This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
He Gets Us, my
lord and saviorfavorite blogger Scott Alexander has written a piece about love and libertyScott is somewhat famously (formerly?) not a libertarian. Reading a piece by someone that understands my base impulse and aversion to state power was very refreshing. I feel like I have to bury that emotion deep down to have discussions with most of the people around me. The revulsion you might feel about someone proposing a government enforced redistribution of the benefits of beauty, is something I feel about most redistribution schemes. The revulsion you might feel about a government licensing scheme for dating is the revulsion I feel towards nearly all government licensing schemes (I only say nearly all, because I leave myself room to be surprised in the future, not because I can think of an exception in the moment).
As a libertarian I tend to end up arguing with everyone (even fellow libertarians). In the last few years the most important argument I keep having with the left is about the nature of corporations and the shared marketplace. I think money is the one value nearly everyone shares, so making it the center piece and main value of the market allows the maximum number of people to participate in it. Once they have their money, they can take it out and go spend it on other things they value (and being able to spend it is why so many people value money!). I think DEI initiatives, environmentalism, certain parts of the labor movement, and social justice have been trying to undermine this for many years. I also don't think too many people on this forum disagree with me there.
No, as the always arguing libertarian, my disagreement with the right is on the topic of nationalism and immigration. Due to the recent wipe I lost one of the posts where I laid out some of my specific disagreements with nationalism. I have a much longer history on this forum of arguing in favor of immigration. Usually only for a day at most, and only a few responses deep, since I encounter a great deal of disagreement. I don't think I have ever laid out an "ick factor" argument about immigration, or in other words why immigration restrictions kind of disgust me. Mostly, I don't think it convinces anyone, but as Scott's article points out it is as close as possible to the true reason why I support open immigration and open borders. And in the future if anyone ever bothers to say "you want immigration for bad reason X" I can refer back to this post, and say "no these are my motivations".
I'll choose my own friends, thank you very much.
Growing up you might remember a time when you had friends not because of who you liked, but because of who your parents liked. Before age 7 it felt pretty common. Most of the time this was ok for me. I didn't have strong preferences for the kind of people I wanted to be around, and I was at the whim of whatever my parents wanted to do anyways. Having a kid to play with at least seemed better than just being in a kidless situation while they hung out with adults. But I specifically remember one time when it was not ok. One of my mom's best friend's from college had two boys, nearly matching in age with myself and my older brother. One of those boys who was a year older than me had a kind of roughness in play that I always hated. If we wrestled it was never really as friendly as it was with other boys. He'd distract me and steal my halloween candy. He'd show me "fun" like how it felt to have your wrist skin twisted in opposite directions. None of these sound too bad in retrospect, but at the time he was literally the worst person I knew. My dad was drunk one time, saw the kid picking on me a little too much and spanked the kid. The parents didn't like that, they didn't believe in spanking, and that kind of ended the friendship between the moms. I assume other people have their own sorts of "forced friendship" stories.
I am lucky to not have many of the opposite types of stories of "forced non-friendship". Where some authority figure in your life doesn't like one of your friends for a reason that you don't care about. Maybe that friend's parents aren't rich, or aren't the right color, or they where in the wrong neighborhood. I think I would have rebelled mightily against this, and sometimes when I got a whiff of my parents doing it for my own good with bad friends, it would sometimes make me want to interact with those people more.
In general humans are social creatures and we like to make our social groups as much as possible. We like to pick our allies and close friends, and we like to exclude those we don't get along with. This is the equivalent of "dating" to me. So when people come in and intrude and insist that I must be friends and allies with some set of people, and enemies with another I feel reactively disgusted with their impositions.
The Policy Implications of choosing your own friends.
Some of the anti-immigration people reading this have already picked up on the first story and shouted "aha! you agree with us, I don't want to be forced to associate with immigrants, but that's exactly what progressives are doing with open borders". To some extent, I sympathize, I really do. When every media property must have a diverse cast, when every college insists on affirmative action, and when government positions at the very top are filled based on race and gender. It certainly feels like an example of some of the forced social interactions I hated as a kid. I like to tell progressives to stop doing that, and I do! Stop affirmative action, stop race based quotas, they are bad for just about everyone involved (they are often only good for the charlatans that gain money and influence by peddling race politics).
But doing the opposite of a bad thing, doesn't make that a good thing. The progressives say you must interact and be friends with these people, but the nationalists say you must not interact or be with these people. I chafe at both rules, or the single rule of "I get to decide your friends". Since we cannot have unlimited friendships, and we don't have unlimited options, the rules are two sides of the same coin.
And for all their many advantages, in this one area the progressives are often at a disadvantage. Because enforcing friendships is actually incredibly difficult, and forbidding them is easy. Progressives might want you to be nice to immigrants, but that process can be sandbagged and slowed down at all levels (if you don't think this is true, then I guarantee that you do not know anyone who has tried to legally remain in the united states. It is a pain in the ass.)
The nationalists have had much more success in enforcing non-interaction. Physically getting into the US and other counties has only gotten easier in recent times, simply re-enforcing natural barriers was one of the main ways of forbidding entry in the past. But lately the US government has started to forbid interaction with the people that are already here. E-verify systems for workplaces have popped up everywhere, and e-verify for renting has also started to pop up in some places (its rarely required by law currently, but I'm an eternal pessimist about the expansion of government powers).
E-verify is one of the largest impositions on the market in recent times. DEI rarely says "hire 100% [our favored people]", but e-verify says exactly that. It doesn't matter how much better a foreigner might be as an employee or a renter. You can't hire them. "Can I pay double the cost and pay two employees for the work of one just to satisfy you?" DEI says yes, e-verify says no. And I know e-verify isn't required everywhere for every job currently, but again I'm a pessimist about the expansion of government powers, and so far e-verify has only expanded in scope not shrunken.
Forget Americans for now, what do you make of Europe and their "infinite flood of sub-Saharan Africans and Arabs" (as opposed to Mexicans and Guatemalans) predicament? I'm a libertarian too, and I see it as something that obviously puts the existence of (Western) European civilization as such in peril. I think there's a problem with priorities here.
If self defense is illegal...
if carrying pointy objects of wrong shape, let alone firearms is illegal....
if freedom of association is outlawed...
if natives are heavily taxed, but foreigners are subsidized...
if you live in an anarcho-tyranny state and the "authorities" are happy to prosecute natives for violation of one of the arcane regulation clauses written down in one of the many tomes of legislation, but are terribly afraid to investigate, prosecute, sentence, let alone deport a Muslim foreigner for rape and plunder...
letting open borders be used as a weapon against you seems rather short-sighted, even if in a better world something as crude as building a wall and physically removing aliens from your country might be less practiced.
Right. If you and I share a house, I can't tell you who to be friends with but I can get pissed when you invite them home. And it seems fair to forbid you to bring guests without vetting when so many of them break things, pee on the furniture, and refuse to leave.
More options
Context Copy link
Sometimes government can really pile on the messes. They've certainly done similar things with medical care in the United States.
If they caused all the messes in the first place, should we really gonna trust them to fix the latest one?
Do you have a proposal how it should be fixed, then?
I can understand a position of a libertarian who argues that municipal fire brigade ought to be dismantled, and people should buy insurance of private fire-fighting companies: two alternative, realistic solutions are presented, and their respective pros and cons can be weighted.
Arguing against state enforcing border control on the grounds that they are going to mess it up is different, because without border control, the end result is no migration control at all (not much different from the mess-up). Unless you have a plan for private migration control.
More options
Context Copy link
Well, as I was saying - anarcho-tyranny.
Governments create a mess by deliberately not trying to fix it, while using its full capacity to "solve" certain problems that make the aforementioned mess worse. A more classical state, unlike anarcho-tyranny, would at least have borders in order. I think even the segment of the Right that likes to scowl at "lolberts" will concede that open borders would be more practical with some or all problems I listed in my first comment fixed. Anyway, what would you like to dispute? Unless you're saying that France/UK/Germany with migration policies of Poland would make the problem worse, I don't think we disagree about anything.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Are you in favor of open borders as a practical policy matter under our current political system which does include redistribution schemes, birthright citizenship, various employment regulations etc.? The libertarian case for open borders in a legitimate “libertarian state” makes sense to me as ultimate freedom of association, but in current year US it seems to have second-order effects that are detrimental to libertarianism given the voting tendencies of second-gen immigrants and the fact that they end up as beneficiaries of various redistribution schemes. Is it like an accelerationist point of view, where having actual de jure open borders (which seems unlikely to ever happen in reality) would quickly make redistribution schemes untenable? Or is it just that the moral/ideological importance of open borders supersedes the practical considerations for you?
Practical concerns make me more in favor of open immigration, not less in favor. The largest spending item on the federal budget is not welfare, its social security. And Social Security is a pyramid scheme paid for by young. Immigrants tend to be young and looking for work. "economic migrants" is for some reason a dirty word, when without them the federal government would be going insolvent much sooner. One of the largest forms of welfare currently and being pushed by progressives and liberals is free/cheap medical care. The people most in need of medical care are often old, so the native population, not immigrants.
Those two effects alone end up swamping all other fiscal concerns.
There is also good empirical work that voter support for welfare states tends to fall with racial and ethnic diversity. Progressives have realized this and torn out their hair in frustration over all the racism. I see the result and become far less concerned about immigration.
This is kind of what I’m getting at though- right now the status quo is that illegal immigrants have to traverse across Mexico, cross the border, and work jobs where they are paid under the table in shittier conditions than the government allows for its citizens. I and many others have problems with this, but this selects for these hardworking young people you’re referring to. I’m not sure if they end up paying into social security, but I know they don’t draw on it. So point taken there. The legal immigrants are often very smart and conscientious people who largely are a net financial benefit to the government.
But if we were to have de jure open borders, where the rights of citizenship are given to anyone who can scrounge up money for a plane ticket from around the world, you’re going to get a billion people and their old parents following them which would immediately cripple every social program and lead to massive crime and housing shortages. Do you disagree with this? If you’re suggesting some sort of permanent residency program where the immigrants are not ever given a path to citizenship or any entitlements like they have in the Middle East, I actually agree this could potentially work but I don’t consider that open borders, and I rarely see that proposal made explicit.
Regarding your last point about diversity decreasing support for welfare states, I would guess this is because the data is coming from western countries that went from being largely homogenous to having an immigrant underclass very quickly. The data also overwhelmingly shows that second-gen immigrants in the US and Europe vote for pro-welfare parties. This causes a larger share of the majority population to oppose welfare states, but if the previous majority becomes a minority I don’t know why we should expect the immigrants to stop voting for gibs
In general I think people should have the right to work and live anywhere they want. I don't believe voting, receiving government welfare, being a citizen etc is a right. So that is my conception of open borders. I don't really think of open borders as open citizenship for anyone or open welfare.
Does it count as voluntary as long as you're allowed to leave the club and its premises at any time for any reason?
With all of your stuff, sure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So would you only support open borders if we got rid of open welfare (and birthright citizenship) first?
It would be nice to have a 3-tier citizenship that looked something like:
Technically we have that now. But birthright citizenshp and amnesties mess up how well it works (of course with open borders there's no need for amnesties).
And that doesn't really answer the open welfare question. Would you support open borders before we get rid of open welfare, or would you willing to wait first because of the consequences of getting open borders without getting rid of it first? (And the same question for birthright citizenship).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wouldn't you be able to shoot down practically any other libertarian reform down on the basis of "Well, in a fully libertarian state this would work, but in ours...", too?
Yes, but if it's true then you could just take this as much a mark against gradual reform as a viable tactic. Liberal democrats often aren't very liberal or democratic when they're busy trying to do away with the king.
More options
Context Copy link
In some sense yes, I think “libertarianism” is not a viable political program in a democracy (or maybe at all). But for something like drug legalization which you mentioned below, a lot of the more mainstream arguments for this are that it actually reduces drug use, or makes it safer, or the cost-benefit of enforcement isn’t worth it etc. There’s plenty of arguments that even with our current political program it would be beneficial for various reasons, whether they are correct or not.
But for open borders- I don’t understand what is even meant by this when it is put forth as a policy. If the US were to pass a law tomorrow that literally anyone who wants to live here can show up and be entitled to the benefits of citizenship, we would immediately see millions of immigrants from poor countries around the world show up who are now entitled to welfare, food stamps, healthcare, housing and minimum wage which would become unsustainable immediately. We’re able to mostly handle high levels of illegal immigration now because these people are not entitled to government benefits or subject to minimum wage laws or other labor protections. When people argue for open borders as a policy- do they mean we maintain de jure immigration laws but just completely stop border enforcement and allow anyone who shows up to remain here as illegal immigrants not eligible for our entitlement programs?
More options
Context Copy link
Is he talking about a "fully libertarian state"? He brought up redistribution. You could have a full-on command economy without redistribution.
That's what I took "libertarian state" to mean.
Well, can you step me through it? How is a command economy without redistribution a "libertarian state"?
What I was trying to say is in an ideal libertarian state, where the government is just law/contract enforcement and a military or whatever, and does not otherwise redistribute money or interfere in much else - de jure open borders would at least be a possibility. Having actual, de jure, open borders in 2024 America would collapse the government relatively quickly if millions and millions of immigrants showed up and were given welfare, healthcare and other entitlements.
More options
Context Copy link
W-what? He mentioned "redistribution schemes, birthright citizenship, various employment regulations etc.?" - but that's besides the point, ie. that there are numerous other libertarian policies that one could presumably oppose on the basis of them happening in a country with redistribution schemes ("Can't legalize drugs since that creates drug addicts who live on state teat!" and so on).
I may have misunderstood what the "That's" was referring to, lol.
Right, but that's beside the point, i.e. are open borders combined with redistribution a good idea or not? If you want to agree with him re: open borders, and then pull the thread more to see if he's consistent, and/or show him other flaws with libertarianism, that's fair game. But not really saying anything, and just poking holes is pretty lame.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Open borders libertarianism is a modern instantiation of the adage "capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them".
Who wrote "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore" on the statue of Liberty? A jewish socialist. Democrats are keeping the border open for their own dark purposes, obviously not out of love for freedom.
Pretty much just paraphrasing our founder:
OG approved.
Why cut off the end of the quote?
There's a big laconic If there, one that doesn't apply to all nations or all religions equally, since they are not equally meritorious. At the time of that letter, the law of the land was this:
Yes, the infamous Free White Men of Good Character. That's who he was addressing, not Indians and Africans crossing half the world to be given free housing, food, communications, and travel, paid for by the sweat of the native American man.
That's the form I got the quote in. It doesn't change it though, this is the standard pro-immigration stance - ever hear people argue that we should prioritize indecent people known for their bad conduct?
Significantly, the 1790 Act placed no restrictions on immigration whatsoever, from white or nonwhite nations, which feels like the opportune chance to have done so if they wanted. Either way this is not a particular contrast with our late 19th century poet. A mostly white crowd is who Lazarus was addressing as well, writing during the era of mass European immigration. It is well known that Washington was himself a racial supremacist and I think it's good we've moved past his bad ideas (he himself felt that the slavery he profited from was immoral and hoped that it would be done away with). My point is that being welcoming to poor immigrants isn't some commie Jewish revisionism, it's been an attitude present in political tradition from the very start - many of our other founders expressed similar sentiments.
It absolutely does, especially since your source probably left it off deliberately to change the meaning, a meaning you repeated, a meaning not meant by G. Washington.
No, it placed no restrictions on immigration, just restrictions on citizenship, restrictions which I would like to see revived and reimplemented.
I mean no, not really, for the reason I described. If someone said "I want oppressed and persecuted people to immigrate here," which is a more natural interpretation?
"I want oppressed and persecuted people to immigrate here, and I want them to be moral people"
"I want oppressed and persecuted people to immigrate here, and I hope they're really bad"
Yes, that is what this conversation is about.
Sure I didn't ask.
"I want them to be immigrate and I want them to be moral" carries the connotation that enough of them aren't moral that you need to take that into consideration rather than just assuming the opposite. It doesn't just mean its literal words.
I mean, he could have made immigration law take morality into account but didn't, suggesting it wasn't really that important to him as a matter of policy. Is the claim "not everybody in the world is equally awesome" really relevant to anyone but Bryan Caplan? Few people genuinely imagine the entire earth should move into their country.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I wonder if he would have approved of current state America, with it's welfare state schemes and restrictions in the second and first amendment.
We had surprisingly robust state welfare in his time, and he lived through a period of far more extreme restrictions on the first amendment via the Sedition Act. I imagine things nowadays would be pretty unrecognizable for him, but I like to think he'd be proud that we built the richest and freest nation in the world.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You've been warned repeatedly about exactly this kind of low effort snarl without even attempting to justify your lazy generalizations. Given how recent your last ban was for this exact thing (and I'm pretty sure you got another warning which was purged during the rollback), this ban will be for a week.
More options
Context Copy link
Democrats love freedom actually.
Lame boo outgroup nonsense.
More options
Context Copy link
She wrote that when there were essentially no social services that immigrants could run up the bill for, and most of the immigrants were coming from faraway countries that they couldn't walk back to, giving them more reason to assimilate.
Immigrants through Ellis island assimilated at gun point, albeit mostly figuratively. Before the Great War there were large enclaves that mostly spoke German scattered throughout the country; the end of that was not voluntary. To say nothing of Italian, Jewish, etc immigration which was assimilated as much by force as by passage of time in a strange land, because plenty of Ellis Islanders did go back.
No doubt if Guatemalans were legally forced to assimilate they would do it. But to claim that Germans and Italians just wanted to be American is historically ignorant, because they maintained ethnic enclaves up until they were forced to stop, and didn’t use English as a first language until they were forced to.
At least from the surveys I've looked at it sounds like hispanic immigrants want to learn English, and they make their kids learn even when they themselves don't. This is from 2015 but:
I'm not sure how many other Europeans were really all that forced to integrate either. Even for Germans, while prejudice and discrimination against them was definitely very real in the WW1 era, iirc the laws against German language schools were struck down pretty quickly, and I'm not aware of similar rules on Italians, Poles, etc.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't really see what the big deal is?
You are upset that there are people who you would want to work with that you cannot work with? Like who? You need a specific plumber from Guatemala? What specific tasks need to be performed locally that it's impossible to find somebody local to perform equivalent work?
Professionals have been working remotely for a few decades now, you could literally manage a company with somebody without ever seeing them face to face if you wanted. Unless they're in Russia and some other countries that non-nationalist governments have decided to isolate from financial services, what's the issue?
If sharing a physical location with these people is so important for you, have you considered moving? Surely libertarians could get together, pool some money and figure out a way to make their border-free utopia a reality.
This is often the same thing I hear progressives say about diverse representation in media. "Whats the big deal? Can you not handle seeing a gay or lesbian couple and a few extra black actors."
I think people on this forum rightly point out, that its the principle of it. Once you grant them the principle of it then it is increasingly hard to push back. This might feel new to conservatives, as if progressives suddenly started springing this dirty trap on them in the last decade or two. Where originally progressives just said "lets allow gay marriage" and now they say "whats wrong with teaching your daughters that they are actually just men?" But libertarians are very familiar with slippery slopes. Its one slippery slope after another for just about every government on earth and for just about every policy they ever enact. Rolling back even unpopular government policies is like pulling teeth.
So yes, let me hire the useless plumber from Guatemala, and you not allowing me to is stepping on my liberty.
Seasteaders have been working on it. I suspect the first few will get blown up, invaded, and smeared if they go and do anything too libertarian.
Well I believe that progs are wrong on that, because <20% of the Western population allegedly being under-represented in media (I highly doubt it) does not really matter to the other 80%. Whatever public money goes into making movies (from the public education provided to the workers to state subventions) should surely go toward satisfying at least 80% of taxpayers, not the 1% LGBTQ lobby or whichever flavor-of-the-week. To my limited knowledge, nobody is really preventing anyone from making movies with diverse representation. There's plenty of 'diverse' movies being made, by Nollywood for example. Their 'What's the big deal?' should apply to them, who are challenging the status quo of adequately providing the majority of viewers what they want to see. Likewise, it appears to me that the onus would be on you to provide justification for getting rid of something most people historically liked, borders.
I still don't really see what the issue is for you, as if you really cared about having some random person immigrate to the US, you could spend a million dollars or less and get them on an investor visa.
The problem I see with your 'open-borders' proposition is that it has a huge cost. Satisfying 'your principle' would burden tremendously most people in the country you live in. I don't know if anybody else expressed that to you yet. In the same manner that you could theoretically want to dump heavy metals in the local river because that's just how you like it. It's your freedom to enjoy your 'seasoned' river. And then all that's left for everybody else who perhaps drinks out of that water is to install costly equipment to remove the seasoning you graciously provided at no cost to them.
How do you 'invade' an open-border territory? I have my doubt that these libertarians actually want open-borders. A billionaire like Musk says he wants free-speech on his platform that is until somebody posts the coordinates of his private jet. Would the seasteaders provide refuge to Hamas, Houthis, Somalian pirates... ?
While democracy is already the rule of the rich (with extra-steps of buying major media and nudging voters that they should give legitimacy to your policies) -here is a recent example at the Superbowl.- libertarianism appears to me to be straight-up 'let people wealthier than me do whatever they want'.
I'm not against freedom of association. I wish I had it. But I don't think destroying the country I live in by opening its borders is going to get me that in the short-term. Borders are nice to have, as long as you are the ones in control of them. And that used to be the point of nationalism. Now you want a bunch of (very) rich dudes to control your country's borders, but that's not you.
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, so long as, if the useless plumber from Guatemala ends up flooding your house, you don't go running to the courts under laws passed by a government that you have been calling restrictive looking for redress. Live by the sword, die by the sword; you don't get to say "these restrictions are trampling on my liberty" and "there should be restrictions on unqualified people causing damage". You want to take the chance on the Guatemalan plumber? The tree of liberty is watered by the blood of patriots? This is your natural born right? Fine. But you take the chance that he's competent, and if he's incompetent, you eat the bill for the damage. Nobody is treading on your rights then.
You seem to be equating immigration status with professional competency and I'm not sure why. It's reasonable to assume that a licensed plumber is more competent than an unlicensed plumber, but are Guatemalan-born plumbers (licensed or not) less competent than American-born plumbers?
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, I am very much against licensing restrictions. And No, I am not waving my right to sue people for fraud.
Then you can't have both. If you want unregulated business activity, and no restrictions on who can set up to be a plumber, dentist or the like, you don't get to turn around and say "this person with no credentials who set up out of the back of their van deceived me as to their capability!" You pays your money and you takes your chance. If you don't want fraud, you need restrictions on fraud which brings in law which brings in some element of government to make laws. If anyone can set up as a tradesman without the relevant licensing body of their profession having any say, then you get what you pay for, just like the days of the snake oil nostrums before the FDA.
More options
Context Copy link
You sue and then what? How do you collect? What's to stop that plumber from just running away somewhere else? Is somebody going to barricade the roads, stop him at the airport, seize his assets?
Meh then I suppose I help my community chase out a fraud.
What would you call an organization dedicated to 'chasing out frauds' in the community? Perhaps by providing some kind of token to authenticate that the bearer possesses the skills they represent themselves as possessing?
Definitely not "government" or any of it's licensing bodies, because it does more than chaseout frauds, and their tokens do more than authenticate, they prevent anyone from hiring a person, even if they are aware he was not given the token.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
?
Guatemalan tradesman are pretty normal in America. As far as I know there is no constituency of people demanding government retribution for Mayan house-flooding practices.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Scott’s article lists ways we could regulate love but don’t, including:
We have this, it’s called marriage. Historically the community has regulated love quite closely, and its recent failure to do so has led to plummeting birth rates, MeToo, and record levels of celibacy.
It is also the case that Scott is a rich man with a literal harem. As he says himself:
People who do well under the current system want to keep it. Incels and people whose wages were driven down by cheap labour don't, for obvious reasons.
EDIT: A number of people commented saying that Scott had given up the polyamory post-marriage. Quote from Highlights From the Comments on Polyamory:
What? I think people have been taking the poly angle a little too liberally here; he got legally married and immediately had kids, that's not Bay Area poly paradise fuck sixteen people every week we don't normatively impose gender or orientation here sign up to the list for my birthday gangbang practice. Besides, I feel uncomfortable discussing his personal life like this, but I don't think he has a harem or anything close to it (unless you count all the followers of the Real Caliph as being his intellectual groupies, in which case I admit the soft impeachment).
More options
Context Copy link
Big, if true.
More options
Context Copy link
I suppose historic attitudes on this were different, it's odd that has become one of the holdouts on government intervention.
And I don't feel that community regulation is equivalent to government regulation.
On the basis of distance from you, or the ability to send you to prison, or something else? Your post talks about disliking having your friends chosen for you by your parents and goes on to discuss the government, so I assumed you saw them both as being somewhat similar.
Could you add more detail? Or point to a post where you’ve discussed this?
I think you can't have neither, and at worst you'll have both. And they do have many different characteristics.
I made the comparison mostly to give some sense to people of how it feels. I picked the most relatable experience I could think of. Not the most similar comparison.
Detail on what specifically?
Thanks, I get where you're coming from now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How does he have a literal harem? As far as I recall, he was in a polycule with Ozy and one other person. Is there some more information about his relationships I'm not aware of?
He’s married, and has a secondary on the side.
Wait, who is the secondary? My understanding is that the polycule was a thing of the past.
I think it came up at some point in the last six months of Astral Codex but I had a quick scan and didn't see it. I still think it's true but take with a pinch of salt.
EDIT: he mentioned it again in an article this week. See parent comment.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If we're going to have this whole discussion about regulation, it is perhaps worth noting that for many, this would have been understood to be a contradiction or at least a betrayal - the affair at best is an undermining or a betrayal of the marriage, or at worst, is a sign that he isn't validly married at all.
(Traditionally, valid marriage requires intent - to marry someone, both you and they must agree to marry each other, freely, with full knowledge of what marriage is. Given that Scott and presumably his partner did not intend sexual fidelity to one another when they said their vows, their vows are deficient - they were not made with correct understanding of what marriage is, nor with the intent to constitute a marriage properly understood. Ergo he is not married as such. This is still the formal position of e.g. the Catholic Church.)
At any rate, yes, I think it is probably true to say that Scott's situation is highly atypical, and not a good one to generalise from. Does he feel subjectively happy? No idea. But the rules that govern his relationships are weird, and would not work for all or most.
I feel like this whole Bay Area rationalist scene is a group that - and I don't mean this pejoratively, though I realise it may sound like this - would benefit from acknowledging their own freakiness. They are a small, highly-selected group of weirdos. They are bizarre. They should not generalise from themselves to humanity. This is the case for most small highly-selected groups, and it is always worth remembering. Most people are not like you.
We don’t say “freakiness” we say “outlier” or “tail of the Bell curve” or “unrepresentative” or “three standard deviations out”.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As sweet as Scott is being, I doubt his wife is ‘out of his league’ in looks or any other way. And he doesn’t have a ‘harem’, he’s just Bay Area Poly, and I doubt that he’s hugely more popular with the ladies than his wife is with men.
He’s being romantic of course. As for having a ‘harem’, I put it that way
because I seethe with jealousyfor dramatic effect, but AFAIK he is in a long-term relationship with a secondary partner along with the wife and I think that counts.But I do note that he stopped writing searing articles about the plight of awkward young men not long after his blog blew up in popularity. And I do kind of resent him for writing a cheerful paean to free-for-all love now that he’s got what he personally wanted.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You have to wonder if that is why the kid was so rough, he knew he'd get away with it and at most incur "Now, Johnny, that wasn't very nice" from mom and dad.
Though the "spanking is child abuse!" set would be horrified by that. It's a tricky balance to get right; sometimes kids do need a swat on the behind at the right time to steer them off the track of being little bullies. But that's not an excuse for beating kids because you're a terrible parent, and sometimes there's really something psychologically wrong with the kid that needs professional intervention, not just a good smack.
With two kids of my own now I get the tricky balance. I was not really ever spanked, mostly cuz you didn't need to spank me to punish me. You could tell me I did something bad or wrong and I would feel terrible. My brother apparently laughed at my parents when they spanked him. They found it far more effective to take away the toys he liked.
So there are people in this world like you who do not necessarily need violence to stay in line, and then there are people who do. You have personal experience of this.
I imagine that there are millions of the 2nd kind (violence-needing), and that you would get a lot of them in an open-border territory. And the more of those you would get, the less likely you would be to attract the 1st kind.
What's your plan?
None of the stories here imply violence as a solution. It was messing me up. It was ineffective on my brother. And the solution to the parent's friend kid was ultimately separation. The spanking merely brought about that separation, its unclear if the spanking would have worked long term.
But yes, I agree some people need violence to stay in line. Nothing else will really work. They have short time horizons, low to no empathy, or some form of psychopathy. And there are even some people where I think even extreme violence will not work.
Me? I'm not that smart. I like the work of David and Pattri Friedman on these types of problems. I also think the impulse to structure societies into some perfect form is a statist impulse, and something I try to avoid. I don't know if there is a perfect solution. I do feel pretty certain that the current solution is not very good for a multitude of reasons. And those reasons are my entire belief set and political experience for the last two decades, so not a short list or something I've not thought about a lot. It just feels too long to go into here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Libertarianism is incompatible with democracy. I think this is the obvious realization that people like Hoppe had.
Libertarianism + democracy is the end of libertarianism for two primary reasons.
The first is that pretty much only (some) Anglos like libertarianism; the Swiss have their guns and direct democracy but they also call the police if you play music after 9pm or use the wrong recycling bin. Because Anglos have tended to establish the world’s wealthier major states, mass immigration to them if open borders should exist is inevitable. These other peoples are unlikely to have a particularly great fondness for libertarianism, and so will slowly dismantle it as soon as they get the vote (just as happened, to some extent, in the US from the 19th century onwards). You could limit citizenship to only descendants of some core population, but that in turn both eventually ends ‘democracy’ (certainly in the popular modern sense) and creates a huge resentful underclass prone to supporting upheaval, as happened in Liberia.
The second reason is that even without mass immigration libertarianism trends towards high degrees of inequality and thus creates a lot of ‘losers’ drawn to redistributive movements hostile to libertarian ideas. Unlike the capitalist welfare state and feudalism, both of which involve extensive patronage economies, libertarianism leaves the rich fundamentally exposed. The result is an unstable, high inequality, Latin American style political economy, in which rich libertarians routinely race off against socialists in both democratic competition and (low and high intensity) military conflicts that create huge instability and economic deadweight that stunts growth and productivity and often manifests itself as extreme corruption and high levels of violent crime.
“Libertarianism” / “classical liberalism” is a thought experiment, the outcome of which is rationally that the long-term best functioning societies typically involve elites that grant some receptivity to public opinion but do not chain themselves to it. Call it managed democracy, Venetian oligarchy, ‘Singapore style autocracy’ or whatever you want. (Democracy is political incelism etc etc). Even if it worked it would be a poor idea; one should consider the deeply tragic and deleterious effects of a lack of strong (compulsive) guidance on the underclass, as has been the case since the 1960s and which is the product of “social liberalism” ie social libertarianism.
The biggest issue with Libertarianism actually wielding power is that they cannot control the keys to power in a society. Any attempt by them to actually wield the keys to power leads to dilution of the ideals of the ideology itself, as by its very nature it is about minimising the cost of government and therefore the 'treasure' that anyone in power can use to bring others to their side. Conversely, the stronger and more powerful government already is, the greater the number of people that would be actively opposed to the ideology as they stand to lose considerable power and wealth in that kind of power transition.
Socialism has the Soviet problem along with being unable to counter the efficient market theory of economics; but Libertarianism has the Somalia social problems and 'freedom', also bears. The issue with an unregulated society in general is that it becomes extremely difficult to deal with bad actors of all types, a kind of societal distributed gish gallop, whereby what 'can be done in civil society' is overwhelmed by the outcomes already burnt into institutional memory like so many Chesterton's fences. We not remember lead laced tin cans, and snake oil salesmen, but I'm sure the FDA hasn't forgotten the reason for its existence.
Let’s not bring up the FDA as a good example when it’s a pretty clear case of failing the cost-benefit analysis test due to how much it impedes progress and raises costs.
Better to simply assign liability to punish and deter bad actors than erect a giant misaligned bureaucracy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
One of Alex Nowrasteh's hobby horses is that we don't have a ton of evidence this is true, partially because it doesn't just matter how immigrants vote; it matters how the native population changes their own votes in response to immigration. America's government stayed unrecognizably small during our largest period of mass immigration in the 19th century. The period of 1921 to 1968 when America had its most restrictive immigration laws (and was 90%+ white and building a common national identity) also had the largest expansions of the government and the welfare state: the Great Society and the New Deal. After we reopened our borders government spending and union participation went back down, whether because xenophobic people don't like welfare going to foreigners, or language barriers make unionization harder, or maybe they're not related at all - point is more government doesn't necessarily follow from more immigrants.
Isn't the obvious objection here that during the first period, citizenship and power in institutions mostly rested with WASPs and similar demographics while in the second one, although immigration had been restricted, now a large share of the native born population consisted of (descendants of) Italians, Irish etc., i.e. ethnic groups that down to the present day have markedly different attitudes towards redistribution or even things like free speech in comparison to English- or German-Americans?
Unless the hope is that quasi-accidental effects like 'diversity reduces societal cohesion -> less unions form -> unions can't interfere with growth' outweigh this, I'd wager that continually adding more people who come from countries that practice more distribution and, when asked in surveys like the GSS, explicitly say that the government should intervene more and reduce income inequality, will in fact eventually result in a society that redistributes more and values economic freedom less.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting you or you meant spending coming back down from the highs of WWII, this claim doesn't seem true, whether for overall spending or social spending in particular, both of which have a strong upward trend starting in the early 20th century.
I've seen people try to track with data that various European groups have consistent attitudes on policy over time, but I feel like it's pretty hard to square with how things actually worked in practice. Those same ethnic groups that supported the New Deal democrat party also supported the Democrats when they were the extreme laissez faire, anti-interventionist party, while the WASP-dominant Republicans were much more pro-intervention. I think an easier explanation is just that immigrants probably cluster around the pro-immigration party. The bulk of Irish and German immigration happened in the mid nineteenth century, but it wasn't till the better part of a century later than they (and southern whites and many other native demographics) were sold on more statist policies, so it's hard to draw a straight line from their entry into America towards larger redistribution.
This was the OP's wager as well and it's not unreasonable. But I don't think it's a claim we see much demonstrated in our own long history of mass immigration. Also worth remembering that immigrants are not perfectly representative of their own countries. The kind of person who crosses an ocean or a desert to start life all over is gonna be a little unique.
You're right, I overstated his actual claim, which was that the rate of growth of spending as a percent of GDP slowed.
From the Civil War till WW1, the heyday of mass immigration, federal expenditures as a percent of GDP stay barely above 0% and even fell over time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem the anti-democracy crowd have is that Libertarianism is incompatible with any other alternative, too. It's always in the interest of those with power to limit the liberty of someone. This is why non-anarchist libertarians tend to like governments of 'limited and enumerated powers, with checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power in one branch'.
This is why I don't consider myself officially a Libertarian despite some fairly strong leanings in that direction. A handful of monopolistic megacorp/cartels using economic power to suppress competition isn't that much different from a handful of government bureaucrats doing that same with laws. Better to have some regulations even if they restrict the markets as first-order effects as long as they result in more free markets on the second and higher orders. And also to solve obvious game-theoretic issues like externalities and coordination problems.
But my ideal government would probably take a Libertarian minimalist government as a template and then patch the bugs until you end up 10-20% of the way towards what we currently have.
Generally I agree with you here but I will say this bit has basically never actually happened in the US, though it is frequently claimed and used to justify regulations that do hurt competition:
Actual monopolies and cartels have long been illegal, so definitions have to shift to something approximating “big company regulators/politicians don’t like.” The consumer welfare standard is a pretty darn good one.
Yeah, we definitely need to move in a more libertarian direction than we are now. It's just that an awful lot of Libertarians claim things like "we need to remove literally all regulations", and I'm like "no, the anti-monopoly, anti-cartel ones are pretty good and we should keep those while we strip out the bad ones."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ah yes, I'm not really a fan of democracy. But arguably any form of government is the end of libertarianism. Dictatorships can obviously be bad for libertarianism, but also some of the best examples of libertarian experiments are from dictators peacefully surrendering power. Oligarchies can become stagnant and instead of choosing to support vibrant market competition can decide to crush it in order to maintain their own power.
Libertarianism is when power is not exercised through governments and force, or when it is at least minimally exercised. The alternative avenues of exercising power are through persuasion/ideas, wealth, and social pressures. The three modes of government dictatorship, oligarchy, and democracy all line up with one of these methods taken to an extreme. They usually use government and force to reach into the areas where they are not as strong. Athens (democracy) killed Socrates (persuasion), and voted themselves the (wealth) of other. Feudal systems (Oligarchy) demanded loyalty from a warrior class (persuasion), and cheap labor from a peasant class kept down by religion and their peers (social pressures).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My understanding is that E-verify isn't changing any law; it's simply an enforcement mechanism for existing laws. While not enforcing a bad law may be better than enforcing it... it's still a bad situation. For employment of undocumented workers, the legal grey area means they get underpaid and poor work conditions because they don't have the legal recourse of reporting their employer for abuses. I think pushing for E-verify is about trying to corner the anti-immigration politicians into defining some official concept of a work visa so we don't have the current nonsense of de-facto work visas without labor laws. The actual result seems to be a complete lack of action on immigration because a compromise can't be reached but no one likes the status quo either.
More options
Context Copy link
I've always thought libertarian support for open borders was a pretty natural extension of their skepticism of government generally. The government is incompetent to run businesses. The government is incompetent to run society. But the government is competent to decide who should be allowed to enter a certain geographic area and under what conditions? Seems implausible.
Keep in mind that voter sentiment has often wanted far less immigration than the government has allowed.
In the US, government incompetence on border control results in something closer to open borders, not closed ones.
Plenty of libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists and desire some level of state control of our borders.
More options
Context Copy link
I consider this a good practical argument, and specifically something I have said before.
More options
Context Copy link
"It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state" -- Milton Friedman
We have a welfare state now. Not just the obvious transfer payments, but highly progressive taxation along with government services provided evenly or even disproportionately to the poor.
That's a problem with a welfare state, not a problem with open borders.
Why does the arrow only go one way in your equation?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, yea. Lots of libertarians are also anti-welfare state. Following from similar principles of government incompetence.
Yes. And after they entirely abolish the welfare state I'll be open to considering an increase in immigration levels.
More options
Context Copy link
Given, however, that we're stuck with the welfare state, it makes sense for a libertarian to oppose a move to open borders.
Or even better, support open borders because the inconsistency means one of them will have to collapse, and since you're supporting open borders the welfare state will be the one that ends up shattered.
But they'll impose ruinous confiscatory taxes on people like me before the welfare state collapses.
This is my problem with accelerationism. I suppose it could "work" for some understanding of "working". But it has a decent chance of also breaking the mechanisms that allow me to easily obtain food, live in a society that doesn't routinely engage in horrific mass slaughters, etc.
More options
Context Copy link
The inconsistency, my
tiresomeburdensome friend, means the country will eventually collapse. This will indeed collapse the welfare state, and borders will be a matter for the various successor states. But nothing so clean as a collapse of the welfare state leading to more freedom; instead, we'll get greater and greater authoritarianism and redistribution until the debt finally comes due.More options
Context Copy link
There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.
And more importantly, my children live here. And hopefully, my children’s children.
More options
Context Copy link
The welfare state will eventually collapse of its own accord, and it won’t be pretty when it does. All open borders accomplishes is hastening that collapse and making things worse in the meantime. As Trump said, Mexico (et al.) aren’t sending their best.
I would hazard a guess that illegal immigration selects mostly for the best, hardest working, and most ambitious members of the working class, even if lots of criminals and randos get swept up along with.
Maybe my small sample size is skewed. But I would say that the illegals I’ve known who came here a couple of decades or more ago are hard-working, ambitious, and respectable. The second generation is a mixed bag: some are model citizens (including one whom I greatly respect), but far too many are net negatives to society, content to commit petty crimes, soak up government handouts, and, especially among the women, jump on the “we need compensation for putting up with this racist and sexist American society” bandwagon. I don’t know if that’s due to regression to the mean, poor cultural influences, or some other factor, but it’s a pattern I’ve noticed. In addition, more recent illegal immigrants haven’t really impressed me. Again, though, my sample is small and may be skewed. Considering your location and general line of work, I’m sure you interact with far more illegals than I do.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Can you conceive a scenario where unrestricted immigration could lead to severe problems?
Personally, I’m a law and order libertarian. America’s past success with immigration at scale is not guaranteed to continue.
Yes, I can also conceive and witness problems caused by unregulated relationships. Does it change my position? Not really an inch on either issue.
Do you think a crisis of legitimacy in the current socio-political system is a plausible outcome of unrestrained mass immigration?
If so, do you see such a crisis as a good thing, or do you think such a crisis is unlikely or easily-avoided?
More options
Context Copy link
Are you an anarcho-capitalist?
“Relationships” in the personal sense and the issues of immigration, including citizenship, are not really the same. In a better world, the whole world would be open borders (enforced by the one world government, of course) and the lamb would lay down next to the lion.
It’s not about the government being competent at it. Competent compared to what? It’s that it’s a situation where there’s no better alternative, similar to the related issue of national defense.
But then I’m a (bad) libertarian who thinks seat belt laws are justified on utilitarian grounds.
Eh, if you push me I suppose I am an anarcho-capitalist. I'm happy with small marginal movements in a libertarian direction, and the intellectual arguing and posturing within the liberty movement is supremely unhelpful.
How much are they the same vs not the same? I think they are similar enough to give people a sense of how I feel about the issue. Even if as I said above I don't think it's the most convincing way to argue on this topic.
I do believe there are good and helpful interventions, but I think having the machinery of government laying around is too much of a temptation to use government on bad interventions.
I philosophically sympathize with anarcho-capitalism, but pragmatically I end up being a state capacity libertarian.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Are you against tobacco and alcohol? If not, is it a cost-benefit situation with very specific numbers and math, or something unique to seatbelts? The right to not wear a seatbelt is a natural consequence of self-ownership.
I’m a utilitarian libertarian, not deontological. Seat belt laws are easily justified on a cost/benefit basis.
Restricting/taxing things with known severe downsides like alcohol and tobacco is also easily justified, though the details are much more complicated than mandating seat belts. Of late, I think broad legalization of digital sports gambling is a pretty bad idea.
Externalities and tradeoffs are real and ought to be addressed, in other words, and that sometimes necessitates government intervention and curtailing liberty.
Then you're not a libertarian. A deontological libertarian would not care if liberty lead to less utility, they'd still be for liberty. A utilitarian libertarian believes liberty does lead to more utility. You apparently do not believe this; at best you're just a plain utilitarian.
“A utilitarian libertarian believes liberty does lead to more utility.”
This is generally true, not absolutely true. It’s a testable claim, in fact.
I'm a rule utilitarian and I think I overlap with say Tyler Cowen or Scott Sumner on politics on at least 90% of what I read from them.
Some here seem to want to treat libertarianism as a religion with pure doctrine that cannot be disobeyed, instead of an approach that can deal with empirical reality, trade offs, and necessary compromise.
I thought it was generally accepted that “classic liberal” and “libertarian” were interchangeable terms, alongside the rarer “right neoliberal.”
It's not a testable claim, it's a definition. And it's right there in the name. Libertarianism is about liberty. If you're evaluating propositions based strictly on some form of utility that does not assign high utility to liberty itself, it's hard to be a libertarian. If your evaluation often results in non-liberty being chosen over liberty, it's ridiculous to call yourself one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you’ve arrived at paternalistic classical conservatism, just by a scenic route.
No.
Libertarianism is not solely anarcho-capitalism.
“Classical conservatism” is opposed to “classical liberalism” on several key grounds, and I favor the latter. Many “conservatives” in the liberal tradition share a lot with libertarians, of course.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Please do so -- what is the net cost to you of increased traffic fatalities? (in a libertarian society if possible, but I guess that's hard mode -- even in today's US I think you will have a tough time)
It’s higher than the net cost of seat belts and a compliance regime.
Having more severe injuries and deaths from auto accidents, that are preventable by seat belts, is so obviously a bad thing for any given individual and society at large due to increased medical spending and decreased tax revenue alone.
There are so many bad cases of government intervention and so it’s always a shame to see a clearly good one get opposed.
You are wrong about the medical spending -- in a libertarian society this would be a personal matter, and in the real world the medical savings from all the additional (mostly) young people who die in crashes rather than getting old and sick far outweighs the additional burden from those who might choose not to wear a seatbelt and incur somewhat more serious injuries than they otherwise would. Same goes for excessive tobacco and drinking.
The second claim is more interesting -- if you think that society has a right to maximize tax revenue from individual citizens, it sounds like government should be able to direct people's labour however it deems optimal, on utilitarian grounds? I'd probably argue against this on the basis of the track record of planned economies in general, but in any case it sounds diametrically opposed to any form of libertarianism (or even anarchism) that I'm familiar with?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As I recall all of these things have been shown to if anything reduce total lifetime healthcare costs, as most of them tend to kill you relatively young (if at all) -- so before you have time to rack up a bunch of bills for long-term care and general age-related degeneration.
So I'm more curious about the actual nature of his utilitarian grounds than how he squares it with any sort of libertarianism.
Relevant Yes, Prime Minister clip
I suppose the question would be whether those kill or harm you quickly enough to significantly reduce your lifetime earnings. That seems doubtful with smoking and drinking, but it may very well be the case with drugs and not wearing seatbelts.
From a utilitarian standpoint, I suppose the law would ideally mandate seatbelt wearing for children and the gainfully employed, while forbidding seatbelt use for the chronically unemployed and retired.
More options
Context Copy link
Now adjust for lost productivity and taxes due to disability and/or early death.
Had we more sensible healthcare policy the gap would be even bigger.
Please refer to my second point -- your argument appears to allow for unbounded government intervention into career/life decisions of any kind. Retirement, for instance, would seem to be right out -- much less FIRE or hobo-ism.
I'm not sure what to call this system, but it is very not-libertarian.
I gotta say it’s funny to basically be advocating for good old-fashioned American style government with a GMU Econ-pilled approach and be told it’s verging on totalitarianism.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To quote Scott, (from here)
I'm pretty sure he considers himself a libertarian of some variety now.
He’s self-identified as such a time or two in posts.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think that's the liberal position. Arguing that one ought to be friends with people of a different race/sex/gender/etc. is the progressive position.
It's also the traditionalist position, but with slightly different answers to the "ought" part of the equation.
More options
Context Copy link
Agreed, ill edit
switched cases of conservatives -> nationalists as well.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link