onyomi

I think Mike Huemer's point beginning around 20:00 in this video is a more satisfactory rebuttal to the "lifeboat" scenarios than strict adherence to NAP, or simply stating that the NAP doesn't apply in extreme circumstances. (Or, put another way, here is an argument for where to draw the line between "steal a hair to save the world" and "welfare state"). Also, I highly recommend this whole video, and Mike's new book, "The Problem of Political Authority."

In most cases the "greater good," is a puppet used to represent the interest of a few (with political power), so outside the once-a-millenia scenario you can safely conclude that calculus for a "greater good," translates into "central planning and misery." I agree. I hate it when people take something like "well, you would steal a hair to save the world wouldn't you???" and then run with it to "therefore, taxation is justified." I'm just trying to figure out if there's any objective line we can draw somewhere on that slippery slope between "it's okay to steal to save the world" and "it's okay to steal to help the poor."

Isn't that what a principle is though; a guideline or general rule you deem worthy of acquiescence to? I think it just comes down to personal decisions based on the context of the moment. Just because a principle might resolve to opinion, that doesn't make it less of a principle; it's just what it is: a guiding rule, no? One might always follow it or only sometimes, or find "contradictions" or not in the rule when applied in reality, but that's why I consider all principles to be loose guidelines based on personal values. What else could they be? I generally prefer/value peaceful society and interactions, so my "principle" is that of peaceful relations with people. Personally, I agree with you: I think the world would be a better place if everybody endeavored to live by the NAP as much as possible. However, that's just my opinion of what would be nice, not an objective fact. I think Stef's goal with UPB is to show that the NAP is not just a good idea, but an idea everyone implicitly endorses by their actions. Otherwise, it's just an opinion. Therefore, to not follow the NAP is hypocritical or even, "incorrect." But that doesn't prove that it's "good" to be correct or "evil" to be incorrect. It doesn't bridge "is" and "ought." I could be wrong, but thinking about it again lately, it doesn't seem to me that UPB so much bridges "is" and "ought," as it throws out "ought" altogether, along with holy writ and parental/governmental privilege and infallibility. There's no external basis for "ought" in the words of a god, parent, or government. Given that parents, government officials, and authors of holy texts are all just humans like you and me, they can't create "oughts" that somehow act as "meta-rules" for human actions and preferences. Thus, the only guidelines that can exist are revealed by those behaviors which we can deem "universally preferable," by virtue of everyone engaging in them. It seems to me that, in some sense, UPB replaces "good" and "bad" with "right" and "wrong" or "consistent" and "hypocritical." The only problem with that is, it still leaves you with the problem: I might say to a statist "taxation is wrong because it applies a different set of moral standards to different people," and the statist, seemingly, can just say, "I'm okay with sacrificing the principle that 'all men are created equal' if the result is a more even distribution of wealth." This, then, seems similar to the idea "I'm willing to sacrifice the principle 'don't steal' in cases where stealing is necessary to prevent some awful catastrophe." That is, if people can, and do, decide to make exceptions to NAP (generally in very implausible, weird situations not likely to come up in real life, admittedly) based on some calculus of the "greater good" (better to steal a hair than let the world explode), then that would seem to allow the statist to make exceptions to the NAP, or to "all men are created equal" when he feels some other goal, like economic equality, is more important.

I understand Stef's argument that the existence of a bizarre exception doesn't necessarily invalidate a general moral principle in the same way the existence of a two-headed horse doesn't require biology to redefine "horse." What I don't think I've heard him address is the more fundamental point I think some critics who raise such hypotheticals are getting at: There's an old joke: "A man asks a woman: 'hey, would you sleep with me for a million dollars?' She says, 'sure.' Then he says, 'okay, would you sleep with me for a hundred dollars?' She slaps him and says 'what kind of a person do you think I am?' The man says, 'We've already established the principle, now we're just haggling over the particulars.'" That is, if you posit some moral absolute like, "it's always wrong to initiate coercion," then, so long as it is truly absolute, you can stand on the principle, just as the woman in the example might have stood on the principle "it is wrong to sleep with people for money." However, once you accept the idea that the principle is malleable in extreme cases, like, "don't initiate coercion unless it's really, really important," then it stops being a "principle" and instead becomes more of a guideline, the borders of which are open to negotiation. In the joke, for example, the woman already admitted that she wasn't really working with an absolute principle "it's wrong to sleep with someone for money"; instead, she was working with a general guideline: "it's wrong to sleep with someone for money, unless it's a whole lot of money." But once she's conceeded that, then it's totally subjective as to where the cuttoff should be: "is it wrong to sleep with someone for 100,000? 200,000?" Maybe if you're really hard up, it's okay to sleep with someone for 100 dollars. By extension, if we concede there are exceptions to the non-agression principle, such as "it's okay to coerce if it's really, really important," or "it's okay to coerce if it saves somebody's life" (I would not include, "it's okay to use violence in self-defense" among "exceptions," since the principle is generally understood as prohibiting initiation of force, not all force), then, we've established that the "principle" is actually somewhat flexible and open to negotiation. But if we conced that the non-agression principle is open to negotiation, then how do we draw an objective line in the sand where we say "this is not important enough to justify coercion," or "that's too much coercion, regardless of the necessity." If we concede coercion's okay with stealing a penny to save the world, then how do we draw a hard and fast line between that and stealing a thousand dollars from a millionaire to give it to a poor person? Or between stealing a thousand from a millionaire to give to a poor person and a generalized system of taxation-funded welfare? I may argue that in A, we need to make an exception, but in situation B, that's too much, or that a penny to save the world is a good time to make an exception, but a whole tax-funded welfare system is going too far, but once we've conceded the principle, we can no longer cite it as an objective standard, but instead are thrown into the messy particulars of arguing why "this much coercion is okay, but that much coercion goes too far." Personally, my only take on it is to say, "it's still wrong from the perspective of a strict interpretation of ethics to steal a penny to save the world, but in real life, everyone works with a combination of ethical and practial/utilitarian considerations--no one acts in strict accordance to ethical principles or strict utility maximization." I think Stef is implicitly making a similar concession when he says ethical rules are more like biological definitions (the boundaries of which are negotiable and porous), than like axioms of physics. But once we concede that the boundaries of ethical rules are negotiable, doesn't that leave the door open to negotiation as to what degree we should stand on principle and to what degree we should be utilitarian? Once we concede we have to make that principle-utility negotiation, how can we claim objectivity?

I've really enjoyed reading and listening to materials put out by anarchist Keith Preston (attackthesystem.com) lately. He seems to have a very nuanced, historically-informed view that can help unite anarchists of various stripes. Would love to see an interview with him and Stef.