Some People Will Choose Badly
It isn't government's job to force them to choose well. Sheldon Richman at reason links to Albert J. Nock's essays in "On Doing The Right Thing", available on Kindle
Across the political spectrum, social engineers think they need to deprive us of freedom in order to make us moral or in some way better. (Such as thin. See New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to outlaw some sugared drinks larger than 16 ounces in eateries and ballparks.) So they use the law to keep us from discriminating, gambling, eating allegedly fattening foods, taking drugs, smoking in restaurants, abstaining from helping others, leaving our seat belts unbuckled, you name it.Nock saw through this long ago:
Freedom, for example, as they keep insisting, undoubtedly means freedom to drink oneself to death. The anarchist [that's what Nock called himself] grants this at once; but at the same time he points out that it also means freedom to say with the gravedigger in Les Misérables, "I have studied, I have graduated; I never drink." It unquestionably means freedom to go on without any code of morals at all; but it also means freedom to rationalise, construct and adhere to a code of one's own. The anarchist presses the point invariably overlooked, that freedom to do the one without correlative freedom to do the other is impossible; and that just here comes in the moral education which legalism and authoritarianism, with their denial of freedom, can never furnish.
Here he echoes Thomas Paine in Rights of Man :Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.Nock concluded that the purpose of his advocating freedom was nothing less than "that men may become as good and decent, as elevated and noble, as they might be and really wish to be."
...Nock's essay on the Right Thing is a reminder that the advocates of the paternalistic state, whether "left" or "right," have it backward: good conduct isn't a precondition of freedom; it is a consequence of freedom.
I have worked steadily on swallowing the founders red pill.
My question, constantly anymore, it why is the fed involved in this?
Jim P. at June 6, 2012 11:54 PM
There will always be people who choose badly. It becomes a problem when their bad choices have negative impacts on society at large. So, what a rational society ought to do is structure itself, to the extent possible, so that it is isolated from the effects of people who make bad choices.
Unfortunately, since the early 20th century, Western civilization has been going in the other direction. Among the people who make bad choices are narcissists and borderlines. And with a lot of these types of people, their #1 motivation in life is to be able to make bad choices and shift the costs to someone else.
A lot of Cluster B's have the gift of gab, and a huge amount of talent as liars and storytellers. They can and have worked themselves into positions of power and influence, with the goal of structing society so that they themselves never have to face the consequences of their bad choices. They are supurb at finding and hijacking humanitarian-type movements to use towards this purpose. I've been wondering for a while now why it was that all of the major 19th- and 20th-century civil rights movements eventally went bad. Well, this explains it. The purpose of civil-rights movements is to right wrongs, and Cluster B's always feel like they have been wronged, and they feel it with an intensity that normal people almost never do.
I've had a theory for a while that the amount of trouble that narcissists, borderlines, and sociopaths cause in society is proportional not to their percentage of the population, but to their absolute number. Once the sub-population of Cluster B's in a society reaches a certain number, the downfall of that society is inevitable. As power accumulates to an unaccounteable and self-appointed elite, resources are redirected towards grandiose and unproductive purposes; the law becomes irrational and loses its moral authority, and eventually everything breaks down into tribalism and criminal anarchy. I've often wondered when the the modern West would reach this point, but now I'm starting to think we've already passed it, back around 1900. Since then, technological (mostly) and social (a bit) evolution has been able to forestall the day of reckoning.
But now we're scraping the bottom of the 20th century's barrel of tricks, and the Cluster B population keeps growing. Given that a permanant solution to the problem is probably still centuries away, can we come up with new ways to hold off the vandals until then? Time will tell. I'm cautionsly optimistic.
Cousin Dave at June 7, 2012 7:45 AM
These restrictions have worked so well in the past. Prohibition, the war on drugs--there's nothing people respond better to than having something forbidden to them. That's why we're all so slim, sober and healthy.
Pricklypear at June 7, 2012 9:02 AM
Unfortunately, not only are we turning govt into a nanny state, moral relativism and multiculturalism is undermining societal taboos that helped us maintain a civilized society without having gov't do it for us. Creeping sharia is a perfect example of moral relativism and multiculturalism run amok. It is a real lose lose situation.
Bill O Rights at June 7, 2012 12:20 PM
I'm an economic conservative and a social liberal.
I'm going to argue that morality and a monoculture undermine liberty more than moral relativism and multiculturalism.
Some items that fit in the "moral relativism and multiculturalism":
If you approach any of the above and make a law about it, you are either restricting my liberty or restricting someone else's liberties.
Using the bible or other Christian texts to create laws is restrictive to those of other faiths or no faith.
Prohibition and drug laws restrict my liberty.
Declaring health care a "right" is imposing slavery on the health care staffs. A guy roles into the ER with a brain tumor at midnight. He demands treatment. Are you going send police over to some doctor's house, demand he get out of bed and come in to the hospital to treat him?
And the next question: Where is this stuff in the United States Constitution?
You need to think what is liberty and what is really the responsibility of the state, or the person.
Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:
Jim P. at June 7, 2012 8:11 PM
"These restrictions have worked so well in the past. Prohibition, the war on drugs..."
Point taken. However, as I was trying to argue, the solution is not to ban the behavior, but to minimize the linkage between it and society in general. For example, if someone wants to use drugs, they can have at it. But when they need health care to deal with the effects of their drug use, I'm not paying for it. Currently, our society is going in the opposite direction from that.
Cousin Dave at June 8, 2012 11:02 AM
That's not an accident. Leftists push schemes like socialized medicine for the purpose of having yet another excuse to butt into adults' personal decisions.
The bottom line is what David Friedman calls consumer sovereignty: every adult's view of what is good for him is by definition true. The Constitution should exclude risks an adult chooses to assume from the definition of the public safety.
John David Galt at June 12, 2012 6:50 PM
Leave a comment