What is the strong version of “taxation is theft”, for example? I can recall arguments against taxation stronger than this, of course, but none of them I would consider a version of the “taxation is theft” argument.
As for the arguments mentioned in the OP, “taxation is theft”, “abortion is murder” and “euthanasia is murder” are typically right-wing, “affirmative action is racist” is also probably right-wing (although general accusations of racism fit better into the left wing arsenal) while “capital punishment is murder”, “ev-psych is sexist” and “genetic engineering is eugenics” sound quite leftist to me. Not sure about “M.L.King was a criminal”, but the examples seem balanced with respect to the stereotypical left/right division. With respect to Yvain’s opinions the choice might be less balanced, of course.
What is the strong version of “taxation is theft”, for example?
Simple: “taxation is theft and is also just as wrong as mugging because 1) the supposed benefits of government programs aren’t really there and 2) majority voting doesn’t make mugging any better than theft by a gang of robbers is better than theft by a single robber.” All of these arguments can be made stronger by specifying the reasons you should ignore the major differences between the moral issue in question and the archetypal example’s.
(1) and (2) are two distinct arguments. (1) is stronger than, but not related to the original argument by categorisation. (2) is itself a conjunction of (i) “taxation is theft” hidden as a tacit assumption and (ii) a counter-argument to the unsaid “but this instance of theft is legitimated by majority voting”. I don’t find it useful to call X and Y and Z a strong version of X when the only thing Y and Z have in common with X is their being used to support the same conclusion.
Edit: (1) is in fact also a counter-argument to the (yet) unsaid “this theft is legitimised by its positive benefits” and doesn’t address the question of why taxation is bad in the first place, besides categorising it as theft.
What is the strong version of “taxation is theft”, for example? I can recall arguments against taxation stronger than this, of course, but none of them I would consider a version of the “taxation is theft” argument.
Well I can give you one example. Neoclassical economics makes a pretense of being neutral about how resources are distributed. The focus is instead on the absolute amount of resources. As I think Steven Landsburg puts it, taxes are no fun to pay, but they are fun to collect. The problem is that taxes can be avoided, and that resources put into avoiding taxes (and collecting them) are wasted. There is an identical economic argument against theft: the issue isn’t that the thief deserves to have the painting less than the museum, it’s that resources the museum puts into defending the painting (and that the thief puts into procuring it) are wasted.
Naturally that is a criticizable line of reasoning, but it gave me a lot to think about the first time I heard it.
But private property also requires resources to defend it (which are wasted like the ones to collect taxes), so in fact, neoclassical economics agree with Proudhon that “property is theft” ? :)
I think the standard rejoinder is that private property incurs greater benefits than the general cost of securing it, owing to true “tragedy of the commons” type situations it attempts to avoid.
Agreed that the anti-capital-punishment stance exemplified by “capital punishment is murder” is more attached to the American left than the American right, as are accusations of sexism in general (including but not limited to those applied to evo-psych).
“Genetic engineering is eugenics” seems trickier to me.
In the U.S. at the moment, I’d say Republican voters are more likely to endorse a “science can’t be trusted” argument than Democratic ones, and Democratic voters are more likely to endorse a “corporations can’t be trusted” argument than Republican ones. “Genetic engineering is eugenics” can be spun both ways, I think.
That is, if I wanted to convince a randomly selected Democratic voter to vote against genetic engineering, I could use rhetoric along the lines of “evil corporations want to use genetic engineering techniques to breed a so-called superior race of food crops, which will eradicate the food crops ordinary consumers know and trust and leave us at their mercy. Don’t let them get away with it!” pretty effectively. (Though less effectively than they could have 30 years ago.)
If I wanted to convince a randomly selected Republican voter, I could use similar rhetoric with “corporations” replaced by “scientists” and “consumers” replaced by “ordinary people”.
Both of those, I think, would be invoking the spectre of eugenics, the only change would be how the eugenicists are characterized… that is, are they elite academic eugenicists, or greedy corporate eugenicists?
All of that said, I endorse eugenics, so I’m probably not a reliable source of information about the rhetorical charge of these words for the mainstream.
Different perspectives, probably. In most European countries, I dare to say, everything associated with genetics is suspect to the left and the left also more often sides with the anti-science rhetoric in general. This is partly because the European right-wingers are less religious than in the U.S. (although I have heard creationism had become political issue in Serbia few years ago) and perhaps somehow related to the differences between Continental and analytic philosophy, if such intellectual affairs have real influence over practical politics.
Yeah, that’s been a significant shift over the last few decades in the U.S. There’s still a significant anti-scientific religious faction within the American left (New Agers and such) but they’ve been increasingly joined by factions that thirty/forty years ago would have been considered right, making the coalition as a whole a lot more secular than it was. Meanwhile the right’s power base has increasingly moved towards more rural states, and the . anti-scientific religious faction within the American right (evangelical Christians and such) have gained more relative power within it.
Three or four decades ago I think were were more aligned with the European model.
I have no idea whether the distinctions between continental and analytic philosophy have anything to do with it, and am inclined to doubt that the philosophical schism is causal if so, but I’d love to hear arguments supporting the idea.
It gets more complex once you include other groups, too — such as libertarians. In the ’60s and ’70s, the libertarian movement was closer to the New Left than to the Right, for instance.
I would tend to put “Genetic engineering is eugenics” in as a left-wing argument, because the left seems more likely to compare the right to Nazis, call them racist, etc. (with the right, of course, comparing the left to Stalin).
But on the other hand the American Right seems to have been up in arms about “Death Panels” or something, so I gotta admit I’m uncertain; I don’t follow the minutiae of politics on your side of the Atlantic.
Yeah, I think in a global context I would agree with you. The U.S. Left and Right are at this point their own beasts.
Also, at this point in the U.S., pretty much everyone compares everyone else to Hitler, and pretty much nobody remembers exactly who Stalin was. Actually, I suspect that >60% of the population, if asked whether the Soviet Union was allied with the U.S. or with Nazi Germany during WWII, would state confidently that it was allied with Nazi Germany.
I would say that “USSR was an ally of Nazi Germany for a time” is an example of WAitW. They had a non-aggression pact for a while, but both side knew it was just a matter of time before they will fight each other, and they didn’t do anything to actually help the other—USSR mostly used all the bought time to prepare itself for war against Nazi Germany. For borderline values of “ally” you can call them allies, but that’s sneaking in the usual connotation of being allies (actively helping each others) which was just not present.
This is far off-topic, but Stalin certainly expected the non-aggression pact to last. The whole tone of the Soviet press at the time changed to avoid criticizing fascism much, and there were trade ties and even (gasp!) cultural exchanges. There were no indications that the Soviet regime had any inclination of starting a war with Germany, though ti would probably not have joined the Axis either. Well, maybe, if Hitler changed the rhetoric enough to exclude the Russians from the Untermensch classification and found his Lebensraum elsewhere, though this is a pure counterfactual speculation.
There were no indications that the Soviet regime had any inclination of starting a war with Germany, though ti would probably not have joined the Axis either.
The Soviets actually tried to join the Axis in October-November 1940. The sticking point was that the Germans wanted the Soviets to agree to a split in spheres of influence along the Dardanelles and Bosporus, while the Soviets wanted a share of the Balkans.
Throw in things like Basis Nord, the massive amount of war-critical natural resources the Soviets shipped the Nazis 1939-1941, the German shipments of weapon systems (cruisers, aircraft, naval guns) and technical drawings to the Soviets, German diplomatic support for the invasion of Finland . . . well. The Soviets and Germans were awfully cooperative until Barbarossa, even if one stops short of saying they were allied.
Feel free to substitute “fought a shared enemy with” for “was allied with” if you think that improves the question. I trust you understood my point, though.
I thought the standard left-wing argument against genetic engineering was that only the rich will be able to afford it, with an implication that the rich will be able to unfairly stabilize their advantages.
What is the strong version of “taxation is theft”, for example? I can recall arguments against taxation stronger than this, of course, but none of them I would consider a version of the “taxation is theft” argument.
As for the arguments mentioned in the OP, “taxation is theft”, “abortion is murder” and “euthanasia is murder” are typically right-wing, “affirmative action is racist” is also probably right-wing (although general accusations of racism fit better into the left wing arsenal) while “capital punishment is murder”, “ev-psych is sexist” and “genetic engineering is eugenics” sound quite leftist to me. Not sure about “M.L.King was a criminal”, but the examples seem balanced with respect to the stereotypical left/right division. With respect to Yvain’s opinions the choice might be less balanced, of course.
Simple: “taxation is theft and is also just as wrong as mugging because 1) the supposed benefits of government programs aren’t really there and 2) majority voting doesn’t make mugging any better than theft by a gang of robbers is better than theft by a single robber.” All of these arguments can be made stronger by specifying the reasons you should ignore the major differences between the moral issue in question and the archetypal example’s.
(1) and (2) are two distinct arguments. (1) is stronger than, but not related to the original argument by categorisation. (2) is itself a conjunction of (i) “taxation is theft” hidden as a tacit assumption and (ii) a counter-argument to the unsaid “but this instance of theft is legitimated by majority voting”. I don’t find it useful to call X and Y and Z a strong version of X when the only thing Y and Z have in common with X is their being used to support the same conclusion.
Edit: (1) is in fact also a counter-argument to the (yet) unsaid “this theft is legitimised by its positive benefits” and doesn’t address the question of why taxation is bad in the first place, besides categorising it as theft.
Well I can give you one example. Neoclassical economics makes a pretense of being neutral about how resources are distributed. The focus is instead on the absolute amount of resources. As I think Steven Landsburg puts it, taxes are no fun to pay, but they are fun to collect. The problem is that taxes can be avoided, and that resources put into avoiding taxes (and collecting them) are wasted. There is an identical economic argument against theft: the issue isn’t that the thief deserves to have the painting less than the museum, it’s that resources the museum puts into defending the painting (and that the thief puts into procuring it) are wasted.
Naturally that is a criticizable line of reasoning, but it gave me a lot to think about the first time I heard it.
But private property also requires resources to defend it (which are wasted like the ones to collect taxes), so in fact, neoclassical economics agree with Proudhon that “property is theft” ? :)
I think the standard rejoinder is that private property incurs greater benefits than the general cost of securing it, owing to true “tragedy of the commons” type situations it attempts to avoid.
Agreed that the anti-capital-punishment stance exemplified by “capital punishment is murder” is more attached to the American left than the American right, as are accusations of sexism in general (including but not limited to those applied to evo-psych).
“Genetic engineering is eugenics” seems trickier to me.
In the U.S. at the moment, I’d say Republican voters are more likely to endorse a “science can’t be trusted” argument than Democratic ones, and Democratic voters are more likely to endorse a “corporations can’t be trusted” argument than Republican ones. “Genetic engineering is eugenics” can be spun both ways, I think.
That is, if I wanted to convince a randomly selected Democratic voter to vote against genetic engineering, I could use rhetoric along the lines of “evil corporations want to use genetic engineering techniques to breed a so-called superior race of food crops, which will eradicate the food crops ordinary consumers know and trust and leave us at their mercy. Don’t let them get away with it!” pretty effectively. (Though less effectively than they could have 30 years ago.)
If I wanted to convince a randomly selected Republican voter, I could use similar rhetoric with “corporations” replaced by “scientists” and “consumers” replaced by “ordinary people”.
Both of those, I think, would be invoking the spectre of eugenics, the only change would be how the eugenicists are characterized… that is, are they elite academic eugenicists, or greedy corporate eugenicists?
All of that said, I endorse eugenics, so I’m probably not a reliable source of information about the rhetorical charge of these words for the mainstream.
Different perspectives, probably. In most European countries, I dare to say, everything associated with genetics is suspect to the left and the left also more often sides with the anti-science rhetoric in general. This is partly because the European right-wingers are less religious than in the U.S. (although I have heard creationism had become political issue in Serbia few years ago) and perhaps somehow related to the differences between Continental and analytic philosophy, if such intellectual affairs have real influence over practical politics.
Yeah, that’s been a significant shift over the last few decades in the U.S. There’s still a significant anti-scientific religious faction within the American left (New Agers and such) but they’ve been increasingly joined by factions that thirty/forty years ago would have been considered right, making the coalition as a whole a lot more secular than it was. Meanwhile the right’s power base has increasingly moved towards more rural states, and the . anti-scientific religious faction within the American right (evangelical Christians and such) have gained more relative power within it.
Three or four decades ago I think were were more aligned with the European model.
I have no idea whether the distinctions between continental and analytic philosophy have anything to do with it, and am inclined to doubt that the philosophical schism is causal if so, but I’d love to hear arguments supporting the idea.
It gets more complex once you include other groups, too — such as libertarians. In the ’60s and ’70s, the libertarian movement was closer to the New Left than to the Right, for instance.
I would tend to put “Genetic engineering is eugenics” in as a left-wing argument, because the left seems more likely to compare the right to Nazis, call them racist, etc. (with the right, of course, comparing the left to Stalin).
But on the other hand the American Right seems to have been up in arms about “Death Panels” or something, so I gotta admit I’m uncertain; I don’t follow the minutiae of politics on your side of the Atlantic.
Yeah, I think in a global context I would agree with you.
The U.S. Left and Right are at this point their own beasts.
Also, at this point in the U.S., pretty much everyone compares everyone else to Hitler, and pretty much nobody remembers exactly who Stalin was. Actually, I suspect that >60% of the population, if asked whether the Soviet Union was allied with the U.S. or with Nazi Germany during WWII, would state confidently that it was allied with Nazi Germany.
But it was, for a time at least!
I would say that “USSR was an ally of Nazi Germany for a time” is an example of WAitW. They had a non-aggression pact for a while, but both side knew it was just a matter of time before they will fight each other, and they didn’t do anything to actually help the other—USSR mostly used all the bought time to prepare itself for war against Nazi Germany. For borderline values of “ally” you can call them allies, but that’s sneaking in the usual connotation of being allies (actively helping each others) which was just not present.
This is far off-topic, but Stalin certainly expected the non-aggression pact to last. The whole tone of the Soviet press at the time changed to avoid criticizing fascism much, and there were trade ties and even (gasp!) cultural exchanges. There were no indications that the Soviet regime had any inclination of starting a war with Germany, though ti would probably not have joined the Axis either. Well, maybe, if Hitler changed the rhetoric enough to exclude the Russians from the Untermensch classification and found his Lebensraum elsewhere, though this is a pure counterfactual speculation.
The Soviets actually tried to join the Axis in October-November 1940. The sticking point was that the Germans wanted the Soviets to agree to a split in spheres of influence along the Dardanelles and Bosporus, while the Soviets wanted a share of the Balkans.
Throw in things like Basis Nord, the massive amount of war-critical natural resources the Soviets shipped the Nazis 1939-1941, the German shipments of weapon systems (cruisers, aircraft, naval guns) and technical drawings to the Soviets, German diplomatic support for the invasion of Finland . . . well. The Soviets and Germans were awfully cooperative until Barbarossa, even if one stops short of saying they were allied.
Feel free to substitute “fought a shared enemy with” for “was allied with” if you think that improves the question. I trust you understood my point, though.
I thought the standard left-wing argument against genetic engineering was that only the rich will be able to afford it, with an implication that the rich will be able to unfairly stabilize their advantages.