When you have an answer on your ethical injunctions, please elaborate them in terms of “who does what to whom”. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
The whole Dictatorship of the Proletariat could have been punctured with a simple question—“How exactly is that supposed to work?” When you get down to concrete individuals, you see quickly that individuals have different interests. “We” aren’t going to be the Dictator. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
I certainly wouldn’t plan to establish a government on a set of restrictions that I’ve only spent a few minutes formulating
Can you see how libertarians would find that disturbing? “I want the government to positive impacts, subject to some ethical injunctions, but I haven’t really spent any time thinking about the ethical injunctions.”
Libertarians have spent more than a few minutes on questions of who does what to whom.
I do think, though, that the usual libertarian conception of rights is not a good way to narrow down issues that I care about
Well, I’ll go back to Thomas Sowell, and ask “compared to what?” Compared to what conception is the libertarian concept of right deficient? You don’t seem to have alternative conceptions that answer “who does what to whom”.
As for coordination problems, it’s a lot easier to coordinate people who have the same goals and want to cooperate voluntarily than force those who don’t want to cooperate to do what you want. The Libertarian way is to have the government ensure that people are free to cooperate with others to spend their lives as they choose, instead of the dominant paradigm of a government where we fight to control others, and make them spend their lives as we wish they would.
Can you explain what negative rights you think the government needs to protect? That is, a list, such that everyone could agree what are and aren’t legitimate negative rights to protect, and no important rights which society would suffer for not having defended are left out?
I’m aware that what I have is only the rough shape of a form of government, which needs a lot of work to convert into something practicable, but I think you overestimate the degree to which the hard work needed to formulate libertarianism as a system that could actually stand to improve on our current one has already been done.
As for coordination problems, it’s a lot easier to coordinate people who have the same goals and want to cooperate voluntarily than force those who don’t want to cooperate to do what you want.
It’s certainly easier to get people to cooperate with a strong central authority whose goals are in accordance with their own than one which is trying to force them into something they don’t think is in their interests. But when we look at examples of coordination problems like depleting fisheries, there’s an ample history of people who had a shared vested interest in their resources not being exhausted failing to work out amongst themselves and implement a scheme that would preserve their interests in the long term, whereas governments have had significantly greater success dealing with this sort of problem. Governments have certainly demonstrated a lot of failings, but it seems that the answer to the question of “how good are people at solving coordination problems to improve their shared interests over the long term, without a central authority to arbitrate,” is “pretty bad, compared to when they do have such an authority.”
I hope you do get back to me.
When you have an answer on your ethical injunctions, please elaborate them in terms of “who does what to whom”. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
The whole Dictatorship of the Proletariat could have been punctured with a simple question—“How exactly is that supposed to work?” When you get down to concrete individuals, you see quickly that individuals have different interests. “We” aren’t going to be the Dictator. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Can you see how libertarians would find that disturbing? “I want the government to positive impacts, subject to some ethical injunctions, but I haven’t really spent any time thinking about the ethical injunctions.”
Libertarians have spent more than a few minutes on questions of who does what to whom.
Well, I’ll go back to Thomas Sowell, and ask “compared to what?” Compared to what conception is the libertarian concept of right deficient? You don’t seem to have alternative conceptions that answer “who does what to whom”.
As for coordination problems, it’s a lot easier to coordinate people who have the same goals and want to cooperate voluntarily than force those who don’t want to cooperate to do what you want. The Libertarian way is to have the government ensure that people are free to cooperate with others to spend their lives as they choose, instead of the dominant paradigm of a government where we fight to control others, and make them spend their lives as we wish they would.
Can you explain what negative rights you think the government needs to protect? That is, a list, such that everyone could agree what are and aren’t legitimate negative rights to protect, and no important rights which society would suffer for not having defended are left out?
I’m aware that what I have is only the rough shape of a form of government, which needs a lot of work to convert into something practicable, but I think you overestimate the degree to which the hard work needed to formulate libertarianism as a system that could actually stand to improve on our current one has already been done.
It’s certainly easier to get people to cooperate with a strong central authority whose goals are in accordance with their own than one which is trying to force them into something they don’t think is in their interests. But when we look at examples of coordination problems like depleting fisheries, there’s an ample history of people who had a shared vested interest in their resources not being exhausted failing to work out amongst themselves and implement a scheme that would preserve their interests in the long term, whereas governments have had significantly greater success dealing with this sort of problem. Governments have certainly demonstrated a lot of failings, but it seems that the answer to the question of “how good are people at solving coordination problems to improve their shared interests over the long term, without a central authority to arbitrate,” is “pretty bad, compared to when they do have such an authority.”