighty arguments to be made against both libertarianism and atheism. Sadly, Dinesh D'Souza is no longer likely to be the one to make them.
UPDATE: Just in case, I should clarify that in denying that "many libertarians" are "gay...or druggies," I am in no way accepting D'Souza's equation of these two categories. As I'm sure regular VC readers know, I don't believe that there is anything wrong with being gay. Indeed, it is probably true that the percentage of gays among libertarians is higher than among social conservatives. However, even if gays are twice as common in the libertarian community as in the nation as a whole, that would still make them only a tiny fraction of the total.
How many in a "many"? He's not saying all or a vast majority.
My social circles include a fair number of people who are literate in conservative ideas and are gay or druggies (of one sort or another),and there's a pretty large universe of people who find the conservative moral agenda too restrictive.
I agree with the general flavor of your remarks.
D'Sousa use to market himself mostly to intellectuals. He's found a larger market among anti-intellectuals and fundamentalists, so his message has evolved.
Basically, his point is "nyah, nyah, Hitchens drinks a lot and atheists don't have fun holidays."
D'Souza's an embarrassment to Dartmouth.
He ought to get work as a NYT opinion columnist.
First, I am a Christian, a Conservative, and a Libertarian. If you want to ponder that paradox along with Dinesh D'Souza, feel free to. The labels just don't apply, most people with a brain of their own simply do not fall into the pre-defined buckets established by political movements or academia.
With regards to fundamentalism, however, it bothers me to no end that a Christian Fundamentalist would berate those who do not share their beliefs. This Christmas day in particular, I would like to remind my fellow Christians that Jesus did not spread his gospel by insulting those who did not believe in him; rather, he demonstrated compassion, pity, and leveraged grossly unpopular speech. No stones were thrown.
Dinesh D'Souza may have some reason to be upset, however, because there are indeed Secular Fundamentalists out there, and they are as bad as any Christian Fundamentalist you can find. These folks too have a faith, although exclusively in science, that includes their belief in the origin of the Universe and a moral code to go with it. The problem with people like Christopher Hitchens is that he has gone over the top and abandoned anything that resembles tolerance, making it his Crusade or Fatwa to convert those of differing faiths.
Neither description of Christian or Secular fundamentalists really fits most folks, however. Many from both sides are Conservative, many from both Sides are Libertarian, and many are down-right Liberal according to today's definition. And they generally get along with one another fine and actually enjoy discussing their beliefs intellectually.
I would, however, caution all from both sides against intolerance and inflammatory language associated with fundamentalism of any kind. One need only look at the level of violence that has recently arisen from Islamic Fundamentalism in the last few decades to realize that such immature and narrow-mind behavior really only has one destination, one of ignorance, self-destruction, and death.
Ease up on the name calling, and find common ground in the faiths of others, rather than bashing them as inferior as you look down your noses. And that means all of us.
Fundamentalism sucks. Christian, Islamic, and Secular. It sucks like a nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner. It sucks so hard it could pull the Moon out of orbit. It's ignorant. And, most ironically, I say that without tolerance.
Merry Christmas to all who are not butt-hurt by wished to have one.
He is also quite sneaky. He was able to get in the last statement in the entire debate and use that opportunity to accuse Hitchens of being an atheist for the purpose of avoiding accountability for immoral behavior, knowing quite well that Hitchens wouldn't have the opportunity to respond to what was clearly intended to be an ad hominem attack. He does a similar thing to Hitchens in the article which prompted Professor Somin's post. Notice the sneaky manner in which he claims that Hitchens is "at home" with "libertarians [who] are basically conservatives who are either gay or druggies or people who generally find the conservative moral agenda too restrictive."
To claim that there is such a thing as "secular fundamentalism" is a false one. People do not have faith in science, they believe what science proves or theories best postulate. Scientific theories and facts are falsifiable and if the science proves to be wrong (or the earth doesn't turn out to be 6000 years old) we accept the new facts and move on.
I know of no academic work he did supporting socialism, but I think even teenage flings can be relevant to a person's intellectual biography.
does it suck harder than space vacuum?
No. There was just a time when Dinesh's invectives were used solely against Democrats. It's unfortunate that you don't realize that this has been D'Souza's gig ever since he was a student at Dartmouth.
/s
I guess this is true in one sense, but the sad fact is that libertarians generally have sold their souls to the Republican party for the last 40 years and we're all paying the price for that.
But...
I would observe the following. D'Souza wrote the following:
He used the qualifier many, not most.
And you know what, as a factual matter, he may very well be right. Surely, there are at least some libertarians for which the above is true. And determining the point at which some may be correctly interchanged with many is not a matter of precise physics.
First of all, it would be interesting to know statistics about libertarians behavior. What percentage of libertarians engage in illegal drug use or casual sex? Is it higher than for the general population?
I personally do not find gay people morally problematic, as it is possible D'Souza does. But I can imagine a weak correlation between being gay and being libertarian. Many gay people are understandably revolted by traditional religion, because it labels and rejects them. (It should be noted that there is a trend for many Christian denominations to accept gays, so this may be less important in the future.) Further, gay men at are less likely to have family responsibilities, which leads to a relatively easy life with substantial amounts of disposable income. Combine the two and you might have a higher probability of libertarianism being appealing.
I do believe that people who are obsessed with mostly theoretic hardships (i.e. the "coercive" loss of interest payments due to withholding) tend to not face any significant hardships in their own lives. When you are denied basic medical care or are struggling just to make ends meet or are your concerned about the quality of your children's education, these sorts of theoretic hardships that bother libertarians tend to fade in the background.
I think it is likely that libertarianism is correlated with being part of a leisure class that lends itself well to indifference with the actual struggles of ordinary people while leading one to be excessively concerned with actions (like the withholding of taxes), that while not causing serious hardship, are ideologically forbidden.
This statement is not even logically responsive to D'Souza's claim. He did not make any claims about a particular group of libertarians. Instead, he made claims about "many libertarians."
On the other hand, I do not find this statement by D'Souza to be particularly defensible:
On the other hand, this statement is so obviously wrong, it seems like that D'Souza knows that is wrong and is not completely serious. In fact, other places in his post make me suspect that D'Souza is only half serious in his claims in general.
Of course, one does wonder whether libertarians are probabilistically more likely or less likely to have problems with alcohol. But clearly, to attribute the drinking problems of a particular individual to their ideology is wrongheaded, absent more particular information about that person.
One can imagine a causation scenario. A former non-libertarian for some reason embraces libertarianism. Freed from previous ideological restraints (i.e. communitarian concerns about the effects of their behavior on others) they start engaging in vices that negatively impact those around them, like excessive drinking.
That is all fine and good, but obviously of a speculative nature. I would not suggest that the personal problems of any particular individual is caused by their ideology, absent particularized knowledge, simply because there are so many other explanations for that personal failing.
Now, to address the last part of the post.
Clearly, this is tongue-in-cheek. It is explicitly speculative. Did Somin even read the "I wonder" part???
I think it is strange that Somin's argument proceeds by taking this tongue-in-cheek speculation seriously. It is nearly as though he is desperate for a straw man, which has been conveniently provided by his inability to see that D'Souza is being explicitly and purposely speculative and sarcastic.
[thread hijacking alert]
As for the "atheist equivalent of Christmas," atheists no more need an equivalent of Christmas than we need an equivalent of Ramadan or Yom Kippur.
Just for the record, since it's what first drew me to the Blawg, and it's especially pointed with Christmas coming so late (16 Teveth) this year, Jews don't need an equivalent of Christmas either. One of my kids' (government) school homeworks had a theme about Christmas traditions around the world. It ended with an open-ended "thought" question: "How would your celebrations be different if Christmas were in June?" (If I were more paranoid I'd suspect this was going to lead to an AGW bit.) As I was checking the homework I answered that one "If Christmas were in June, people would be telling me that Shavous is the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar, and it should be celebrated not with cheese blintzes but with gift-giving."
Still, I wonder whether someone who won't walk under ladders, or pays attention to his or her horoscope, or has a lucky pair of socks that they plan to wear for the softball tournament, can really be much of an atheist. It's the 21st Century and I work in an office building with no 13th Floor (for Christ's sake!). Surely the person who made that decision can't have been a true atheist ... Right?
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a correlation between race and libertarianism in the United States. The atomistic individual is more likely to be embraced by certain cultures (think Nevada) that embrace the myth of rugged individualism. These cultures have probably been historically more white. Further, the concerns of immigrants (which given modern day immigration patterns, tend not to be white) tend to be more focused on the concrete challenges of everyday life, not the abstract concerns that motivate libertarians.
Further, I would say that there is likely a strong correlation between privilege and libertarianism. The libertarians I have encountered tend to have had an easy life economically. This has probably enabled them to become obsessed with their abstract and theoretic objections to what substitutes for injustice in their relatively easy lives. (i.e. taxes)
Of course, there is an alternative model. The person who has made it economically, buys into the myth of rugged individualism (they did it themselves, they tend to downplay how public investments helped create the economic environment that enabled them to succeed in the first place), and self-righteously expects all others to be in a position to do the same thing.
Actually, this sort of self-righteousness is precisely what I think has enabled a libertarian and religious conservative political alliance.
It should be fairly obvious to anyone that coming from a stable and strong family background is an enormous enabler of success. Non-libertarian conservatives often take this observation and suggest that strong families are "the solution" to many social ills, suggesting them as an alternative (as opposed to a cooperating force with) broader social action. Of course, this ignores the fact that many people are raised in socially dysfunctional families through no fault of their own and are not in a position to change or even influence that fact. Certain religious conservatives are thus able to embrace libertarian anti-government dogma based on the belief that most problems can be solved by strengthening families. While many libertarians probably find government actions to strengthen families as theoretically problematic, they are able to drop such objections for political convenience when they contemplate this as a political move that can be used to undermine broader initiatives.
In either case, there is a sort of self-righteousness and selfishness involved. People who think that strong families are the solution to all ills probably had the privilege of coming from a strong family and somehow fail to consider that while increasing the number of strong families would be infinitely valuable, there will always be people who fall through the cracks. People who have "made it" and buy into the libertarian myth of rugged individualism fail to recognize the roles that others have played in their success. They also often fail to recognize that their God-given talents are not fairly distributed across the population and that they did nothing as an initial matter to "deserve" socially valuable talents.
One thing that fascinates me is how there seems to be fissures in the conservative/libertarian political alliance (keeping in mind that libertarians have always been the dispensable party in the alliance and that conservatives could do just fine without them). I think that this fissure is best exemplified by the venom that libertarians have spewed at Mick Huckabee.
Please, stop wasting your time on the worthless manipulative lying garbage as Souza ( I would like to add up here Jonah Goldberg as well)
Yours truly, liberal Jewish fascist-Sasha
I think the answer lies in liberalism (recognizing that all these terms are very broad).
Liberalism (in the modern vague sense of the term) wants no restrictions on matters of morality and the like, and disfavors even private criticism or action on that basis. Conversely, it favors are lot of restrictions on economic activity, and is entirely open to all manner of government regulation that is not (obviously, anyway) based on morality.
The first hacks off the social conservatives, the second hacks off libertarian conservatives. Ergo, both are conservative in the sense that they are annoyed by modern liberalism. One might even say by a contradiction in modern liberalism, which assumes that in matters of morality the individual is wise and sufficient and the government corrupt and abusive, and in all other settings that the individual is selfish or foolish, and the government wise and altruistic.
Having in the first instance noted that "[l]ibertarianism is a philosophy of government, [whilst] conservatism is a philosophy of life" and that "on the central question of what constitutes the good life, libertarian is largely silent" (this is, of course, entirely right)
That's an overstatement, in my opinion. Libertarianism tends to suggest something similar to the Hippocratic Oath - first, do no harm. A good life consists of that which one chooses without harming others or infringing on their rights. That is a much better life than going around trying to force your views and opinions on others.
I thought libertarians were rich priviliged white kids who didn't want to pay taxes and help the poor ...
Actually, libertarians want to make sure there are no poor people to begin with, or at least the minimum amount, through enacting sound economic policies. Socialist and communist economic policies - and similar redistributionist schemes - are supposed to be the ultimate in "helping the poor", and they result in poverty, misery, and starvation for many.
And I don't think all libertarians are "rich privileged white kids".
Maybe the libertarians Dinesh D'Souza encountered were all gay drug addicts. Nothing wrong with generalizing from personal experience!
My point was that many people in this thread find offense to D'Souza's inaccurate stereotypes about libertarians as being purely socially self-interested, and yet for many years now inaccurate stereotypes about libertarians as being purely economically self-interested are accepted by many, mostly liberals, as true. See, for example, any thread about health care, taxes, and immigration, where libertarians are caricatured as rich, priviliged white folks who already "got theirs" and don't care that they're screwing poor minorities by denying them health care or by getting their jobs outsourced.
They also often fail to recognize that their God-given talents are not fairly distributed across the population
Are you saying that on average libertarians are smarter than the general population? Surely that can't be an argument against libertarianism ...
I love the dumbth element in his argument of how bad it would be if 300 milliion Americans became pornographers -- no doubt it would be as bad as if they all became priests or bakers.
I confirm that Hayek wrote about how he was a socialist until he meet Mises and read his book Socialism. That is so well known and conceded I’m surprised that anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of Hayek was unaware of it. Hayek himself wrote of this in a later introduction to the Mises book that he wrote.
D’Souza’s tactics are dishonest in my view. To state that some unspecified number of libertarians use drugs is obviously true but meaningless. But he goes further and then implies that libertarians are libertarians because they aren’t socialists of the soul wishing to impose the will of the great collective on the private lives of other people. As a libertarian I fight for the rights of many people to do things which I don’t believe they ought to be doing including smoking, drinking or going to communion. I’m not in favor of sky diving but wouldn’t ban it and think prostitution is a bad career choice and problematic in many ways but also not my business. Libertarianism to me is rooted in respect for others to make their own choices as opposed to merely living up to my choices.
Dave Hardy: you say modern liberalism “wants no restrictions on matters of morality” -- that is actually false. They want to force us to be nice to other people. The differences between Left and Right on the matter is what morality they want to enforce. Conservatives will force us to be moral and liberals would force us to be virtuous. Conservatives mainly worry about sinning against God and lefties worry about sinning against the people. Similarly they both adopt big government regulations of the economy but different mixtures. Their premises are the same only their applications differ slightly.
That was sarcasm. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I don't think it is exactly right to say that the Soviet government "rejected" evolution. Rather, the Stalinists accepted Trofim Lysenko's belief in the heritability of acquired characteristics. Rather than deny evolution, they believed that they could influence it. As far as I know, they did not deny the processes of adaptation, natural selection or speciation — they just applied a crude rendition of dialectical materialism to the process.
I do believe that people who are obsessed with mostly theoretic hardships (i.e. the "coercive" loss of interest payments due to withholding) tend to not face any significant hardships in their own lives. When you are denied basic medical care or are struggling just to make ends meet or are your concerned about the quality of your children's education, these sorts of theoretic hardships that bother libertarians tend to fade in the background.
Nonsense. You just have to know enough about economics to know what the cause of a lot of hardships are.
I think it is likely that libertarianism is correlated with being part of a leisure class that lends itself well to indifference with the actual struggles of ordinary people while leading one to be excessively concerned with actions (like the withholding of taxes), that while not causing serious hardship, are ideologically forbidden.
Right, all libertarians are part of some "leisure class". That's ridiculous, especially when one sees that many wealthy people are liberal.
One can imagine a causation scenario. A former non-libertarian for some reason embraces libertarianism. Freed from previous ideological restraints (i.e. communitarian concerns about the effects of their behavior on others) they start engaging in vices that negatively impact those around them, like excessive drinking.
This is all well and good, except that it's a strawman because it isn't consistent with libertarianism. In your hypothetical you would be harming others and/or violating their rights. That isn't consistent with libertarianism.
Of course, there is an alternative model. The person who has made it economically, buys into the myth of rugged individualism (they did it themselves, they tend to downplay how public investments helped create the economic environment that enabled them to succeed in the first place), and self-righteously expects all others to be in a position to do the same thing.
Let's examine this theory. If everyone has the benefits of the same public investments because they live in the same country, then their success IS a result of their own doing. The only variable that is different is the individual.
Your writings indicate some fundamental misunderstandings about libertarianism. Perhaps you should learn more about the philosophy before misrepresenting it like you have.
Oops. My apologies.
He used the qualifier many, not most.
And you know what, as a factual matter, he may very well be right. Surely, there are at least some libertarians for which the above is true. And determining the point at which some may be correctly interchanged with many is not a matter of precise physics.
"Many" in this context surely at least means something like a substantial proportion of the whole. If I said that "many conservatives are actually racists who want to find a respectable cover for their prejudice," I couldn't defend that statement by saying that I just meant that there must be some people like that. Similarly if I said that "many liberals are traitors who want to appease our enemies."
In the defense of this, note that it's somewhat tongue in cheek insofar as it's an "atheist holiday." A lot of what many atheists are doing these days are things to try and get the culture to pay attention to the reality of the significant portion of non-believers in our midst. Events like this give those efforts some focus and news value.
And heck, Darwin was a pretty darn neat guy, who radically changed science and culture, probably for the better (it's almost certainly no accident that racialism and it's result racism, crumbled for the first time in human history not long after we unlocked the realities of biology and common ancestry). The real problem is that he wasn't American.
D'sousa's characterization of libertarianism was incorrect. Your, and most libertarian's, characterization of conservativism is equally incorrect. I refer you to Scruton's The Meaning of Conservatism.
I was going to comment on this, but Justin and Sashal beat me to it. The amazing thing is that people in a position to spend their own money and control where it goes subsidized this cretin for so long. I think they call it "wingnut welfare."
Give me one weighty argument against atheism.
From a commenter:
No matter how many times you may say it, the simple fact is that science is not a religion.
Incidentally, science (at this point at least) also gives us very little about why we are here, although it is doing a surprisingly good job explaining how we got from the beginning to here.
Christians and other religionists commonly claim that atheists are "intolerant." This is, usually, complete and utter balderdash, and it is so here. Christopher Hitchens is not intolerant. He, and the vast majority of atheists I know, including myself, think you should be free to believe whatever you want. I, and I suspect Hitchens as well, would actually fight to the death for your right to believe (for example) in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Vishnu, or perhaps a tripartite divine Jewish carpenter.
But tolerance doesn't require me to refrain from stating my views about such beliefs. Indeed, it's clear from your post that you don't really want tolerance (which you already have in copious quantities), you want agreement, or at least silence and adherence.
Sounds kind of fundamentalist to me.
Well, it would have to be to suck the moon out of its orbit.
Calm down. I agree that personal experience is not a proper basis for making sound generalizations that are known to be true with a high level of certainty.
Think of my observation as nothing more than an initial inquiry about something I think would be interesting to explore with statistics.
I do suspect that libertarians are more well off economically and this certainly does fit with my personal experiences. And it also makes sense. The concerns of libertarians are so abstracted from serious concerns of those who are not economically privileged (losing interest due to the "coercion" of withholding) that it is likely that these similar concerns do not loom large in the life of libertarians. Normal people do not have the time or interest to obsess over practically imaginary injustices while ignoring the very real injustices attendant to everyday life.
I am pretty certain that not all libertarians are well off economically, however.
Maybe they are smarter than average. And your right, that is not an argument against libertarianism. However, it is an argument against self-righteous expectations that anyone can follow the same path you have followed, despite large variations in talent and access to resources.
In general, I was not referring to intelligence in particular, but rather economically valuable talents in general. I think that intelligence people tend to think that intelligence is the most important attribute. No surprise there. But when it comes to success, there are many other talents or attributes that can be helpful as well. For example, there are less intelligent people who make more successful than those who are more intelligent, often because they are good at emotionally reading others.
Research demonstrates that those who are taller make more money. As well as those who are more attractive.
The point is, we all have different talents, but not all of our talents are equally translatable into goods that are economically exploitable. One should not take one's God-given talents for granted and self-righteously assume that others are necessarily capable of following the same path you have followed. Also, one should also recognize all the other people that played a part in whatever success you have managed to obtain.
At the end of the day, I do not believe it is alright to use others (who may be less intelligent or may merely be in a less favorable position) to serve you food in restaurants, to collect your garbage, and do various all the other services you receive from markets and at the same time see these same people you depend on for all these services deprived of medical care when they need it.
You may be more intelligent than someone else. That doesn't mean that you are better. And if libertarians think they are better because they are more intelligent, that is an argument against libertarianism.
The Soviet government, under Lysenko's influence, rejected genetics, which is the cornerstone of modern evolutionary theory. Many creationists also accept nongenetic adaptation, natural selection, and speciation. It doesn't make them believers in evolution.
I'll give you a couple. No known society has flourished with a predominantly atheist populace. Theism (of one form or another) is the most enduring of human institutions, perhaps as enduring as language itself.
These same practical observations were made by the Founders of America and Tocqueville.
I do sympathize with the "strong atheists" though and they certainly have the right to say there is no god as much as another can say there is.
Interesting. On what grounds do you establish the refutability of propositions?
Second, should we infer that you believe it would be better for a society today to believe in, say, Thor and the Norse Gods, or Zeus and the Greek gods, than to be atheist?
Not true. As I discussed in this post, several successful societies have atheist majorities today, including Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic. It is true that, historically, most societies have been theistic. But that says very little about the validity of atheism or lack thereof. By the same token, until the last 300 years, nearly all societies had slavery and nondemocratic governments. Yet no one claims that that proves that a successful society must have slaves and a dictator.
Of course talent is not evenly distributed. So what? Talent, standing alone, will get you very little in this world (save for very few exceptions). If your talent does not produce results, it's fairly worthless in the market (as it should be). I suppose that's why you have conveniently left off all of your lists things like thrift, hard work, self-discipline, etc. Will you take the position that those virtues are inherited too?
At best, this is typical kind of positivist evasion of pragmatic criteria. Are we disputing the truth of atheism or its usefulness? Perhaps you should consider this point.
No. Religious practices and beliefs are situated and useful in particular historical and social contexts. This point is rather obvious.
Sheesh, the strawmen don't stop.
I do suspect that libertarians are more well off economically and this certainly does fit with my personal experiences.
More "well-off" than what? There are few libertarians, so the majority of wealthy people are either liberal or conservative.
The concerns of libertarians are so abstracted from serious concerns of those who are not economically privileged (losing interest due to the "coercion" of withholding) that it is likely that these similar concerns do not loom large in the life of libertarians. Normal people do not have the time or interest to obsess over practically imaginary injustices while ignoring the very real injustices attendant to everyday life.
Another strawman. The lost interest from tax witholding is a relatively minor concern for libertarians. The overall tax rate and the hidden and non-politically approved taxation of inflation are much more important concerns for libertarians. And these stifle the private economy and hurt everyone, including and especially the poor.
It's a matter of knowledge. Before mankind knew about germs they didn't know what was making them sick. Since libertarians tend to know something about economics, they know why economic hardships exist. So it isn't a function of privilege, it's a function of knowledge.
The point is, we all have different talents, but not all of our talents are equally translatable into goods that are economically exploitable. One should not take one's God-given talents for granted and self-righteously assume that others are necessarily capable of following the same path you have followed.
Who said libertarians take talents for granted? Libertarian economic policies allow individuals to benefit themselves and society as much as possible. And who said anything about assuming others can "follow their path"? The point is to allow others the successes they achieve regardless of their path.
Also, one should also recognize all the other people that played a part in whatever success you have managed to obtain.
Who says libertarians don't?
At the end of the day, I do not believe it is alright to use others (who may be less intelligent or may merely be in a less favorable position) to serve you food in restaurants, to collect your garbage, and do various all the other services you receive from markets and at the same time see these same people you depend on for all these services deprived of medical care when they need it.
For starters they aren't being "used", they are making money in a voluntary transaction. And socialized medicine certainly isn't the answer to this problem, with all its inherent problems.
You may be more intelligent than someone else. That doesn't mean that you are better. And if libertarians think they are better because they are more intelligent, that is an argument against libertarianism.
Ah, yes. Liberals are the only ones that are compassionate, everyone else are greedy robber barons or robber baron wanna-bes. Everyone else are arrogant SOBs that look down on the "working man". No libertarians have ever worked any menial or manual jobs, worked hard, etc.
This is another strawman and an ad hominem attack. And completely false as well.
I agree with this entirely. In fact, you have to know a lot about economics. Much more than you learn in economics 101. I have noticed that many libertarians don't seem to go much deeper than that.
I would also add that besides economics, if you want to understand the cause of a lot of hardships, you have to have a good grasp of history, sociology, psychology, and political science as well. Along with other subjects I am overlooking.
First, who used the word all? I will tell you who used it. You did. Can you say strawman.
The fact is, the concerns of libertarians tend to be quite abstract and remote compared to the concerns of more typical individuals. I think a big reason for that may be because they tend to be in a comfortable economic situation. Why is it that certain gay men with large amounts of disposable income and few family obligations tend to gravitate towards libertarianism? (Even while the majority of gay men in such a situation remain liberal, of course.)
I never said that a comfortable economic situation was either a sufficient or necessary for one to be libertarian. There are countless individuals who are comfortable economically who are liberal or socially conservative. It is not sufficient. There is surely some poor fool out there who has been working at a minimum wage job for the last five years who is a libertarian. It is not absolutely necessary.
But if I were a betting man, I would put my money on a bet that the economic situation of libertarians tending to be much more comfortable than average. What kind of person obsesses over the lost interest income due to withholding? Basically, libertarianism is a sort of intellectual conspicuous consumption. The concerns of libertarians do not resonate with the average individual, and for good reason.
How is excessive drinking that harms others but does not violate their legal rights inconsistent with libertarianism?
Let us hope that the theories of most libertarians are not so simplistic.
If I own a trucking company, am I similarly situated in my ability to benefit from public investments in public roads as the typical member of the public? Here is an nice concept from economics 101 you might be familiar with: "barriers to entry." Here is another concept that might be helpful to you: "Differential access to private resources, enabling one to benefit more or less from social resources." Some people are better positioned to turn their access to public roads into a lucrative opportunity. Maybe they have a rich relative willing to finance their start up trucking company. Maybe their parents are already in the shipping business.
Finally, in the real world, people do not even have access to "the same public investments because they live in the same country." Take the public school system for example. Depending on which school district within a state you grow up, or even what school within a school district you go to, the quality of the public education you receive can vary considerably. Not only that, but the amount of funding that your school receives per pupil can vary tremendously as well. Guess what. Economic conservatives have been fighting to keep it this way for a long-time.
Your utopia where we all have access to the same public resources because we all live in the same country does not exist. Economic conservatives have been fighting an agenda to make education more equitable for a very long time.
Then time will tell how sell these societies will flourish. In a few hundred years, I will recant on the evidence. As of now, you haven't any, though. It takes a load of hubris to ignore the arguments (and you have ignored them) of the Founders, Toqueville, and others who see religion as essential for a cohesive society. History stands quite against your judgement.
Validity as a structurally correct argument by logic? I don't dispute the atheistic argument --- there isn't one. Atheism is a rejection of arguments for theism. I'm rejecting the atheist rejection on pragmatic grounds.
When we appeal to pragmatic criteria we must reference history, since our judgments of usefulness derive from past experience.
This is sophomoric. You seem to think that pragmatic-historical judgment is illegitimate for establishing the usefulness of an idea. It is surprising to find this attitude in a legal practitioner, since judgment under English law is based on this principle.
The historical judgment of slavery and tyranny is overwhelmingly in favor of freedom. Why? Because historical experience weighs in favor of the judgment that freedom promotes human flourishing.
But it seems very clear to me that, if you compare the average libertarian to the average conservative, the average libertarian is far more likely to be involved with drugs, promiscuous sex, homosexuality, prostitution, gambling, etc. I don't think that this is surprising: Obviously people who engage in these behaviors are more likely, on average, to support government policies that don't make their actions illegal. Libertarians may not be more likely to be promiscuous, drug addict, etc., than liberals, but they certainly are more likely than conservatives.
Now if D'Souza had somehow implied that it would be inconsistent or irrational for someone with a conservative personal lifestyle to support libertarian policies, that would be wrong and stupid. But as far as I can tell he made no such implication.
I also read the comment about Darwin's birthday as a joke making fun of some atheists' obsession with evolution.
Not once did I claim that the majority of wealthy people are libertarians. You should read more carefully.
First, your more extreme friends think that all taxation is coercive theft. But, to you all that matters is the rate. As a libertarian, your a prostitute, and all we are arguing over is price.
Second, moderate levels of inflation can be caused by changes in spending patterns and supply and demand that are separate from government policy. To call this inflation a tax is intellectual bankruptcy. Finally, a low level of inflation does not do much harm to the economy. Of course, any reasonable observer should agree that a high level of inflation harms the economy and most people, especially those who are less sophisticated, those on fixed incomes, and the poor.
No human can attribute all their success in life to themselves. This is just the myth of individualism.
Next time you go to the store and enjoy the low costs made possible by minimum wage workers that enable you to run your own business profitably, I hope you realize that your success is not entirely your own doing.
Also, maybe you should thank your parents. Just maybe. And your teachers. And the grocery clerk. Our society is very successful because we have many successful individuals. Individuals are very successful because they live in a successful society. These two cannot be separated.
That you are engaged in a voluntary transaction does not mean you are not being used. Especially when life offers you no palatable alternatives.
It is often the case that those with more power and choices use those with less power and less choices. That those with less choices enter into transactions voluntarily does not mean that they have enough negotiating power to get an equitable share of the surplus arising from the relationship. And furthermore, assuming a true surplus from the relationship assumes a sort of justice in initial conditions that is often lacking.
Just to be balanced, I should also point out that in countless instances voluntary transactions are entirely just, since there exists a rough justice in initial conditions and negotiating power is such that there is an equitable division of surplus. But this assumption that all that matters is a voluntary transaction is simplistic in the extreme.
But in any case, if someone is working a full time job to make sure that there is food on your table and other peoples table when they work at the grocery store. That person has a moral claim to receiving medical care when they need it. I believe universal healthcare is a moral imperative.
Maybe you should actually read what I wrote. Especially if you bother quoting it in order to "respond" to it.
It is not an "obsession," it's a response. We'd be happy to stop talking about it if our kids' science curricula were left to scientists and teachers.
The fact is, the concerns of libertarians tend to be quite abstract and remote compared to the concerns of more typical individuals. I think a big reason for that may be because they tend to be in a comfortable economic situation.
Wrong. I don't know why you keep focusing on the tax witholding issue, that's a relatively minor concern. Much less important than the overall tax rate and inflation.
You seem to be focusing on the gay issue a lot. I'm not gay and I know of many other libertarians that are not. I guess you seem to think it helps your "privilege" argument, but it's much more easily explained by the fact that libertarians are socially liberal and generally more tolerant.
But if I were a betting man, I would put my money on a bet that the economic situation of libertarians tending to be much more comfortable than average. What kind of person obsesses over the lost interest income due to withholding? Basically, libertarianism is a sort of intellectual conspicuous consumption. The concerns of libertarians do not resonate with the average individual, and for good reason.
More on this hobby-horse about tax witholding. Tax. Witholding. Is. A. Minor. Concern. Among. Libertarians.
How is excessive drinking that harms others but does not violate their legal rights inconsistent with libertarianism?
Because you are harming them. If you're claiming that libertarians believe in harming others as long as their legal rights are not being violated you are mistaken. More of this liberal conceit that only liberals are compassionate, sensitive, responsible, caring, etc.
If I own a trucking company, am I similarly situated in my ability to benefit from public investments in public roads as the typical member of the public? Here is an nice concept from economics 101 you might be familiar with: "barriers to entry." Here is another concept that might be helpful to you: "Differential access to private resources, enabling one to benefit more or less from social resources." Some people are better positioned to turn their access to public roads into a lucrative opportunity. Maybe they have a rich relative willing to finance their start up trucking company. Maybe their parents are already in the shipping business.
Talk about simplistic. If I own a trucking company I am paying much higher taxes towards the mainenance of roads than the average citizen - in tolls, gas taxes, corporate taxes, etc. - you name it. So your example fails.
And your family example doesn't work either. Some families help each other, period. For example in communist countries the good government jobs would be given to the relatives of bureaucrats and party bosses.
Finally, in the real world, people do not even have access to "the same public investments because they live in the same country." Take the public school system for example. Depending on which school district within a state you grow up, or even what school within a school district you go to, the quality of the public education you receive can vary considerably. Not only that, but the amount of funding that your school receives per pupil can vary tremendously as well. Guess what. Economic conservatives have been fighting to keep it this way for a long-time.
That assumes that education is responsible for all success. It isn't. As you acknowledged there are many other factors.
Your utopia where we all have access to the same public resources because we all live in the same country does not exist.
Actually I never constructed a utopia like that. I just refuted your contention that an individual's success was not mainly due to the achievement of the individual in most cases. Yes there are many cases of nepotism and networking, but there are some that do achieve success themselves.
But it seems very clear to me that, if you compare the average libertarian to the average conservative, the average libertarian is far more likely to be involved with drugs, promiscuous sex, homosexuality, prostitution, gambling, etc.
Possibly, but I think only by a small margin. Libertarians are much more likely to be honest and upfront about it. But as the conservative political scandals have shown conservatives are engaging in the same kind of thing, they are just covert about it. Remember, they have to bring in prostitutes from other cities for both conventions - Republican and Democrat.
D'Souza has completely given up not being Ann Coulter.
Well JF, there do seem to be a fair number of people who believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming. I have seen people skeptical of this labeled as denialists or "non-believers".
I would say that there are people who put a faith into science that science neither requires nor endorses. Claiming something as 'scientific' entitles an authority once reserved to theology - and people often lean on the authority aspect rather than what the actual science is saying. Marx certainly touted his quasi-religious program as scientific socialism.
What is this argument about?
Are you arguing that an individuals success is 60% as a result of that individuals effort and 40% other factors while I am arguing that it is actually 40% individual effort and 60% other factors so that you say that individual success if mainly due to individual achievement while I argue it is mainly other things?
No. That is not what this argument is about. The problem is that you just cannot separate the individual and his choices from his environment and from his unique genetic makeup which he did nothing to deserve, whether the resulting attributes from those genes are good or bad. These things are deeply intertwined.
You are right that a trucking company owner pays more taxes. But, what you fail to realize is that it is a privilege to pay more taxes. If that person did not have a successful trucking company, which was enabled by the public road system, he would not be paying as much in taxes.
And furthermore, even if a trucking company owner pays more taxes, that does not mean that he does not still disproportionately benefit from public roads compared to the taxes he pays. And that also ignores the fact that without the public roads, he would not have had opportunity to be successful in that industry in the first place.
The major fallacy of your point of view is not that you say that success is 60% due to individual achievement when it is really only 40% individual achievement. Your problem is that you believe it is analytically possible separate them and make a precise division. The fact is, they work together. Individuals are successful because society is successful. And society is successful because individuals are successful. These things are deeply interrelated. And with those interrelations come responsibilities that certain individuals would like to deny. Certain individuals want to use other members of society without ensuring that their basic needs are met. The philosophy that justifies this is libertarianism.
I don't disapprove of family members helping each other. That isn't the point. The point is that you cannot separate individual success from the help they receive or do not receive from others, including and especially their families.
If anything, I wish families would help each other more. My purpose is not to denigrate that. My purpose is to point out that this is a factor in one's ability to be successful over which one has very limited control. And for that end, my bringing it up does "work."
Nothing that I wrote in what you quoted makes any such assumption.
Is education the only factor? Absolutely not. Is it a major factor, even decisive factor, in countless cases. Absolutely. To make my point, all I need is for education to be an important factor and for the distribution of its quality to be arbitrarily distributed in a manner over which the individual receiving it has no control. Again, the point is you cannot completely sever the success of the individual from the success of his society.
The only people who I would say achieve success for themselves are those who have managed to live off the land with no dependence on economic transactions or social transactions of any sort to improve their lives.
Actually, Ann Coulter is pretty hot. Maybe wrong about just about everything. But still...
What really matters are looks.
Ah, warmed over labor theory of value.
Speaking of inequitable conditions, mr liberal, Kobe Bryant earns more for his talents in one year then you and I will likely earn in a lifetime. How do you suggest redressing this intolerable inequity? Surely he is profiting from exploiting and/or oppressing us, isn't he?
Are these countries truly atheistic, or are they simply securlist? There's a big difference there. Secularists often retain some vague or general deistic belief, and perhaps even some very specific superstititions, perhaps of the New Age sort (wehich are veruy common in both Europe and North America-- I am less certain about Japan). Also, in regards to Japan atheism and religion are not necessarily opposites as there are schools of Buddhism which are atheistic, or at least non-theistic.
Wow, talk about Calvinistic pre-destination!
People who put an emphasis on liberty would agree that his choices is the critical component. Curious though, as to how you annointed yourself as to what anyone "deserves".
I think this misses the point. The comment noted that Lysenko was, in essence, a Lamarckian. Lamarck was an evolutionist. He just had an erroneous theory of evolution. Thus, the official Soviet position, while utterly wrong, was not inconsistent with acceptance of evolution. It was only inconsistent with natural selection.
I usually see the term "denier" but I think the implication is similar.
I agree that science is not a religion, but that doesn't stop a lot of (generally not very scientifically literate) people from behaving like it is. Some of them "scientists"! I put that in quotes because while they may have college degrees and publish in prestigious journals, what they practice does not actually adhere to the scientific method. But that is a topic for another day.
I do believe, however, that the lack of religion in many peoples' lives is being replaced by a new religion which uses science as its guise. I guess the need for belief is simply too strong. Personally I find that I can live with some unanswered questions but I think a lot of people can't.
> Remember Lehrer? He's a bit of a relic...
Lehrer wrote topical humor that's now half a century old, and people still listen to it today. How many people will be re-reading Dinesh D'Souza in the year 2057?
Fast forward 15 or 16 years, and we still find him publishing books and articles which show a shallow and uninformed understanding of the subjects he is attempting to critique, but he is starting to tackle subjects that are broader in their appeal than arcane literary theory, and in the age of the internet, it's a lot harder for his shallow understanding of matters such as Libertarianism, Atheism, Islam, or Jihad to go unchecked or unnoticed by many of those who might otherwise be in his target audience.
Christmas is all about giving gifts and being with family. That's good enough by itself and was a tradition to celebrate that way during the winter solstice long before Christians were created. So why would anyone think that a holiday that predominantly is about exchanging gifts, putting up pagan trees and eating a big feast has anything to do with the real birth of Christ?
Concerning your view that libertarians oppose withholding taxes (merely) because it causes us to lose on interest payments on the money, you are wrong. The primary argument against withholding is that it allows the government to tax significantly more money from the populace because they don't get a chance to focus on how much is being taken from them, since they never put it in their bank accounts, or under their matresses, in the first place. They are never in a position to ask themselves, as they write out a $30,000, say, income tax check, "Am I satisfied with the services I get for this level of payment?". This effect is widely agreed to by economists of all political stripes.
As far as converting to libertarianism and subsequently, due to one's newfound ideology, taking up excessive drinking, the only thing that pushes libertarians to excessive drinking is having to deal with ill-informed people like yourself.
And, to keep up with the point of the thread, I want to at this time extend my congratulations to Mr. D'Souza for the church's apparent success in having rid its ranks of gays and drug users. Best of luck coping with the continuing pedophile problem.
It is definitely true that there is more open homosexuality and substance abuse among libertarians than there is among conservatives.
The more restrictive are a group's social mores, the higher the incidence of sneakiness and hypocrisy.
I am so screwed.
'With regards to fundamentalism, however, it bothers me to no end that a Christian Fundamentalist would berate those who do not share their beliefs.'
Though you do not say you are either a Christian or a Christian Fundamentalist, I am pleased you are bothered.
On the other hand, I have never in six decades met a Christian Fundamentalist who did not berate, eg, me for not sharing their beliefs. Not once, not ever; and I have encountered thousands of them.
Wow, I should have been more specific.
In asking for a weighty argument against atheism, I was kind of hoping someone would come up with a weighty argument in favor of the existence of a deity. Instead I get an argument that, as a practical matter, and apparently whether or not there is a God, we're screwed unless the masses have an opiate.
I've heard that before, somewhere.
You are confused.
Why would 2 people ever choose to enter into a voluntary transaction? Presumably, it is because there is some benefit that is produced by the transaction than would occur without a deal.
This surplus (i.e. the net benefit from entering into the transaction minus the net benefit of not entering into the transaction) will presumably be divided. If either party tried to take 100% of the benefit of the transaction, the other party would have no interest in entering into it.
So, both parties should get something. But, how the surplus pie is divided is a function of the parties relative negotiating power. Those with many alternatives and choices tend to have much more negotiating power than those with fewer alternatives and choices. In such situations, the person with the more power will be able to dictate that they get a very disproportionate part of the expected benefit.
By the way, while I am certainly not as familiar with the idea of Marx as I should be, the idea of surplus is not unique to him.
The concept of surplus is standard in the economics textbooks of such renowned "communists" as Greg Mankiw, former chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors.
Just maybe you shouldn't let ignorance dictate your knee-jerk responses.
Actually, you need to read what I wrote. I did not affirmatively assert any theory of what people deserve. I simply wrote that that I am sure that people did not make any choices that entitled them, or made them deserve, the genetic makeup that they were born with.
But even if I had made an affirmative theory about what people deserve, that is no more arrogant than libertarianism itself or pretty much any school of philosophical thought dealing with these issues. Libertarians believe that people "deserve" to keep the property they already own and the additional property that they acquire through free enterprise, for example. I do not find this assertion to be arrogant.
Indeed, if we played by your definition which labels as arrogant any discussion of what people do or do not deserve, no philosophical system dealing with the subject of political economy would be possible without being arrogant.
Goodbye John Locke Two Treatises on Government. Goodbye Adam Smith Wealth of Nations. You and your books are apparently arrogant.
Oh, and I never asserted that people do not have choices. All I am asserting is that the choices people have and the choices that they make are deeply intertwined with the societies within which they live. That is not exactly the same as Calvinist pre-destination.
I would observe that you seem to have a proclivity to use labels, apparently as a substitute for thought.
To claim that there is such a thing as "secular fundamentalism" is a false one. People do not have faith in science, they believe what science proves or theories best postulate. Scientific theories and facts are falsifiable and if the science proves to be wrong (or the earth doesn't turn out to be 6000 years old) we accept the new facts and move on.
First of all, you countered that atheism is not a "faith", which is a point that you and I are probably doomed to disagree on. One only need to look to the claims of scientific "fact" of the Global Warming movement, PETA, etc. to see that there is a faith in "certain" facts that captures the attention of the man with blinders on... one who cannot for one minute accept that something outside of the established and documented proof can possibly exist... this is, my friend, "faith", if not blind stubbornness.
Secondly, and most confusingly, you stated that there could not be a "Secular Fundamentalist" because atheists have no "faith". Regardless of the faith issue, there are most certainly indeed Secular Fundamentalists, and they are every bit as intolerant and potentially dangerous as those fundamentalists driven by "faith" as you understand it. You don't need faith to be an arrogant or even violent arse hole, people do it all the time for reasons that make us all roll our eyes.
Look again at the Global Warming religion, the PETA religion, the Environmental Liberation Front, Move On, etc. These people, by and large, share the atheist view and worship of science above all else with many rational people, yet take actions that attack others either through hateful speech (which should remain legal) or even violence (which should remain illegal).
For what it's worth, my background is a professional in computer science who spent years as an agnostic before returning to Christianity when I learned to accept the Bible as metaphoric and the answers to the origin of the universe from science limited. I do science for a living.
That being said, I love a good discussion, because my faith and science are both life-long learning experiences, and I like to share them with those who think differently... not to convert them, but simply to share and learn.
I don't care if you're Christian, Atheist, Jewish, Muslim, or worship pink bunnies. Grow up and act like an adult about it. That's all any of us should be asking for.
Christopher Hitchens is telling all to believe like him or be labeled as an idiot. Well this Christian says f* you, Chris. Peace be with you. :)
The same end can also be obtained by a system of sales taxes where the taxes are included in the final price. This is precisely how gasoline taxes are paid.
There are benefits to withholding. Tax compliance would be very low among wage earners without it. Indeed, I do not think an income tax would be very administrable without withholding. Further, without withholding, many people would have a very hard time budgeting for taxes. The distress and penalties for those who failed to do so would be a significant cost. Even among those who did budget, the distress that people they would feel when taxes are due and payable from their pockets is a significant cost. In contrast, the joy people feel (especially those who do not have good budgeting skills) when they get a refund is a benefit. I think it a little more complicated than you make it out to be. I think the real issue among libertarians who bring this up is probably an opposition to the income tax altogether.
I do not that this is the issue that Mr. Somin was getting at. Here all we are talking about nothing more than correcting political ignorance in a particular context and in an incomplete way. (If your attention is drawn to the requirement that you owe X dollars in taxes, it is still incredibly hard to assess the value produced by complex budgets. People will remain ignorant.) Mr. Somin called withholding "coercive" and said it was a forced loan to government that deprived individuals of interest payments to which they are entitled. It is not the same issue your bringing up here.
This is pretty funny.
Well, always remember that no one, no matter how ill-informed, irritating, obnoxious, and evil, is worth destroying your liver over!
Oh, a zero sum fallacy to boot.
There is a very well known 'problem' with the labor theory of value - one that has stumped economists from Smith on. It has to do with the concept of the surplus. When you are past Econ 101 you might encounter it.
Oh, and you completely evaded the point about the income inequality between Mr. Bryant and ourselves. You do realize that there are more multi-million dollar incomes amongst athletes and entertainers than Fortune 500 CEOs. So how exactly is this an insufferable problem?
"The same end can also be obtained by a system of sales taxes where the taxes are included in the final price. This is precisely how gasoline taxes are paid."
-----
You are making my point for me. Certainly I never suggested the withholding tax is unique in regard to this particular political evil, namely duping the public into thinking they are paying less than they are, making them illegitimately more accepting of government spending than they would have been in a fully transparent system.
But consider the gas tax for a minute. Gas is now about $3/gal. In certain states upwards of 1/3 of that, or $1, is due to taxes. Yet people complain about getting ripped off by the gas companies, not by the government. I'm sure if the pumps were set up to say, "Gas: 10 gallons Price: $20 Taxes: $10 Total:$30" people would look at the matter differently.
Or to state the matter differently: if you told a friend, "Good news and bad news: The good news is the oil companies are dropping the price of gasoline to $2. The bad news is the government is adding a $1 tax" your friend would be rapturous in appreciation of "big oil" and very upset with the government. But of course what you describe is really no change at all; it is the current system, hidden from view, as withholding hides from view what people actually pay in income taxes.
I never suggested, let alone used, the word "arrogant".
I merely pointed out that libertarians would agree about "choice". You assert that other factors are seemingly pre-eminent, possibly to the point of pre-determination. Then I did ask as to how you (or anyone else) decides who is deserving of what (particularly based upon things not of their choice, e.g. their genetic endowment).
To return to my unanswered question, Mr. Bryant makes millions of dollars annually based on both his genetic, environmental and self-determined factors. How does his good fortune come at your and my expense?
Kobe Bryant is paid by Lakers. I would not say the negotiating power of either party in the transaction is so different as to render the outcome other than acceptable.
Once again, you are failing to read. The fact that there is a surplus indicates that the transaction is not zero sum. People enter into transaction to do more than divide pie. They enter into them to increase the pie.
There are two pies. There is the pie without the transaction. And there is the pie with the transaction. How the different essential parties divide the pie with the transaction is a function of their negotiating power. No matter how much you grow the pie, you still have to divide it.
There is clearly some informational value in people knowing exactly how much they are paying in taxes, but the "in your face" approach you are advocating probably does more harm than good.
My concern is that information value of "in your face" taxes may be overwhelmed by the accompany cognitive distress. If you do not think that the oil cartel OPEC is a problem but the only problem is taxes, that is an example of irrational annoyance overwhelming your critical thinking faculties. Alternatively, it is an example of your failure to realize how cartels artificially raise prices.
I think that the informational value from "in your face" taxation is very limited because one has to know about the whole picture before they can assess whether they and society are getting a good deal for their tax dollars.
It seems to me that, overall, all this does is cause what would otherwise be content individuals anxiety more than it informs them. To be meaningfully informed, one would have to look at the budget as a whole. As long as that information is publicly available, as it should always should be, interested individuals will be able to assess whether they and society are getting a good deal for their money. Causing them distress at the cash register does not advance an informational goal, except to the extent it motivates people to perform a more full analysis. In my view, it is likely that this distress will rarely be the catalyst for a more full analysis, and thus it would be better if we did not cause the distress in the first place.
I prefer taxes that are less "in your face," because they do not cause people distress and are easier to accept.
Perhaps if I were ideologically committed to having taxes as low as possible without regard to the human cost of cut services, I might consider the distress that "in your face" taxation causes to people an acceptable price for others to pay to advance my ideological goals.
I would like to point out one more thing. You did not address my assertions that withholding has benefits as well as costs, and that an income tax system without withholding would be very difficult or impossible to administer.
Basically, why don't you admit it. You probably would like to do away with income taxes altogether.
Am I the only one that understands that the actual truth of religion is irrelevant? If belief in Zeus was appropriate for the ancient Greeks, and worship of Thor was useful for a Norse, but we all agree now that both Zeus and Thor are figments of mankind's imagination, what does that say about the "veracity" of current religions. Are they just the appropriate figments for our particular historical and social contexts, to, obviously, be discarded when these contexts change, and be replaced by a more adequate figment?
I call BS. Most people, including me, have no freaking clue whether or not currently accepted scientific theories are accurate. And most people accept most currently accepted theory. They "believe" in it. They haven't made a hypothesis, tested in in a lab, and repeated the results. This is especially true when it comes to global warming, sustainability, and other scientific or scientific sounding environmentalist concepts. Granted the scientists doing the research aren't practicing a religion, they actually follow the scientific method (I'm sure people can find exceptions).
But all the jackasses trying to make the world a better place are sure acting a lot like the people I got to church with, even if the god they believe in happens to really exist (just as a coincidence).
First, your more extreme friends think that all taxation is coercive theft. But, to you all that matters is the rate. As a libertarian, your a prostitute, and all we are arguing over is price.
I think you messed this up by trying to bring in the reference to the warmed over old joke about prostitution.
With taxes I would say it is a matter of degree. A tax rate of 100% is certainly coercive theft. A tax rate of 1% that went to essential services is pretty clearly not theft. Other libertarians and myself can certainly disagree at what point it becomes theft. But I think most would agree that tax rates should be much lower than they are now.
Second, moderate levels of inflation can be caused by changes in spending patterns and supply and demand that are separate from government policy. To call this inflation a tax is intellectual bankruptcy. Finally, a low level of inflation does not do much harm to the economy.
If you're talking about control of the supply of money and credit by a central bank this is certainly government policy. And if a government devalues a currency by creating money and spending it that is certainly a tax. You may claim that a low level of inflation is acceptable, but the buying power of currency is still being eroded, and the savings of savers and income of those on fixed incomes along with it.
No human can attribute all their success in life to themselves. This is just the myth of individualism.
Technically this is true because human beings are born helpless, but you're using this to justify the farce of collectivism. For the most part people are responsible for their own success. You're just claiming that individual achievement can't be separable to justify collecitivism.
Next time you go to the store and enjoy the low costs made possible by minimum wage workers that enable you to run your own business profitably, I hope you realize that your success is not entirely your own doing.
That other poster was right, you are advocating a warmed over version of the labor theory of value. That's a fallacy. People are compensated for the value they create. Stocking shelves doesn't create as much value as say, writing bestselling books, so it isn't compensated as much. (And I've stocked shelves before.)
Also, maybe you should thank...your teachers.
I'm the wrong person for you to try this on. I've had a couple handfuls of good ones. But I also had some pigheaded racist morons that went out of their way to make sure I didn't succeed.
Also, maybe you should thank your parents.
I'm also the wrong person for you to try this one on as well.
And the grocery clerk.
If I'm not being harassed or insulted, I usually do. Of course if you want courtesy and decency, you give courtesy and decency.
Our society is very successful because we have many successful individuals. Individuals are very successful because they live in a successful society. These two cannot be separated.
Collectivist claptrap. Our society is successful because it is based on free-market capitalism, which enables society to benefit from the success of individuals. You want to claim that this isn't due to individual achievement because you want to justify collectivism.
It is often the case that those with more power and choices use those with less power and less choices. That those with less choices enter into transactions voluntarily does not mean that they have enough negotiating power to get an equitable share of the surplus arising from the relationship. And furthermore, assuming a true surplus from the relationship assumes a sort of justice in initial conditions that is often lacking.
More labor theory of value, warmed over. People are compensated for the value they create. If someone is being exploited - not being compensated for value they create - they should leave or use the legal system to collect this value.
Just to be balanced, I should also point out that in countless instances voluntary transactions are entirely just, since there exists a rough justice in initial conditions and negotiating power is such that there is an equitable division of surplus. But this assumption that all that matters is a voluntary transaction is simplistic in the extreme.
Well the concept of "rough justice" is nonsense. But we are talking about normal transactions. Of course swindling or fraudulent transactions shouldn't be tolerated. That's what the legal system is for - to collect from someone that swindled, defrauded, stold from, etc. you.
But in any case, if someone is working a full time job to make sure that there is food on your table and other peoples table when they work at the grocery store. That person has a moral claim to receiving medical care when they need it. I believe universal healthcare is a moral imperative.
If that's your belief, fine. If you want to politically lobby for or fund socialized medicine with your own money or money freely given to you (not stolen from others) that's your right. One would hope you would research the issue enough to realize all the horrible problems inherent in socialized medicine, however.
Uh, actually, the Lakers have no negotiating power. There's a maximum salary in the NBA and when Kobe asks for it, what are the Lakers going to do, not pay him? There is no "negotiation"; the only real question is whether the Lakers kiss Kobe's ass enough to get him to be willing to stay. Furthermore, once Kobe signs the deal, he can skip practices, not listen to the coach, not play hard, refuse to play defense, etc., and there's not a single thing the Lakers can do about it (see: Carter, Vince). Maybe the government should step in to give the Lakers a helping hand. Clearly some regulation is called for.
But despite the complete lack of any negotiating power by the Lakers, they seem to be mostly happy with the deal. Why is that? Could it be because an imbalance of negotiating power doesn't necessarily mean one side gets screwed? Maybe this applies to the cashier making $8/hr as much as to the Lakers? At least the cashier can go elsewhere; the Lakers can't just go get another superstar.
PS I actually work with cashiers making $8/hr (and was one of them for the longest time), so according to your standards of having to know the concrete challenges of everyday life I clearly know what I'm talking about.
We can debate about everything else, but I will bet my life savings that the guy working at the grocery store* isn't there to ensure there is food on my table; he's there to ensure there is food on his table. He's not there because he wants to help me out, he's there to help himself out. I have no extra moral imperative to help him out with his health care just because what he does happens to help me put food on my table; my obligation to him is fulfilled when I indirectly pay his salary by purchasing products from the store that employs him.
*Except that I am the guy working at the grocery store, so in one sense the guy working at the grocery store is working to put food on my table. But I'm certain that my co-workers aren't. And do I get extra moral authority in this debate because I'm one of those people Mr. L wants to help?
Kobe Bryant brings in a lot more money to the Lakers than he is paid. But the salary cap limits his salary.
It should be noted that in the NBA, there is a soft, not a hard, salary cap.
As far as your example of $8 per hour cashiers, I do believe that the minimum wage should be raised to increase their negotiating power. (Just as a salary cap increases the Lakers negotiating power). And I do believe that these workers should have access to health care. And they should have access to education, so the more ambitious and talented among them have a path to move on to better opportunities where they can contribute more to themselves, their families, and to society.
The fact is, without a larger social effort, many people in those sorts of jobs are not going to have that many opportunities to move along in the long run. Getting paid $8 an hour as a cashier is OK for a couple of years maybe, but we as a society should ensure people have better opportunities in the long run.
Further, when I as a customer utilize the labor of cashiers to buy goods and services that massively increase my productivity, I cannot say that all my achievements are entirely due to my individual efforts. We should all recognize the contributions of others.
No. That is not what this argument is about. The problem is that you just cannot separate the individual and his choices from his environment and from his unique genetic makeup which he did nothing to deserve, whether the resulting attributes from those genes are good or bad. These things are deeply intertwined.
Well you were just saying before that people ought to live up to their potential and not take their talents for granted - which is it? People should be able to profit from whatever way possible - be it their labor, their inherent talents, etc. - and this is what libertarian philosophy supports. And since we live in a society based on free market capitalism, society benefits from the individual's success.
You are right that a trucking company owner pays more taxes. But, what you fail to realize is that it is a privilege to pay more taxes. If that person did not have a successful trucking company, which was enabled by the public road system, he would not be paying as much in taxes.
Wrong, the government is parasitic on the private economy. Without the private economy there wouldn't be anything to fund the government with. And the private economy could make private roads - they do similar things all the time.
The major fallacy of your point of view is not that you say that success is 60% due to individual achievement when it is really only 40% individual achievement. Your problem is that you believe it is analytically possible separate them and make a precise division. The fact is, they work together. Individuals are successful because society is successful. And society is successful because individuals are successful. These things are deeply interrelated. And with those interrelations come responsibilities that certain individuals would like to deny. Certain individuals want to use other members of society without ensuring that their basic needs are met. The philosophy that justifies this is libertarianism.
Wrong. As above you're just claiming that individual achievement can't be separated to justify collectivism. And libertarians don't want to "use" other people. That's emotionally manipulative, ad hominem garbage.
I don't disapprove of family members helping each other. That isn't the point. The point is that you cannot separate individual success from the help they receive or do not receive from others, including and especially their families.
No, you want to claim that individual success can't be separated because you want to justify collectivism. What happens when your family hinders you - steals from you, sabotages you, defrauds you, etc.? Do you get a refund under your collectivist scheme?
Is education the only factor? Absolutely not. Is it a major factor, even decisive factor, in countless cases. Absolutely. To make my point, all I need is for education to be an important factor and for the distribution of its quality to be arbitrarily distributed in a manner over which the individual receiving it has no control. Again, the point is you cannot completely sever the success of the individual from the success of his society.
No, the leap that you keep making is that because we can't control the number of math problems everyone gets from kindergarten through 12th grade that this magically justifies more collectivism, which most likely will make things worse.
The only people who I would say achieve success for themselves are those who have managed to live off the land with no dependence on economic transactions or social transactions of any sort to improve their lives.
Let's see: Because I went down to the store to buy milk that means that I owe everything to the great collective. That's ridiculous. Talk about a lack of understanding of fundamental economic principles - that's called the division of labor.
"many" is a fantastic weasel word. It commits the speaker to no particular number or percentage, and when one is dealing with a large enough population virtually any subpopulation is going to be large when measured on some scale. At the same time, using the term very strongly implies, without actually saying, that the subpopulation is a large fraction of the larger population, and that there's some strong positive relationship between being a member of the larger population and being a member of the subpopulation. So if the population you're talking about is large enough, you can say virtually anything you want about them, and there's no way you can be demonstrably wrong.
So "many" is a good sign that the speaker is being purposefully misleading, or at best just lazy.
What I don't get about Mr. Liberal's way of looking at things is this: apparently, those of us who received "help" (undefined) from specific people owe some debt to entirely other people, whom we will never meet and who are just as likely to oppose us as support us. What creates this obligation?
To answer AP's question, Mr. Liberal does have a scheme for providing "refunds" to those whose families have failed to "help" them: confiscate money from the former and distribute it to the latter.
I call BS back at you, and the tricky thing is, I'm right and you're wrong. I'm sorry to be so blunt, because you're probably a nice person, but a fact is a fact.
The point is that whether or not people accept scientific claims without question, they are in fact free to question those claims, and (here's the key part) the claims are falsifiable, because evidence and reason can prove or disprove them.
The fact that some people blindly accept scientific claims unquestioningly -- and certainly some people do that -- simply means that they aren't engaging in science at all. It doesn't mean that science is wrong. And it certainly doesn't make science equivalent to (perhaps I should say "no better than") faith.
I'm not sure what point you're making here, but let's be clear. There absolutely are theories dressed up as science that are, in actuality, just non-falsifiable belief systems. Frankly, I think string theory went there a long time ago. For many people, I fear, global warming is no better than a non-falsifiable faith, a religion complete with oppressed apostates. But the point is that these people are abandoning science, not somehow proving that science is a religion.
I don't quite follow this, either. Are you saying that all the people making the world a better place are religious? That's simply false. Are you saying that one must be religious in order to do good works or have morals? False. Are you saying that some atheist jackasses engaged in good works share that habit with religious people? True.
Look, I'm sorry that the good and just God you apparently believe in almost certainly doesn't exist. Feel free to disagree with me about that, consign me to Hell, etc. But don't go claiming that I'm really religious too, that I simply believe some supernatural mumbo jumbo -- that I happen to call "science" -- controls or guides us all. Don't go around fooling yourself that science is "just another religion" and the people in it merely have "faith" in scientists rather than gods.
Because it ain't so. My beliefs about the world, how it works, and what comes afterwards are falsifiable. If you have faith, then at least some of your beliefs aren't. That's a big difference.
So, yes, when you benefit from division of labor, you are benefiting from society. And as a matter of reciprocity, you should acknowledge those benefits and recognize their immense value to you as an individual.
The point is that ones social position is not purely a product of individual achievement, but is deeply intertwined with many factors which are unchosen and unearned.
The duties you owe to other members of society and the rights you are entitled to have respected arise from other relationships. The point is that we do not make ourselves.
Your family, like you yourself as an individual, influences and is influence by our larger society.
My, you do enjoy recasting the statements of those you disagree with in strong and distorted terms.
Do you owe society "everything" because you buy a gallon of milk? Of course not. Have you benefited from the division of labor, which is a product of social cooperation. Absolutely. Do you owe something (not everything, but something) to the people who allow you to achieve more in your own life because you have access to nutritious food that you would not otherwise have access to? Absolutely.
The consequences of coming from a broken family should not be a lack of opportunity. The consequences should not include being denied necessary medical care or basic necessities.
And in the same way, cashiers in unions negotiated away their chance to receive unilateral raises from their employers. And yet in one instance you think there's no problem when one side gives away their negotiating power in individual circumstances as part of a collective bargaining agreement, and in another instance, you want the government to step in to give them more money. What's the difference between the Lakers owner who has no negotiating power in his specific dealings with Kobe, and the union cashier who has no negotiating power in his specific dealings with his employer? Obviously, one is a multimillionaire and the other makes $8/hr. But that just proves my point: negotiating power doesn't have anything to do with it.
And a thought experiment: what about the Harvard grad (with plenty of negotiating power) who voluntarily makes near-minimum wage so he can go work for a non-profit and save the world? Should we pay for his health insurance too?
I am not against making the most of your unearned talents, family connections, labor, whatever. I am against arrogant self-righteousness that believes everything that you have accomplished is somehow a product of your own choices and unrelated to the society in which you live. Or a self-righteousness that believes that everyone can or should follow the same path you have followed. Or a self-righteousness that believes that there is anyone out there (overt criminals and extreme sociopaths excepted) whose lack of talent and other unearned advantages should result in deprivation of basic necessities.
There should be a floor below which no one is allowed to fall. There should be a safety net for those who take risks that go badly. As a society and as individuals, our concerns should extend beyond maximizing our own pleasure at all costs.
You didn't answer my question.
Why do I owe a debt to people I do not know and who have had no discernable influence in my life (and, if they had, would have been as likely to sabotage me as help me)?
Another question: if I have done nothing to "deserve" whatever genetic advantages I possess, then what have others done to "deserve" a portion of whatever successes those advantages have helped me achieve?
Unions are a means of increasing negotiating power overall. Seriously, very few cashiers would be better off without a union. The job is pretty damn simple. It is not hard to find replacements. Although, I have encountered grumpy cashiers who do not do the job well who I think should be held accountable, for the most part, I do not see a huge amount of variation in quality based on individual skill and initiative.
I should add that unions are not the be all and end all. First of all, they have historically been exclusive. Second of all, those controlling unions have used them to advance their own personal interests rather than union members. In certain contexts, I very much would be concerned about individuals ceding negotiating power to a union, to the extent that union fails to faithfully represent the interests of its members.
But the fact is, without a union, the amount of negotiating power that cashiers have is pretty close to zero. How hard is it to train a replacement cashier? Cashiers do not exactly lose much negotiating power when they go with a union. They don't have much to begin with.
First of all, it is inaccurate to say that the Lakers have no negotiating power with Kobe. They could walk away from the table and still own a world class basketball team. Second, the Lakers have much more influence over whether the league adopts salary caps than individuals have over whether a union they don't want is adopted.
The fact is, the Lakers have plenty of negotiating power. They get a large part of the surplus that is produced through their dealings with Kobe. The salary cap puts limits on how much of that surplus Kobe could expropriate.
In general, the negotiating power of the owners of the Lakers in our society is quite high. That they do not bring the strongest hand to every single table does not concern me. Especially when this table where you claim they have no negotiating power yields them millions of dollars in profit.
Yes.
You buy milk.
The store makes a profit.
The store pays my salary from those profits.
As far as I'm concerned, your obligation to me ends right there. I don't see why the state then has to take part of your salary and give it to me.
And who really is more responsible for your having nutritious food, the stock clerk, or the guy who grew his company from one store in the middle of nowhere to a nationwide chain with efficient supply lines that can get fruit from another continent to here for a great price? If I think it's the latter, should we be giving our tax money to that guy?
And what about the guy working at McDonald's? Every day he's providing malnutritious (is that a word?) food to thousands, clogging their arteries and making them die sooner. Surely I have no moral obligation to him, that immoral murderer. But, you say, he's also providing the service of convienient, albeit not necessarily nutritious, food. In that case, everyone who works any job anywhere provides a service to society. And what a coincidence, the amount of good they provide society is generally proportional to how much they're paid!
Now what's your argument again for why we have extra moral obligation to those who does the least good to society? And I include myself in that category. If a surgeon messes up someone dies. If I mess up some old lady doesn't get her Rolos. Surely society owes more to him than to me. Why does the government need to help me out more than to help him out? Maybe it's because I make less and need the help, but it doesn't have anything to do whatever great service Mr. L thinks I'm prividing to society by making sure that old lady gets her Rolos.
If the influence of others in your life is not discernable, then the problem is that you are not discerning. It is only because you turn a blind idea to the extent that your interactions with others benefit you that you believe this.
Your are also unnecessarily cynical. You think people are just as likely to sabotage you as help you? Yes, there are bad apples out there for which this is true. But this is not true in general. I have no illusions about human nature, but this is unduly negative and cynical.
Good question. Why do we deserve anything? Why do we deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
The fact is, we don't really deserve all the benefits we end up with. Plain old luck plays a part.
The point is not so much that someone deserves the things you have gotten through luck. It is that no one deserves to go without basic necessities or medical care because they got fucked over by the genetic lottery, or because their mom was a crack whore, or because they are only able to do jobs where they are quite interchangeable and thus lack negotiating power.
How about if we found evidence of fossilized rabbits in the Precambrian?
Sure wish I had made that up. But I didn't.
Next question?
I know how my interactions with others help me. I just don't think my immediate interactions incur a debt to people I have not met and will never meet.
I'm not cynical--it's just impossible to tell out of the hundreds of millions of people I've never met, who will be helpful in my success and who won't.
OK, now your position is clearer to me.
Still, even if we accept your assertion that nobody deserves to go without basic necessities, we face the thorny question of how those necessities will be provided.
I don't think there are many libertarians (if any) who'd say, "Let 'em starve." But the method of providing such things is important, because when it comes down to it, there are two basic options: people are forced to provide, or people voluntarily provide. In the libertarian view, the former is morally bad.
Both. No clerks, no efficient supply lines.
If you think that McDonald's is that horribly, maybe we ought to force them to change their menus. Is McDonalds a market failure? Are the people eating not benefiting but rather behaving irrationally?
Society does owe him more than you. He gets the Lexus or the Corvette and the nice house. You get annoying roommates. Thats fine with me.
Now, you are suggesting that he benefits more than you? I actually believe its fine if he benefits equally. I am fine with the provision of a minimum income to everyone, including the surgeon.
Alternatively, the surgeon just may find himself as a beneficiary. Maybe he has a mental break down at a time when he has too much debt and goes bankrupt. He loses his medical license and finds himself without the means to properly support himself. In that case, I certainly believe he should be given access to medical care, just as I think you should have access to medical care. I think he should have access to all basic necessities. Just as you have access to the same.
Actually, if you work in a grocery store, you are presumably part of an institution that enables individuals to efficiently obtain food, something without which they could do little else. I think your excessive focus on Rolos trivializes and denigrates the importance of your job.
There is a connection between your efforts (and similarly situated individuals) and what you deserve. The fact is, while you are part of an institution that provides enormous social benefits, you nonetheless have very little negotiating power to receive much of the surplus you help produce. Those who receive the bulk of that surplus should not let you starve or not receive medical care when some unfortunate event fucks you over.
You may not deserve as much as a surgeon, but your job is not unimportant. And as significantly, you have a worth that far transcends whatever wage your paid at whatever job you happen to have.
This way of looking at the world is all rather radically different from, say, debating the existence of the Holy Trinity.
Mr. Liberal has also seen through the ruse of my complaint against lack of transparency in taxes (withholding, gasoline) and discovered my true goal: ending taxes altogether. Curses! He has found me out!! Fortunately, the arguments I provided work equally well for someone else, uninterested in ending taxation and merely concerned with good government and allowing people to be informed of how much it costs. [BTW, I have also discovered Mr. Liberal is really not interested in the harms of "in-your-face" taxes, but really wants to impose a communist dictatorship of the proletariat. Email me off line and I'll show you my proof... :-) ]
I'd also like to put in $0.02 about a point of contention Mr. Liberal is having with another poster on the issue of "rugged individualism".
Mr. Liberal seems to confound "individualism" with "atomism". I don't understand why. They are very different concepts. The notions of individualism vs collectivism have to do with autonomy, with who gets to make the decisions about scarce resources. The concept of atomism has to do with metaphysical claims to the effect that individuals can support themselves entirely by their own designs. It is a fairly foolish name for the concept given what we know about mixing electron shells. And it is a fairly foolish concept, not taken seriously by anyone I know. I see it used mostly as a strawman foil when arguing against libertarianism.
Libertarians have nothing at all against collectives. Virtually all of us belong to several: families, religious institutions, corporations, clubs, formal and informal organizations of all types. We merely oppose mandatory enforced collectives extending beyond the degree absolutely necessary. The idea that working with and depending on friends, your church, your family, your fellow employees, the Rotarians, charitable organizations, and more is "atomistic" but genuine interpersonal community can be achieved with faceless bureaucrats is a strange view of the world. But he is Mr. Liberal, after all...
(I should mention, in fairness and admiration, that "Mr. Liberal," despite my sarcastic wit, is one of the better advocates of his position I've had the pleasure to "draw swords" with [I say by way of compliment])
Your examples fall well short of proving your point. First, evolution is absolutely falsifiable. See here for a discussion of how. For example, the common descent hypothesis, one of many put forth by Darwin, says that all multicellular life is descended from a single, ancient ancestor. This hypothesis can be falsified: if you go out, discover a new animal species, and find that its genes are not coded by DNA (to take an extreme example) but rather by some other chemical such as TNA or GNA, the common descent hypothesis is false. See the site I linked to for much more nuanced and quantitative examples of how macroevolution is falsifiable.
Regarding black holes, I think many physicists could design very precise spectroscopic experiments to test theories of black hole behavior. Just because no instruments yet exist with the required sensitivities, or just because sending a satellite probe to do the test would take 100,000 years, does not mean it cannot be done. Thus, black hole theory, too, is (at least potentially) falsifiable.
That's easy for you to say.
Why do so many people have it in for schizophrenics?
Isn't such an attitude (denying people self help through natural medicines) unChristian?
Absolutely. National elections are typically won by 1 to 3%.
No doubt the conservatives can win by subtracting 3% to 7% of the population from their coalition.
Just like the Republicans running for Congress in 2006 won in a landslide by discounting fiscal Conservatives.
Let the purges continue. Purity of Essence is the moral imperative.
A lot of heavy people don't have faith in it.
Money at one time had two functions.
1. A store of value
2. A medium of exchange
for various reasons (one of which is to keep money invested as opposed to stuffed in a mattress to increase an economies' productive capacity) money is no longer a store of value.
So at this point in time money is no longer a store of value. This may be good. This may be bad. However, it is what it is.
Invest accordingly.
The mistake here is believing (what a faith) that science is dependent on experiment. It is not. It is dependent on evidence. You can get evidence without experiment. You just search for it (anthropology, paleontology). Certainly experiment is on the whole more reliable. However, it is not a requisite for science.
To be falsifiable a theory need only be subject to counter evidence.
Well, what about all the food safety laws that ensure that the food is safe and free of bacteria and pathogens (not to mention your drinking water and sewer). Libertarians respond with a blank stare when you start bringing up all the things government does that private parties have never been capable of doing yet in the libertarian paradise suddenly there will be a profit in (roads are just the most obvious example).
Well, what about all the food safety laws that ensure that the food is safe and free of bacteria and pathogens (not to mention your drinking water and sewer). Libertarians respond with a blank stare when you start bringing up all the things government does that private parties have never been capable of doing yet in the libertarian paradise suddenly there will be a profit in (roads are just the most obvious example).
Come on, J.F. You've been libertarian-baiting long enough to know that this is easily answered. I hope you're feeling OK.
Libertarians aren't against all laws, and a significant part of enforcing food safety is the threat of private lawsuits. This, together with private inspection organizations would do essentially the same thing the government does now.
PS - I just saw this last post and was able to respond quickly, I won't be able to post other responses for a while.
I don't think I ever said that people using the scentific method are just practicing a different religion. Nor would I ever say that people who believe in God do so because they formulated him in a laboratory under repeatable conditions. What I mean is that many lay people "believe" in scientific theories while possessing no more evidence that I have for the existence of God. I'm not saying that such evidence doesn't exist, just that they don't know of it. Not only do these people believe certain scientific theories are true, they hold these beliefs fervently, and IMO, are unlikely to change them even in the face of contrary evidence. So, in many ways, they have "faith" much like a religious believer does. It is rare person who can dispassionitely look at the evidence and make up his mind. It is rarer still that once one makes up his mind, he doesn't become invested in being right, and become attached to his ideas even in the face of new and contrary evidence. So the behavior I've described is to be expected, because it's human nature, or at least, based on my experience, it's common.
Gay sex, porn, gambling, drugs and guns make up 95% of the motivation for being libertarian according to my unscientific survey of those who post or comment on the internet. The economic freedom angle is just a rational.
So, I think D'Souza, while he exaggerates, is closer to the truth than the professor here.
We don't disagree. But my point is that people like the ones you describe are idiots. And what they are engaged in has nothing to do with science.
I don't know whether you are criticizing the scientific method, defending religion, or neither. But in any event, I assume we're agreed that it isn't a valid criticism of science to point toward idiots who are, by definition, unscientific in their approach to the world.
I almost made it through the comments to the bottom determined to talk about D'Sousa and let the liberal/tarian discord play itself out amongst other commentors. Considering all the dogmatic bait offered by Mr. Liberal I conceived of myself as well restrained. However in this little ditty he undercuts all his own arguments about the lack of negotiating power of clerks based on the fact that anybody can replace them. All the while Mr. Liberal inherently recognizes there are not infinite replacements for the entrepeneur. If there were, he could not support his finger on the scale theory of justice for those with less negotiating power -- if there were an endless supply of those wishing to employ cashiers then cashiers' negotiating power would be manifest by their ability to go work for a competing concern.
If you can't see that the entrepeneur is more responsible for the outcome in this scenario of food provision, I don't think we are operating in the same logical framework.
That is completely absented from the argument of whether or not it is up to society to give the cashier medical insurance (in my mind a poor bet because I don't think the cashier ends up better off overall in a society that coerces taxes to fund free medical care - taking into account the overall quality, innovation and efficiency of care along with comparing the foregone economic opportunties as a consequence of siphoning wealth to this priority with any productivity gains associated with purported better median health. I am convinced at a faily low level scan that socialized medicine is a bad idea, but not because of some theory of deserts.)
The funny thing is that a thread begun highlighting the purported conservative libertarian disconnect has largely been about arguing the liberal liberatarian disconnect. That is probably a more fertile ground of substantive disagreement despite D'Sousa's (and such detractors as Ilya's) conjuring a disagreement over Christmas.
I do think that D'Sousa overdid it piling on Hitchens libational habits but on the whole I think the piece was good natured joshing and the organic post here as well as numerous responses making it out to be a Coulter style hit piece are over the top, e.g. much criticism of the following in logical terms as well as puportedly libidinously libelous motives:
Everyone seems to have focused on gays and druggies which he obviously threw out first with tendencious intent, but the sentence adds those "who generally find the conservative moral agenda too restrictive". I would say that the addition well supports the use of "many".
D'Sousa has never shied from ad hominem but I don't think all his more serious arguments rise or fall on that point. Burke, after all, was nothing more than a well lettered polemicist. His assaults in the Reflections on Dr. Price are equally sarcastic in context. Of course his mustering of contrary arguments in support of his cynical tone has withstood the tests of time and we are still reading his work - in all likelihood his relevance will outlast both Lehrer and D'Sousa although I see a closer call than many others on this thread.
I would agree that there is virtually nothing of substance in D'Sousa's ironic little Christmas quip, but i also have to say that I recently saw him speak on his ideas about the reconciling, to some extent, Islam with western civilization. I found the presentation to be one of the most thoughtful least incendiary treatments of the subject that I have heard throughout a score years of contemplation of this divide.
I did not hear him suggest that we should sacrifice many of our freedoms in order to allay the anger of Muslim fundamentalists as Ilya did. Rather he recommended more fully communicating conservative ideas and inclinations that are manifestly American to supplant the photos of Britney Spears running around sans skivvies as a way to explore common ground with the Islamic community.
He held to the view that muslim ire is more easily inflammed by the fear that engagment with the global economy requires embrace of some Hollywoodesque popular culture then by some sense of geopolitical injustices - citing as an example Khomeni's support of the reinstatement of the Shah, a purported watershed in American meddling in region. While the Shi'a clergy had been amongst those disillusioned with the Iranian monarchy, the popular socialist reformer Mossadegh was supplanted by Communists when the shah fled Iran and the religious establishment, when faced with the hostility of the communist movments to religious institutions, actually backed the Shah.
D'Sousa's synergy of these events made a reasonable case for consideration of the cultural pretext for jihad. I don't think he should be so lightly dismissed, at least on the basis of his lighthearth Christmas comments. I think he does conflate libertarian and aethist imperatives as a warning to libertarians about the limits of reason and the danger of its cop-opting by new age scientists and philosophers. Figures like Dennett and E.O. Wilson seeking a spiritual hegemony inspired by real phenonmenon predominate in the secularist movement. I totally agree that there is:
But if religion, as a means or extracting a moral world view and socially useful institutions, is seen as in competition with secularism, humanism or naturalism it must be conceded that these too are religions and where we will be suspicious of religious invocations as a basis for pubic policy we should be likewise skeptical of these skeptical movements -- and where we will admit of the relevance or admissibility of their transformative message we should do likewise for all religions.
brian
Why? In what ways is "secularism" a religion?
I agree, and after re-reading the original comments, I think I attributed views to you that you didn't proclaim. I either imagined it out of wholecloth, or conflated comments you made with those someone else made. I guess the argument I was trying to rebut takes the form of:
-Religious beliefs are based on faith
-Science isn't
-Therefore, beliefs about scientific theories aren't in any way based in faith, but in reason.
I guess I'm just bitter because if I don't want to me labeled and apostate (by some), I can't point out that efforts to recycle paper and efforts to decrease one's carbon footprint are at odds.
My apologies.
If a neuroscientist tells me how the brain works, I will believe him and I will repeat what he tells me. I do this because he is an expert and I trust him. I don't think he is lying to me.
DRWN says that I have "faith" in science because I accept its claims without checking them. Therefore, he says, I am just as bad as a religious person. This is wrong.
I trust the scientist based on what I know about scientists. (In other words, based on my experience and evidence.) I don't see why he would lie to me, and I know that scientists have a good record of trying to find mistakes in each other's work. For similar reasons, I tend NOT to trust what street gamblers tell me.
Religious people ask for a different kind of trust and faith. They ask for belief against evidence. For example, everything I know about biology and humans tells me that virgins don't give birth. If I have "faith" in a virgin birth it is completely different from "faith" in a recognized establishment like science. DRWN is saying they are the same.
I see your point, and it is a good one. It's certainly true a lot of the time.
But I don't think it captures all of the possible situations. I think some people have religious beliefs that are not necessarily against evidence, because in some cases there simply is, and can be, no evidence. For example, if a Deist claims that some supernatural entity ignited the Big Bang, and afterwards took no action to alter or affect physical reality, I have a hard time arguing that the Deist's belief is "against evidence." But I haven't thought about that much, and I could be wrong.
Meanwhile, I really do think that some people abuse and misinterpret science and the scientific method in a way that makes their views roughly analogous to a religion -- perhaps I should say "as bad as a religion." For example, I know people for whom human-caused catastrophic global warming amounts to an article of faith. It apparently fits how they like to view the world, and I very strongly suspect they would not abandon their belief in this phenomenon even in the face of a mountain of contrary evidence. Yet, I also have heard such people (some of them staunch secularists) characterize their belief as "scientific."
I think they have simply fallen into the same trap as religionists. Their natural, possibly hard-wired, human tendency to see patterns and demand explanations has totally screwed up their objectivity and rationality.
At least they aren't strapping on suicide bomber vests. Yet.
"You have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, so you're no different from someone that believes Mohammad rode to heaven on a winged horse...." Give me a break.
Re science and religion, what Waldensian said.
Re D'Souza, anyone paying attention to his last book (blaming the "cultural left" -- feminists and gays in large part -- for 9/11) should have realized that he was trying to out-do Coulter in making indefensible and morally reprehensible "arguments." As with Coulter, whether D'Souza does this because he's a complete loon or because he's a con many out to make some money off the carny marks of the American far right is perhaps debatable, but either way, serious folks shouldn't take him seriously.
As for D'Souza, if you're going to consume right-wing pornography, go all the way and get it from Ann Coulter.
I am not a libertarian, but if Bob From Ohio is right, libertarian meetings might be more fun, or at least entertaining to watch, than I have generally imagined them to be.
Unless Bob means "porn featuring lesbians marketed to heterosexual males" when he refers to "Gay porn", I would say he is a little off. Most of the libertarians I run into are straight like myself. Of course the main objects of fantasy are female Sci-Fi characters and Buffy and geeky stuff like that, but that's normal, sort of.
Point of correction.
Sex and Porn. Not "Gay porn". Two separate categories.
Though "porn featuring lesbians marketed to heterosexual males" is probably more precise than "porn".
Read your own words
Transactions do not occur due to a "pool of surplus", but because each party finds advantage in the transaction vis-a-vis the status quo absent the exchange. What those relative merits are is NOT a function of slicing some pie (where my benefit comes at your expense).
It doesn't matter how many pies you choose to [half-]bake.
Criminals really need to unionize so they can get better health insurance. /s
I) Elliot Reed: "Try designing an experiment whose results could falsify ... the hypothesis that there are such things as black holes. There isn't one."
Er, how 'bout:
1) Restate the hypothesis in a scientific way, e.g. "Black holes are the end stage of stellar evolution for stars >3 Mo."
2a) Choose a canonical example of a purported stellar black hole, e.g. Cygnus X-1, and debunk it.
2b) Find massive stars that have not evolved into BHs.
2c) Find BHs that are not associated with massive stars.
3) During steps 1-2, work with theoretical guys to poke holes in existing theory and propose alternative that fits data better.
II) In re "faith," the two propositions "Science is different from religion" and "Some people treat science as if it were a religion" are not incompatible. Both could be true.
What does Dinesh's rant say about
III) What I call the "Repo Man Phenomenon" (from the nightclub scene where Otto says, "I can't believe I used to like this band."). More generally, the phenomenon of realizing that stuff you used to like suddenly seems lame, and wondering what it says about you and your tastes and judgments. Last year it was the painful case of George Gilder; now it's Dinesh.
IV) A potential schism within the right-wing coalition that has proven stable for the last three decades. To me the key theme running through the modern right is free markets, and no one carries that torch more proudly than the libertarians*, yet they're taking a beating from all sides. First Huck, now Dinesh, I fear that the social cons are really feeling their oats. They're latecomers to the party, but their sheer numbers make them important, and they feel (correctly) they've been taken advantage of and (incorrectly) they have something to offer. What do we do to keep them from bolting, while not handing them the car keys? (If I had my druthers, both parties would fracture & recombine into The Smart Party and The Dumb Party, but, er, that could take time...)
* Who are nonetheless crazy
Clever quip, but I differ to beg (the question). Try out this tripe from the Center for Naturalism:
People are leaving the reservation of reason as soon as the word awe pops out of their mouth:
Virtually all the organized secular movements I know of are caught up in this earth worship crap, whether implicitly or explicitly. They sometimes try to mask it with empirical qualities like 'carrying capacity' or 'sustainability' although I think this ignores the extent to which it is absolutely an article of faith that this biological generation owes sustainence to the next. Where does one derive that value other than from past practice? In which case the prevalence of religion fits right into this intellectual inheritance approach.
Great secularist philosophers -- again, when a movement has philosophers and not scientists one should get suspicious of its essentially religious character -- like Dennett are given to quips describing the earth as thinly veneered with green and blue and man now holding the paintbrush (and this in a polemic claiming as its purpose "Breaking the Spell" of religion).
I think it defensible that individuals considering a secular/religious divide can do so without such motive, but virtually all efforts at secular organization have this kind of creeping value judgment that has some awe-inspiring view of the natural as a replacement for the supernatural. It certainly seems to me that it is the awe that inspires organization -- in other words the parts of ones response to natural stimuli that they cannot explain themselves.
And - back to the thread - I still think you're being too hard on D'Sousa's arguments. Maybe D'Sousa himself deserves to be heaped on for his tactical tactlessness, but his defense of the status quo from a virtually blind commitment to progress threaded throughtout his contribution to public discourse has a Burkian resonance deserving of consideration.
brian
atheism is a religion in the sense that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Indeed, I'm going to start using that line, with some qualms about how and when I can cite "GayDruggieAtheistLibertarian" as my source. But if what Bob from Ohio says about Libertarian meetings is true. . .
Atheism is just a non-belief. Do you believe in Zeus? No? How does that affect your outlook on life? Not at all? Atheism is very similar.
What I just said is practically a tautology. The problem is that people add to their atheism with other beliefs. (For example, think religion is harmful.) These additional beliefs get branded as "atheistic philosophies" - but that phrase doesn't really make sense.
Today your Zeus-atheism is no big deal, but if you lived in ancient Greece people would attribute all manners of evil to your scandalous a-Zeus beliefs.
Atheism is a non-belief. Any other beliefs have been added on top of this non-foundation.
I quite well understood the import of this aphorism. I think it is clever and logically unassailable in the abstract. It is a bit the macro version of an equally logical defense of secular 'faith' embodied in your challenge:
My point is not that you don't have the theoretical upper hand, but rather that, in practice, I have found no organization of secularists that does not espouse relating to the natural world as if it had the same sublime quality as Mohammad riding to heaven on a winged horse.
Dennett and his virtual worship of MacCready's decrying man's share of the worlds' resources.
Lovelock, the originator of the purportedly scientific Gaia hypothesis, and his explicit call to worship the earth as an organism, see, e.g., A Way of Life For Agnostics, Lovelock, James, The Skeptical Enquirer, Sept./Oct. 2001.
I don't disagree that an aethist or secular perspective could in theory divorce itself from the sense that it substitutes for religion; but, in practice, virtually all the organized 'isms' surrounding the aethist maypole are trying to sell you a far more didactic and moral world view than can be derived simply from a phenomenological approach to existence.
Some, like E.O. Wilson, still couch this in scientific terms as the ultimate goal of the enlightment -- that the social sciences could be used to rule human society. I can't think of an attitude more dangeous to liberty. D'Sousa and a few motley defenders of the remnants of puritanism pale by comparison.
Brian
What I reject is supernaturalism. I think religion taps into something real, but then dresses it up with mumbo-jumbo and requests for $.
Check out the Center for Inquiry (orginally a joint project of CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism) - the quintessential secularist compendium with such luminary charter members as Isaac Assimov, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins. - that sends me a constant chain of e-mails about how I ought to leave them my fortune so they can promote lefist politics under the guise of science.
Their latest 'scientific' contribution is a diatribe in favor of gay marriage as a constitutional right.
Now I tend to think that the abstract libertarian proposition is that the government has no business sanctifying relations between individuals. The status quo, or social Darwinian perspective might be that the institution is meant for the nurture of offspring to maintain the structure of society necessary ultimately to support adults as well. The Center for Inquiry argues for stripping marriage of its historic purpose and tradition related to procreation but rather than simply getting government out of the business of marriage it wants government control of marriage to continue to promote stable two person relationships.
This subtlely coopts conservative thinking in an ironic way. It is not illogical in relation to some of the manifest purposes or benefits of marriage, but there simply is no scientific case for or against marriage as a state institution. Throwing out statistics that stable couples are more productive, feel better about themselves, are healthier or what have you offers no indication about some scientific threshold for making this a governmental value judgment.
The same positive attributes are attributed to religious observance and gun ownership in the statistical war of values. This are ultimately policy decisions dependent on one's world view and not on science. It is a co-opting of science to champion such policies.
It is certainly appropriate if proponents of traditional marriage claim scientific support for their position that skeptical criticism should emerge, but it is clear that these secularists are not agnostic on the outcome, but have a very particular progressive outlook on these problems and command science to march to their drummer rather than the vice versa. A few brave and honest skeptics have for this reason criticized these efforts and abandoned them,but they are few and far between and have offered no other significant organized efforts that can be cited to insulate the movement as a whole from these criticisms.
Ironically, progressives are trying to capture a fundamentally conservative institution in their campaign to define marriage more broadly. But there simply does not seem to be any place for a group claiming to argue on behalf of science regarding the civil rights claims at issue here.
It seems to me that the main reason for secularist involvement in this issue is not science but a hostility to religious sentiments. But theological motives in public policy debates are unscientific or refuted by science only to the extent that the debate actually turns on objective criterion. To suggest that the religious perspective is not objective does not remotely objectify (uncoventional use of that word, I know, but it fits) a competing perspective.
I have no problem that what started out as an organization debunking UFO's, pyschics, and cults has seen fit to enlarge its definition of cults to include all the world's major religions. But when you look at the philosophical and political adventurism of these figurehead organizations you understand that a value laden worldview with its own superstitions is the house of cards being built by organized secularists.
Brian