The easiest way to show this is just ask some woke stars on their views of libertarianism, which is literally to let everyone be themselves.
One of the more ridiculous ideas to come out of this is that “everything is a human construct”. For example, it appears to be a woke idea that mathematics, science is some human (more specifically, white) invention and we should explore “alternative mathematics” or “alternative science”. Perhaps a new (and most importantly less oppressive) scientific method is right around the corner.
Like a long forgotten music video that you talked about with all your friends, most of these ideas will end up with no relevance and are completely meaningless. Wokeness is primarily an attention-seeking social phenomenon where influencers can tell you the new hot woke which you can mention later to impress your friends or get a date.
We see the world through the lens of social media optimised to make us angry at other groups of people.
Most of the people I know are queer and extremely leftist, and they're all massively annoyed at some of the bullshit performative wokeness we see. It's only a very very small minority of people who actually behave like that.
It's like what the linked article mentions with only 4% of people actually caring about the use of latinx. You get angry at people pushing for this and think progressives are stupid, but actual progressives are also annoyed at it because they know it's going to be used as an excuse to make their communities look stupid.
Idk what's a good conclusion on all this but I'd just say, keep in mind that extreme stuff you see online is usually not reflective of any sizeable amount of people
And these people actually have power, as journalists, film directors, etc. they do set the talking points.
So I think it’s completely fair to react to this in a negative way, because it is actually happening.
It would be great if the normal woke minority would reject these people and stand up against them and say they are too extreme, but they don’t.
Do you have a source for this? I’ve never heard of either of these terms, the closest being the “alternative facts” of one of Trump’s press secretaries.
> School district leaders in Seattle, Washington recently released a proposal to incorporate ethnic studies in the mathematics curriculum at all levels from kindergarten through grade 12. This initiative is part of an ongoing redesign of the district’s entire core subject curricula based on identity politics. The plan will be reviewed and voted on by the school board before the next academic year.
> Published by an Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee (ESAC), the new math curriculum is based on four major themes. These do not include, as one might think, numerical literacy, logic and problem-solving, or reasoning by analogy. Instead, the framework for K-12 will be Origins, Identity, and Agency, identified as “the ways in which we view ourselves as mathematicians”; Power and Oppression, based on the “disenfranchisement” of “people and communities of color”; History of Resistance and Liberation, the “stories, places and people who helped liberate people and communities of color using math, engineering and technology”; and Reflection and Action, urging young people to identify “mathematicians of color” and empower “their identities as mathematicians.”
Note the complete lack of 'math proficiency' theme. Fortunately it appears the proposal has not made it into the actual curriculum. https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/mathematics.
There are many post-positivist research traditions in many fields that you will be able to look up and read more about if you are interested in specific citations and authors that do this kind of work.
> For decades, America’s schools have tried and failed to close gaps on math test scores between White students and students of color. That’s not because math discriminates by race, and it’s not because some groups of students are inherently more suited to math. It’s because we give students of color and students from lower-income families the least access to critical resources, from the most qualified teachers to the best technology to the most advanced courses. And it’s because instructional materials and practices—even good ones—are influenced by culture and perspective.
> When we think narrowly about teaching math, we create barriers for students; we allow them to fall into the trap of thinking they’re “not a math person.” But the truth is we can all be “math people.” The goal of “A Pathway to Equitable Mathematics Instruction” is to engage as many students as possible in not just solving math problems but understanding math concepts so they can apply them across a wide range of real-world applications. Math problems, of course, have correct answers. But students can arrive at the right answer without understanding the bigger concept or they can have an “aha” moment when they see why they got an answer wrong.
> The toolkit was written by educators, and it doesn’t tell teachers how to do their job—it asks them to think about how they do it. For example, when we ask students to show their work, we should think about how and why. The point should be to have a dialogue about their process and their learning, not require every student to follow the exact same path to the right answer. A child of immigrants might have learned a different way to solve a problem because that’s how their parents were taught where they grew up. If we just tell that student their way is the wrong way, we risk turning them off to math for life. If we take the opportunity to explore why there are different ways to approach the same problem, it can be a learning moment for the entire class
"This tool provides teachers an opportunity to examine their actions, beliefs, and values around teaching mathematics. The framework for deconstructing racism in mathematics offers essential characteristics of antiracist math educators and critical approaches to dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by making visible the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture (Jones and Okun 2001; dismantling Racism 2016) with respect to math. Building on the framework, teachers engage with critical praxis in order to shift their instructional beliefs and practices towards antiracist math education. By centering antiracism, we model how to be antiracist math educators with accountability."
Math teachers need to know (1) math; and (2) how to teach it.
The argumet is that this falls into the second category.
I am not claiming to have read any evidence that it is effective, or even that there is any. I do think this shallow dismissal is improper.
That sounds a bit unfair, especially considering that anyone who would seriously try to provide such evidence would probably commit a career suicide, by being called a racist and cancelled.
At some point - once an adult - you have to call bollocks when you see it.
Signed,
A person who can speak five languages.
* "Math should always have one answer and this idea that there could be different ways of doing things is evil and will corrupt our youth. Objective = one answer." Ugh. As a mathematician this is the one I hate the most. This is what led Pythagoreans to campaign against irrational numbers, some Catholics to campaign against imaginary numbers, some folks to react against distributions/generalized derivatives/generalized functions in analysis. The whole point of math, the whole creativity and beauty and opportunity for innovation, is to see how you can break the rules!! Hyperbolic and spherical geometry are not tools of the DeViL!!! Nor are they woke. David Brooks, get a frikkin education [1].
* "You shouldn't talk about race in math because math is objective." Math is a human activity, humans are embedded in society. Brown vs Board was decided within my parents' lifetime. Racial segregation was the official policy of many educational institutions for most of US history and students will come with different educational histories. When you're teaching, you want to connect with students and you want to trace the intellectual history of the topic. It is more intellectually honest to acknowledge the unfairness of history than pretend it doesn't exist, and for students to understand the intertwined evolution of mathematics and technology they must understand historical context as well. When you're trying to motivate kids, especially, role models and stories from history and today can be useful, which is why ET Bell published Men of Mathematics [2] which inspired folks like Freeman Dyson, and we today include Power in Numbers by Talithia Williams, Mathematically Gifted and Black at https://mathematicallygiftedandblack.com/, Lathisms at https://www.lathisms.org/, Mathematicians of the African Diaspora at https://www.mathad.com/home, and more. There's not much point in dwelling on race/gender/sexuality, but intentional censorship (pretending Alan Turing wasn't gay, pretending Elbert Frank Cox had equal employment opportunities) is deeply dishonest.
* "Math should not be a tool for social justice." Um, what should it be? As I wrote in my other comment on this thread, everything is a tool. Math is a tool for justice, for oppression, for carpentry, for art, for software design, for computer games, for gerrymandering and anti-gerrymandering. As a mathematician I just want everyone to have access to this tool, rather than only some people! The idea that education can help people and society better them/itselves is not new. Check out the work of Bob Moses during the Civil Rights Movement [3]. It's a good read as everyone in America agrees the Civil Rights Movement was Good but many of those people believe "wokeness" is Bad -- because the concept of wokeness is also a tool used for many purposes. The argument is just over how people get to use this tool and who gets to use it.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/opinion/this-is-how-woken...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_of_Mathematics
[3] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/206027/radical-equa...
I don't know how to reconcile these two things. There are surely people stuck in environments for whom it completely describes their experience. But like the wokeness narratives themselves, there are also going to be people facing adversity for other reasons who end up misattributing their difficulties to "wokeness".
Perhaps it's just the same social bullying behavior there has always been, but couched in new criteria. Perhaps these new terms are just foreign to us (eg we're used to school bullying in terms of who plays football), and the overall situation is actually getting better. Or perhaps not.
I think in order to discuss it with the weight of a societal problem, there at least needs to be some measurable framework and resulting data showing effects and trends. To do otherwise is just stoking the identity politics dumpster fire.
Like any movement, I’m sure there are some valid points being made. And like any movement, this one appeals to some legit human needs: significance, connection, contribution, etc.
I think my main beef with wokeism is how disempowering it ends up being to an individual subscriber. The ideas being perpetuated (I am a victim, I am an oppressor but will now be a white savior) are useless and counterproductive in the real world.
The very sad and unfortunate thing is that some naive people are tying up their whole identities with this crap just to feel validated or connected to some group. No judgement, we all need those things. My concern is that they will end up figuring out way too late that internet points don’t pay the rent.
So yes, your criticism of wokeism is valid. The question is how relevant it is. You mention "some naive people". Yes, in a highly connected world of 8 billion people, some people are doing literally anything. The question is whether there is enough of a new trend to make for an actual concern, or whether it's being blown out of proportion and context. This matters because opposition to wokeness seems to be its own strain of identity politics.
Libertarianism fails really hard in situations where you have a lot more overall prosperity if you limit everybody. Libertarianism misses these opportunities because of its blindness to anything but individual freedoms. In economic terms it mostly refuses to deal with the tragedy of the commons. And it likes to pretend negative externalities don't exist, or that the most free markets would make negative externalities magically disappear.
Let's get concrete with a real life example.
Air pollution will very likely shorten my life by a couple of years (if the science is to be believed). A very moderate libertarian might be willing to discuss preventative regulations, but the vast majority of libertarians' response is "oh well, you can only sue after the damage has been done". Which puts the entire burden on the victim and after preventable damage has already been done. It's too late.
It's far cheaper and more effective for me to support a government that stops them from damaging my health and stops them from inteferring with my freedom to breath clean air. The complaint from libertarians is that I'm interfering with their freedoms using the threat of government force. Damn right I am! Because the only thing that has worked over the decades to clean up the air I breath is government regulations interferring with the freedoms of car manufactures, and the freedoms of consumers to buy and operate excessively polluting vehicles. Along with government interference in other polluting industries. Government inference 1, free markets 0. If I could find viable candidates who would intefere and regulate at a much faster pace, they would get my vote. Because it increases a freedom I deeply value.
Libertarianism would be a lot more interesting if the libertarians I talk to were actually interested in my freedoms and priorities (which are often collective freedoms to enjoy a shared resource) instead of only being interested in maximizing individual freedoms and their own priorities.
As far as asking "woke stars on their views of libertarianism" can you give examples and sources?
All models are wrong, but some are useful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-watchman_state#Philosoph...
Minarchy as described in that article would do a very poor job of regulating negative externalities and the criticisms I made in my parent post still apply. I know it's a big world our there and I could probably find a minarchist or even a libertarian who has a reasonable take on regulation of negative externalities, but so far I've been consistently disappointed. And it's not like it's tough to find debates around these subjects.
For example, I’ve yet to meet a libertarian who cares about their carbon emissions, even though that affects everybody else via climate change. Same goes for coronavirus - they don’t care if they spread the disease to others, but they feel like it’s oppression if they have to wear a mask.
And the same goes for trampling on the feelings of others, or passively accepting that they’ve been given huge advantages over others in society. They feel like they should be able to do anything short of actually stealing from or hurting others physically, and don’t consider the subtle ways they impact others in society.
Something tells me you’ve yet to a meet a libertarian at all. Being held accountable for your pollution of others’ property is a tenant of libertarianism.
> Same goes for coronavirus - they don’t care if they spread the disease to others
This sounds quite the opposite of libertarianism. Hurting/killing others isn’t part of the ideology.
It sounds like you’re just describing people who don’t understand science, which has nothing to do with libertarianism.
The air we share and breath isn't "others' property" though is it?
Like the parent commenter, I've also met and debated many libertarians over the past couple of decades. I've yet to meet one who cares in the least bit about polluting the air I breath. Or if they do claim to care they offer solutions that history has proven to not work: just remove every last regulation and the magic of free markets will make abuse magically disappear. When the opposite is true. The very worst air pollution happened when there were no regulations.
It is. It can be modeled as shared property. Libertarianism does not imply you don’t believe in commons.
> I've yet to meet one who cares in the least bit about polluting the air I breath.
Well allowing pollution is a violation of property rights. So again, it sounds like you’re just debating people who don’t believe in pollution. You encounter anti-science regardless of market regulation ideology.
> just remove every last regulation and the magic of free markets will make abuse magically disappear. When the opposite is true.
No, a libertarian solution to this problem would be something like cap and trade. Use the government to enforce the protection of the air and then allow the free market for carbon credits to find the best solution.
> The very worst air pollution happened when there were no regulations.
Well China has terrible air pollution and far more regulations than the US. The government regulating every aspect of life is irrelevant if the government isn’t regulating the right things. Some of the worst atrocities in the last couple of centuries were done at the direction of a government authority.
It's already shared property by its very nature, so I'm not sure what the extra step of it being "modeled" as that does. But sure, let's do it. Can you explain how my air would no longer be polluted using this model? Or how pollution would at the very least be significantly reduced on a year by year basis until it is no longer polluted?
> Use the government to enforce
Wait, a libertarian asking for government regulations and enforcement? Not the libertarians I talk to. Unless they are very very moderate in their libertarian views. All the libertarians I talk to are against government regulations. They want free markets and insist that it's regulations cause all the problems and prevent free markets from functioning properly.
I also think that calling cap and trade a market solution is disingenuous. The important part of it is the cap. It does all the heavy lifting of achieving the actual goal of reducing carbon emissions. A cap without the trade would achieve the goal, although possibly would be politically unpopular. Trade without the cap would be meaningless.
So at very best its a hybrid solution. And not one that I'm against. Markets are good at some things. But without the cap itself, markets would do almost nothing to improve the situation. Or they would start when it's already far too late.
But the point is that I'm not libertarian and I think cap and trade is a reasonable approach. So do many people. So we are really talking about a very moderate libertarian stance in the case of cap and trade. Because again, the important part of it is the regulation part.
> Well China has terrible air pollution and far more regulations than the US.
How many regulations does China have compared to the US and what's your source?
When you look at a city like Beijing for example, the air pollution was so bad because you had literally millions of people individually burning coal for their personal heat. Personal and individual liberty at work.
When they banned heating coal (along with other measures), PM2.5 levels went from 89.5µg/m³ to 58µg/m³, a reduction of about 35%. Very quick and effective. Not very popular, but for everyone who values the freedom to breath clean air it was a quick and significant accomplishment that benefited everyone by limiting everyone These are the kinds of liberties that libertarianism fails hard at achieving. Because of the part where you have to limit everyone in one area to achieve an overall shared liberty in another area.
> if the government isn’t regulating the right things
Who determines what the right things are?
> Some of the worst atrocities in the last couple of centuries were done at the direction of a government authority.
That's the spirit! Exactly the kind of arguments I've heard from libertarians when they insist that regulations are the wrong approach and we must just trust that free markets will somehow sort it all out.
If you are unaware of how resistant self-described “libertarians” are to wearing masks, taking vaccines, or reducing their carbon emissions, then you are the one who is ignorant.
If you want to say that those people are not true libertarians, fine, but I don’t see how you can pretend that relying on personal responsibility is actually effective.
You’re associating anti-science with libertarians, which is just lazy. Not poisoning and killing others is a pretty core tenant of individual liberty.
But sincerely thanks for being a better person than some of the libertarians that have a bigger audience. I appreciate you being super careful about your carbon emissions. I am curious though - do you simply leave carbon emissions to personal choice and hope that everyone is as respectful of our shared resources as you are?
And you should read up about why the aclu did this, they say some very relevant things to today.
Nice neighborhood y'all have here, eh? It'd be a real shame if crime went up around here...
No, it isn't. Its core is to enforce private property rights? That will very likely not translate into "letting everyone be themselves".
If, to be yourself, you need to claim someone else property, then Libertrarians would say it goes against the core principles of liberty, because to execute this claim you exercise coertion.
But as long as you do not exert coercion on no one else, you're free to be yourself anyway you like.
In practice, it means lack of government coercion because that's the easiest kind to oppose. Weaken government too much, and other forms of coercion will come to the fore. Changing that would require changing human nature though, so most libertarians prefer to turn a blind eye to it.
In any case, of cause, the reality is much more complicated, if there is a dispute over property rights or a form of coercion you go to court to decide who is right and who is wrong. Libertarianism is not anarchism. At the same time, in spite of all the complications of the real world, there is a clear difference in ideology between libertarianism and social democracy, for example. And one can claim the difference stems from the core principle where the two worldviews differ in certain values.
It's a core inconsistency of right-libertarianism that the artificial creation of property rights are taken as an exception that is elevated to something almost holy.
But because of the coercive nature of property rights, there isn't a country on earth that doesn't have huge carveouts to reduce their applicability. Ranging from zoning, to regulations of what you can do on your land to access rights and easements.
Some more than others. E.g. in Norway where I grew up, a private property owner can't deny you access to walk through forests or other non-urban land, nor can they deny you the right to forage or camp, as long as you're a certain distance from dwellings, as such restrictions have always been seen as undue restrictions on the liberties of the public to the point where it was for a long time the only uncodified area of Norwegian law, as it was seen as so inherently obvious it didn't need to be. Sweden has similar rights in their constitution.
But left-libertarians reject property rights entirely because they see it as entirely incompatible with liberty to apply coercion to exercise a claim of land at all by denying others access.
Then they will hold a monopoly over necessary resources for a few generations until someone innovates around them.
You have to realize it’s a good thing to see others go without just to make sure I never have to share my excess wealth /s
He was an anarcho-communist and the first publisher of libertarian political texts.
Right-wing libertarianism is about a century younger, and e.g. people like Rothbard very intentionally tried to find common ground between what he saw as the anti-authoritarian parts of the left and the right, but was largely rebuffed by the left, where left-libertarians, many of whom are anarchists, saw the right-libertarian obsession with property rights as fundamentally incompatible with the goal of maximising liberty.
How can you make this claim when Frederick Bastiat was a contemporary of Dejacque's? Many of today's leading libertarian-minded thinkers (Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, etc.) consider Bastiat core to their beliefs and you can hear Bastiat's writings echoed in their works.
Libertarianism as such was founded as a rejection of "moderate" anarchism, and a more extensive rejection of authority than that of Proudhon, along with an absolute rejection of property rights as oppressive.
That he was later adopted by some right-wing libertarians does not mean he invented libertarianism. Many people toyed with similar ideas. Dejacque was the person who gave it a name and promoted it as an explicit ideology.
You'll also not that Bastiat did not take things nearly as far as Dejacque did. E.g. Bastiat argued in Justice and Fraternity even for limited state provided welfare, so he did not even go as far as many right-libertarians. But whatever the size, he argues for a state, not the total dismantling of the state, which was the origin of libertarianism.
As such, Bastiat looks libertarian to right-libertarians because they took left-wing libertarianism and gutted the commitment to liberty of Dejacque to add in state restrictions on liberty to enable property, and in doing so shifted the ideology far to the right. But he's far less libertarian by its original definition than e.g. an anarchist like Proudhon. To left-libertarians he's just another statist.
[1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joseph-dejacque-on-t...
I don't recall reading anything like state provided welfare in Justice and Fraternity. It has been a very long time since I've read it, but that sounds antithetical to some of his other writings which I've re-read more recently. I would be curious to see the specific passage.
To my knowledge, communal arrangements (like Dejacque seemingly favors) have not proven practical outside of relatively small communities.
You've got a silly proconception that mankind is endemically neurotic. Virtually every interaction you make throughout the day is self-organized, I'd conjecture the vast majority of it is done without direct, indirect, or conditioned coercion, and unsupervised. Multiply this by 7bn. That is to say that most all hierarchical authority isn't even preventative, and is almost exclusively reactionary, which further extends into reasoning that the "order" promised by the institutions is largely illusory outside of the directives offered, which could just as well be derived through any other system.
You see that historically libertarianism follows directly from classical liberalism. They just changed the name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
and the broader thread, in context, is traced here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
One point that may make the distinction clear is that in this sentence, from the article you linked: "During the mid-20th century, many with Old Right or classical liberal beliefs began to describe themselves as libertarians." The "Old Right" were opponents of Roosevelt, who himself sits at the base of the branch of what the "Liberalism" entry calls "Modern Liberalism"—but both are under the tent of liberalism, as were others then and earlier whose views did not line up with libertarianism.
Liberalism was not renamed libertarianism, even just in the US, and that's certainly not what's meant by liberalism internationally.
'Liberalism' as used when refering to Democratic Party policies in the US, is generally refered as social democracy or social liberalism in Europe.
Here's another source from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_Unite...
Or the exact opposite of slavery.
Your original categorization is apt in describing how property taxes and the USDA farm subsidies work, but not free enterprise.
In your view, is it acceptable that the USDA can dictate the prices of one's crops or put liens on someone's farm land for producing food in manner that isn't produced according to government dictates? Do you think that's the same as coming to an agreement with an equal on certain terms, even if one isn't necessarily happy with all of them?
The difference in practice is that someone can walk away from a deal, but no one can walk away from the government.
Why would you otherwise feel the need to rephrase it and are still unable to explain the practical difference?
> A deal isn't a coercive act. Having a metaphorical gun to one's head is to practice labor is.
Yes, and for the masses without property? I think I hinted at indirect coercion by "to feed yourself".
and I have no interests in going off into some USDA tangent.
Because your "definition" implies a lack of agency in an agreement between contracting parties. That is a practical difference and one that was noted in my last sentence which you either didn't read or avoided addressing. To quote: "The difference in practice is that someone can walk away from a deal, but no one can walk away from the government".
>Yes, and for the masses without property? I think I hinted at indirect coercion by "to feed yourself".
I read your statement as implying the usual anti-libertarian argument: property is coercion. I thought that the "to feed yourself" line was a throwaway example of a "limited" freedom "granted" by a property owner made to support your mistaken thesis that a top-down structure exists between individual parties freely engaging in a deal. My approach was to explain how property owners can't grant freedoms, as people have their freedoms or trade them for expedience, and that this top-down structure has, in the past and the present, implicitly and explicitly been practiced by government. I couldn't have read your statement in the way you implied simply because I've never conceived of any such claim being made seriously that choosing to feed oneself, whether one owns property or not, is evidence and a product of force. But now that you've made that clear, I can only say that it's ridiculous.
>and I have no interests in going off into some USDA tangent.
The USDA is not a tangent. It's an example of my point that someone without the ability to decide what do with his own property is better defined as coerced under your original phrasing. It's also a counterpoint to your claim that my point is a euphemistic rephrasing of yours.
Because if you do I have no idea how you can come to the idea that one can just "walk away".
> The USDA is not a tangent
It is, you're switching the topic to be about government, and a contemporary setting, instead of continuing on the topic of a private property owner and a hypothetical libertarian society.
Libertarians seem to have a bad habit of using unnecessarily convoluted language.
And yes, people can walk away. Human beings have being walking away for tens of thousands of years. You don't need to read libertarian literature to know the phrase "vote with your feet".
A government with a monopoly on force and enforcement of contracts is as much a feature of a libertarian society as it is in a contemporary one, and so the comparison involving the USDA is germane. The contention is one of degree and nature involvement. A private property owner in a libertarian society must still follow the law to the extent that such laws don't violate his rights.
There aren’t any frontiers anymore. Everything is owned
and there you have it. why libertarianism in it's propertarianism form has nothing to do with freedom and all to do with giving power to the property owners.
> And yes, people can walk away.
You surely can't believe that people can just walk away from their only source of income?
The coercive act is hidden by giving you a choice on who to deal with, but the coercision is still there in that you're forced to make a deal with some property owner. There's no choice to not make a deal with the cartel
A postscript on voluntary slavery. I am on record on numerous occasions in support of voluntary slavery; some other libertarians support me on this issue as well. See Andersson, 2007; Block, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007A, 2007B, 2009A, 2009B; Lester, 2000; Nozick, 1974, pp. 58, 283, 331; Philmore, 1982; Steiner, 1994, pp. 232.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/walter-e-block/scurrilou...
It does not mean chattel slavery, or involuntary servitude, or even involuntary government seizures.
You can argue what truly voluntarily slavery would look like in a modern world, but involuntary chattel slavery is what conflicts with principles of private property.
I'd argue things like athletes signing away future percentages of potential earnings (which was a fairly popular idea until the current NCAA name and likeness rules changed) would be one potential version.
No it’s not, it’s freedom from being coerced into doing things. Quite literally the opposite of slavery.
No you can’t violate people’s liberty like that. Come on Mike, you’re not that stupid. Don’t attack strawmen.
People will do with what they own, wether it be land or its inhabitants.
Private property IS coercion.
What exactly makes wealth such a sticking point in these arguments against libertarianism? It's not considered wrong to be "too" intelligent, or "too" handsome, or "too" strong. But for some reason using these qualities and abilities to obtain money, supposedly in excess of some "moral number" like $1B, results in being "too" wealthy and thus "wrong". Wealth and private property are a representation of value earned through choices made. I would think that one would want more value in his life not less. In a free market, value is generated by choosing to vote with one's dollar, gold bar, or bitcoin. Private property is NOT coercion. Coercion implies you own nothing and owe everything.
While choice is not without context, that context is individually determined by the one's interests and rational faculties. One doesn't know what he doesn't know. However a person still has the freedom to to take a calculated risk if he deems the payoff worth it. That a person doesn't need to know everything to exercise his agency is what demonstrates choice exists and is not simply the rationalization that you claim it is.
As far as ownership is concerned, why in your view is that direct or indirect coercion? Why is buying or owning something force?
You've made weird deductions and extrapolated on top of that then you reject that caricature you've created. That has never been stated.
It would be helpful if we can try to keep this in plain English.
> Either one has the agency to make and agree to a contract or one does not
People can have both agency and still use that agency into making an indirectly coerced "choice". The fact remain that it's coerced, and thus not particularly free as in freedom.
How are you defining coercion or assessing its presence in a given agreement? Ignorance? Being in want? Genetic differences?
When, in your view, are people not coerced?
Weren't the 19th century coal miners coerced by economic necessity to accept life threateningly bad working conditions?
Weren't the parents of the child laborers coerced by economic necessity?
How is this in any way shape or form even hard to understand and admit to?
> When, in your view, are people not coerced?
When one's general well being and access to necessities are not dependent on accepting the terms of the agreement.
Dejacque, the father or libertarianism criticised Proudhon, the father of anarchism for being a "moderate anarchist, liberal but not libertarian", but strongly supported his infamous "property is theft".
Incidentally I think everyone should read Dejacque's open letter to Proudhon [1], irrespective of their political views - it's just one of the most poetically written political texts I've read (and his first use of the term libertarianism). Also somewhat relevant to the discussion here as an early example of a form of wokeness - Dejacque criticising an ally on the left for not going far enough in throwing off the social order Proudhon was ostensibly challenging by failing to stand up equally for women.
[1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joseph-dejacque-on-t...
So freedom is the core.
What you are talking about is more Austrian economics.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
No, it's just the what libertarianism means 99 times out of a 100 when talking on HN or well, just Americans in general.
At some level, I'm disappointed that we've progressed so much in the last few decades, but all the effort was in the direction of keeping discrimination going, instead of trying to end it completely. Yes, many people have a disadvantage due to centuries of discrimination, but I don't see equality of outcome as being the way forward towards an equal society in the long run.
I’ve had discussions about “equality” with folks aligned across the political spectrum, and most everyone agrees they want equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. I’m confused about who or what group is speaking about people desiring equality of outcome.
And discriminating against other people because of their views - what if their view is, “group A of people, who didn’t do anything to belong to group A, shouldn’t exist or have the same rights as group B?”
> 'When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism.'
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/reader...
It is arguing that there are no differences between groups that justifies disparities unless there are biases or oppression.
Even if he is wrong, this still does not become an argument for individual equality of outcome.
We might imagine that humans are akin to gas molecules and human groups are ideal gases, thus an ideal gas law of sorts holds for humans, PV = nRT. There is brownian motion at individual level, but we expect that, statistically, all ideal gases / human groups to have the exact same macro properties. And perhaps if we hard subscribe to rational choice theory (a popular theory among American economists with deep roots in The Enlightenment) we might imagine that indeed humans are atomized undistinguishable gas molecules, pushed around randomly by the vagaries of fate and character.
Alas, there are other ways for matter to organize. Witness the bewildering diversity of minerals out there. 'The Smithsonian's mineral and gem collection [...] consists of approximately 350,000 mineral specimens and 10,000 gems'. As soon as we allow for some degree of matter / social cohesion, the ideal gas / human group law is blown to the smithereens.
I'll let you ponder whether hard atomized rational choice theory is a reasonable assumption when it comes to human groups. Or whether it is a reasonable goal to aspire to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/geogallery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory#Critici....
So would you say that men having shorter lifespans than women is due to bias or oppression against men?
Should we reallocate public health spending from women to men until lifespans are equal?
This is essentizlly false. Ibram X. Kendi is a Harvard professor, author, and widely published by the New York Times, the Atlantic, etc.
He is literally a leader of a large group of people pushing for exactly the views he espouses.
Your second statement does not follow from the first.
You are free to claim that he isn’t, but there is a preponderance of evidence that he is.
“IBRAM X. KENDI is one of America’s foremost historians and leading antiracist scholars.”
“Dr. Kendi strives to be a hardcore antiracist”
“In 2020, The Root 100 listed him as the seventh most influential African American between the ages of 25 and 45 and the most influential college professor.”
We know what his goals are, and we know that he is independently regarded as extremely influential. He is de facto leading people towards his goals.
What isn’t clear is why you’d try to claim otherwise. He certainly wouldn’t.
[Side conversation] As to the why question, consider:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-blame/201709/...
> Willful ignorance occurs when individuals realize at some level of consciousness that their beliefs are probably false, or when they refuse to attend to information that would establish their falsity.
> In contrast to this sort of willful ignorance, self-deception occurs when individuals believe false things with complete conviction.
We are all subject to these kinds of cognitive biases. The best we can hope is to learn some of our own and try to avoid them. Likely we will fail most of the time :(
It’s not always clear what is willful ignorance, and what is a rhetorical device.
1) More blacks are incarcerated than their representation in the population. Therefore the justice/police system is racist and must be abolished (BLM)
2) Minorities cant get loans in proportion to their representation in the population therefore the financial system is racist and must be abolished. Banking must be taken over by the govt
https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/12/follow-money-how...
3) Minorities cannot achieve the same scores in math and science, therefore math and science are racist and must be abolished.
https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/weapons-of-math-... etc etc. This goes for any disparity of outcome by race.
No.
Nice try but I don't buy it. I'll entertain the idea, "if you ruin early education along racial lines you produce disparity of outcomes and this is racist", but I'm not going to sit still for "minorities cannot achieve the same scores in math and science", and especially not for framing it like that's the fundamental issue and what to DO about it is the only concern. That axiom is busted, fake, made up by self-justifying racists… and racist, yes.
Something to consider: as the 'abolish math and science' movement grows in influence, especially in public schools, students of lower means are likely to fall further behind their more affluent peers, whose parents afford private schooling and tutoring.
It is in the strategic interest of this country, both from an internal cohesion POV and from an international competitiveness POV, to encourage excellence in STEM, across race and class lines. Consider that the voices ready to raise 'racism' at every slight opportunity are actually making it harder to achieve this goal.
Seems more like you have conflated its meaning in reaction to a movement you don't like.
"Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. Nov 5, 2020"
In many cases, you can take a view (and craft an argument) that a particular action is one or the other, depending on whether or not you agree with it.
Take admission standards for colleges. Some colleges (at least as I understand it) are requiring higher SAT scores for Asians than other groups to consider students to be equally likely to be admitted. If you agree that’s good policy, you’re likely to argue that this represents increasing access to higher education for underrepresented non-Asian groups and therefore is an equality of opportunity measure. If you oppose it, you argue that those SAT scores represent a measure of the students’ demonstrated scholastic ability (an outcome at that point in time) and that perturbing those results is being done in an attempt to equalize these outcomes. (The truth is that it’s almost surely a mix of both.)
Opportunities compound, so they will lead to wide gaps in outcomes, so I do not see any solution other than to reduce the income/wealth gap to reduce that inevitable gap in opportunity of outcome.
Though bringing more female representation and thereby creating gender parity in employment served as the impetus, this rule was broken in Paris in 2018 when 69% of jobs went to women under the mayor's (Anne Hidalgo) purview. This led to a fine of €90,000 against the Paris government.
Both the mayor and deputy mayor (Audrey Pulvar) publicly expressed happiness, pride, and a sense of honor at having been fined for breaking the rule. In 2019, the fine was subsequently dropped.
So here we have an interesting example of aiming for equality of outcome. What makes it interesting is that when the results led to inequality in favor of one particular side, it was actually championed and seen as progress.
Sources:
When women are overrepresented in every prestigious sector, I think it'll be worth having a rethink about policies like this. Until then, it seems a bit ridiculous - and I say this as a man. If you're a man, and you're not an idiot, you've doubtless noticed a ton of incidents where your gender has helped you advance socially or professionally. You can't just overnight shuck of centuries of history. Quotas are a simple way of trying to push back on that.
> If you're a man, and you're not an idiot, you've doubtless noticed a ton of incidents where your gender has helped you advance socially or professionally.
I don't think that's the case for everyone. Maybe that's because I'm young? But I haven't noticed much if any discrimination against women firsthand. Even around me, it's very rare to hear stories like that.
> You can't just overnight shuck of centuries of history.
I think you can. Culture erodes very fast when the people that enforced it are no longer around. We had two world war with Germany, and I don't know anyone that has any ressentment against the Germans. I think part of it is because most of the people from that time period are not around anymore, or are now very old. If someone said that he dislikes Germans because of the world wars, everyone would think that person is very weird. As another example, rights of LGBT have been moving very fast these last ~10 years.
I think it's very important to recognize that even if we are far from perfect, lots of improvements have already been and continue to be made. We should use this as an inspiration to know that what we're doing isn't useless or for the future generation, and that we can improve the life of people right now.
The recruiter told him directly that they were looking for people with disabilities to fill their quota of people with disabilities, necessary because it was a government position. So we're definitely out of the game of recruiting based on merit in at least some government spots, and instead focused on unrelated favoritism.
The actual requirement for government contractors is that they cannot require someone to disclose disability information, but they must give the applicant the opportunity to do so.
Because roughly 10% of the workforce has a disability, and it was found that government contractors appeared to discriminate against people with disabilities that were otherwise qualified for the work. So, large contractors became obligated to have a less-than-representative 7% of their workforce pulled from a pool of candidates with disabilities.
I'm not sure quota systems like this are the best way to handle the problem. However, this approach is hardly the death knell for merit-based hiring.
E.g if boards are required to put women in place, it creates an organizational incentive to improve the conditions so more women gets the training and promotions and mentoring that makes then suitable for those board positions, and also takes away an ability to avoid hiring qualified women.
I don't know if anyone that see those rules as desirable in and of themselves.
They weren't some persecuted underground, they were cushy academics who got given sinecures in the aftermath of the 60s protests.
If someone is punching you in the face every single day, and nothing you try that’s non violent works, but suddenly you get results when you push back, wouldn’t you employ that method? Sure, it hurts the person punching you, but they were punching you.
And suffragettes put bombs in mailboxes and threw their bodies under horses. 2nd wave feminists were far more "anti-man" than modern feminists (there aren't too many political lesbians nowadays). The "peaceful protest" that people recall so fondly rarely was so peaceful but is instead used as a cudgel to resist all change today by claiming that activists aren't "doing it right".
And you think that had a positive effect on women's suffrage?
> 2nd wave feminists were far more "anti-man" than modern feminists
Well so what? Was suppressing men an actual tactic that contributed to progress?
It wasn't obtained through asking politely.
> The campaign was halted at the outbreak of war in August 1914 without having brought about votes for women, as suffragettes pledged to pause their campaigning to aid the nation's war effort.
> The extent to which suffragette militancy contributed to the eventual enfranchisement of women in 1918 has been debated by historians, although the consensus of historical opinion is that the militant campaign was not effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette_bombing_and_arson_...
In the U.S. there is still a major fight for women's reproductive rights, with frequent backsliding (TX is the most extreme recent example).
> All of this progress has occurred without any of the radical discrimatory tactics that are used today.
Every step toward restoring human rights to marginalized groups has been labeled radical (because technically it is radical compared to the status quo) and must come at the expense of some privilege that others hold. Privilege, however, is not a human right and therefore not something inherently worthy of protection.
The other side argues that the fetus (usually called "unborn") have independent heartbeats and unique DNA, and as such have their own right to life. That is why they use the term "pro-life".
This seems to be the crux of our entire political situation as a country (has been for awhile, though certainly feels amplified the past 15 years).
Ask, talk to, or overhear any of the people in texas who support the bill, and not one of them will give a damn about, or even consider as an issue, "control over female reproduction". That is your concern, not theirs.
The Dutch simplified the most useful rule in the 17th century: "live and let live", it was codified into (maritime) law.
We have a system that cannot accommodate all views and opinions, but if we gonna call it democracy, at least the minorities should not be discriminated on.
But yeah, a bullies freedom of speech and someone with green hair crossing paths will cause some potential friction. If not right there on the spot, people will vent online. Case in point, there's this guy Nick Szabo , intelligent person, but damn his Twitter feed and contributions make you wonder if he dresses up as a klansman in the nights.
What's interesting is that men's suffrage was often justified by conscription: that people shouldn't be sent to fight wars they didn't have a say in. But then women got suffrage without having to be conscripted on the basis of equality, while only men still got conscripted. Not a great deal for men!
Would that happen to be the same Dutch that were heavily involved in the slave trade (about the same time you mention)?
The statement is potentially nice, though.
For example, a white Dane is unfit to translate the work of a Black poet because a white person cannot understand the experiences of a black person—the difference between any white person and any black person in the 21st century are far greater than the 21st century Dane and the 15th century Shakespeare whom the Dane regularly translates without controversy.
Or similarly, a school board decides that an eminently qualified white man is unfit to volunteer because he can’t possibly empathize with the experiences of minorities.
Or the woke demande to dispense of standardized tests because these tests only judge us according to “white” strengths (literacy, reason, etc) which blacks or other minorities don’t possess. https://mobile.twitter.com/JamaalBowmanNY/status/13765200627...
...and be cancelled, fired and banned from being hired anywhere.
“Silence is violence”.
Either get on board and start supporting them or you’re the enemy.
Silence is violence when there's a concerted effort to normalize unjustified hierarchy through cultural peer pressure. Whether it's 'let's all make rape jokes, also rapists aren't actually bad', or 'let's put up statues of slavers waaaaay after the war they were in, because slavers aren't actually bad', part of the purpose of such social pressure is to stifle anybody who's inclined to object.
The intensity with which people demand their right to performatively line up with bad things they claim they are not, right then, themselves, actually doing, tells me something about those people. I'm deeply not interested in exploring hypotheticals through which people might claim they want to dress up as a Nazi without actually being one, and deeply not impressed with the argument, "You're cruelly trying to punish me for BEING a Nazi, but I am only DRESSED as one, so you're morally obligated to be silent and let me do my own thing!"
Edit: Why are people down voting me? Critical theories are very open about their critique of liberalism and rationality? And how they've led to lack of change. It's not some weird conspiracy.
I personally think it's not worth it to abandon liberal ideas. As suddenly you validate a lot of illiberal politics. It allows for authoritarianism. I can't stand inconsistencies.
And that is why you're earning downvotes :)
This is honestly a great HN thread for wilfully burning karma in fires of brigading. I know my own interaction with it, is in the full knowledge that if I do correctly identify and explore ideas, I'll be massively downvoted for sheerly tactical and ideological reasons. You could hardly have a thread less conducive to the stated aims of HN discussion.
But if you don't take liberal ideas seriously, suddenly you validate authoritarian tactics. The only difference then is that it's ok to use authoritarian tactics just as long as they push my ideas, and not yours. If you don't like authoritarian tactics that right wing people use, you can't use authoritarian tactics to promote left ideas without being a massive hypocrite. Either using authoritarian tactics is ok or it isn't.
Most atrocities in the world come from the authoritarian parts of politics regardless of where you are on the left/right spectrum. My ideas are the right way, and I'm going enforce it using law, mob justice and violence. As opposed to liberalism where diversity of thought is welcomed.
It's actually good that, now, I understand the big ol generic "Indian" with a war bonnet painted in the school gym when I was a kid was a misrepresentation and misuse of sacred, hard-earned symbols. It's good that I know whose land those pipelines cut across now. It's good that I understand spirit animals are a sacred, private thing, not something to bandy about or declare for every fleeting interest on Twitter. It's good that I know naming certain evils is kind of a jerk move to do in a crowd of people who believe in them.
Many want that to be absolute no harm. I strongly disagree that "hurt feelings" and "uncomfortableness" are worthy levels of harm.
Society continues to debate this.
You speak in abstract terms of rights and privileges. This is the actual, real situation. There are real human consequences to treating endangered indigenous cultures as something to repackage and transform for the benefit of people outside those cultures.
Keep that in mind as you debate abstract ideas with "society," whatever that is.
> It's good that I understand spirit animals are a sacred, private thing, not something to bandy about or declare for every fleeting interest on Twitter.
If people constantly joke around about rape, it's clearly not meant to be that big of a crime, plus it's on people's minds as a possible thing to do.
If it's normal to go around presented with swastikas and nooses but not normal to react angrily to such messaging, then those things and Nazism and lynching are culturally acceptable regardless of the letter of the law, which will be next on the list to bring up to speed with what the cultural messaging is saying.
If it's normal to go around seeing giant expensive statues of slavers put up, not during a conflict but many years later when black civil rights are becoming a thing, then those slavers are the real heroes regardless of what the laws say… and the laws will follow along as soon as it's convenient to do so.
It's always projection. The fear of Critical Theory is real and not unjustified. That sort of societal-context thinking is how Nazis, slavers and racists have historically got what THEY wanted, so it stands to reason they'd recognize it right away when it's used against them.
>or violet hair, non conformist clothing and views. Let them
>be, let them express and find themselves
Wonder if you would be as supportive of the Hitler mustache
- "the more open minded ... as long as it's open to what I like and closed to what I don't"
- "do as you like as long as I approve"
And I'm not speaking to you-- But rather extrapolating these as they represent the fake tolerance of the anti-traditional neomarxists-- SJWs who typically exhibit substantial fascist traits
* --> See those downvotes? Point proven :) The hypocrisy of those who claim tolerance of different perspectives *
So you, as an individual, have a vested interest in participating in social trends/resisting social normalization of beliefs that harm your way of life.
Say you enjoy the pub, it is in your interest to resist a social movement banning alcohol (or immigration from countries where these views are common).
I am the shave every day suit kinda guy and will remain so, but if someone chooses to be different or wants to complain about new woke culture values , fine by me.
There's not more or less trans and gay people these days, they are just more visible and have a voice, as they won't be burned at a stake anymore, metaphorically speaking.