We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day Where did Mises stand on the issue of discrimination? He distinguished two kinds: that extending from choice and that imposed by law. He favored the former and opposed the latter. He went even further. He said that a policy that forces people against their will creates the very conditions that lead to legal discrimination. In his view, even speaking as someone victimized by invidious discrimination, it is better to retain freedom than build a bureaucracy that overrides human choice.
“In an unhampered market society there is no legal discrimination against anybody,” he wrote. “Everyone has the right to obtain the place within the social system in which he can successfully work and make a living. The consumer is free to discriminate, provided that he is ready to pay the cost.”
– Jeffrey Tucker quoting and discussing Von Mises in an article called Must a Jewish Baker make a Nazi cake?
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Doesn’t the article confuse the difference between discriminating against someone for who they are rather than what they believe? In the case of Jewish ethnicity, this can hold either way, but it was clear that nazis were against the race not the religion.
But what they believe is part of who they are.
As to antisemitism, it is Judaism itself that is found philosophically objectionable – including the Nazi variety, where the “ethnic” part was just a populist means to power.
One complication is whether the private discrimination really is private, and not the result of some government bureaucrat in the background, whispering “Nice business you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it…”
See: “Operation Choke Point”
Or to put it another way, how does one end government-imposed discrimination when the government-imposed discrimination goes underground?
I think the point is the reason is not important, only is the state imposing it. But yes, Deep Lurker raises a valid point.
Playing devil’s advocate for a second, it is certainly possible that certain groups can be excluded from participating fully in society, e.g. blacks in pre civil rights US south. In situations such as this maybe there is not much difference between legal discrimination and discrimination by societal convention. This is obviously not the case for gays in modern UK and US.
The problem with von Mises support for political equality is that it does not tackle the “awful” problem of economic equality which according to Rawls’ egalitarian theory of Social Justice is the whole purpose of “deliberative democracy” [to quote Obama’s former regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.]
As Yaron Brook and Don Watkins set out in their new book:
–Equality is Unfair.
Just in anyone thinks I am exaggerating:
Oh yes, Dr. Rawls. The gent who begins by requesting us to imagine a man who is as yet unborn and knows nothing about the world he will be born into. He asks us what that man’s first wish would be regarding the kind of world he would be born into, and then informs us that naturally that man would ask that it be a world where everyone is equal.
There is so much wrong this that I can’t begin. But I will anyway. The hypothetical is ridiculous: if the unborn man doesn’t know anything “about the world,” then he doesn’t know anything period, and is in no position to even understand the question, let alone make the choice. And what is this “equal,” kemo sabe? There are lots of kinds of “equal.”
The imaginer of this little skit will obviously put his own favorite Condition of Everything into the Unborn’s mouth.
Anybody who hasn’t got utter tunnel vision or an idée fixe, and who has at least a little observational power or imagination, will know at once that different people will choose different worlds to insert into the Unborn’s head. Mr. Rawls’s Unborn Man may be trying to operate from behind a Veil of Ignorance, but his audience is not.
Although, come to think of it, I guess Mr Rawls himself is.
I’m not quite sure that’s what Rawls’ veil of ignorance is about. I think you’re only supposed to be ignorant about your place in the society, not about what the society itself looks like. By the society itself I mean the selection of possible societies.
He’s saying – here look societies A, B, C and D. You’re going to get plonked into the one you choose. But you’re going to be plonked in to an unknown position in that society. (Position includes natural abilities.)
Obviously, the whole thing is nonsense – he just assumes that everyone would pick Society E. But it’s a slightly different nonsense from the one you’re criticising.
Unless I’ve missed it (quite possible), one of the minor artificialities of Rawls’ ‘unborn’ is that, while they seem very concerned about how their life will go, they seem very unconcerned with their chances of surviving birth itself, e.g. through not being aborted. There is of course an obvious political reason for this oddity, but in terms of pure logic, I find it odd that Rawls chooses the concept of the unborn to play the role that in other theories is played by “the independent observer”, “the fair-minded man” and so on, but then seems to ignore an important and immediate concern of any actually unborn-but-yet-aware person.
Does anyone know if Rawls, or a Rawls, or a Rawls supporter (or even a Rawls critic) discussed this lacuna?
I think Rawls postulates that you are an adult, while behind the veil of ignorance, on the grounds that children are not fully rational yet and so can’t make proper moral judgements. Obviously this is a bit of a torpedo up the whole idea, because what we are as adults depends to no small extent on the choices we make as children. So if we are to be plonked down randomly into an adult status, it becomes even less likely that we would choose an egalitarian society, since then we would be voting for our childhoods to be a developmental write off.
I believe however that learned folk have debated the implications of Rawls for abortion and reached…astonishingly…different views.
I’ll just throw one thought into the mix, though. If we were to make the veil of ignorance choice as fertilised eggs, would we really be that bothered about abortion ? If, say – I’m guessing here – 60% of fertilised eggs are naturally aborted, what does legal abortion add to that death rate ? Does it go up to 65% or 70% ? It’s not obvious to me that – say – a 30% chance of making it through to birth is a lot worse than a 40% chance. Especially if I’m a girl and I don’t want my winning ticket if I get one to be spoiled by having to go through with inconvenient pregnancies.
And I’ll add a second thought now that it occurs to me. Choosing my preferred society when I’m a fertilised egg gives me a very different perspective on risk. If I’ve got a 60% chance of not making it out of the womb, then am I really going to be super cautious about the 2% possibility that I’ll be disabled and uncared for, weighed against the possibilities of fame, glory and loadsamoney ? I’ve got much less to lose, statistically, from a non egalitarian society when I’ve got so many risks to run anyway.
As Julie says there are lots of kinds of “equal,” but Rawl’s begins on the axiom that unequal is bad.
If you didn’t create everything yourself including the century you’re born into, well – “You didn’t build that,” to quote Obama.
“It takes a village,” etc., and that is unfair!
As Piketty writes [in Capital for the 21st c.] “To the extent that inequality of conditions is due, at least in part, to factors beyond the control of individuals, such as the existence of unequal family endowments (in terms of inheritances, cultural capital, etc.) or good fortune (special talents, luck, etc.), it is just for government to seek to reduce these inequalities as much as possible.”
Ayn Rand denounced Rawls in “Philosophy Who Needs It” in the 80’s – it’s been interesting to see his SJW acolytes taking over the universities.
Brook and Watkins address Rawl’s error in Equal is Unfair – essentially it is a revisitation on the pre-Socratic blunder of adopting an unreal criteria of judgement – the pre-Socratics were always doing that – they eliminated time, space, motion, change, certainty – you name it they got rid of it.
And of course Rand memorably eviscerates Rawls in Philosophy Who Needs It?
However Rawls is only the start – the egalitarians have taken his notion of Inequality even further.
According to the philosopher G.A. Cohen, it’s not that Steve Jobs can’t create Apple unless he’s able to earn a fortune – it’s that the greedy bastard won’t. In Cohen’s view, that’s immoral.
It is on such foundations that Pol Pot, who was trained in France, took equality to its logical conclusion.
“Equality” according to Piketty, is a particularly French thing – and I believe him.
Lee Moore, April 9, 2016 at 1:33 pm “I think Rawls postulates that you are an adult, while behind the veil of ignorance, …”
IIUC, Rawls postulates his ‘unborn’ have an adult ability to reason, and a knowledge of the various societies they are considering being born into, but no knowlege of which group they will be born into beyond statistical likelihood – so in 1900, being born into UK society would mean a lowish chance of being an agricultural labourer, whereas being born into Chinese society would mean a high chance. Rawls analysis would make the unborn choose the society with the greatest average age at death if other things were equal, even if it were only a week longer than its nearest rival, so personally relevant to far less than 2% of that society’s members. (I think Lee’s suggested stats are well off, BTW, but I note that Lee said they were only suggestions for purposes of discussion, which is fair enough.) One could, by a slight increase in the contrivance of Rawls’ already artificial concept, treat the unborn as the un-by-only-one-minute-born, thus excluding all pre-natal risks, but if mothers tended to be seriously underfed or overworked in one society relative to another, affecting the relative chance of death-before-birth, I don’t see Rawls ignoring that. So I think there is just a hint of Humpty-Dumpty in Rawls approach: “the concept is mine, so it will apply only to those issues where I want it to apply.”
This line made me laugh [from Equal is Unfair] –
On the stats
I found a wiki page (obviously written by a “pro-choicer” so health warnings etc) which suggested that about half of all fertilized human eggs survive to four weeks, and then about three quarters of those survive to birth. Since the page purports to be about natural abortion, I’m assuming these figures don’t include deliberate abortion.
So, if true, that would give us a 62.5% natural abortion rate.
Elsewhere, I spotted the figures that the (deliberate) abortion / live birth ratio in the US is about 20%.* So of the 37.5% of fertilised eggs that would normally make it to birth, about 6.2% would be deliberately aborted (in the US). So legal abortion might reduce your chances of making it out of the womb from 37.5% to a little over 30%. Not trivial, but not an earth shattering difference.
(But if Rawls offers you New York as a possible society, turn it down. The (deliberate) abortion rate is twice as high as the US average.)
On disabilities, a government site suggests about a 1 in 33 rate of birth defects. Serious and not so serious. Presumably, the rate in t’olden days would have been (a) higher because defective babies will be selectively targeted by deliberate abortion these days and (b) lower because fewer babies would have survived premature birth. So you takes your pick.
* extra health warning – I bet this doesn’t include “abortifacient” “contraceptives” – ie where a fertilised egg is prevented from implanting. Not least because nobody would have any idea how to compute the number.
Here’s another:
-Equal is Unfair, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins.
JohnW wrote,
What’s worse than their claim of the superficiality view of hard work is that Woz or Bill Gates are genetically disposed and also just happened to find themselves in favorable positions to become who they are. Of course, while making such claims, they ignore other cases like Ben Carson who grew up a poor black boy in a ghetto to a single functionally illiterate mother, and became a leading pediatric brain surgeon.
Two things that the leftists hate mentioned is (a) personal responsibility, and (b) the principle of earning. The principle of earning makes us unequal, AND it justifies private property. I own what I earn. And since people becoming rich doesn’t make others poor, they can’t justify the concept of wealth expropriation due to “inequality”.
Runcie Balspune wrote,
“Doesn’t the article confuse the difference between discriminating against someone for who they are rather than what they believe?”
It should be noted that leftists don’t like discrimination of any sort. Thinking requires discernment. Discernment requires discriminating one from another. And ALL discrimination means that things are not identical and/or “equal” which suggests injustice in their warped minds. So thinking just gotta go, (lol), and hence the pushing of an agenda which includes multiculturalism and the equivocating of all things good in lefty eyes.
JohnW wrote,
“Equal is Unfair, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins”
What I greatly dislike about the book is that it begins by pointing out how focusing on inequality is fallacious reasoning, and then goes on to enormous lengths, with stats and other boring sources, refuting the aforementioned illogical false argument.
That fact that an argument is fallacious is sufficient grounds to dismiss it entirely.
Thailover, It does refute equality philosophically later. But Piketty wraps himself in the prestige of science and expert testimony and in order not to be dismissed as “superficial” Brook and Watkins tackle Piketty’s statistics head-on.
By the time they’ve finished Piketty is dead in the water. Then the book ramps up a gear and goes for the jugular – Rawls, A. G. Cohen, Peter Singer, Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel. These are among the most influential philosophers of today. Unfortunately, most people who are sympathetic to the inequality issue have no idea what these people are really selling. Brook and Watkins leave no doubt as to their hatred and venality:
I am surprised that some central planner hasn’t mandated cosmetic surgery for all, so looks are neutralised. And why are people still allowed to date and marry anyone because of their personal preferences? Some fairness bureau should assign dates to us! We can all then get a fair share of supermodels!
Jeffrey Tucker’s interpretation of Ludwig Von Mises is correct.
If I run and shop and say “I do not want red haired people here” that is my private property rights (no matter how stupid and bigoted I am). To FORCE me to serve red haired people is to enslave me – to make me a slave of the state. The “common carrier” and “public accommidations” argument goes back to the late Roman Empire and is total nonsense.
According to this “argument” – because a business is “open to the public” it is a “public matter” meaning a government matter – meaning that the state can order the business owner about. Such a justification for using state violence may satisfy the Emperor Diocletian (it did) – but it should not satisfy someone who does not proto totalitarianism – which is what the Roman Empire under Diocletian and his successors fell into.
“Anti discrimination laws” are just as wrong as “Jim Crow laws” – and for the same reason, they tell private people who they must or must not trade with or employ. The use of violence (state threats or the threats of private criminals) should have no place in who someone chooses to trade with or employ – this is Freedom of Association which must logically include the freedom NOT to associate.
I was deeply shocked to hear that Gary Johnson (the former Governor of New Mexico – who is trying to become the Libertarian nominee for President of the United States) supports a Jewish baker being FORCED to bake cakes for Nazi events (and supports Christians being FORCED to bake cakes for “Gay Marriage” ceremonies).
To support making people slaves (working under the threats of the state – or of private criminals) shows that Mr Gary Johnson has not got a clue what the word “liberty” means.
By the way Nicholas (Excentrality!) Gray – have you heard of the novel “Facial Justice” (yes FACIAL justice)?
It is interesting that in most of the academic examinations of the novelist Hartley’s work “Facial Justice” is presented as a “satire about the medical profession” – it is, of course, nothing of the kind. It is a satire against the absurd nonsense that “Social Justice” is.
Novelists who oppose the evil nonsense that is “Social Justice” either have their work forgotten (if one checks the best seller lists for the 19th and 20th centuries one finds many writers who do not appear on university literature reading lists – conservative writers tend to get shoved down the Memory Hole by the children of Plato, the academics).
Politicians also feel a strange need to support “Social Justice” (perhaps because of what they were taught at school and university – after all one does not tend to hear ordinary people talking about “Social Justice”) – even if, like Mr David Cameron and Mr George Osborne they are people of inherited wealth whom “Social Justice” would destroy.
No doubt they (“Progressive Conservatives” – a contradiction in terms) also believe in “anti discrimination” doctrine, even though it means state violence being used against people (enslaving them) who do not desire to bake cakes for red haired people, or whatever.
No, Paul, I haven’t. Who wrote it?
Facial Justice, by L.P. Hartley.
Paul Joseph Watson. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwYN7l–3oY&nohtml5=False
If, as Paul Marks states above, “… in most of the academic examinations of the novelist Hartley’s work ‘Facial Justice’ is presented as a “satire about the medical profession” …”, that would reveal strong and (I think) _unconscious_ (jn this case) pro-SWJ bias in this academics (so what else is new 🙂 ). I doubt anyone could read ‘Facial Justice’ and _consciously_ miss the point so badly, or even think ‘satire on doctors’ could fool any other reader of it. The ideology of the successor state that the heroine rebels against is explicitly all about Envy, and the state’s duty to manage people so as to eliminate all possible causes of ‘Bad E’ while tolerating ‘Good E’.
I could believe it is little read and reviewed; it’s not the greatest work of either science fiction or the novelist L.P. Hartley (though perhaps more readable/less unreadable to most here than his other stuff except ‘The Go-Between’). As his sole (IIRC) work of SF, and very unlike his standard “child who grows into miserable adult after traumatic event’ stuff (well written in the Go-Between, less well in his many repeats of the theme), I could also believe it gets ignored through being hard to pidgeon-hole.
BTW I’d have to agree with Paul that Gary Johnston seems anything but libertarian in his views. He might take voters from Sanders-supporters (and deserve them), but I’d expect any inclination that a genuine libertarian (of the “Never Trump/Ted/Whoever’ type) might have to switch to Gary would be sensibly moderated by reading the article the post links to.
Lee and Niall,
Very well. When I get back to where the local library keeps the current Guru of Lost Souls, a.k.a. the git Rawls, I will RE-read the offending chapter, as I will admit that there is at least a theoretical possibility (however unlikely) that I got it wrong. If I get up the interest and the gumption, that is. I mean there is a huge stack of books that I mean to re-read, in some cases for the third or fourth time, because I actually enjoyed them before. And that’s before we even get to the stack holding up the ceiling that is labelled “Read at Once.”
Johnson. I have not followed Gov. Johnson, I confess, because the Libertarian candidates always seem so hopeless and it has seemed important to vote meaningfully against Clinton/Gore/Obama/Shrill-‘n’-Bernie; but I had heard that he was not quite the Jesus-come-to-save-us sort of libertarian that one seeks in a libertarian. I’ll have to watch that debate that Stossel was supposed to put on, featuring Johnson and some other dude — if he did put it on, and if it’s on UT. And read Mr. Tucker’s piece *blush*.
Julie, Stossel did conduct two hours (broadcast in two separate one-hour segments a week apart) of debate among the three leading LP candidate wannabes (Gary Johnson, John McAfee and Austin Peterson). I’ve taped both, but truthfully haven’t watched them yet. I plan to do so soon, however.
FWIW, Johnson won the LP nomination four years ago because he is reasonably libertarian in outlook (far from perfect, but that describes most of us, too), and he doesn’t come across as certifiably crazy. Moreover, he is that rare bird in libertarian circles: a successful politician. And if he isn’t a hard-core libertarian, at least he isn’t an outright pretender like Bob Barr (the 2008 nominee). He is the presumptive nominee for now, but won’t necessarily win it; McAfee certainly has an outside chance, and Peterson might, too.
Ah! I see the subject of the posting arose specifically in the Stossel debate. Very good.
O/T here, but very interesting, is the link to a column for FEE by Andrew Bernstein on examples of the way Negroes and part-Negroes were able to vitiate racism against Negroes, mostly in the 19th century, in places where government kept its hands to itself, at least as regards race, and allowed the free market to work unmolested. Very interesting piece, full of history that I didn’t know. For instance, Mr. Bernstein tells us that Benjamin Banneker was so well-endowed with smarts, as well as a photographic memory, that he ended up on Thomas Jefferson’s team assigned to plan Washington, D.C; Mr. Jefferson was so impressed by Mr. Banneker’s intellect that he had been forced to change his former opinion that Negroes were inferior as a race in that regard.
https://fee.org/articles/black-innovators-and-entrepreneurs-under-capitalism/
Thanks for the info, Laird — both items. :>))
I will have a look at the Toob.
John Rawls is old hat – the SJWs have moved on since the 1950’s:
Watkins, Don; Brook, Yaron. Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality.
Julie – I can’t imagine that it would be a worthwhile use of your time to re-read Rawls. Even once is once too many. It really only takes hearing the punchline “y’all would choose this; because I say so” to know that the rest is a waste of effort.
Thank you, Lee. Then I will consider that I am “mitigated out” of the remedial requirement. *Huge private sigh of relief*
I do think your bottom line pretty much says it all. :>)
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“Mitigated out of ____”: Entering students at U. of Chicago were all given placement exams before classes began. If you needed more catch-up courses than there was time for, you were excused from taking the ones in which you’d scored highest. This was known as “mitigation.”
Laird, I am part way through the video. One or two things said so far (by whomever) I can agree with, but most are fairly cringeworthy. Just now I have had to break (at 18’29”) to inform you all that per G. Johnson, in answer to the question “What would you do about ISIS?”: “intel, intel, intel,” and then:
What planet does this guy live on? !!! He shot himself in the foot for real with that last remark, which is a flat statement. And even if it’s not ISIS on the loose in those two unfortunate jurisdictions, they’ve both had attacks — though I can’t say China’s had it’s fair share.
However, I’d also note that those particular states are not terribly noteworthy for their concern over protecting the libertarian rights of their people. Which is the subtext here: security vs. privacy, in particular.
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Full show, starting with ~30 raucous seconds of introductory screeching of Jackasses & Heffalumps:
U-Toob, period, com, then /watch?v=QQPWiCgAjDo&nohtml5=False&spfreload=10
Correction, that wasn’t Mr. Johnson, it was Mr. McAfee. I really do apologize, everyone.