Propertarianism
Guide For Conducting An Effective Political Debate
I debate quite a bit online, in person, in business, and in every other possible forum. It’s the best way to learn whether your ideas are supportable or not. I tend to treat arguments as tests, and debates as laboratories. I don’t know whether my argument will hold up until I test it in the lab. I know this confuses people because I come across as more committed than I am. Arguments are engineered structures. You build them as well as you can. But they have to be tested. I don’t know if they support what I intend them to until they’re tested.
Debate a skill. It’s an art form. And a civic duty. Learning to debate is hard work.
Everyone has reference books. Damer T. Edward’s “Attacking Faulty Reason” is a book commonly used for teaching debate in colleges and universities. It’s as good a reference as any.
But, while it’s the most common approach, I disagree with quite a bit of Edward’s principles for conducting a debate. It’s awfully victorian and absurdly genteel for today’s politics. We are not in a parlor or a classroom. We’re in a battle for the species. The western tradition is unique in the world. The citizens of the world live in some form of prosperity disproportionately because of western scientific technology. And western scientific technology is the result of western political technology: competition, innovation, consumerism, rule of law, the work ethic.
Instead of his genteel approach, I argue that in political debate, one must not count on the other party to do anything rational, logical or honest - because political debate is almost entirely about the transfer of status and money from one group to another, between one class to another, over differences in preferences not differences in facts. And because the stakes at hand are very high, the debate is not conducted in any semblance of a genteel fashion. In that light, if you wish to win, you must not count on the other party for anything, and instead, must carry the full burden of the argument yourself.
So my approach is to carry the full burden of debate on myself.
And to carry that burden, I follow the following principles:
1) Know your positions and why you hold them. The purpose of any arguent is to falsify your own beliefs, and learn from it, as much as it is to dismantle or discredit your opponent’s positions.
2) Conduct One Argument At A Time. Stick to one problem at a time. And stay on point until it is resolved. Then move on to the next point.
3) Seek To Understand. Seek to understand your opponent’s argument. Do not assume anything. Ask all the questions that you need to in order to understand your opponent’s position.
4) Disassemble your opponent’s argument. Disassembly of most political arguments is quite simple if one breaks an argument into the incentives and transfers. Or more simply, if you “Follow the money”. Following the incentives will expose almost every argument for what it is : an effort to take from someone else for a supposedly ‘noble good’. NOTE: This is why I use Propertarian reasoning. It exposes the direct and indirect transfers in any political action.
5) Make only clear and honest statements. Unfortunately when you are refuting a common misconception, or a series of them, you must make a long chain of clear statements. Think of how hard Darwin had to work to argue the concept of evolution. So simple arguments are for simple topics. But clarity is is required to make a complicated argument.
6) Make your arguments in terms of human actions. And translate your opponents arguments into human actions. If you cannot describe something as a series of human actions, then you do not understand your own argument and very likely are wrong yourself. So make sure you can make your argument as a series of human actions. Each action then will take place in the context of the incentives available to the actor at any given time. As such, errors in either your argument or your opponents will be exposed by stating or restating arguments as human actions.
7) Account For Opportunity Costs: Be very cautious of the fallacy of ignoring or discounting the opportunity costs that humans pay in the real world. This is why conspiracy theories are almost always false. All people at all times, can choose from all opportunities that are available to them at any moment. Opportunity costs are as real as hard costs.
8) Use Economic Data, Because Economic Data Is The Only Reliable Political Data. So called scientific data from surveys about human beings that is conducted by testing is almost always false – humans are heuristic and the methods of the physical sciences do not account for the untestablity of human beliefs. Economic analysis is extremely accurate in measuring human behavior because in commerce, people demonstrate their preferences by their actions – something that they do not do with their words. Therefore make sure you understand the economics of any argument. People’s perceptions, and the measurement of their opinions is a poor substitute for economic data that demonstrates their preferences. Therefore economic data always is superior to perceptual, and so called ‘scientific’ analysis.
9) Determine Which Social Class you and your opponent are arguing for. Most political arguments are in fact, attempts to benefit one social class at the expense of the others. The more elaborate model of class hierarchy that I have hypothesized is a very effective means of disassembling class motivations so that you can understand them.
10) Remain skeptical of your own argument. Every statement contains many assumptions. If you discover that you are wrong, cede only the point where you are wrong and state that you must now reconsider your position in light of what you’ve learned and ask if you can return to the debate afterward. Do not let your opponent claim victory on the broader argument, just state that you are now unsure and must rethink the position.
11) Avoid snarky, cunning, or emotive and other distracting comments. Ridicule is a form of theft. It breaks the contract of debate. If your opponent ridicules you, then attack your opponent for lacking intelligence and honesty, state that he is a fraud, and so is his argument, and accuse him of wasting your time, then ask if he wishes to return to the debate, or whether he wishes to continue to demonstrate that he has lost the argument.
12) Thoroughly defeat your opponent until he walks away. Do not claim victory early. Conversely, never surrender early. Stick with your argument until either you have learned that you are wrong, or you have either caused your opponent to walk away, surrender, or admit that you are correct.
13) The audience is the judge. When you believe you have won the audience, declare victory, and summarize why. Thank your opponent for helping you learn something. (by defeating him.)
Arguments you will win if you understand economics:
If a preference requires a transfer from one person to another or one group to another, or one class to another, it is either an involuntary or voluntary transfer. ALL MORAL ARGUMENTS consist of some kind of prohibition on involuntary transfer of costs from the group to the individual. But you must understand those transfers in order to make moral arguments, and use those transfers instead of moral arguments.
Arguments you will lose, no matter what:
0) Empowering Your Class At The Expense Of Others are always false : We have created a single-class style of government out of our three-class model of english government, and in doing so created a permanent open class war. Social and economic classes exist. All people are classist, culturist, racist to some degree, unless they are at the very bottom of the proletariat where they are attempting to coordinate with other proletarians to gain political power across class, race and culture boundaries. The question we face is how to cooperate given that we have these different class, race and culture preferences. Our current system of government is a winner-takes-all model that means perpetual class warfare.
1) Moral arguments are never true. Moral statements describe some sort of contratual utility. They are not ‘truths’. You must understand that underlying utility and argue that instead of moral ‘shortcuts’ that describe those underlying utilities. Those forms of utility are simply some form of prohibition on transfer.
2) Arguments that rely upon Spirituality, Magic, Mysticism and Religion are always false ON THEIR FACE. (If not under economic analysis, where they often appear to be quite beneficial). Anything that assumes divine intervention, or the existence of a divinity in the material world. Gods exist like numbers exist. They do exist. They just do not have any of the powers that mystics assign to them. They just have more utility and impact than do such things as historical or mythical characters do. Instead, understand the economic impact of scriptural statements, and argue those statements instead of their abstraction. For example, the ten commandments is nothing more that a list of forms of private property for people who are poor, and a prohibition against any other form of law that would interfere with those commands to respect property.
3) Arguments to preference. Taste is not debatable. Preferences are not. On the other hand, opportunity costs, and real costs are. That human beings did not understand this problem because it has been masked by religion and moral codes for so long is the reason we have these debates.
4) Arguments to political Ideology : All philosophies are class philosophies. All political ideologies are class philosophies. All ideologies seek to empower one class at the expense of the other classes, so that they an arrange society for their benefit. The uniqueness of the anglo model that we call Classical Liberalism, was that the king, the upper class, and the middle class, all had houses of government. Their mistake was in not creating a house of proletarians, instead of handing over the house of the middle class to the proletarians through increased enfranchisement.
Damer T. Edward’s Principles
The Fallibility Principle
“Neither of us may be right”
When alternative positions on any disputed issue are under review, each participant in the discussion should acknowledge that possibly none of the positions presented is deserving of acceptance and that, at best, only one of them is true or the most defensible position. Therefore, it is possible that thorough examination of the issue will reveal that one’s own initial position is a false or indefensible one.
CURT: You should assume you may be wrong, but never assume your opponent is doing so. The purpose of political debate is either to persuade your opponent, or persuade others by demonstrating the failure of your opponent’s arguments.
The Truth-Seeking Principle
“Honestly Search For The Truth”
Each participant should be committed to the task of earnestly searching for the truth or at least the most defensible position on the issue at stake. Therefore, one should be willing to examine alternative positions seriously, look for insights in the positions of others, and allow other participants to present arguments for or raise objections to any position held with regard to any disputed issue.
CURT: This is not the purpose of current political debate in a polarized electorate. Since all current political debate is not for the purpose of seeking truth, but for gaining political power for the purpose of conducting involuntary transfers, or preventing involuntary transfers, then assuming a search for truth on the part of one’s opponent going into a debate is simply a silly hangover from the Scholastic era – it assumes a commonality of incentives and purpose that is not true in contemporary democratic politics. The electorate is polarized behind the egalitarian strategy of increased reproduction and the meritocratic strategy of improved reproduction. It is little more than a gender strategy conflict. Contemporary democratic political debate is entirely for the purpose of creating or preventing transfers between social classes. Nothing more. And anyone who argues otherwise is either naive or deceptive.
The Clarity Principle
“Speak Clearly, And Stick To The Problem At Hand”
The formulations of all positions, defences, and attacks should be free of any kind of linguistic confusion and clearly separated from other positions and issues.
CURT: Yes. You should. But you should not expect your opponent to do so. Because they will not.
The Burden of Proof Principle
“The Burden Of Proof Rests On The Person Making The Statement”
The burden of proof for any position usually rests on the participant who sets forth the position. If and when an opponent asks, the proponent should provide an argument for that position.
CURT: Yes. And you can easily hold your opponent to his burden of proof.
The Principle of Charity
“When restating your opponent’s positions, do not ‘cheat’ by recasting it in a weaker light”
If a participant’s argument is reformulated by an opponent, it should be expressed in the strongest possible version that is consistent with the original intention of the arguer. If there is any question about that intention or about implicit parts of the argument, the arguer should be given the benefit of any doubt in the reformulation.
CURT: Yes, this violates the principle of honest debate. You should not violate it ever because you must retain your credibility. Credibility is important in public debate because the the audience will more easily believe your arguments when arguments are toss-ups, or when your opponents falter. I realize that I puts greater burden on myself by following this principle but it’s better to debate a lot and get good at it then cheat a lot and never get good at it.
The Relevance Principle
“Stick To The Topic At Hand”
One who presents an argument for or against a position should attempt to set forth only reasons that are directly related to the merit of the position at issue.
CURT: Yes. You should. But do not expect your opponent to, and viscoiusly assalut him for dishonesty and fraud if he does, then ask him to return to the debate.
The Sufficiency Principle
One who presents an argument for or against a position should attempt to provide reasons that are sufficient in number, kind, and weight to support the acceptance of the conclusion
CURT: Yes, but this requires that you actually understand your arguments. It is very unlikely that unless you debate fairly consistently for at least two years on any topic that you will have sufficient mastery of it to be able to create sufficient and necessary arguments.
The Rebuttal Principle
One who presents an argument for or against a position should attempt to provide an effective rebuttal to all serious challenges to the argument or the position it supports and to the strongest argument on the other side of the issue.
CURT: Yes. You must master your subject, but do not expect your opponent to master it.
The Resolution Principle
An issue should be considered resolved if the proponent for one of the alternative positions successfully defends that position by presenting an argument that uses relevant and acceptable premises that together provide sufficient grounds to support the conclusion and provides an effective rebuttal to all serious challenges to the argument or position at issue. Unless one can demonstrate that these conditions have not been met, one should accept the conclusion of the successful argument and consider the issue, for all practical purposes, to be settled. In the absence of a successful argument for any of the alternative positions, one is obligated to accept the position that is supported by the best of the good arguments presented.
The Suspension of Judgement Principle
If no position comes close to being successfully defended, or if two or more positions seem to be defended with equal strength, one should, in most cases, suspend judgment about the issue. If practical considerations seem to require an immediate decision, one should weigh the relative risks of gain or loss connected with the consequences of suspending judgment and decide the issue on those grounds.
The Reconsideration Principle
If a successful or at least good argument for a position is subsequently found by any participant to be flawed in a way that raises new doubts about the merit of that position, one is obligated to reopen the issue for further consideration and resolution.
The Acceptability Principle
One who presents an argument for or against a position should attempt to use reasons that are mutually acceptable to the participants and that meet standard criteria of acceptability.
5 Responses to Guide For Conducting An Effective Political Debate
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About
Curt Doolittle
Seattle, WA, United States
I am an independent theorist of Political Economy in the Conservative Libertarian tradition. And as a methodological Propertarian I attempt to complete the work of Rothbard and Hoppe by suggesting post-democratic political solutions for heterogeneous polities.
Wonderful list, thanks! Just one question: Is is possible that the statement “Democratic politics is entirely for the purpose of creating or preventing transfers between social classes” (listed under the Truth-Seeking Principle) is a supposition you inject that isn’t universally accepted regarding democratic politics?
Amy,
Thanks for the comment. I’ve updated the text to be clearer. :)
DISCUSSION
Assuming you’re not confusing the term “Democratic” where I’m referring to the process, with “Democratic” as the name of a party, then yes, you’re right. Although it might be clearer if we quote the entire sentence. The context is:
So, while you’re right, there are two problems here, and I probably conflated them.
FIRST – THEORY VERSUS REALITY
It isn’t necessarily true that democratic politics MUST be for the purpose of transferring between social classes, but in practice it IS for the purpose of transferring between social classes. That’s because there is not a “commonality of incentives and purpose” and because of that, “…debate is not for the purpose of seeking truth, but for gaining political power” where those differences can be resolved by force. Democracy is the use of force. It is the threat of the application of violence. Thats what government does: maintain a monopoly on the use of violence.
We can of course, use democracy to choose between priorities. No one objects to that process. The problem with democracy arises when we must choose between one group’s preference and another group’s objection. It is not so much taxes people object to, or laws that they object to, it is the use of laws and taxes for purposes they object to. The problem with class warfare, much of which was created by the state takeover of charity and civil society, is that it has destroyed the interdependence of the classes: under charity the lower classes traded conformity to norms for support. Today we argue that it is not charity, but rights, and the lower classes need do nothing in exchange. Under this model, we eliminated the exchange, and converted what had been an exchange into a theft.
So because we live in a large, heterogeneous democratic polity with many competing interests where taxes are paid by a minority, and where class warfare is used to justify the taking of profits from one group to redistribute to another group without requiring conformity and status signaling in exchange, and where as a consequence the wealthy group has committed to fund the super wealthy as an act of opposition to that redistribution, the practical reality is that the differences are irreconcilable and as such, the purpose of debate in practice is to obtain power by which to forcibly transfer from those that produce to those that do not on one hand, and to block those transfers on a scale that will bankrupt the state on the other hand.
I’m sensitive to this process because I am keenly aware of the successful leftist strategy promoted by Saul Alinsky (a hero of Obama) of expressly avoiding rational debate. A strategy that the right adopted defensively during the late 90′s in reaction to democratic evasion of questions and recitation of talking points on television and radio — despite it’s being counter intuitive to them. (I know, I was a member of the faction that advocated that the right had to adopt the tactic.)
It is this change in debate from truth seeking among groups with similar priorities to advocacy of a groups position out of necessary and irresolvable conflict, that I’m stating has substantially changed the nature of debate, and therefore changed the advice that needs to be given to people who want to conduct debates. ie: we cannot assume that our opponents are seeking the truth.
SECOND – INDIVIDUAL SCOPE VS GROUP SCOPE
People can certainly use debate to pursue the truth in order to improve their own decision making. People can certainly truthfully argue for their preferences. I’m assuming that you’re question arises from the idea that debate can be used as a means of inquiry: learning. Just as it can be used for the purpose of persuasion. Or for the purpose of justification of violence. Or for the purpose of deception and fraud. Debate can be put to any of those uses.
The context I’m writing in is to suggest that Damer T. Edward’s principles are too gentlemanly to reflect how debate is actually conducted today. Until about 1960, conformity was both existant and an assumed good. WE had a common vison of how society should be constructed. Debate was conducted within that framework. But that’s not been true for fifty years. And since the internet has become so prominent a vehicle, the debate has intensified, fragmented, and become increasingly ideological. The ideological debate is between an increasingly polarized left and right whose objectives is not to reach consensus but to cause the opposition to fail in achieving their goals. So his advice that we seek the truth is valuable, but we cannot, as we have in the past, assume our opponents are seeking the truth, and instead we must assume that they are seeing to justify their preferences using ideological arguments that are diametrically opposed.
We have sufficient evidence that political preferences are biologically determinant, and that they do not change. We have more evidence that people become entrenched in their ideas instead of expand them. We have more evidence that they seek to confirm their natural biases rather than falsify them, at every opportunity.
People who debate these issues tend alight ideologically they rely on memes that they rarely understand whose consequences they rarely understand, where they obtained the argument from their faction, as a device for obtaining their preferred ends. (See Caplan “The Myth Of The Rational Voter” for example.)
But in a representative democracy, people must aggregate their efforts behind candidates and parties with sufficient numbers to form a majority that can force a decision against opponents whose interest is not only policy itself, but the pursuit of power necessary to enact policy: election and reelection. So, if people debate issues they may in fact be pursuing truth. If they debate parties, or ideologies, then they are seeking power. In our current polarized political environment, an environment which is the result of adding women to the electorate and the work force, our parties are permanently polarized.
So of necessity, truth seeking is not the purpose of political most debate. Since political debate in this context is not for the purpose of seeking truth, but for gaining political power, assuming a search for truth going in is simply a silly hangover from the Scholastic debate – it assumes a commonality of incentives and purpose that is not true in democratic politics. Democratic politics is entirely for the purpose of creating or preventing transfers between social classes. Nothing more. And anyone who argues otherwise is either naive or deceptive.
REASONING:
All property is scarce. There are more desired ends than means. If not, we would not have property in the first place. The first cause of property is scarcity. Political debate is only necessary in order to choose how to concentrate capital, time and actions among different uses that cannot be conducted through market mechanisms. That need to concentrate scarce resources is the only ‘necessary’ reason for political debate. People have different knowledge, understanding and preferences. Of the knowledge they possess they vary greatly in the amount of error. Groups have different preferences that are aggregates of these differences in knowledge, understanding and preferences. To accomplish this concentration of capital on one thing or another, they form political groups to concentrate their efforts within the available institutions at lowest cost to them by concentrating political power using the rules of those institutions. SO institutions determine the method of debate. Given institutions that assist in the voluntary funding of priorities, these groups can conduct debates over priorities about which preferences to voluntarily fund. Or given involuntary funding of priorities, they can, in a democratic society which issues laws, conduct debate over how to force which preferences to fund. That is, to transfer involuntarily from one group to another. If democratic debate were not for the purpose of involuntary transfer we would not need laws. So, at the point in which we argue for political parties within a democratic system that issues laws, we are of necessity arguing about the use of group preferences to use violence to transfer assets between groups. Further, in a polity where a minority pays taxes, and the majority does not, then when we argue about funding we are by necessity arguing about the involuntary transfer of money between groups.
GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION
So, if we graphed this kind of debate as a spectrum, within a democratic polity, individuals would conduct debates over abstractions with which to empower their party, while parties conduct debates for the purpose of obtaining political power in order to apply violence in order to conduct forcible transfers. Political arguments are usually complicated means of emotionally loading arguments in order to justify those involuntary transfers as obligations rather than preferences – and the inverse. In practical terms, ideological elites create argumentative memes which are then adopted downward by their ideologically aligned members who advocate on the behalf of their party and its members. Therefore all political debate must of necessity be for the purpose of conducting involuntary transfers, because the groups have no purpose for existing other than conducting involuntary transfers. That is the way we have constructed our institutions. We could instead, simply have people put up contracts and go online and directly vote our taxes toward one contract or the other. Of course, even to do that, we would have to redistribute allocations since only the minority would vote — at least, a minority would vote on monetary matters. Legislation of norms (behavior) would require everyone vote because everyone acts, even if a minority produce profits that are taxable.
Thank you for your explanation. That makes sense.
This is what most liberals and progressives and regular people who intuitively side with the Occupy Movement are opposed to:
“where as a consequence the wealthy group has committed to fund the super wealthy as an act of opposition to that redistribution, the practical reality is that the differences are irreconcilable and as such, the purpose of debate in practice is to obtain power by which to forcibly transfer from those that produce to those that do not on one hand, and to block those transfers on a scale that will bankrupt the state on the other hand.”
Does this not threaten the stability of our entire system in a very fundamental way? Doesn’t this in effect create a new kind of “nobility or ruling class”? I see fascism as one potential outcome. Chris Hedges talks about Inverted Totalitarianism (a term he gets from some obscure political writer whose name I can’t now recall) via the corporate take-over of politics and government. In practical terms this is more frightening than not being able to find a job because they have all been shipped overseas. Perhaps we agree on this point. You have written a lot on your site and I haven’t read it all yet :)
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“We have sufficient evidence that political preferences are biologically determinant, and that they do not change.” I am reading The Righteous Mind per your suggestion. When I hear something like your statement or the report by Haidt that scientists have not been able to find a way to get people to change their minds outside of the classroom, I take that as a personal challenge to see if I can become an exception. I wrote to Lilienfeld and he sent me the article Haidt references in his book. I’m excited to read it. I decided to conduct a personal experiment in which I will try to ‘become a Conservative’ in my thought processes. I am going to use mantra, inquiry, repetition of thought, investigation, learning, and discussion to do so. I guess I’m trying to ‘rewrite’ my neural networks in a way to allow me to intuitively understand the Conservative perspective. I plan to keep a journal about it to track my progress, as well as my changing and evolving thought processes. Your website is quite helpful.
And thank your for your earnest interest in debate. It is such a breath of fresh air. As someone in the group (per the Mises article entitled “the 99 and the 1″) who gets just sound bites and bumper sticker hand-me-downs of high-level political theory I recently realized it is useless and also annoying having those kinds of conversations with other people in my group (class? – I never quite know if that word means specifically economic class or other kinds of class, also it countermands my learned narrative that here in America with our “melting pot” we did away with the rigid class structure of say, India’s caste system, so I’m fairly uncomfortable using that word). I once asked my father why he has always been a Conservative and he said, “I don’t know”. It was disappointing because our arguments about politics have, over the years, alienated us and diminished our relationship. I would expect someone who had placed ideology above commitment to a positive connection with their own child to at least understand why they believed what they believed. I’m interested in my future life not allowing this to happen anymore between myself and anyone else.
I realize not having any collegiate experience with politics, philosophy, and economics puts me at a great disadvantage, but I’m an eager student and I’m excited to learn. I think I have finally accepted the idea that philosophical and economic theory (especially when it is based on rational and empirical scientific data of, as you say, “how people actually are, and not how we hope them to be”) is just like any other scientific endeavor (astronomy, physics, medicine) in which theories that can be refuted by data, which then must be adjusted, etc. I’m not sure why I didn’t understand this earlier (nobody ever told me this, is all I can think!), because I LOVE the scientific method and am trained in it as an undergrad. Anyways I’m excited to learn about the theories of philosophy and politics and economics so that I can understand why my natural intuition is to be what I’ve thought to be called “progressive” but what I now understand is just a very human-centered empathetic position on the Classical Liberalism spectrum. In fact, I just realized that like almost everyone I know, I have always accepted the four rules for Classical Liberalism you laid out as a successful organization for society: rule of law, rights of man, socially representative houses of government (which I find lacking right now), and meritocracy (which trips up my intuition system a bit)). It’s just that I don’t like the human collateral damage that occurs along the way. I thought this made me a progressive, but now I’m not so sure. So I’m starting with the Conservative point of view, because that seems to be the most popular, the form that started our country, and because I really really want to understand the people who live near me. (At times I feel like I was born into the wrong family at the wrong time and in the wrong place, it’s not a comforting way to live and it leads to great unhappiness, as you laid out in your article “Why Conservatives are Happier”.)
So while I agree that usually, we can’t change, I’m setting out to prove that when we set our minds to it, and when we use Haidt’s two paths (targeting intuition and using reason) we can change ourselves. The purpose is not to move from falsehood into the truth (i.e. the assumption that I know Liberals detect from Conservatives that conservative thought is perfect, whereas liberal thought is weak and idealistic and naive) but to move from ignorance into knowledge. My working hypothesis in starting out is that we can create a framework for society that creatively integrates ideas and values from all over the political spectrum. I’m starting with a rewriting of my brain to understand the Conservative perspective. After that I’ll probably work on Liberatarianism, then the other political ideologies. Not sure how many rewrites of neural code my brain can take or if instead of truly rewriting I’ll be doing something more like tweaking? :) For me, for now, my purpose in asking questions is to learn. So thank you so much for taking your time to respond!
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Question: Please clarify, with both scientific evidence and an explanation, when you have time, this very popular yet in my opinion tired dogmatic sounding statement: “…a minority pays taxes, and the majority does not…”
Please help me understand this from the Conservative point of view. Thanks!
RE: “Does this not threaten the stability of our entire system in a very fundamental way? Doesn’t this in effect create a new kind of “nobility or ruling class”?
Yes, this means that the classical liberal system did not survive the addition to women and labor into the voting pool, because classical liberal institutions were developed to provide a neutral means of resolving conflicts in priorities between men of similar economic and social interests, and it cannot survive the resolution of conflicts between different goals and ways of life, between genders, classes and races. (Hence why the export of democracy appears to be a failure, and the export of consumer capitalism is successful.)
RE: “Doesn’t this in effect create a new kind of “nobility or ruling class”? I see fascism as one potential outcome.”
Well, doesn’t ‘what’ create a new kind of nobility or ruling class? The current arguments floating around are that the natural consequence will be the south american model, where there is an elite core of upper and upper middle class people in the cities, a ring of lower class poverty around them, and a few middle class people dotting the mostly vacant countryside. Another is that we are dividing from classes into castes because geographic proximity, eduction and organizational relations are causing selective breeding. Another is that we are ‘speciating’ by this process. (That’s silly.) My argument is that we should break up the country (see Nine Nations Of North America) in order to solve the problem. But it is very unlikely that a territory this large will persist under a central government. THe only thing perpetuating it right now is the dependency on redistribution. But if the military declines like most of us think it will, and the petro-dollar declines, it is pretty likely that the USA will, like europe, not be able to redistribute enough to compensate for the loss in purchasing power. We could also fix the government but that would require a constitutional convention and I don’t believe that’s possible. We could also become a totalitarian state, which I suspect we will do for a short time. But the idea that a system designed for people marginally indifferent can provide a means of resolving conflicts for people who are extraordinarily polarized for any length of time is simply impossible.
RE: “via the corporate take-over of politics and government.”
I don’t see corporatism as any more likely than socialism. This is partly because corporations are far less powerful than we think they are. They are only powerful because conservatives and libertarians have allied with them against the state and socialism. But more importantly, corporatism is as divisive as socialism. The state causes both problems, and that’s why we need an inflexible constitution not a ‘living document’.
RE: “not having any collegiate experience with politics, philosophy, and economics puts me at a great disadvantage,”
I’m not sure that’s really true. Seriously.
RE: ‘become a Conservative’
Well good luck. It would just mean that you were an outlier. :) A few people are affected but they tend to be intellectuals and they tend to change because they gained knowledge. I”m a pretty serious libertarian and it actually bothers me to know that it’s because I think in processes rather than experiences, am intellectual rather than emotional, and that it means by consequence I will be a permanent minority and less likely to be happy than both liberals and conservatives. But I started out as a conservative not a libertarian. And the conversion was involuntary and somewhat painful as I discovered that my belief in the myth of the founding fathers ant eh constitution and democracy were unfounded. It didn’t make me happy. That’s for sure. But then the truth may or many not make us happy.
RE: “And thank your for your earnest interest in debate.”
Like you, I’m just trying to figure it all out. I do my best. And it’s precious when you find someone who is intellectually honest. So the feeling is mutual. It’s also rare. although the truth is I’m not sure that there is anyone out there who is any better at articulating political systems than I am. And that’s a sad statement.
RE: ” sound bites and bumper sticker hand-me-downs ”
That’s because ideology is accessible to the passionate but inarticulate. And the truth is we’re all flailing in the dark. If democracy won’t work, then what will? That’s frightening. But we don’t know. It’s all trial and error.
Now, the mises institue was intentionally developed to spread ideology in response to Alinsky’s program of spreading left ideology. So the fact that mission arguments are so pervasive on the web is a testament to the success of the model.
RE: “Class”
Look up social class and economic class. Then read Paul Fussell’s “Class” and your world will never be the same again.
RE: “believed what they believed”
And is your father supposed to be unique in this regard? :) He’s not. The problem is the inverse: trying to find someone who understands all thee sides of the triangle and can articulate why he or she chose one. It all comes down to sentiments. Sentiments are the result of instincts and training. Reinforced by internal narratives.
RE: “to move from ignorance into knowledge”
Well, if you really believe this you’ve already succeeded in doing something very few people can. Congratulations. It’s beautiful. Just reading it made my day.
RE: “Thank you”
No, thank you for playing honestly in the sandbox. I had fun. It’s been a pleasure.
OK, so now that you’ve impressed me to death. Tell me a little about you if you don’t mind. :)
Thanks.
Curt
RE: “Yes, this means that the classical liberal system did not survive the addition to women and labor into the voting pool, because classical liberal institutions were developed to provide a neutral means of resolving conflicts in priorities between men of similar economic and social interests, and it cannot survive the resolution of conflicts between different goals and ways of life, between genders, classes and races. ”
Can you point me in the direction of something to read on this, as it’s entirely new to me. I assume these problems started unfolding with the progressive movements (emancipation, black voting rights, suffrage movement, civil rights, etc.)? Does this mean the founding fathers literally intended that our country would remain a place where only wealthy white landowning men had rights assured and protected by the Constitution? Yikes.
RE: “Well, doesn’t ‘what’ create a new kind of nobility or ruling class?”
Answer –> “where as a consequence the wealthy group has committed to fund the super wealthy as an act of opposition to that redistribution”
Wherein the super wealthy (Charles and David Koch, for instance who are spending money in elections in Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, whereas they are HQ in Kansas but live in Florida, something like that) now effectively ‘buy’ their representation in various states, levels of government, etc. The effect is they are using our government, its offices, the people employed, and the lobbyists who shmooze all of the above, to control and create policy that serves their narrow interests and typically harms their employees, the communities, and the planet. The Waltons are famous for this as well, and their corporation does harm people, communities, and the planet, all through the mechanism that conservatives hate – involuntary transfer. Here’s how: when they hire their low-class workforce, they give them the form to fill out to sign up for food stamps. They pay them incredibly poorly (even though the corporation makes billions in profit each year. Next they don’t provide health insurance benefits to 1/3 of their workforce. (Their workforce is 1% of the US population by the way.) They keep these people at part-time hours so they aren’t required to provide health benefits. This effectively involuntarily transfers the cost for food and health coverage to “we the people”, the taxpayer. Walmart’s production occurs mostly in foreign countries at low cost and without environmental protections which involuntarily transfers more of the cost to those people and the planet. (This is why I don’t agree always that low-cost goods are a “progress” and “benefit” to society.) Other corporations behave similarly to harm the planet and then involuntarily transfer their costs to the rest of us. My husband comes from an area on the coast of Georgia, Brunswick, where there are numerous ‘superfund’ sites that our taxes pay for to clean up areas where corporations picked up and left town, leaving polluted, disgusting, uninhabitable factory remains in their wake.
All this is doing is depressing the low-class, making them more dependent on the state (I agree with that) and involuntarily transferring the costs of them doing businesses from the corporations (that are profitable) to the people paying taxes. And we’re talking about people with jobs, I haven’t even mentioned all the outsourcing. There was a time around 2001 when I was signed up to receive emails informing me when large numbers of corporate jobs were being outsourced. I was getting 1 to 3 emails a week with numbers in the 20-50K of jobs being lost per email. Insane.
RE: “I don’t see corporatism as any more likely than socialism.”
I think corporatism has already happened. I’m not sure what you meant by “any more likely”. Does that mean you don’t think this has already occurred? What election is available anymore to anyone of the common class or anyone who doesn’t have boucoup bucks themselves or loads of connections to people with money? Who are the people with money? People who work (C level and VPs, regional managers etc.) for or own the corporations. Who benefits from their connections? The corporations, who are the people who work for (C level and VPs, regional managers etc) for or own the corporations. Who is behind the corporations? The super wealthy. If you follow the money with every election and every bill that actually passes in Congress, there is a corporation sitting right there waiting to reap big rewards (i.e. government handover of taxpayer money). And that actually means the people who own the stocks in the corporations, right? The top 20%. The top 1% owns 50+% of the stocks, the next 19% owns the next 43% of the stocks. So we have this small group both making all the decisions and reaping all the profits from these corporations. This is not a healthy society. This group is what I mean when I say the “new nobility”. The Affordable Care Act is a great example of corporatism. There are some really great people protections in this law, which is why I like parts of it, but it is mostly a giant contract between “we the people” and the Health Insurance Industry that ensures that they will have a steady supply of never-ending customers. By getting rid of the public option (which may or may not have been sustainable, but it did serve one purpose – providing SOME form of competition in a world of zero competition for health insurance products) that industry and its lobby effectively locked in its profit base for the next, well, until it is thrown out by the conservative SCOTUS in June (which they may not do, because why would they? The health insurance lobby spent TONS of money getting that thing through in its present form, the individual mandate included, and the SCOTUS is VERY pro-big-business).
RE: “not having any collegiate experience with politics, philosophy, and economics puts me at a great disadvantage,”
Honest. I never took a class in any of these subjects. But I was reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in high school. I even got inside suspension for doing so in French and Physics class, which I consider a badge of honor and a terrible irony of the situation :)
RE: “I think in processes rather than experiences, am intellectual rather than emotional, and that it means by consequence I will be a permanent minority and less likely to be happy than both liberals and conservatives.”
What does ‘thinking in processes vs. experiences’ mean? If I had to say about myself, I’m both intellectual and emotional, and have always intuitively felt that both are valuable (both being human).
RE: “And the conversion was involuntary and somewhat painful as I discovered that my belief in the myth of the founding fathers ant eh constitution and democracy were unfounded. It didn’t make me happy. That’s for sure. But then the truth may or many not make us happy.”
Tell me about it. For those of us who do embrace many of the conservative or American values like individualism, hard-work, dedication, etc the “American Dream” was a beautiful thing and it was predicated on the assumption that the founding fathers story (the one about them loving the idea of freedom and a society free from tyranny by an oppressive ruler while disregarding the fact that they owned slaves) + democracy + the constitution was an effective “best case” scenario. We now know better, and the realization is devastating. For me it has all but undone my understanding of my place in the world. There have been days when I have literally felt depressed by the feeling of “what’s the point when it’s all a big giant lie?” The Occupy Movement coincided with me being done with prerequisites for graduate school and reducing my work in my business, which gave me the time to pursue one of my passions (politics, philosophy, and economics – who knew?). I did a lot of writing to educate my friends and family about it, in order to give them the ‘reality on the ground’ from my perspective, and to hopefully combat the skewed perspective they were getting from the corporate controlled media (I mean, we let Australian businessmen come here and buy our newspapers? What kind of idiots are we?). I participated in many actions, protests, helped start the Occupellas (a singing group – we sing songs of freedom haha, it’s pretty awesome actually), wrote some songs (adopted popular show tunes and such with Occupy lyrics), learned a lot about civil disobedience but decided not to get arrested, because I have a very low tolerance for physical pain and the cops are seriously scary right now. Seeing the reaction of regular Americans that I know have been seriously hurt by the recession and by the 1%’s criminal activities on Wall Street (I use that phrase “1%” as a convenient way to reference the uber-rich who are actively pursuing the control of government by their money for their own class-centric ends, and completely disregarding those they are harming (the collateral human damage) in the process. While I know that not EVERYONE who is extremely wealthy does this, still it’s the most convenient way to acknowledge them, and I mean come on, when the Average American 99% household income is $31,244 and the average 1% household income is $27 million, I think the common class has the right to refer to this group in a convenient way:) was shocking. Why were so many people buying the bs about Occupy that was being pumped out on the mainstream media? Couldn’t these people understand their respective interest groups were not looking out for their better interest? I wasn’t surprised when the wealthy came down to Zucchati park with chants “We are the 1%!!”, but I was really shocked to see my conservative friends claiming “We are the 51%!”, asserting that they were part of the group that pays taxes – meaning they completely missed the purpose of the protest. But the moment my sister’s sister-in-law called me a “homeless jobless loser” when she found out I was part of the Occupy Movement, that was exactly when my house of cards came tumbling down. I am none of the above, and Occupy brought me into closer contact for the first time in my life with homeless people, who deserve societal respect for being human beings just as anyone else does. (I have this thing I do where I carry $50 in $1 bills in my car so that whenever I see a homeless person I give them a dollar – it’s the quickest way to buy a smile, and I know it sounds cheesy, but causing someone to smile it a true two-way gift.) I think that might have been the point when I started seeing human nature for just what it is; people are ignorant, narrow-minded, judgmental, insensitive, and full of shit. People’s ability to repeat and parrot what they are told as though they are small-minded birds who happen to be excellent at categorization is unbelievable.
I’ve been pessimistic about our situation since the months leading up to Bush’s theft of the presidential office and Gore’s too-easy capitulation. I was out protesting the Iraq war with my signs, doing my social experiments in different parts of town to see who supported the war and who didn’t (very interesting). Around that time I experienced a painful realization that the polemics of politics in our country can get real personal real fast. While sending a group email I called “goodvibes” to my friends and family I would interject with my opinions about the election, and then after 9/11, about the lead up to war. My godmother replied to all one day with a judgmental and hurtful email about how I was acting so immature to “question my President” and how “unAmerican” I was being. I guess this was in the Ann Coulter heyday. Sigh…
RE: “It’s also rare. although the truth is I’m not sure that there is anyone out there who is any better at articulating political systems than I am. And that’s a sad statement.”
I find this sad too. I’m glad to be connected and able to discuss this with you, but I think that’s saying something really sad about the state of intellectual achievement right now and its intersection with our governance. Let’s take the amendment one from North Carolina. That is a terribly written law. With its vagueness it will alienate ‘common law’ structured families from certain rights that now only legally married families will have. Unless this was the intention (in support of the nuclear family and all). Like I said on Quora, no imagination. I read the first 150 pages of the Affordable Care Act and it was also terribly written, overly long, complicated, and verbose. We have lobbyists writing our legislation right now. Not philosophers, or thinkers, or anyone who is passionate about writing and creating laws to actually solve society’s problems. Not people who are trained in literature and history and who spend their lives learning and talking about the organization of societies. If we compare today to the founding of our country, I have to thank god or whomever that there were actually intelligent (amazing) men who had rich learnings in history and world affairs and ancient philosophy and whatever else that informed their minds when conceiving of the ideas behind our country to begin with. I can’t assume today that we even have a collection of a handful of people in Washington DC or anywhere connected to politics at any level who brings that level of achievement, poetry, innovative intelligence, understanding of the world, respect for the arts etc to their job (like for instance Jefferson and Franklin). How can you be expected to restructure society with merely an MBA or a PhD in economics?
I’m a woman, so I tend to underestimate myself and naturally overestimate others, especially men in power. Well, I can tell you one thing, that delusion has been wiped from my neural networks :) I do not feel right now that we are in good hands.
RE: “And is your father supposed to be unique in this regard? :) He’s not. The problem is the inverse: trying to find someone who understands all thee sides of the triangle and can articulate why he or she chose one.”
Absolutely, you’re right. He was, is, typical. Being an idealist I have extremely high expectations of other people, and invariably they let me down. I’m working on that. For me, it is entirely natural to hear a story on tv or read something somewhere and want to figure out who stands to benefit, which group sponsored it, etc. Politics is just natural to me. I find there are two kinds of people in this world. People you can talk politics with, and people you can’t. Every single day of my life is a day filled with conversations about politics. I married a black man, so for the first two years, all we talked about was race. Now, we talk about politics, race, and everything else. I just don’t enjoy talking about the weather and superficial stuff. And in my opinion, everything in life is political to some degree in some way or another. Also I think it’s important to know what’s going on in every sphere because I have always believed that we are all connected. I once heard someone with four kids and no health insurance tell me that he thought politics didn’t affect his life, which is why he didn’t vote. Sigh…
RE: OK, so now that you’ve impressed me to death. Tell me a little about you if you don’t mind.
1. We just have such low standards anymore in society, that’s all :)
2. It goes without saying that with a reading list like the one you’ve put together, that alone impressed me nearly to death.
I’m two months away from moving from San Diego (which really is beautiful, and wonderful, so much that you start taking it for granted), to Pittsburgh (where I was born) to start attending graduate school to become a Physician Assistant. For the last 10 years I’ve owned a wedding and portrait photography business with my husband, but last year I had a positive mid-life crisis (challenging but strengthening) and decided I needed to diversify my household income by getting a job that was really difficult to get, in having a competitive entry point and requiring a high level of intellectual ability, but had enough of an income to cover all of our bills. Photography since the digital revolution had become something of an ‘everyone can do it’ kind of thing, and I was sick of competing with Uncle Bob for gigs :) Also it wasn’t fulfilling to me anymore, and I really needed a new challenge.
Before that I attended Emory University to study primate cognition and behavior. It was an amazing experience, getting to work with world class primatologists like Frans de Waal and Michael Tomasello (now the head of the Cognitive Evolution at the Max Plank Institute in Germany). The best part was getting to spend a summer in Uganda at a Jane Goodall research facility (understatement – that just meant a cleared plot of dirt to pitch my tent) following chimpanzees through the Kibale National Forest. Ah-mazing. Getting to see the Padtenestrium africanus (not sure of exact spelling) trees alone was worth the trip. Their canopies look like the arterial development of the lungs, ever branching into smaller and smaller subsets, until reaching a single leaf (alveoli), like a fractal or something. It was incredible. I fell in love with photography while there actually. Before graduating I wrote my honors thesis about the acquisition of yes-no questions in a young child named Abe. I pulled out patterns of questions and found support for the idea (called Constructivism) that children model their language after patterns they hear their parents or caregivers asking, simply at first, before abstracting and making more creative use of those patterns.
Before that I lived in Boston for a couple years, after one year at the University of Pittsburgh right after high school. I wanted to experience life a bit, having been sheltered growing up in a small conservative small-minded town in western Pennsylvania. (My family was wonderful, and still very supportive and loving, but my parents didn’t really know what to do with me when my mind developed reason, logic, and abstract thought :) I loved Boston for its walkability, the MFA (John Sargent’s “Daughters of Edward Boit” is unbelievable), Harvard, MIT (the campus, the juggling club, the free lectures!), the variety of people, close proximity to NYC (and all of its museums), and its amazing public library. I read my way through Shakespeare, the major English novel development, and into more Russian literature while there. I also did a year of community service in City Year, whose motto is “putting idealism to work”. I like to joke that after 1700 hours of community service, City Year effectively put my idealism to death, but not really :)
Before going to college in Atlanta I spent a summer in Europe in Rome, Florence, Venice, and Paris to take in the art. I am a HUGE art lover. I had the BEST time in Europe (on $63/day including my airfare, thanks to Rick Steves :) My days consisted of early to rise, breakfast at a little corner store of a baguette and some fruit, then first in line to whatever museum I was taking in that day. 3-4 hours in the museum, which I had usually mostly to myself (I had David all to myself for the first 15 minutes at the Academia in Florence and never once stood in line to see anything at the Louvre), then when the museum got overly crowded (with Asian tourists mostly who never actually looked at the art, just videotaped it with their hand-held cameras, so sad), I would find a hole-in-the-wall for a proper lunch (wine, bread, and pasta in Italy, and wine, pate, and crepes in Paris). Then back to my pensione for a nap, then off to another museum or site before having dinner. It was awesome. In Paris, I went to the Louve maybe 6 times in 11 days. My favorites were the Venus de Milo, Michaelangelo’s slaves, and the Rembrandt room. I love seeing reincarnations of the Venus de Milo in various other places, like the bottom floor of the Portman building in Atlanta, and a piece I just saw in the gardens at the Palm Springs Art Museum. In Paris, I took my own lunch to the Rodin museum almost every afternoon, and I read Gertrude Stein and Hemingway there :) It was sublime.
As a PA I want to go on medical mission trips and possibly work in another country at some point. I’m thinking I want to work in a lifestyle clinic for maybe cardiovascular health or diabetes. On a side note, one of the reasons for my deep distrust of corporations is the unethical, unhealthy things they do to our food, water, and environment. For example, high fructose corn syrup and sugar have been systematically substituted in our food for fat since around the 80′s. This crap “food” is killing us, literally. With 60% overweight, 30% obese, 20% of our children obese (insane!), we may not need to wait for totalitarian to take over, because everyone’s gonna be dead of a heart attack, stroke, or diabetes complications. I’d like to combine my understanding of how people learn, their motivations, their time perspective, and their values to develop education strategies to help empower people to change their lives through restructuring their attitudes, assumptions, and understanding of diet and exercise. I’m a vegan and try to walk the talk so hopefully that will also be inspiring to at least one other someone :) I just had my blood pressure checked, it was 105/70 without even trying :)
An aspiration of mine is to write a book someday, but I haven’t found the material or inspiration yet, though I have created a couple of books for my niece (one on being a Big Sister, and one a retelling of the “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” prayer with a New Thought twist), as well as a photo book of my dog Lou (called “The Tao of Lou”, which combines photos of him and my favorite bits from the Tao te Ching). Now having been out of the photography business for about 6 months I’m starting to work on some personal photo projects and I’m looking forward to more of that in the future. After becoming a PA I plan to work my tail off to pay my loans ($130K yikes) off in 2-3 years so that I can take sabbaticals whenever I want to in order to recharge, work on personal projects, and also, so I’m not a wage slave for the rest of my life :) How jealous of you am I that you get to play philosopher-debator-of-ideas all that time? Very. But not really, kind of like in some of the odder alternate theories of the universe Stephen Hawkings describes in The Grand Design I tend to think of each incarnation of a human being as a potential or possible iteration of human-ness. We should not be jealous of others, nor desire a life of experiences we cannot have or manifest. We just need to complete our purpose and part of our purpose is figuring out exactly what our purpose is :)
Oh wow, that was kind of long. I love writing and crafting sentences and turning my thoughts into words. It’s rare to find someone interested in talking in depth, so I leap at the chance. Hopefully you don’t mind :)
Cheers!