Some libertarians act as if the thing that was wrong with Auschwitz was that it was a state enterprise rather than a public/private partnership
– Antoine Clarke
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Samizdata quote of the dayMarch 17th, 2007 |
 43 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Sigh,
Libertarian commandment #1
“Thou shalt not initiate the use of violence (although thee may respond to violence as thee feelest fit)”
Public/private partnerships are libertarian? How?
“Thou shalt not initiate the use of violence (although thee may respond to violence as thee feelest fit)”
Was Auschwitz a problem? If it was, who should have responding to that violence, the Jews? Was it ia problem for anyone outside the camp, and if so, why?
“Was Auschwitz a problem?”
What??? I have read and re-read your comment in an attempt to understand – I mean is that some sort of joke gone wrong?? If you didn’t actually intend that as anti-semitic, I suggest you explain yourself.
“Was it ia problem for anyone outside the camp, and if so, why?”
Well Chuck, the smell down wind was reputedly pretty bad. I guess that could be a problem.
Living under a government which industrialised mess murder, could that be a problem to some people?
Mass murder in itself, however carried out? Any chance you see a problem there?
who should have responding to that violence
Anyone with a shred of human decency maybe?
Excuuuse me, I was responding to the quote I put at the head of the post and asking questions of the person who posted it. Was that not clear, and if not, why did you think I put the quote there? Think about it. The quote posited that you should not initiate violence, but may respond to violence done to yourself. The question I raised is if you may respond to violence done to someone else. I think that was obvious.
As to the person who accuses me of anti-semitism, I suggest you keep rereading the post until you can rouse more than two brain cells. It takes at least three to comprehend.
I have never heard any libertarian ever say anything so assinine or idiotic. I rather doubt that any true libertarian would say such a thing. To even suggest libertarians would consider believing such a thing does nothing to help the reputation of libertarians. Can’t quite understand why this comment was posted.
I have never heard any libertarian ever say anything so assinine or idiotic.
Are anarchocapitalists truly libertarian? Like Stalinists, some in that crowd would see the world go up in smoke to maintain the “morality” of ideological purity.
When I’ve in the past referred to a Stalinist wing of the libertarian movement I’ve been buried in nonsense about my not understanding that libertarians are anti-statist. Blindered ideologues, they can’t see past the covers of the books they’ve read.
It doesn’t specify who the violence we’re responding to was initiated against. So I will read it as I can respond to any violence initiated against anyone as I see fit. Which in the case of Auschwitz would involve pliers, a blowtorch and getting medieval on the camp commandants ass.
Who is this Antione Clarke, and why is his opinion worth posting? If he could point out these errant libertarians I would be happy to give him a slap and tell him, that they weren’t libertarians but NuLab infiltrators. Public/Private Partnerships, HA! like any libertarian would suggest letting the state get its spanners all mangled in the works of some poor sods private enterprise.
The problem with Auschwitz was not the economics of its running but the fact that it existed at all, any human being with a shred of decency should be able to see that.
I thought that was the actual point Clarke was making. Granted, he is probably confusing libertarians with anarcho-capitalists or whatever.
Shows how much Antoine knows. Auschwitz actually was a public-private partnership. Large parts of it were run by (Link)IG Farben.
Sounds like Mr. Clarke is beating up a straw man of libertarianism unless we have a link or source for context…
Seems pretty obvious to me what Antoine Clarke is saying.
Some libertarians support tax funded vouchers for private schools, when they should be opposing the whole idea of the state being involved in education. Some libertarians support state road-use taxes when they should be arguing for private road. Some libertarians support more private involvement in the National Health Service, when they should be arguing for the abolition of the NHS.
i.e. Auschwitz’ was the problem, not how it was run.
Libertarian commandment #1
Grammar Inquisition here: this should be phrased
“Thou shalt not initiate the use of violence (although thou mayst respond to violence as thou feelst fit)”
Modern English may be a free-for-all, but dammit, King James died a long time ago, and King James English is as alive and flexible as he is.
I think this cuts to a very deep misunderstaning of what libertarians and assorted fellow travellers believe. I know a lot of folk who are left-wing to varying degrees and when you explain libertarian ideas to them (they mainly ask btw – they’re curious because they’ve mainly not actually heard of libertarianism and they’re definitely very interested in how I can self-identify as a “liberal” yet would never vote for Ming and his cavalcade of jackanapes) they really fail to see where I’m coming from.
In short they think of indvidualism as equating to selfishness. Now, these aren’t stupid people but they are just too immersed in the old left/right dichotomy to understand that I believe in cutting welfare and legalising prostitution and that holding both these positions is not the result of schizophrenia or a purely selfish desire to pay less tax and therefore have more cash to spend on crack-whores.
These people just don’t get what Perry calls the meta-context. I wish he didn’t. It sounds very high falutin’ to me but I can’t think of a better label. Well, it’s taken me a while to “get” the libertarian meta-context”and I’ve been hanging around here for ages. It’s quite a learning curve to not see liberatrians as anything other than a bunch of folk who want to polish their guns, smoke some legal weed and let the rest of the world go hang.
Believing that individual wealth and freedom is a good thing is not the same as a belief in pure selfishness and we’ve got to communicate that idea to everyone else. I fix computers and I charge for that. I make a profit and I make a difference to people’s lives. The two are not incompatible as many on the left seem to believe. I’m not a charity but I think I do a lot of good in my community. I’ll quote Tom Lehrer here: “Doing good by doing well”.
I’ve been to Aucshwitz and Dachau. They were abominations and I see it as my duty as a human to prevent such things happening again (as much as I’m able). That’s because I am an individualist and when I saw the suitcases at Auschwitz I I also saw the labels on them. They also once belonged to individuals.
I have known Mr Clarke for years.
He knows that the death camps were public-private partnerships (indeed he has sneered at p-p partnerships by bringing this up).
He also understands that libertarianism is based on (indeed is) the “non aggression principle” which the death camps clearly violated.
Therefore I can only assume that he has been misquoted.
This has happened to me in the past (and not just here). Someone (with the best of intentions) will try and “clean up my English” before posting something by me – and the meaning will get altered.
I think Antoine Clarke was exagerating for rhetorical effect. I haven’t met a libertarian yet who wouldn’t condemn Auschwitz, but I have come across some here with a tendency to object to things more on the basis of it being the government/state/socialists doing it than the actual threat to liberty it poses. I’ve commented a number of times on it in the past – it was the subject of my very first post here, in fact. I’m not going to bring them all up again – you can go back and find them for yourself if you want.
I don’t like it when people use Auschwitz to make silly political points like this – this libertarian tendency is a minor fault and not on the same scale. Although I’ve seen the same in reverse, with libertarians speaking of police states and totalitarianism in reference to events falling rather short of the real thing. That’s just the way political rhetoric goes, though. Everybody does it.
Dr Ellen,
I know how it should have been phrased, but it was meant to be a tongue in cheek presentation.
Please accept my apologies.
No kidding. Albion is exactly correct in his description of the point Antoine was making
Antoine is correct: a lot of people blithely assume that if something is in the private sector, then it must be good. But if that private entity is still directed and guided by the state, or part of the state machine, then there is a problem. Take the case of Capita, the firm that makes money by running the Congestion Charge in London, the driving licence, and the BBC compulsory licence fee. There are, of course, lots of other examples. Antoine was using an outrageous example for good effect.
Perry and J.P. (and Albion).
Yes I see your point.
Jonathan: many people simply confuse privatization with outsourcing. The way I see it, outsourcing can be even worse than pure governmental operation, as our tax money passes even more hands, and more of it is left in various people’s pockets along the way. Also, there is even less accountability to the public than with governmental operation, not to mention a purely private one.
Yup, Alisa. Outsourcing is public spending with even more opportunities for corruption.
“These people just don’t get what Perry calls the meta-context. I wish he didn’t.”
I once asked about that here — two, three months ago, tops — and never saw anything like an answer.
I think it’s very nearly ridiculous.
Not clear what you mean. Are you asking what meta-context is? A meta-context is the unspoken frames of reference within which a person interprets something and the unspoken shared frames of reference within which a conversation happens.
Example: A Republican argues that parental choice amongst public schools (in the US sense of the term) is essential and so a voucher system is needed. A Democrat argues that school choice discriminates against certain ethnic groups… however both positions share the unspoken (i.e. meta-contextual) assumptions that it is the state’s job to make force-backed decisions about how people get educated.
Perry: I think the meta-context for you example is that public education will continue to exist in one form or another.
But maybe it is as you say ‘force based’.
I have noticed the term ‘statist’ is increasingly used to explain that both parties hold – or almost hold – the concept that government is to solve every human woe through some adjustment of regulations and mandatory tuning of human behavior.
Alisa, and some others, pointed to the fallacy of dragging state v. private into the Auschwitz matter. The private companies did not make an industry of exterminating Jews. The Nazi state did that.
And in Germany there were no private companies as we view private today.
Of course, some helped cheerfully and others not so much. So I leave precision judgements to historians and courts.
‘Public’ education and state education both mean politically directed education. They all exist within the same state centred meta-contextual assumptions.
Completely irrelevant. If you read what Johnathan Pearce, Albion & I wrote you can then deduce what the context of the remark actually was. Pearce knows Antoine but Albion just figured it out… and as a result and as I know he is a Brit, I have a sneaking suspicion he might have actually guessed who Antoine was talking about. In spite of the Auschwitz reference, the quote actually has nothing to do with Nazi Germany and everything to do with Britain in 2007.
Perry: thanks for clarifying what Antoine intended. I wondered what the hell he meant by such a seemingly idiotic single sentence. I also figured if a man cites Auschwitz in that way, even in rhetoric, he isn’t worth reading.
Perhaps his words fit redily into the much rougher debates held in the UK. We have nothing quite comparable here and are worse for it.
About the meta matter. I think we see things more or less alike.
K, actually the point I was trying to make in my first comment is that I understand Clarke’s point, and I am not a Brit, but maybe I have been reading this blog long enough:-) (My second comment about outsourcing was a bit OT.).
Godwyn’s law notwithstanding, I hope we have not reached a point where the Holocaust cannot be mentioned in any context other than the Holocaust itself, because this would be counterproductive, not to mention ridiculous. The Holocaust did not occur in a vacuum out of the thin air. It was made possible by certain political conditions, among other things. Those conditions (along with all those other things) are worth reviewing and understanding, if only to make sure it does not happen again.
Perrys use of the term meta-context is both correct and arguable. Although the example he gives does clarify the concept he is advancing, other terms, I think, are more appropriate for that example.
The use of the term ‘meta’ indicates a higher level abstraction than is the norm. Thus meta-data is data about the nature of the data sets under consideration, meta-theory is theory on the nature of theory and theorising. As I take it meta-context is an attempt to describe an overarching context under which the discussion or actions occur.
If this is the case, then the situation Perry describes might better be characterised just by using either ‘context’ (no meta) or paradyme.
The context is – both parties are arguing for state funding. Within that context they disagree on how it should be disursed. They, and most of their listeners, are operating within the paradyme that state funding is essential if the good under discussion is to be produced.
What we in the educative wing of the libertarian community need do is facilitate a societal paradigm (sorry about my previous misspelling) shift into a reshaped meta-context on the involvement of community funded input vis-a-vis socially financed educative opportunities.
Right, a penny and warm thoughts to the person who can spot the most obscene component of the above sentence.
Community
“Educative”. “Socially financed” would be too obvious.
No, the context in the example I gave is “this is a discussion about education” and it is explicit, not unspoken (i.e. it is the reason the two politicians turned up in the studio)… and within that context, the Republican and Democrat have different views.
The meta-context however is the unspoken assumption that a discussion about education will inevitably be about how the state can best intervene in education. To argue about education from within a different meta-context you have to say that state should not be involved at all and entire discussion is a waste of time.
Well said Pa Annoyed.
Chris: My mind rebels at trying to parse your sentence. So it served its purpose. I do wonder what ‘educative wing..’ means to you.
Does it mean you work in education? Or that some actual wing of a broad movement has that label?
I try to avoid the word ‘educate’ because the left appropriated it for political purposes.
i.e. they do not offer their ideas or argue for them, instead they ‘educate.’ The usage probably emerged from social theorists who proclaimed their views as scientific and proved; hence not accepting them showed ignorance and the need for education or reeducation.
So I’m with Alisa. ‘educative’
Well, educative is a pretty good choice, but I think the concept of “libertarian community” does it for me.
Which is strange, because communities of freely cooperating individuals is one of the forecast outcomes of the implementation of libertarian principles.
Problem is the statist hijacking of the term community I guess.
Have we had a collective noun for libertarians yet?
A cooperative of libertarians?
Sounds contradictory, but in fact totally accurate.
liberace?
Mmm.. Maybe not.
Perry: see my remarks at this Samizdata post.
A “context” is what it is, even when it is “unspoken”.
Especially when it is unspoken.
This is really important, and I see no good whatever in impertinent complications.
With all due respect you are simply wrong. Meta-context is in effect the parameters of a person’s world view. A context is something far more narrow and, well, contextual to a situation.
You don’t have to like the term but it is actually a very useful concept that helps explain how people view things.
[shrug] Not to me.
Onward.
It makes it very hard to understand why people cannot see the obvious without involving the concept of meta-context. It is not that they are stupid (though of course they may be) and it is not that they do not understand what the issue is (which usually means context), it is that whatever it is does not register within their world view as being within the range of possible options (meta-context).
When you make sensible and perhaps even self-evident (to you) economics observations but rather than disagreement, you get blank stares or eye-rolling ‘huh?” responses, chances are that this is our old chum meta-context at work.
How To Win An Argument With A Libertarian:
1. Introduce another libertarian to the argument.
2. Walk away whilst they argue endlessly over arcana.
There is nothing arcane about it, it is a very powerful concept.