Non-Tribalist Politics Megathread

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I think it would be good if more people (the governed) were concerned about the nature of their government. I know that’s not the reality right now. If they were interested enough, they could make enough progress in a year or two and then become more active in politics. Learning never stops but this is enough time to where they could help make progress politically. The bar is very low right now.

I don’t understand the question. Can you reword it?

I don’t know how much I can impact it myself. I don’t know if I have a plan? I just think more people should take the necessary steps (learn philosophy) and then become more involved in current politics. This would lead to a better government. A better government is good.

I thought I answered this? Paths Forward is part of philosophy and it should be used in politics too. I reject any claims that you have to choose one or the other, which it sounds like you’re implying? Let me know if I’m wrong. I think they could both have a sizable impact.

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I think this line of questioning is reductive and kind of simplistic, in terms of what happens in the real world and what options are available.

I explained in more detail in the same post you quoted, when I answered your question about whether or not it is ever okay to violate individual rights with threats of violence.

I’ll try to answer here without rehashing that answer too much. I think this answer will build off of that one though.

I don’t think I am becoming a collectivist in principle, but we are talking about a law that exists in the real world. I am evaluating it as a tool used by an imperfect society to try to address a real harm in that society.

Worth noting: 100% of human civilizations that currently exist or have ever existed (best guess based on what historians know currently) are/were at least partially collectivist in their system of laws. Part of creating a civilization, a government, a society, involves making some judgments about how people will work together for a common good. And, hopefully, also includes making judgments about how to protect as much individual liberty as possible at the same time.

So within that paradigm, collectivism is going to be present. I am not overly concerned with judging every law solely on whether or not the law is individualist or collectivist.

I don’t think anti-discrimination laws are primarily about society dictating who an individual has to associate with. I think that is more like a secondary effect that occurs when a racist wants to open a business that employs and/or serves members of the community, and wants to proudly discriminate against some parts of the community.

Edit: “Associate with” is a bit vague. Maybe I’m wrong above depending on how you define it. One big goal of laws is to try to smooth things out and prevent major hostility in society. You can own a business and not like black people or befriend them or spend time with them or join their community events or ask them how their day is going, and just coldly and impersonally sell them hardware when they come into your hardware store. You are “associating” in some senses but you also are not associating with them in other senses.

Also: Anti-discrimination laws don’t really force you to associate with people in your personal life, or as a customer, or as an aspiring employee. You can be quite bigoted in all of those areas. The laws only exert force on you if you set yourself up as someone with meaningful power in society (e.g. an employer, a business owner, a goods-seller) who could try to use that power to harm people. Note about harm: society views a denial of service/consideration/etc. as a harm — I recognize that you will disagree. I think it’s complicated, not fully convinced either way.

Also worth noting, you can take lots of steps to be able to be a racist with power, and exert that power in a discriminatory way, even within a society with anti-discrimination laws. For example: you can move to a place with very few nonwhite people, you can refuse to hire/serve people on basis of race but find other plausible excuses and not mention race, etc. Anti-discrimination laws in the US are pretty narrow in focus, because our society does try to balance such laws against individual liberty concerns.

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Here is some text from Ayn Rand Answers (disclaimer: the editor, Mayhew, can’t be trusted, so you may want to look up the originals, though I’m not sure if they’re all publicly available):

Is there someone in politics today about whom you are enthusiastic?
No. I wish there were. In today’s cultural atmosphere, the better people— the true intellectuals—wouldn’t go into politics; not yet. The battle—which is in the colleges—must first be won, and the foundation laid, outside of politics. [FHF 76]

Is it now time for an Objectivist politician?
It certainly is not. To whom would he speak? One cannot run an educational campaign and a political campaign simultaneously. In fifty years, it might be time for an Objectivist politician; but by the time it’s possible, he practically wouldn’t be necessary. The country’s public opinion would continue in the direction of freedom and reason. Therefore, Objectivists should go to the classroom, and correct the situation there. [PO12 76]

If you’re thinking of the Conservative Party or the Libertarian Party, I’d say join the Communist Party, you’d be cleaner intellectually. The more these parties make themselves heard, the more they disgrace capitalism.

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Evil can’t be fought by greater evil. Using coercion to combat prejudice destroys the moral foundation of liberty. Addressing harm sin’t a license for violating rights. That’s the same argument collectivists always make when justifying the sacrifice of the individual for the group.

So what? The fact that men have practiced evil throughout history doesn’t make evil right. The standard of morality is reason, not historical prevalence. Civilization’s progress has come from the degree to which men have escaped collectivism, not embraced it. Like from the Enlightenment, capitalism, and individual rights, not tribalism or common good decrees.

Civilization’s purpose isn’t the “common good” but the protection of individual rights. The common good is a meaningless abstraction used to justify stuff like tyranny. If the common good requires sacrificing any individual’s rights, it’s evil.

Appeasing hostility by sacrificing liberty is moral cowardice. The role of government isn’t to prevent “hostility” but to protect freedom. Peace can’t be bought by coercing citizens into fake harmony anyways. You persuade racists using reason.

Power in business is voluntary and contractual. A merchant’s refusal to serve a customer does not constitute “harm’, it’s a non-action, not an initiation of force. Every individual has the same moral right to his property and judgment. The moment the government divides citizens into classes (those who may choose and those who must obey) it institutes collectivist tyranny over the individual. The employer and the employee are moral equals under freedom.

Yeah, I disagree. Also, society can’t “view” anything, it has no mind. Only individuals can perceive. What some majority “views” as harm can’t define rights. Rights are objective conditions necessary for human life, not social opinions. Otherwise, rights become permissions granted by mobs.

I think anyone who isn’t seriously concerned about whether a law is collectivist or protects individual rights has surrendered their moral compass, and is part of the problem. The difference between individualism and collectivism is the difference between freedom and slavery. Anyone who treats them as equally valid tools is a moral relativist.

I know the government is screwed up in a lot ways and already violates individual rights, ansd it can’t be changed over night. That’s where piecemeal changes and error correction come into play. When i say piecemeal changes, I don’t mean substituting one policy that violates rights for another one. I mean piecemeal changes that restore rights. Like removing certain housing and building restrictions. Then seeing what problems arise from that (like builders committing more fraud) and strengthening the government’s ability to protect individuals from that fraud. That’s the government’s role and their should be more goverment in that sense, not less. I agree with what Elliot says here: “When I imagine a minarchist state with a free market, I now envision more government enforcement actions against companies than we have today, not fewer.” Capitalism Means Policing Big Companies · Elliot Temple

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It’s funny, I was looking at Mamdani’s website here Platform — Zohran for NYC . There’s a sea of bad policy ideas but there are a couple where he talks about policing fraud more and removing bureaucracy for small business owners that I think I agree with. Politicians should focus on those kinds of policy changes.

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Quotes are from What Can One Do? (from Philosophy: Who Needs It?):

If you are seriously interested in fighting for a better world, begin by identifying the nature of the problem. The battle is primarily intellectual (philosophical), not political. Politics is the last consequence, the practical implementation, of the fundamental (metaphysical-epistemological-ethical) ideas that dominate a given nation’s culture.

An organized movement has to be preceded by an educational campaign, which requires trained—self-trained—teachers (self-trained in the sense that a philosopher can offer you the material of knowledge, but it is your own mind that has to absorb it). Such training is the first requirement for being a doctor during an ideological epidemic—and the precondition of any attempt to “change the world.”

It is too early for a movement of people dedicated to a philosophy of reason.

There is more in the essay. I think you should read the whole of it.

In the essay she also says you should speak up (given you know what you’re saying) when the opportunity arises, but not proselytize.

Most men are not intellectual innovators, but they are receptive to ideas, are able to judge them critically and to choose the right course, when and if it is offered.

I disagree that most men are receptive to ideas and are able to critically analyze them, especially political ideas. Critical thinking needs to be improved among most people.

I’m busy, I’ll reply to your reply to me at some point.

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So consider two things politicians might do:

  1. Improve policing of fraud and other white collar crimes by businesses.
  2. Remove regulations on businesses.

If you could have a politician who will do either 1 or 2, while leaving the other alone, which would you prefer? Which do you think should be prioritized first?

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Since you’ve quoted me a few times, I wanted to state that I don’t agree with you and how you’ve interpreted some of my ideas.

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Do you think Ayn Rand would have voted for Mamdani or DeSantis? I think she likely would have abstained from voting for either of them, but if she had to pick, who do you think she would have preferred and why?

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They’re both good. It depends. If it’s the mayor of a town with little fraud going on and the main thing holding people back are regulations than I’m choosing #2. If there’s tons of fraud, #1 because I’m imagining a town where, even though removing regulations would help businesses who want to do things ethically, it is overrun by big corporations and smaller businesses who do fraud and violate people’s rights. Removing regulations and not also improving policing on fraud would empower them in that case. But, there are tradeoffs.

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What about my interpretation of more government when it comes to things like policing fraud do you disagree with? I want to see whether I agree with you or need to withdrawal my endorsement.

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For context, use current USA nation-wide.

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Why would you withdraw endorsement based on a disagreement? The quality of the essays you’ve endorsed remains the same now as it did yesterday, right?

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I agree, and yet I disagree with you in general. Because we have substantive disagreements about e.g. what constitutes greater evil. This statement is not particularly useful, given that. No?

My statement wasn’t about whether it is evil or not. Just about what might be practical to achieve in reality.

Even if I accepted your premise in principle, there are some problems in the specifics here.

Some civilizations that embraced Enlightenment principles and individual rights have failed and not continued to progress. Maybe that was due to external factors such as not valuing individual rights enough, but I don’t think that’s reliably the sole cause of such things. The world is complex and messy and civilizations may fail for a variety of reasons, often unfair ones.

Also, Enlightenment principles themselves are not as consistent or pure as you seem to be about promoting individual rights and opposing all forms of collective morality.

For example:

Many Enlightenment thinkers have written about the concept of the common good within the context of the Enlightenment. The two ideas are not incompatible.

You might think those Enlightenment thinkers were all wrong. But I don’t think it is accurate to dismiss it as a “meaningless abstraction.”

This is factually untrue. There have been many periods of peace throughout history that came about because people were pressured into living peacefully with one another despite major disagreements that had previously led to violent conflict. Coercing citizens into fake harmony has been a major source of peace throughout much of the history of human civilization.

I agree that persuading people with reason is better.

Let’s imagine a scenario where every business decides to start discriminating against black people and denying them service. Imagine you are a poor black person in this area. Previously you could just barely make ends meet. But now all businesses have agreed not to sell you food, or tools, or medical care, or transportation, or land, or hunting rights, or water rights. And they’ve agreed not to employ you so you have no money to buy any of that stuff anyway. So then you presumably die.

I think by your moral calculus, nobody has inflicted any harm on you. But you’re still dead, right?

Is there any solution here that keeps the hypothetical black person alive, in your conception of what is moral for civilization to do?

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I am also curious to see your answer to this question, @Neo.

I think it’s a good concrete example of the stuff we have been discussing.

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I already replied to one part of this (the six weeks thing) here. There is another part that I want to reply to.

You say: “killing another person isn’t a personal liberty”. This implies that you agree with anti-abortionists that if they were right that a fetus was a person, then abortion would not actually be a personal liberty.

I disagree with that. Even if a fetus were a person, abortion would still be a personal liberty. It would be a decision that a woman was making about her own body.

You say that killing another person isn’t a personal liberty, but how are you defining killing another person? If you define “killing another person” as refusing to pay for someone else’s medical care, I assume that you personally do consider that a personal liberty, based on other things you have said in this thread.

In the case of abortion, “killing” the fetus (from the perspective of those who are anti-abortion) is being defined as refusing to allow it use of your body. Why isn’t it a personal liberty to refuse to allow someone else to use my body in order to save their life? I believe that I should be given the freedom to choose not to give blood donations, bone marrow donations, or kidney donations, even if another person would die without that donation. I think that should be my own personal liberty, even if it would end in the death of another person.

I’m not sure if you disagree with this, or if you think that abortion is different in some way. But the way that you worded it seemed like you accept that women should not actually have the freedom to control their own body when it comes to abortion if the fetus were a person. So if that is the case, I am wondering if you also think that people shouldn’t have the freedom to refuse to give life saving bone marrow donations, or if you think there is some other important difference.

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Why?

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To clarify first: I meant this specifically with respect to my views on politics. Stuff like which politicians I might vote for, which policies I might support or oppose, etc.

To answer your question: Because I think that principles that lead to bad outcomes are suspect. I think my old principles regarding practical political matters were simplistic and impractical. I’m not entirely sure yet which ideas need to be discarded/updated/etc.

Focusing on outcomes — on how stuff actually plays out in the real world — has been helpful in this evaluation.

It might be wrong to say I have become oriented around outcomes though. Not sure. I have been paying more attention there, and caring a lot more there. And thinking a lot more about e.g. “What are the current outcomes of this policy? I thought it sounded kinda good in principle, but in practice it seems like it’s working out terribly."

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I haven’t given much thought to this because I’m pro abortion and don’t think a fetus is a full person. But, in a hypothetical scenario where a fetus is considered to have full personhood and sentience, the best argument I can think of is that the woman, by voluntarily engaging in actions that led to conception, implicitly accepts the potential consequences. Terminating it would violate the non-initiation-of-force principle, as the fetus did not choose its dependence. Thus, the woman’s responsibility to preserve the fetus’s life for nine months could be seen as a consequence of her actions.

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To clarify, in this instance I’m not talking about necessarily withdrawing endorsement on entire essays. Just the idea in the quote if I no longer agree with it. But, I would withdrawal endorsements on essays, books, etc. if I know longer agree with them too, sure.