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 -
Yes, I can also conceive and witness problems caused by unregulated relationships. Does it change my position? Not really an inch on either issue.
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.
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.
I do assign high utility to liberty.
But I am not an insane person so I do not afford it infinite utility, or pretend there aren’t issues where tradeoffs exist.
The testable claim is whether in any given case liberty does lead to utility.
Assuming by definition it does, or simply defining utility to be liberty, with no consideration of empirical reality, turns libertarianism into some kind of fanatical political religion along the same lines as Marxism, and it’s just a stupid way to go about political philosophy.
“Libertarianism is about liberty” well sure. What makes you seem uneducated is that you appear to have no awareness of the variety of thought around those concepts and competing movements and subgroups. For instance, there are civil libertarians who are all for personal freedom, just not where one’s labor and wallet are concerned.
One of the primary reasons the term “libertarian” exists is that in the US “liberal” evolved to mean “left liberal” and so another label was needed to mean “right liberal” or “classic liberal.” In Europe, I can identify as a liberal; in America I have to have a different label, whether classic liberal, right neoliberal, or state capacity libertarian.
The point was not “libertarian means anarcho-capitalism and anyone who ever says anything positive about even limited government is a totalitarian statist.”
Yes. And if you keep evaluating that claim and it keeps failing, and you choose "utility" over liberty each time, you're just not a libertarian by any reasonable meaning of the word. "Well I'd be for liberty if liberty led to utility, but it turns out following the instructions of Comrade Stalin (or Lee Kwan Yu) exactly results in the best utility" is NOT libertarianism, it's just plain old utilitarianism.
I'm aware. I'm also aware of a phenomenon where people will call themselves libertarian but then somehow have very anti-liberty policy preferences. I'm not sure why, it's not like "libertarian" is such a high-status name, but it's a thing.
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
More options
Context Copy link