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

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Damien Sullivan
<phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 01:17:49PM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote:
>
>> I have the feeling that Rafal's position is not a million miles from
>> the True Knowledge of the (paradoxically) libertarian communist
>> future portrayed in Ken MacLeod's novel THE CASSINI DIVISION:
>
> That's not a paradox, that's "libertarian" having multiple meanings, and
> the communist one is the older one; US libertarians borrowed the term
> for their purified version of the dying classical liberal position.
>
>> We had founded our idealism on the most nihilistic implications of
>> science, our socialism on crass self-interest, our peace on our
>               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> True.  My position as a social democrat is motivated partly by altruism
> and egalitarianism and "that's just wrong", but it's also motivated by
> risk-averse selfishness.  I'm in a good position due to scholarships and
> job talent and semi-lucky inheritance, but it's not unassailable, and I
> have lots of friends and family who aren't so blessed.  I want them and
> bad-luck-me to be protected from medical bankruptcies, have good
> transportation options, have a fair share of the country's resources,
> not be handicapped by college debt, etc.

### Yes, and that's why you shouldn't want government controlled
medicine (the cause of most medical bankruptcies in the US),
government-provided transportation (because it's too expensive), and
government-controlled education (which contributed to the
credentialing culture which in turn is responsible for the overgrowth
of colleges, which in turn metastasized into the so-called "higher
education bubble", soon to be burst by the next recession).

It is precisely out of risk-averse selfishness that I oppose these things.

Isn't this amazing, how we can arrive at opposite conclusions from the
same stated motives and an analysis of mostly widely available
information about the world? So much for the Aumann theorem.

Rafal

Rafal