STer

I'm constantly posting about the book The Evolution of Cooperation because it actually discusses studies showing what conditions are necessary for cooperation to thrive in a given system. A commitment to abiding by cooperative rules and imposing consequences for those who do not is required to a certain extent. But I don't think the extent was as great as we might think. I wish I could remember the exact numbers, but I don't think it was even a majority (I might be wrong though). At a certain threshold, non-cooperation becomes disincentivized to the extent that cooperation gains the momentum. As for this thread in general, it hits on a problem that has bothered me for a long time. You can make all the arguments you want that rules like the NAP are not just subjective preferences, but moral imperatives. But guess what. Even if you were to succeed in showing the NAP to be totally objectively moral, you would just move the problem back one step to the fact that many people don't care about objective facts anyway. Whether the NAP is just a subjective preference or not, the fact remains that many people will live as if that is the case and therein lies the real difficulty.

I just want to know if you can come up with a strait-forward example of government protecting from evil that does not originate from government. That's it. You did not answer that question. This just becomes curiouser and curiouser. I pointed out that you ignored my answer to your question in my previous post. So you respond by ignoring my having pointed that out too and asking the same question yet again. OK since you don't want to do the work of scrolling up a couple posts, I will paste it for you: "It's much easier to give examples where the government just protects someone from "evil." Those are a dime a dozen. A person is assaulted by a neighbor and a policeman saves them and a zillion other examples along those types of lines." Now if you want to claim all neighborly assaults are caused by the government, I will have to emphatically disagree with you. If you want to say "Yes but some other entity could have saved them instead" that's quite true, but doesn't negate the fact that the government did it and people saw them doing it and it influences their view of the government. If you want to say "Yes but in many other cases, the police fail to arrive and do their job or they arrest the wrong person" or something along that line, I'll say yes and that's why the view of them is mixed and they are seen as sometimes "evil" and sometimes protective, which is precisely my point. So I think your question has been quite easily answered.

In the examples you give, either people actually could not just dress, speak and move where they wanted - things were much more repressive - or the economy was horrible and a significant proportion of people were having a hard time getting basic needs met (making even our recessions look like luxury). My point is that nothing that goes on in rich Western countries is really near the degree of those cases. On an abstract level, you can make analogies. But the average Westerner does not experience anything like average people in Communist Czech or the Soviet Union before the collapse did. If an average American were transported to those societies, they'd notice some vast differences in how free they felt. There really is a stark difference between the experience of an average Westerner and a person in a truly repressive place. If you don't acknowledge that out of some kind of ideological anti-government purity then you are just not going to sound credible to most people. So it's really important to consider why this gap exists between the perilous leviathan spoken of by lib/an's and the pretty ok day to day life most people seem to feel they live. And I don't think the answer is to compare it to the denial in those other repressive regimes. It's true that things can get very bad and people still be in denial. But I don't think that's what's going on here. I think what's going on here is that Westerners have the best standard of living the world has ever known, lots and lots of everyday freedoms and they are pretty content when push comes to shove on issues of freedom. The homeschooling example is interesting because you ask whether it's resistance. But I keep pointing out that homeschooling is legal. It's a perfect example of what I keep saying - that our government has not stopped us from having a lot of freedoms. There is no need to resist anything to homeschool. It's one of the freedoms we enjoy.

She complained that her kids were being brats and he responded with "Look in the mirror." I don't see any world in which that is "offering empathy," at least not to her. Offering empathy would probably start with something like "So you're feeling frustrated by your kids? Tell me more about that." I'm not saying empathizing with her comment was the only approach one could take. But it certainly isn't the approach he took.

Magnus, We could sit here and debate the historical issues you raise all day long. But I really have no interest in that. We disagree on several things, but it is not what I am interested in talking about in this thread. I want to stick to the messaging/perception issue here. We seem to agree that most people perceive themselves as free to a level that is tolerable to them. You raise a worthwhile point about the role of propaganda in that. That does play some role. But if you are saying "If people knew the truth, they'd suddenly be unwilling to accept the state of affairs" I'm not sure you're right. Even if they saw the things you think they are blind to, as long as they could still get up in the morning, travel mostly where they want, wear what they want, say what they want and so on, I think many, if not most, would continue to consider themselves "free enough." If what you're saying is "What they are missing is that that will not continue to be the case and the government will continue to infringe further and further on those freedoms" that is another story. Then the question becomes "How far does it have to go before the freedom message resonates?" I'm not saying it never could. I'm simply saying as things are presently, I don't think the freedom message resonates and even if people could see the things you think they are blind to, I still don't think currently the freedom message would be that powerful. If conditions change to where everyday basic freedoms are more obviously restricted, then I could see that changing. I don't think we disagree on any of what I just said but if we do, feel free to correct me (concisely if you could, without another long explanation of why you despise the government, since I already understand that. [] )

I was surprised to read this so I just googled bedwetting and abuse and got lots of results. Did you try that?

People don't only see murder, theft and coercion by the state though. They also see the state locking up murderers and thieves. They see policemen working hard to catch murderers (in fact, they complain when they don't see.... you're response was incoherent and had little to nothing to do with the objections I raised. No wonder this thread has gone on for over a hundred posts and you have not changed your mind or changed anyone else's mind. A couple things: The response was not incoherent. You said "If the murder, theft and coercion of the state are not enough to convince someone that the state is dangerous... well maybe it's time to move on." I replied that that is not as simple as it sounds because people may see the state do something dangerous as you listed, but then the very same day see it do something exactly the opposite and stop something elsewhere that was also dangerous. You are focusing on one part of the picture (the dangers of the state), ignoring the other (the dangers elsewhere that the state sometimes intervenes in), and that will not give you a good understanding of the average person's view of the government since they see both of these things day in and day out. You will find almost nobody who won't admit the government does some very bad things (just look at the approval ratings). But you will also find very few who will claim it doesn't also do some good things. So as I keep pointing out, your better message is not "We are unfree and the government is evil." That just doesn't match people's experience. The argument that seems more reasonable and discussable is "Government does some good and some bad, but the bad outweighs the good and we can get those good things more efficiently." This is certainly an argument many people make and I think it's a better one. In this thread I'm just calling into question the "freedom" argument's effectiveness. As for changing people's minds, I'm not even sure many people have disagreed on my actual point to begin with - that the "freedom" message is pretty ineffective in modern Western countries. Some people have tried changing the subject and arguing straw men. But how many have you heard claim that the message "We are oppressed and unfree" is a highly effective one in modern Western countries? Has even one person said that? I know a couple said they agree with me that it isn't effective. Has anyone disagreed? It seems more like people agree with me on that, but rather than just post "Yes I agree" they change the subject to other things like "Is government, on the whole, in net, good?" which is not an issue I've raised. So the length of the thread, to me, just represents that it's a topic that raises a lot of interesting tangents and people have strong feelings about, not that many people are even disagreeing with my core argument, which, again, isn't even about my view, per se, but about the public perception.

So your goal was to avoid answering my question directly. How about another one then, this a little more direct: Where does government protect from evil that doesn't originate from government? It seems more like you selectively quoted my response to leave out the part where I already answered your question, which was only two sentences before the part you did quote, which leaves me wondering if you somehow missed seeing it or rather just decided to be provocative and troublemaking by pretending not to have seen it and then claiming I chose not to answer your question when instead you chose to ignore my answer. You also continue to oddly miss the fact that cases where government protects from evil created by other elements in the government supports my point more than the other cases, not less. If you don't realize that then you may want to reread to understand the point I'm making better because you must be missing the purpose of my argument. Talking about cases where government is solely protective is fine. It's a perfectly interesting discussion to have. But it's a far less compelling one when the topic is "Why do people have such mixed feelings about the government's relationship to evil?" If you're making a case for why people have mixed feelings, showing that government can be both at the same time is a lot more of an example of that than showing it can be one or the other.

It really doesn't matter if you personally think it is or not. Many people believe it is and when they see government entities protecting against it that registers as an example of a government protecting from evil. Hence, a good example of why they have mixed feelings about government creating vs. protecting against evil. Also, this was even going on in public institutions like public schools. You may not like the existence of public schools, but if they exist, surely THEY shouldn't be discriminating on the basis of race. Yet they were. There was also race-based discrimination in voting, which the federal government helped fix. So you can argue that you think discrimination is OK in private interactions. And you can argue that we should only have private interactions. But as long as we have public institutions, even you must admit we should not have governments themselves discriminating that way. And so when another government entity comes in and ends discrimination in ANOTHER PUBLIC INSTITUTION that is protection from an evil, I think even you must agree. But again, even if you don't agree, it still doesn't matter in terms of how that affects public perception of government, which is really the focus here. But in the larger principle, you make my point for me even better than I did. I showed that it's so complex that different government entities can both create and protect against "evil" at the same time. YOU took it one step further and showed that government can do one act that has both evil and protective aspects at the same time. So it's even more mixed than I had pointed out. When it comes to certain private interactions, you look at the same act that many people would point to as a hugely protective measure and see that very same act as an evil measure. That's because you focus on one aspect of it and others focus on another aspect of it. So again, is there any wonder people are confused whether government is evil or protective? Well like I said, it is a more valid argument to try to convince people that the bad outweighs the good and that there are more cost-efficient ways to get the same protection done. It is not valid to claim the government is always the perpetrator or evil and never the protector from it. That's just factually false (at least based on a basic understanding of things like rape, murder, child abuse and so on as evil.) There is just no question that government entities sometimes protect people from those things. And I'd say your 99% is just a made up number. I doubt it's 99% either. But regardless, if you can show it's a net loss, that is a more credible argument. But there is an even larger and more important point that your response brings to light. It's very clear that my goal in this thread is to expose the gap between some common libertarian/anarchist arguments and public perception on things like freedom, protection from evil, etc.. Your disgust for the state, even if merited, which is another issue, is so virulent that you can't even put it aside long enough to focus on the perception issue. This is not about whether you like the state or think it's good. Nor is it really a thread where it makes sense for you to launch into arguments about why government is bad as if you have to convince me, which would be beside the point. The thread is focusing on the fact that I don't think the standard libertarian/anarchist arguments are very effective in modern Western societies and why that is. I think one of the most troubling patterns with activists in this space is when they can't put aside their "anti-government rant mode" (for lack of a better term) to focus on particular aspects of the discussion separate from just launching into the usual argument. I find it worth noting that you would see a discussion that is about public perception and still jump right back into the most cliche anti-government arguments, not even aware that it wasn't relevant to the topic, since the topic is about public perception and what kind of message is likely to resonate with them, not about what you personally think. In fact, it's even ironic that in a thread where I'm explaining why the public does not feel much resonance with these types of arguments, you still saw fit to revert to some of those very same arguments.

But how "good" is an entity that uses bad methods (taxation) in order to carry out "good ends" ? I don't think there is any kind of blur at all. While it may be true that government is able to protect some people from "evil," how is it able to provide that protection in the first place? I would also not deny that politicians and government agents can have good intentions. Good intentions don't directly translate into good actions, though. EDIT: Hopefuly I can revise and add to this before you respond. I see what you mean about people's perceptions. The only thing that comes to mind that I can respond quickly with is that a lot of people believe in faulty moral systems. That is, in systems where "the ends justify the means," and government operates for the greater good despite bad methods. So, that is another challenge in making a compelling argument against the state; to convince people that they need to reevaluate what morality actually is. Oh ok, I was about to respond. But I'll wait and give you some time to clarify if you want. Let me know when you have said what you want to say and then I'll take a look at it.

People don't only see murder, theft and coercion by the state though. They also see the state locking up murderers and thieves. They see policemen working hard to catch murderers (in fact, they complain when they don't see it enough because they want to see it more and they salute them heartily when they do see a widely publicized example such as in Boston a few months ago). You have to understand this. When it comes to what people see on a day to day basis, it is a big mix of government doing things they don't like and government protecting them against things other people do that they don't like. If you can't wrap your head around why the average person sees government as both sometimes evil and sometimes the protector against evil, then you aren't open to the full spectrum of examples people see. As an anti-statist, no doubt you can give a long principled argument about why the cost isn't worth the benefit. But I think you lose credibility if you try to oversimplify and claim that there aren't any people in government that are there because they honestly want to protect people and who sometimes do protect people. To simply state "The government is always perpetrating evil and never protects people from evil" just flies in the face of people's experience. So I think the more honest and accurate argument that you can make, if this is how you feel, is simply that the costs outweigh the benefits and that there are better ways to have that protection that will be more efficient and effective. You can at least then have a discussion about that. But trying to deny the state ever protects people sounds delusional to most people and actually rightly so.

DoubtingThomas, I think you missed my point completely. I purposely chose cases where the government was doing something "evil" and then another part of the government protected someone from that "evil" to show how the very same entity can not only do both, but even do both at the same time. This is the most stark type of example of why people have mixed feelings about whether government concentrates evil or protects from evil. It's much easier to give examples where the government just protects someone from "evil." Those are a dime a dozen. A person is assaulted by a neighbor and a policeman saves them and a zillion other examples along those types of lines. And it's also easy to give examples of where government is just "evil" like when a corrupt dictator has thousands of people killed for political reasons.The entire point of all this is to show why people who try to figure out "Is government the concentration of evil or the protector from evil?" will often get very confused. They can not only see cases of both, but even cases where different government entities are both at the same time and even against each other. So my goal was to show the complexity that goes into people's perception of the answer to that question. Therefore, I purposely skipped the infinite and simple-to-find examples where it's one or the other and showed that it's even more confusing than that.

In what way does government protect against evil? You can cite many cases. Some of the best examples of how this is not as black and white as people make it are cases where one government entity protects someone from harm from another government entity. For instance, you can look at cases where a state government enabled or tolerated racial discrimination and the federal government intervened to prevent that. You can also look at cases where a citizen sues the government over a violation of their rights and a court (another government entity) finds in the citizen's favor. Or how about when corrupt government officials are prosecuted and sent to jail by a court? Now we can talk all day about the complexities involved. I'm certainly not going to the other extreme and saying government is only the protector. I'm saying many governments play both roles at different times (or sometimes even at the same time) It's not as simple as that the government only oppresses people and never helps them obtain justice. Sometimes the government will even protect people from harm about to be done by others in the very same government. It shows how mixed things are on this question of whether government is a concentration of evil or a protector against evil. And I think that explains why people are so confused about which one it is.

And this is, to me, a huge fundamental problem because health requires a balance of opposing values. To take a spectrum like freedom and responsibility and choose one side and make it your highest value, rather than to value a healthy balance, is almost inherently misguided to me. Interesting way to frame it. Also a very interesting way to frame it. I like the way that you're thinking about this overall. You are obviously using stereotypes of the most archetypal person in each category. But the point is well made. I could find it if I took the time to search, but I posted a very similar post to this a while back myself. The main difference between us here (and correct me if I'm wrong about your view) is that you seem convinced the state IS, as a rule, always the instrument of oppression by the powerful, never the protector. I think you can have situations where the state is the oppressor and situations where some other element is even more oppressive and the state does step in and mitigate it. It isn't a black and white issue. Either way, you're zeroing in on the key question behind all this for me too. As I phrased it in one of my blog posts "The key question is this: Is government the concentration of evil or a protector against evil?"

What if they can't? Even if they can't, they are going to be a lot more interested in a philosophy that speaks to their feeling of being abandoned and neglected than one that constantly harps on the need for more and more freedom which they don't feel they are really missing to begin with.

Just because this way of seeing the world might offer some explanation for why a person is in an abandoned and neglected social situation, which could certainly be helpful, that doesn't mean it offers any solution. Abandoned and neglected people don't just want to know why they are in that position. They want to know how to get out of it.

I agree with this asessment. Arguments for freedom are imperfect tools when the listener has no "free" point of comparison. That said, I don't think it's possible for any non-collectivist ideology to strongly appeal to the "neglected, lost, and abandoned," at large. The appeal of liberalism is exactly its ability to coopt just such a person. They offer a social heirarchy with the most oppressed and neglected seated at the top and copious amounts of stand-in parenting from the state. If there were such a corrolarry in the libertarian movement, it would probably migrate to the neocons or liberals. And I think this reflects one of the major problems for philosophies that make a fetish of the individual. People feel neglected, lost and abandoned because humans are not only social creatures, but creatures that evolved for hundreds of thousands of years in tribes. They are born "wired" to expect to be part of a group from birth to death, for better or worse. The very very sudden transition to a viewpoint of extreme individualism is quite difficult for such a creature to adapt to. Libertarians and anarchists don't seem to offer much of a practical solution to this. Philosophically, they can say "We still love groups, but the groups need to be voluntary and freely chosen by all involved." But that isn't of much comfort to someone who is unable to find such a group. And that is a very real practical problem for which the libertarian/anarchist communities don't seem to have any answer.

Yes she makes a very correct point that sometimes people who are slaves don't realize they are slaves. There is also the famous Goethe quote "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." But it just goes back to my last post. Debating the semantics of whether to call a modern Westerner's situation "slavery" or just a certain degree of limited freedom is kind of irrelevant in terms of activism. If people are content with the level of freedom they have then not only will they not really care what you label it, but if you try to convince them it's "slavery" you will more than likely just lose credibility since that doesn't match their experience. I honestly think the "freedom" argument is just not that strong an argument in the West because it quite honestly does not speak to so many of the more viscerally felt concerns of people, not the least of which, as I've mentioned, are the very opposite feelings - feelings of being neglected, lost and abandoned. Until libertarians and anarchists have a good answer to those feelings, they will be missing a huge part of their potential audience.

Yes I do. By that definition, if the Mafia (or anyone else) extorts protection money out of someone, then that person has now become a slave. I hardly think that definition fits. I agree with you that we're defining slavery differently. More importantly, I think people care a lot more about the nature of their situation than what you label it. If you want to call this situation where most people keep most of their money, some of it is taken but they see public services offered as a result, and other than that they mostly come and go as they please "slavery" then I guess you can do that. But I doubt most people will care what you call it as long as they can continue to engage in their freedoms. Letting people live a life marked by a level of freedom that they are mostly content with but debating whether to call it "slavery" or not is probably not focusing on what matters to the people themselves.

Yes, the "Mutually assured destruction" logic is one way of attempting to accede to the existence of aggression while making the use of it maladaptive. Whether it is effective in the "will kill" context is questionable. I've posted before why I think it probably isn't. But it is an example of the point you're making, that attempting to create conditions rendering exploitation maladaptive is a wise goal. That's why in my thread about parenting that promotes healthy neurodevelopment, I alluded to the fact that this also must include preparing children for the threats that they will face in the world. I also mention that I don't even like the term "peaceful parenting" as it is far too vague. Here you show yet another reason why. "Peaceful" is not nearly specific enough of a term for the type of parenting that healthy neurodevelopment requires. I'm quite confident that Stefan does not at all mean that parenting peacefully means never mentioning the existence of harmful people. In fact, I even remember him talking about how he values his daughter's instincts in terms of who she trusts and doesn't trust and so on. I would expect he is likely to prepare her for the reality of the world we live in far more, not less, than the typical parent. By "peaceful" he means not using coercion and force against the child. Sharing the information about how others do that is not itself an example of using coercion and force. Nonetheless, I still think we need to get more specific than "peaceful parenting."

No question that the government has a lot more power to harm you if you resist them than others. But the point here is that most people don't perceive all that much reason to resist them on a day to day basis. In those cases where the government does cross the line to where they really do limit a freedom someone values dearly, then those people will probably come to a new awareness on the issue. But that new awareness will be an epiphany precisely because they probably went their whole lives without feeling the government infringing on them too directly. One exception we could bring up that I'm surprised hasn't been raised is that in some communities people feel that the police stop them too much without good cause and actually do restrict their travel and things like that. And so in that case there might be a feeling of being unfree that others don't necessarily have.

Well let's not get quite that one-sided about it. Plenty of the people who helped build our relative comfort did so not out of cooperative motives. They were driven to enrich themselves and the help to others was a side benefit. If they could have just legally stolen a bunch of money or gotten away with it, many of them would gladly have preferred to do so. And there is plenty of exploitation that takes place in the course of industry too. So it would be a bit over the top to act like the industrialists and inventors who have brought us greater comfort were all cooperators fighting against the exploiters aiming to take them down. There are cooperators and exploiters on both sides. Nonetheless, what we agree on is that exploitation is - and will always be - a threat. And so the argument OP made, which I think is a good one, is that the main way to protect ourselves from that threat is to create conditions that make exploitation maladaptive. Do we agree on that?

If you want to have that discussion then it's incumbent upon you to present some evidence for your pre-historic claim OK I could take many angles on this. But I'll start with an easy one since it is one the FDR community appears to like a lot. The psychohistory angle has been advocated here a great deal. According to that work, primitive cultures were extremely violent. In fact, I have seen this research used many times on FDR, often by Stefan, to back up the claim that we have made much progress. It says that pre-historic cultures had very abusive childrearing practices leading to a lot of violence. Do you agree with the psychohistory work? I'm not even sure I do. But it seems many people here do. So it's an odd paradox that, on one hand, I hear people reference that work a lot to show how violent childrearing was in primitive tribes. And at the same time, when I claim violence predates civilization, I'm called out as if this is wrong and pre-historic cultures were cooperative and peaceful with no threat of exploitation at all. If that doesn't work for you, let me know and we can try some other angles. It's rather extraordinary for you to actually claim that manipulation and exploitation didn't exist in humanity until the last 10,000 years. We see these behaviors everywhere in nature. I almost wonder if you're just being provocative by even attempting to make such a claim. But I'll play along. I didn't pin my argument on pre-history. I pinned my argument on evolution. Manipulation, exploitation, the use of violence are survival and reproduction strategies. What other purpose do you think they serve? They are ways that organisms use to try to gain advantage. If the envirronment rewards and incentivizes them, then they continue just like anything else selected for evolutionarily. How could it be otherwise?

Yes this is exactly what I'm saying. Obviously we're not completely free. But most people don't care about being completely free, as there are infinite things they simply have no interest in doing. As long as they can do the things they really feel strongly about doing, they will be, for the most part, content. And where they are limited, the limits seem to come more from entities in their personal lives than from the government. Taxes is one big exception that I think most people do notice and feel, but again it isn't enough of a burden on them to push them over the edge.

Yep, that's the whole trick. Also, the government will teach you about government in school, but only to show how fair and balanced theirs is in comparison to worse ones in history. The Nazi\Hitler plugin for example, comes pre-installed in our operating system. So when current government is enacting some shitty policy all we do is compare that to a nazi concentration camp and conclude, "Hey no big deal". I'd bet that even the people in protests getting tear gassed and beaten by riot police are likely not thinking "Fuck ALL of this shit, Statism is immoral!", but rather "Fuck these guys, we need to get these crooks out and vote in some GOOD political leaders!" The Man IS keeping us down, but if we can't correctly identify who the Man is, then we'll be fighting all the wrong fights. Government is basically a cheater in the game of life. People get more riled up about pro athletes using steroids than they do about fundamental and wide-reaching cheating by governments. So baseball players and cyclists must be tarred and feathered whilst thieves and murderers are elevated as demigods. Students are also taught to respect their teachers and elders. Does that stop children for generations from complaining about the way their schools and parents are limiting their freedoms? No. Because they actually experience those people doing it in a very direct way. Their teachers tell them "You must sit still and not talk." Their parents tell them "You are not going out wearing that shirt." If you try to directly take away a basic freedom from people, they will complain many times despite propaganda. I'm not saying propaganda can't work on the larger scale. Obviously it can. But when you directly take away freedoms enough it becomes harder to hide it. The government simply isn't the one telling people they can't say what they want to say, wear what they want to wear, go where they want to go on their schedule for the most part. I think that is a big part of why most people are not up in arms about this. Even with propaganda, which certainly can play a role, if the government started telling Americans they can't travel or wear certain clothes or make political speech, I think we both know there would be an uproar. I'm not saying you can't find counterexamples where people will put up with certain degrees of limitation. But there is a point where even Westerners will become quiet upset.