tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post3702667125399249574..comments2024-03-27T03:00:27.024-04:00Comments on Facts & other stubborn things: Two good posts from Krugman and VienneauEvanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12259004160963531720noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-58395151610491932512011-04-14T12:49:12.591-04:002011-04-14T12:49:12.591-04:00By your definition, if a libertarian wants pot to ...By your definition, if a libertarian wants pot to be decriminalized is it because he views it as a property right... and how do you distinguish this from a progressive wanting the same? Are progressives "propertarian" regarding pot but not regarding OPM?<br /><br />Regarding equality of outcomes I quote you: <br />"Inheritance allows the appropriation and accumulation of property with NO LEGITIMATE CLAIM AT ALL. The inheritor didn't work for the property. It's solely his by virtue of the pact of violence between him and society to bash the skulls of anyone else who would claim it. What is the difference between the heir and the non-heir that warrants the award of property to the heir? Sheer luck of birth, and nothing more."<br /><br />That's pretty clear. Smells Marx-y with the appropriation and accumulation stuff. You decide what wealth is legitimately owned. It's unfair for some to be unequally wealthy just because of birth. Fan of the Death Tax? Why do you want a "public option" if not to equalize services? If you think the government should do a thing, you think it's legitimate to point guns at people to do it because government can't tax or legislate anything without using guns. Your kind never convinces me that you're right, you just point a gun at me and start laughing.<br /><br />Did you not mean it when you said calling someone a pinhead was fine?mobsrulenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-29032326708964773772011-04-14T09:37:42.419-04:002011-04-14T09:37:42.419-04:00As I cautioned Gary above - don't interpret &q...As I cautioned Gary above - don't interpret "property rights" as such a strict economic issue.<br /><br />Who has proposed equality of outcomes? Someone, perhaps, but not me - and I've certainly never said it's legitimate to point a gun at someone to do it.<br /><br />And who are you calling a pinhead? You really need to get a grip if you want to comment here. I don't appreciate it.Danielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17192667997950934790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-19473885534470798212011-04-14T09:10:00.113-04:002011-04-14T09:10:00.113-04:00Because liberty is such an indistinct term, you ca...Because liberty is such an indistinct term, you can decide for yourself what a libertarian means when he calls you anti-liberty based on how he answers questions as put forth by Haidt's group and how your answers differ. You'll notice that Haidt comes to the obvious conclusion that libertarians are driven by the same feelings whether the situation is economic or other, so the term propertarian doesn't really get it.<br /><br />Libertarian definition of liberty can't be wrong (that's granting one exists) because our axioms are different. You so value equalizing certain outcomes between people NOW that you think it's totally legitimate to point a gun at me to make it happen. I don't care about equality of outcomes AT ALL for a host of reasons, principle being that capitalism leads to discovery and once widely useful knowledge is attained it's not lost, so even the most ineffective and useless people in America (which is much less egalitarian than the other almost mono-racial OECD countries) tend to live great lives by comparison with just a short time ago, pinhead.mobsrulenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-33456862359610978382011-04-14T06:33:40.421-04:002011-04-14T06:33:40.421-04:00Before anyone overreacts - the first paragraph was...Before anyone overreacts - the first paragraph was a serious point, the second was a joke.Danielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17192667997950934790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-75133341984175444382011-04-14T06:30:05.611-04:002011-04-14T06:30:05.611-04:00mobsrule my whole point has been that we may be de...mobsrule my whole point has been that we may be dealing with two incommensurable definitions of "liberty" and libertarians may be wrong. How does a paper that works of single definition of "liberty" inform that at all?<br /><br />I steeply discount the study upon reading this alone: <i>"2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional intellectual style"</i>. Libertarians are among the most emotionally volatile people I've ever met.Danielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17192667997950934790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-74285273839118615952011-04-14T03:15:01.242-04:002011-04-14T03:15:01.242-04:00So if you want the "empirical" work, the...So if you want the "empirical" work, there it is. You value equality at gunpoint, libertarians value individual liberty.mobsrulenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-1396762823160485812011-04-14T03:13:09.796-04:002011-04-14T03:13:09.796-04:00"Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgm..."Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. We found that, compared to liberals and conservatives, libertarians show 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle and correspondingly weaker endorsement of other moral principles, 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional intellectual style, and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness.<br /><br />http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1665934mobsrulenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-30222638029840029342011-04-13T14:29:30.888-04:002011-04-13T14:29:30.888-04:00In other words, I am very surprised to hear you sa...In other words, I am very surprised to hear you say it's never mentioned in other blogs you follow because you strike me as someone who talks and thinks about the state a lot.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-79598477588076729832011-04-13T14:28:48.151-04:002011-04-13T14:28:48.151-04:00re: "As for the 'state' comment, it m...re: <i>"As for the 'state' comment, it may be just a lot more used to it never being mentioned in the blogs that I follow because the general assumption is it that is mostly a cock-up."</i><br /><br />I don't know. I have felt for a long time that 75% of the discussion of the state that goes on on here gets started with your comments. We simply do not have a commenter here more interested in the state than you Gary. That's fine. I'll talk about lots of stuff. But I definitely talk and think about the state now more than I would if you did not comment here. This is probably a good thing - it's always good to think through things oyu normally wouldn't think about. In thinking about Rorty's thoughts on truth - as I was thinking about when I wrote the post above this one - politics and the state were quite far from my mind. Maybe it's good to have thought of them. But it often comes up when you bring it up.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-75498623801551126322011-04-13T14:23:11.336-04:002011-04-13T14:23:11.336-04:00daniel,
My point is that you're confusing con...daniel,<br /><br />My point is that you're confusing constructionism and constructivism a lot of the time.<br /><br />As for the 'state' comment, it may be just a lot more used to it never being mentioned in the blogs that I follow because the general assumption is it that is mostly a cock-up. However, it is involved the majority of your conversation topics - which I think is partly indicative of the unfortunate level of power it wields over our lives.Gary Gunnelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14463810435943252898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-65175131817101715892011-04-13T14:16:48.392-04:002011-04-13T14:16:48.392-04:00Skittish about the state? I'm don't trust...Skittish about the state? I'm don't trust any hierarchal/corporate entity if that is what you mean by skittish - that is an essential aspect of being a classical liberal. <br /><br />Look, to get back to Rorty, his utopia is a "democratic" one ordered primarily by state processes, mine is a market utopia ordered by "voting" in the marketplace and by a bottom up emergence of human liberation. They are radically different visions of how humans function one with another. <br /><br />Let me tidy up something, on Hume, despite the fact that Rorty tried to appropriate him, he had to dump so much of Hume's thought in the process that the Hume he presents isn't the historical Hume (and Rorty would not disagree with me - that's how he used past philosophers and their works). <br /><br />To sum up, Rorty, like Keynes, tried to "transform" classical liberalism, and in doing so abandoned it for a anti-liberal way of thinking about things.Gary Gunnelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14463810435943252898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-31881562245446252352011-04-13T14:08:16.699-04:002011-04-13T14:08:16.699-04:00Take a look at the posts that appear on the home p...Take a look at the posts that appear on the home page right now - I just did.<br /><br />Only <i>one</i> is explicitly about "the state" as an institution (another is about policy, and another is about political philosophy more broadly but no real discussion of "the state").<br /><br />The ONLY one about "the state" of all the posts currently showing is highlighting the problem of <i>government failure</i>.<br /><br />"The state" you see here is often the state you've brought to the table, Gary.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-33654100350071042322011-04-13T14:05:13.931-04:002011-04-13T14:05:13.931-04:00I also talk about what people are interested in.
...I also talk about what people are interested in.<br /><br />I would talk much more exclusively about economics if I had a somewhat different readership... and even economics talk gets back to the state in the comment section sometimes.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-6235823564104591272011-04-13T14:04:01.865-04:002011-04-13T14:04:01.865-04:00How am I all over the place? I've never even m...How am I all over the place? I've never even mentioned constructivism on here because I'm not really familiar with it.<br /><br />I am coming from the Berger, Luckmann, etc.. From what little I know about constructivism it sounds alright as a knowledge creation process that goes on. I see nothing immediately objectionable about it in a cursory look at it. But I've certainly never mentioned it on here so I have no clue why you're raising it as an issue. I am not "all over the place on that" because I am not <i>any</i> place on that. If you want to make a case that constructivism is consistent with something I've said, be my guest.<br /><br />Rarely talk about anything but the state????<br /><br />I find that I talk about things other than the state a lot, and you always end up bringing the state into the comment section. And when I do talk about the state, it's sometimes to reference it as a social institution that free people act through, but <b>never</b> as the source of rights or knowledge or anything like that. Never once.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-54746201008398854932011-04-13T13:55:42.578-04:002011-04-13T13:55:42.578-04:00The term "social construction" is the of...The term "social construction" is the offspring of a bunch of theories of knowledge that it was my unhappy task to read a great deal of in graduate school - personally I've never been sure if you are really talking about construction or constructivism because you're all over the place on that. Then there are all the causation related issues associated with social construction - weak, robust, whatever. I find the notion creates more confusion in blog conversations than it explains because the field has exploded so much since the 1960s. <br /><br />Be that as it may, I get that impression because you rarely talk about anything but the state here. Since you're a professional economist that ought not be that surprising I guess.Gary Gunnelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14463810435943252898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-38217454167350690382011-04-13T13:46:03.855-04:002011-04-13T13:46:03.855-04:00He talked about the political, but he specifically...He talked about the political, but he specifically talked about things like whether "moral communities" as he put it, are contiguous with political communities.<br /><br />He's not skiddish about the state (and neither am I) in the way you are, it is true.<br /><br />It does not seem to do with him what you did with me - and take that to mean that all collective action is somehow really just a reference to state action.<br /><br />You did this above when you said: <i>"you say it yourself - rights are socially constructed and depend on participation in the body politic by "the people" in order for them to come to fruition"</i>. Of course I never said this at all. I <i>only</i> said that rights are socially constructed - I said nothing about the requirement of participation in the body politic. That's something you made up in your head to pin me to the Greeks.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-37709561518437692752011-04-13T13:39:49.340-04:002011-04-13T13:39:49.340-04:00If Rorty didn't want people to think he was ta...If Rorty didn't want people to think he was talking about the state then he shouldn't have talked about the state so much. It isn't the "social" that he refers to, it is the "political" (you see this throughout his work) - and the political means the state. The agenda of reformist liberals like Rorty is always intimately tied with a focus on the state and the winnowing away of the private; thus you see Rorty stating rather bluntly that the very language of what the state does needs to be divorced from the language used for the private - something which has always disturbed me greatly because it is a proposition ripe for so much mischief.Gary Gunnelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14463810435943252898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-48456218515777195782011-04-13T11:34:43.249-04:002011-04-13T11:34:43.249-04:00Speaking of this whole Bretton Woods meeting, I tr...Speaking of this whole Bretton Woods meeting, I tried to find some videos of it. And I was almost falling asleep 20 seconds into one of them.<br /><br />Wonks are so...wonkish!Prateek Sanjaynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-56065277501516101572011-04-13T11:27:55.216-04:002011-04-13T11:27:55.216-04:00re: "No wonder you trace Rorty back to the st...re: <i>"No wonder you trace Rorty back to the state too!!!!"</i><br /><br />I was thoroughly confused when you had brought that up. But if you're reading "body politic" wherever you see "society" or "social", I suppose that makes sense.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-34411826665630163342011-04-13T11:26:10.373-04:002011-04-13T11:26:10.373-04:00This is somewhat depressing, actually, if you thin...This is somewhat depressing, actually, if you think that I'm saying participation in the body politic and the state play a primary role in rights.<br /><br />As you point out, this is completely anti-modern. It's illiberal, and it is starkly juxtaposed to what I've been saying about rights.<br /><br />The fact that that appears to be my position <i>I hope</i> is a function of your wanting it to be my position, but I'm not sure. I've always thought "social construction" didn't need elaboration, but perhaps I should define it better when I use it.<br /><br />Same with liberty outside of the confines of the state. If you think I'm claiming that then either you're not listening or I'm not communicating.<br /><br />But I think it may be the former... I've consistently talked about a social reality and society as a real thing and individuals in a society as a real dimension of individual action. I don't think I've ever brought the body politic into it - so I don't <i>think</i> it's me. I've always thought there was a pretty clear distinction ebtween "society" and "the state" or "the body politic", but perhaps I should not have taken that as understood.<br /><br />No wonder you trace Rorty back to the state too!!!!dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-52010076555507468182011-04-13T11:20:39.052-04:002011-04-13T11:20:39.052-04:00I'm talked out too, but I want to clarify in n...I'm talked out too, but I want to clarify in no uncertain terms that I'm <b>not</b> suggesting that the body politic constructs rights at all. I have said that these rights are <i>socially</i> constructed. I've said this specifically, so I'm not sure why you keep tying it back to the body politic, participation in the body politic, or the state.<br /><br />Now, of course I have said that the state essentially ratifies a lot of rights that are generated in societies, and that seems perfectly functional and fine to me. Sometimes the state even generates legal rights - like incorporation rights - that end up being great innovations.<br /><br />But noting that the state sometimes ratifies rights is completely different from the claim that rights "depend on" the state or "come to fruition" through the state or the body politic. I've never claimed anything of the sort.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-40710476177178996022011-04-13T11:11:01.675-04:002011-04-13T11:11:01.675-04:00Anyway, I'm all talked out.Anyway, I'm all talked out.Gary Gunnelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14463810435943252898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-23687764695918636732011-04-13T11:08:50.881-04:002011-04-13T11:08:50.881-04:00Though I am taking a bit of liberty with Benjamin ...Though I am taking a bit of liberty with Benjamin Constant's thoughts on this subject, I am generally in line with what he thought. So...<br /><br />I'd say that is the way modern liberals do things; you say it yourself - rights are socially constructed and depend on participation in the body politic by "the people" in order for them to come to fruition - that is close enough to the ancient version Constant defined of rights/liberty to talk about it that way.<br /><br />Modern liberty stresses the individual as sovereign actor outside the confines of the state; I just do not see you stress that sort of thing. I suppose you will argue that the latter requires some sort of societal understanding, but I would argue that it does not require a state - and it certainly doesn't require a state (or any other centralized corporate bodies) in the way that the liberty of the ancients does.Gary Gunnelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14463810435943252898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-66634361704108737742011-04-13T10:55:51.288-04:002011-04-13T10:55:51.288-04:00Are you suggesting I define rights like the ancien...Are you suggesting I define rights like the ancients? Sorry - I just have trouble keeping up with the part that is assigned to me sometimes.dkuehnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136690886858186981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-47393837710935311052011-04-13T10:53:38.522-04:002011-04-13T10:53:38.522-04:00_What do you think is the center-of-gravity libert..._What do you think is the center-of-gravity libertarian answer to the question "what constitutes a violation of liberty?"_<br /><br />I have no idea. I know what the answer is for me. It is a violation of personal autonomy - of the individual as decision maker, particularly as such are manifested by hierarchies - be they they state, religious authorities or any other corporate body (I've made this point enough you would think it would not be worth repeating - it comes right out of Locke's "Letter on Toleration"). Libertarianism is for the most part the individual vs. the corporate - while individuals do clash, most of the dangers (small, medium sized and large) in life have very little to do with my day to day interactions with other individuals. Most of the talk about the need for corporate bodies to keep people from hurting one another is bunk; most of what corporate bodies do has little to do with that and their power is out-sized in comparison to the dangers associated with human interaction.<br /><br />"On paternalism - no, what I'm saying is that your hurling of the accusation of paternalism presupposes a rights structure."<br /><br />Not in the way that you define a rights structure; thus ancients vs. moderns.Gary Gunnelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14463810435943252898noreply@blogger.com