Unit of political action

[labmath2]

I am listening to Sam Harris podcast, Evolving Minds, and and Johnathan Haidt makes an interesting point about women's rights. Now i am paraphrasing so i might not do the argument justice, but here goes nothing. For most of human history, the family was the unit of political action, so that men and women had very different roles/rights (if men were voting it would be more accurate to think of them as voting not for themselves, but for their family which would be framework of most political action). Today, the individual is the unit of political action, therefore it would be unjust/unfair to not give women the same rights as men (I think your view on this might differ depending on if you are conservative or progressive. Although i think support for individual as political actor is strong considering political actions are now about artificial groups born of similarity between members like race, gender, sexual orientation, and strong desire to preserve trees). 

 

I have considered some of the implication of the unit of political action being the individual vs the family, and i intuitively think it should be the family. which do you think it should be and what are the downsides and upsides to it being the family?

[shirgall]

If we needed to name another SI unit for a quanta of political action, I nominate the name "Argh" as in "the leak of the TPP text produced 30 kiloarghs/second."

 

In all seriousness, the minimum unit for political thought or action is an individual.

[dsayers]

which do you think it should be

As that which is political is predicated on the initiation of the use of force, there is no should be that will be philosophically sound.

[AccuTron]

Interesting proposition.  Off hand, I think about earlier decades or even centuries, and things may have been somewhat more straightforward to evaluate; not sure how that would go now.  The problem is, a wise and informed family, or a dysfunctional stubborn close minded family?

[Mister Mister]

it's an interesting idea, but all assumes the legitimacy of democracy (by Harris and Haidt, not you).  my understanding of how this all evolved, is that originally, the State was owned by the King, who passed it on to his son.  Then, the nobles rebelled, i.e. the Magna Carta, in England, and the State was owned by the landowners, who in turn owned the peasants.  This model was adapted in the US and other Republics, in a more free market model, where any man could own land if they were willing to work it.  So the idea of a Commonwealth Republic, was that property owners, who paid most of the taxes, in a sense collectively owned the government, and voted on how their tax money was spent on basic things like roads, security, fire protection, and so on, similar to board members of a corporation.  Sounds reasonable enough, but of course the real losers in this system were A) slaves, and B) lower class male citizens who were still subject to the draft despite not being able to vote on going to war. 

 

  Property restrictions were lifted around 1850, at a time of growing tensions in America.  It was generally considered that voting was one of several male privileges, that also went along with several responsibilities unique to men, specifically the draft.  When women got the right to vote in the 1920s, of course they were not subject to the draft.  It's also important to note that women's suffrage came only 70 years after universal male suffrage - despite the idea that we've always had 1000s of years of patriarchy where all men rule women!!! 

 

  Since the 1960s and the Great Society programs, you have an increasing number of people who take more out of the system than they pay in.  On top of that, since the Federal Reserve System came into place in 1913, and we came off the gold standard in the 1970s, the government has financed its operations through more and more debt.  This is all important to understanding what's wrong with modern democracy, because statists often describe it in theory, as similar to how it was in 1776: "we all pay into the system, and then vote on how that money is spent, so it's not theft", but of course this is not even close to being true.  The truth is that large numbers of people are voting to keep money flowing into themselves, and a huge burden falls on future generations who either can't vote yet, or aren't even born.  Theoretically, democracy could be more functional if A) governments couldn't borrow money, and B) only those actually paying into the system could vote.  Theoretically...

  So is your suggestion that only families should be able to vote?  I don't quite understand.  I mean, I agree that the family is the basic institution of society, the most important, and the one which conditions all others, but if you are talking about organizing a political system around the family I'm not sure what this would look like.

[labmath2]

As that which is political is predicated on the initiation of the use of force, there is no should be that will be philosophically sound.

Phrasing from a more free society perspective, are free societies more likely to be family oriented or individual oriented. Considering how far we have come technologically, are we likely to see the reemergence of a strong family unit if people were free to make their own choices (absent the state)? Would enough individuals be willing to make the choice someone like Stefan made in being a stay at home dad (or mom)? What impact would going one way as opposed to the other likely have on a free society?

[AncapFTW]

If we needed to name another SI unit for a quanta of political action, I nominate the name "Argh" as in "the leak of the TPP text produced 30 kiloarghs/second."

 

In all seriousness, the minimum unit for political thought or action is an individual.

Could the unit of Force, a newton, or pressure, Pascal, be used?  Not sure how you'd quantify political pressure or force, though.

[dsayers]

Phrasing from a more free society perspective, are free societies more likely to be family oriented or individual oriented.

Individuals exist. Family is a concept. You cannot have families without individuals.

[rosencrantz]

The smallest unit is an individual and the context that person is in. We don't exist in isolation. Rather, we are embedded in society, like nodes in a graph. The impact a person can have is measurable by signal intelligence. Somebody like Stef can reach a lot of people and change the way they think. The represenation of his social context is much more complex than me. If there was a unit of influence it would be logarithmic since the distribution of social relations and their importance follows the power law.

[Guest Gee]

Could the unit of Force, a newton, or pressure, Pascal, be used?  Not sure how you'd quantify political pressure or force, though.

 

Yup.