[ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles)

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Damien Sullivan
<phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 01:40:36PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> Or in other words, for my last post of the night:
>
> "libertarianism with free good land was good for some poor" does not
> generalize to "libertarianism is good for the poor".

Let's try a different approach... would you agree with the following statement:
"The advance of technology, engineering and science has been good for
the poor (and even better for the rich)."

If so, and I really do hope you believe that here of all places, then
it follows that:
"Whatever society does to promote the development of technology,
engineering and science promotes the well being of everyone, including
the poor (albeit in a delayed manner compared to the rich)."

So the real answer to how to care for the poor is really:
"What is the best system for pushing science, engineering and
technology forward at the fastest possible pace."

You could answer this by saying, "Only government sponsored research
is far enough out to really push the envelope."
Or
You could say, "Capitalism is the best at promoting technology,
engineering and science."
Or perhaps some other governmental form would be better at promoting
these things.

If what we are truly after is the well being of mankind, then the
government that best serves mankind is the government that allows for
freedom in developing as much technology, science and engineering as
possible.

Perhaps there are other ways of looking at the world, but progress in
the liberal arts has not helped today's poor to be ahead of their
brethren from 100 years ago.

> "libertarianism was better for the poor than war-torn quasi-feudal
> aristocracies" does not generalize to "libertarian is better for the
> poor than social democracy".

I contend that all social democracy does is slow down the things that
actually help all of us. This is just an opinion, and I don't think it
can really be proven one way or another without a real experiment.

> The 19th century lets us combine these: "libertarianism with free good
> land [and various other geographic qualifiers] was better for the poor
> than war-torn and land-starved quasi-feudal aristocracies" does not
> generalize to "libertarianism is the bestest thing ever".

OK, so how does social democracy push forward technology, science and
engineering (by engineering I mean infrastructure) better than
libertarianism? (Real question)

As to the free land question, it was not free. It was stolen from the
American Indians. From the European standpoint, they weren't using it.
This seems evil in retrospect, and it was. It was driven by religious
belief systems that commanded us to subjugate the earth. Yes, the
American Experiment was given a boost by the free land and under
exploited resources. There was also the land taken in the Manifest
Destiny fiasco.

Whether it benefited from slavery is a little more debatable. There is
no question that slavery benefited slave owners, but the open question
is whether it benefited society as a whole over the long term... and
there I'm a little less sure. I'm not dogmatic on this point because
it's easy to make arguments about the productivity of slavery, but I
think there was a soul stealing malignancy that slowed everything down
too. That is harder to measure, and so harder to argue. It did boost
the population in an underpopulated land... it's complicated for sure.

If you grant that slavery in the northern states was much less than
that in the south, and the economic power of the north exceeded that
of the south (leading to the historical outcome of the civil war),
then you might be inclined to believe that libertarian capitalism did
more to develop industry and technology because that's exactly what
happened in the north. Note that industrialization in the south lagged
considerably.

> This all feels related to my observation that when Adam Smith attacked
> government intervention in the economies, he was mostly talking about
> monarchs using mercantilism and artificial monopolies to raise revenues
> for war.  Not about universal-suffrage democracies using progressive
> income taxation to fund univiersal pensions and health care, public
> schools and transportation, and a side order of environmental and safety
> regulation, especially as none of those things existed in 1776.

And I would support government regulation concerning the environment,
or at least government oversight of organizations that did the same.
This is because you are impinging MY liberties when you pollute the
planet I have to live on.

As for public schooling, I would not be so opposed to it, except for
the fact that it is used to indoctrinate citizens as much as educate
tomorrow's scientists, engineers and technologists. And in the long
term, that is a really bad thing, IMHO.

BTW, the Libertarian philosophy is not really intended to help the
poor directly, but rather to give as many people as are willing to
work hard the opportunity to escape poverty themselves. The fact that
libertarianism does, in fact, help the poor by pushing society
forward, is a happy coincidence. If you don't believe that to be the
case, well libertarianism is still the best way to provide the
opportunity broadly.

What justification is there that society owes a living to anyone? Is
that belief based in the same flawed religious roots as the belief
that it was OK to steal the land from the American Indians, or that
slavery was just fine? This is a really important question to answer
if you want to support your position that society should help the
poor.

-Kelly