This one’s for you, ArisKatsaris—the “correct-line-ometer” prevents me from responding directly to your response, so I’ma put it here.
I have checked what I wrote, and nowhere did I write that the (well understood) Coase-style arguments about how to ameliorate nuisances, had anything to do with morality. They are something that any half-decent second-year Economics student has to know, on pain of failing an important module in second-year Microeconomics: it would be as near to impossible as makes no odds, to get better than a credit for 2nd year Micro without having read and understood Coase. So if you think I made it up from whole cloth, I suggest you’ve missed a critical bit of theory.
So anyhow… if you want to go around interpolating things that aren’t there, well and good—it might pass muster in Sociology departments (assuming universities still have those), but it’s not going to advance the ball any.
As to ‘hiring thugs to beat up people who engage in’ [insert behaviour here]… well, that seems a perfect analysis of what the State does to people who disagree with it: since I advocate the non-aggression principle, I would certainly never support such a thing (but let’s say I did: at least I would not be extorting the money used to pay for it).
This is a funny place—similar to a Randian cult-centre with its correct-line “persentio ergo rectum” clique and salon-intellectualism.
Kratoklastes, your arguments are clumsy, incoherent, borderline unreadable. Your being downvoted has nothing to do with “correct lines” or not, since we have a goodly number of libertarians in here (and in fact this site has been accused of being a plutocrat’s libertarian conspiracy in the past), it has to do with your basic inability to form coherent arguments or to address the points that other people are making. And also your overall tone, which is constantly rude as if that would earn you points—it doesn’t.
As to ‘hiring thugs to beat up people who engage in’ [insert behaviour here]… well, that seems a perfect analysis of what the State does to people who disagree with it: since I advocate the non-aggression principle, I would certainly never support such a thing
And yet your argument DOES support it: You argued that someone can prove that a cost is incurred on them by being willing to pay money to stop such behaviour. You’ve argued that morality is about letting people do as they will as long as they aren’t incurring costs on others.
Can you really not see how these two statements fit together so that your argument ends up excusing all that state violence which you decry? The theocratic Iranian state after all is composed of people, which prove that sinners are incurring costs against them by being willing to pay money (e.g. morality police wages) to stop such sinful behavior.
That’s your argument, though you didn’t realize you make it—because you just never seem to realize the precise meaning and consequences of your words.
And as for your babble about Coase, I never mentioned Coase, I’ve never read Coase, and that whole paragraph is just a further example of your incohererence.
“Your [sic] being downvoted”,,, hilarious: you’re showing the world that you can’t write an English sentence—which is hilarious given your prior waffle about “the precise meaning and consequences of [] words”.
Pretend it was a typo (which just happened to be the “you’re/your” issue, which is second to “then/than”, with “loose/lose” in third, as a marker of a bad second-rate education).
Make sure you go back and cover your tracks: you can edit your comments to remove glaring indications of a lack of really fundamental literacy. Already screencapped it anyhow.
That’s worth an upvote, for the pleasure it has brought me today.
“Your [sic] being downvoted”,,, hilarious: you’re showing the world that you can’t write an English sentence—which is hilarious given your prior waffle about “the precise meaning and consequences of [] words”.
“Your” is indeed the correct form, as it modifies the gerund phrase “being downvoted.”
ArisKatsarsis used the correct form of “your” here.
Also, you guys are filling the recent comments section with your flamewar. Please take it to a private conversation, as it has little value for the rest of us.
Oh please… what sad, sophomoric nonsense. “Down-votes” are for children: In my entire life on the internet (beginning in 1993) I’ve never down-voted anything in my whole life—anywhere—because down-votes are for self-indulgent babies who are obsessed with having some miniscule, irrelevant punitive capacity. It’s the ultimate expression of weakness.
Key point: if you have never read Coase—a fundamental (arguably the fundamental) contribution to the literature on nuisance-abatement in economics and the law—then you’re starting from a handicap so great that you can’t even participate sensibly in a discussion of the concept, because (here’s the thing...) it starts with Coase. It would be like involving yourself in an argument about optimal control, then bridling at being expected to have heard of calculus.
You brought the Coase issue into play it by implicitly asserting that that the “willingness-to-pay-to-abate” idea was mine—showing that you were gapingly ignorant of a massive literature in Economics that bears directly on the point.
While we’re being middle-school debaters, I will point out that your paraphrase should properly have been “Letting people do as they will as long as they are not imposing costs on others” (don’t mis-paraphrase my paraphrase: it’s either sloppy or dishonest—or both).
But let’s look at that statement: what bit of that would preclude the right to hire gangs to do violence to a peaceful individual? The bit about imposing costs maybe?
And nonsense like “That’s your argument, but you don’t even know it” is simply ludicrous—it’s such a hackneyed device that it’s almost not worth responding to.
Let’s just say that right through to Masters level I had no difficulty in making clear what my arguments were (I dropped out of my PhD once my scholarship ran out), and nothing has changed in the interim. Maybe you’re just so much smarter than the folks who graded me, and thus have spotted flaws that they missed. All while never having had to stoop to read Coase. Astounding hubris.
Another thing: the people of Iran do not contribute willingly to the funding of their state. That was not even a straw man argument—it was more like the ashes of a particularly sad already-burned straw man, that was made by a kid from the short bus.
Now some Iranians might be perfectly willing to fund State terror (just as some Americans are happy to fund drone strikes on Yemeni children) - ask yourself what budget there would be for the ‘religious police’ in Iran if the payment of taxes was entirely voluntary. The whole thing about a State is that it specifically denies expression of individual preference on issues of importance to the ruling clique: war, state ideology, internal policing, and revenue-collection.
I am amused that you used Iran as the boogie-man du jour, given that Iran actually has no purpose-specific “religious police”. The Saudi mutaween are far more famous, and their brief is specifically and solely to enforce Shari’a. The Iranian government has VEVAK (internal security forces, who do not police religious issues) and the Basij—the Basij does some enforcement of dress codes, but apart from that they’re nowhere near the level of oppression as in Saudi Arabia, and do not exist specifically to enforce religious doctrine (unike the mutaween).
This one’s for you, ArisKatsaris—the “correct-line-ometer” prevents me from responding directly to your response, so I’ma put it here.
I have checked what I wrote, and nowhere did I write that the (well understood) Coase-style arguments about how to ameliorate nuisances, had anything to do with morality. They are something that any half-decent second-year Economics student has to know, on pain of failing an important module in second-year Microeconomics: it would be as near to impossible as makes no odds, to get better than a credit for 2nd year Micro without having read and understood Coase. So if you think I made it up from whole cloth, I suggest you’ve missed a critical bit of theory.
So anyhow… if you want to go around interpolating things that aren’t there, well and good—it might pass muster in Sociology departments (assuming universities still have those), but it’s not going to advance the ball any.
As to ‘hiring thugs to beat up people who engage in’ [insert behaviour here]… well, that seems a perfect analysis of what the State does to people who disagree with it: since I advocate the non-aggression principle, I would certainly never support such a thing (but let’s say I did: at least I would not be extorting the money used to pay for it).
This is a funny place—similar to a Randian cult-centre with its correct-line “persentio ergo rectum” clique and salon-intellectualism.
Kratoklastes, your arguments are clumsy, incoherent, borderline unreadable. Your being downvoted has nothing to do with “correct lines” or not, since we have a goodly number of libertarians in here (and in fact this site has been accused of being a plutocrat’s libertarian conspiracy in the past), it has to do with your basic inability to form coherent arguments or to address the points that other people are making. And also your overall tone, which is constantly rude as if that would earn you points—it doesn’t.
And yet your argument DOES support it: You argued that someone can prove that a cost is incurred on them by being willing to pay money to stop such behaviour. You’ve argued that morality is about letting people do as they will as long as they aren’t incurring costs on others.
Can you really not see how these two statements fit together so that your argument ends up excusing all that state violence which you decry? The theocratic Iranian state after all is composed of people, which prove that sinners are incurring costs against them by being willing to pay money (e.g. morality police wages) to stop such sinful behavior.
That’s your argument, though you didn’t realize you make it—because you just never seem to realize the precise meaning and consequences of your words.
And as for your babble about Coase, I never mentioned Coase, I’ve never read Coase, and that whole paragraph is just a further example of your incohererence.
“Your [sic] being downvoted”,,, hilarious: you’re showing the world that you can’t write an English sentence—which is hilarious given your prior waffle about “the precise meaning and consequences of [] words”.
Pretend it was a typo (which just happened to be the “you’re/your” issue, which is second to “then/than”, with “loose/lose” in third, as a marker of a bad second-rate education).
Make sure you go back and cover your tracks: you can edit your comments to remove glaring indications of a lack of really fundamental literacy. Already screencapped it anyhow.
That’s worth an upvote, for the pleasure it has brought me today.
“Your” is indeed the correct form, as it modifies the gerund phrase “being downvoted.”
Awkward.
ArisKatsarsis used the correct form of “your” here.
Also, you guys are filling the recent comments section with your flamewar. Please take it to a private conversation, as it has little value for the rest of us.
Oh please… what sad, sophomoric nonsense. “Down-votes” are for children: In my entire life on the internet (beginning in 1993) I’ve never down-voted anything in my whole life—anywhere—because down-votes are for self-indulgent babies who are obsessed with having some miniscule, irrelevant punitive capacity. It’s the ultimate expression of weakness.
Key point: if you have never read Coase—a fundamental (arguably the fundamental) contribution to the literature on nuisance-abatement in economics and the law—then you’re starting from a handicap so great that you can’t even participate sensibly in a discussion of the concept, because (here’s the thing...) it starts with Coase. It would be like involving yourself in an argument about optimal control, then bridling at being expected to have heard of calculus.
You brought the Coase issue into play it by implicitly asserting that that the “willingness-to-pay-to-abate” idea was mine—showing that you were gapingly ignorant of a massive literature in Economics that bears directly on the point.
While we’re being middle-school debaters, I will point out that your paraphrase should properly have been “Letting people do as they will as long as they are not imposing costs on others” (don’t mis-paraphrase my paraphrase: it’s either sloppy or dishonest—or both).
But let’s look at that statement: what bit of that would preclude the right to hire gangs to do violence to a peaceful individual? The bit about imposing costs maybe?
And nonsense like “That’s your argument, but you don’t even know it” is simply ludicrous—it’s such a hackneyed device that it’s almost not worth responding to.
Let’s just say that right through to Masters level I had no difficulty in making clear what my arguments were (I dropped out of my PhD once my scholarship ran out), and nothing has changed in the interim. Maybe you’re just so much smarter than the folks who graded me, and thus have spotted flaws that they missed. All while never having had to stoop to read Coase. Astounding hubris.
Another thing: the people of Iran do not contribute willingly to the funding of their state. That was not even a straw man argument—it was more like the ashes of a particularly sad already-burned straw man, that was made by a kid from the short bus.
Now some Iranians might be perfectly willing to fund State terror (just as some Americans are happy to fund drone strikes on Yemeni children) - ask yourself what budget there would be for the ‘religious police’ in Iran if the payment of taxes was entirely voluntary. The whole thing about a State is that it specifically denies expression of individual preference on issues of importance to the ruling clique: war, state ideology, internal policing, and revenue-collection.
I am amused that you used Iran as the boogie-man du jour, given that Iran actually has no purpose-specific “religious police”. The Saudi mutaween are far more famous, and their brief is specifically and solely to enforce Shari’a. The Iranian government has VEVAK (internal security forces, who do not police religious issues) and the Basij—the Basij does some enforcement of dress codes, but apart from that they’re nowhere near the level of oppression as in Saudi Arabia, and do not exist specifically to enforce religious doctrine (unike the mutaween).