The final chapter of Roger Lancaster’s Sex Panic and the Punitive State, a book lauded by many heretics, is titled “Whither the Punitive State?”
Frustratingly, it doesn’t really address its own question. While it would be unrealistic to expect firm predictions, or a rousing action plan (“Sex offenders of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your tags!”) all we get is a lame – because also unrealistic – list of “pointers for a sounder public discourse”. What it lacks is any sense of agency: good things would happen if his suggestions were adopted, but there no indication of who is ever going to do so. It is as though Lancaster had been sitting at his desk thinking “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone thought like me?”
But they don’t! Many of his readers, to be sure, may think like him and will benefit from his penetrating analysis of our woeful times, but we are left with little sense of engagement in making better things happen. Perhaps the closest we get is this:
“Concerted efforts by scholars, public intellectuals, journalists, and others could begin to make tabloid culture less respectable.”
But who is to do the concerting?
The political landscape might change if, say, the increasingly huge expense of incarcerating ever more sex offenders becomes unsustainable; in that eventuality, economic facts will have been the driving force towards a new discourse, not the conscious efforts of Lancaster or his readers. But concluding that history is just the working out of blind forces beyond our control might have seemed too bleak a note on which to conclude his book.
Nevertheless, it is one of several difficult considerations we must face unflinchingly if we are to “keep it real” as heretics. Another is whether the existence of a powerful state is necessarily a bad thing.
Marx, Engels and Lenin all asked not so much “Whither the state?” as “Wither the state?”
Friedrich Engels was the first to articulate the idea (which he attributed to Marx) that the state in a socialist society would wither away: the propertied classes needed coercively enforced laws to protect their unfair advantage; once the war against such injustice was won, the state would atrophy from lack of any purpose. But famously this vague “withering” thing, magicking the state away with a wishy-washy wave of Marxism’s rhetorical wand, never happened, either in the Soviet Union or in any other avowedly Marxist society: on the contrary, the state under Stalin, Mao and other Communist leaders grew ever more totalitarian and oppressive without even being efficient.
Likewise, we heretics have our own radicals who quite rightly oppose both “sex panics” and “the punitive state” but fail to propose plausible alternatives.
Recently, for instance, I unexpectedly found myself in a debate with the generally excellent Ben Capel at Inquisition 21st Century. At one time I was somewhat contemptuously dismissive of “unscientific” psychoanalysis grounded in the Freudian tradition. Ben put me right, alerting me to the radically humane potential of such therapy as compared with the supposedly more scientific CBT, which is used in coercive and degrading ways in penal settings.
So I value Ben’s thoughts highly and was pleased when Brian Rothery, editor of Inquisition 21, invited me to respond earlier this month to an article by Ben titled “Cruel and unusual punishment”. He had written that parents, as well as MAPs, sometimes find themselves subjected to unjust treatment at the hands of the state, suffering “harassment from social workers to the point where they are driven to mental breakdown or flight”, then seeing their children taken from them into state custody.
The article was part of an initiative called “The Rallying Point”, designed “to bring together isolated and fragmented groups” to fight back against the exercise of power by a state perceived as heartless and arrogant, blundering and bureaucratic.
I like the idea of rallying together with others who suffer injustice, but nevertheless found myself uneasy over the uncompromising anti-statism. Yes, I thought, social workers can sometimes be excessively interventionist. But should it be ignored that children are murdered at the rate of around one every 10 days in the UK at the hands of their parents, sometimes following unspeakable neglect and cruelty? I think not. What we do not hear so much about, and perhaps we should, are the cases where social workers intervene successfully and children are found better homes with loving adoptive parents.
Ben was unmoved when I made this point, insisting that the state should “withdraw and leave its citizens unmolested” until a whole bunch of tough conditions had been met, such as “until cops and social workers are required to have deep and enduring insight into their own irrational drives and sadistic tendencies”.
But, I asked, would the citizenry be left happily “unmolested”? Or would life be nasty, brutish and short? The Hobbesian nightmare of violent anarchy in the absence of a strong state is no mere imagining, I said, but well grounded in man’s truly savage history. The challenge is how to keep the baby (the rule of law) while throwing out the bathwater (unjust laws and unjust law enforcement). Note that my “savage” assessment relates to our history: prehistoric times are another matter, and I will be coming to those below.
I suggested that human rights law, a recent development, is a beginning.
Children’s rights, too, as I have argued here before, are only sustainable in a context of enforceable law backed by state power. And, believe it or not, those rights are being successfully used in Britain right now as a bulwark against intrusive police inquiries into the sex lives of young people.
How? Through Gillick Competence.
And here’s the context: the big, bad state in full panic mode has resulted in police forces around the country being tasked to hunt down teenagers exploited through so-called “grooming”. Publicity following a report last year that had claimed 1,400 victims in just one town, Rotherham, put pressure on the police and other official agencies to reveal the “true” scale of abuse elsewhere – which in practice meant intruding into the intimate behaviour of many youngsters who do not regard themselves as victims at all.
Gillick Competence, as I discovered obliquely from a BBC radio report, is protecting these youngsters. The Gillick principle, enshrined in a House of Lords ruling, acknowledges the competence of many young people under 16 to make important decisions in their life, including, implicitly, the decision to have an active sex life. This ruling, made in 1986, enables them to get advice on contraception and other sexual matters independently of their parents. That is an important reason why, as the BBC reported, police forces asking their intrusive questions found they encountered difficulty in getting answers from other public bodies, notably the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is important in this regard because children are likely to be seen by healthcare staff, such as their local doctor, or school nurse, if they are sexually active and need contraception advice or have related medical needs. Thanks to the Gillick ruling, these staffs have been able to rebuff police enquiries in the name of patient confidentiality.
Thus a legal ruling, backed by the force of the state’s laws, is here seen in support of children and against the police. What this tells us is that reliance on a narrative of the oppressive state crushing the individual is hopelessly simplistic.
As for the ignorance and malevolence of police, social workers, etc., it is easy to reject the state that employs them. But then what? Ben talked about the “spontaneous cultivation of informal networks of trust and solidarity between people” as an alternative to state power.
Umm, really? Like a modern love relationship, say, which is a spontaneous coming together of two people who love each other and set up house together? But what happens if they fall out? Who gets the kids? What if one partner is murderously jealous after a betrayal? In the absence of law, it’s every man (and woman and child) for themselves and devil take the weakest.
And so the debate went on. Readers can decide for themselves who “won”. I like to think my logic was strong but persuasion comes mainly through the heart not the head and Ben definitely had a better story to tell in that regard.
In another debate, though, this time with Nick Devin of the Virtuous Pedophiles on the Sexnet forum, the roles were reversed. Nick was characteristically dour, dull and “realistic”, while I was the “romantic” rebel. In an earlier exchange, I had blasted him as being part of the problem, not the solution. He snapped back at my “fatuous” efforts, saying I spend far too much time blogging to “like-minded people” who collectively wring our hands over the unreasonableness of the world at large and accomplish nothing. “Occasionally,” he said “you speak to the press and invite blowback which leads to more derision and hate.”
You can read the full exchange here. Part of my response addressed fundamental aims:
At heart I am a “make love not war” type. I was never a drop-out or a hippie. I am too driven for that, rather than “laid back”. But my vision sort of harks back to the 1970s and invites us to think how we could take the most promising elements of those times forward while ditching the bad, especially the gender inequality and male chauvinism. Having just finished reading Douglas P. Fry’s wonderful recent book, War, Peace & Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views (O.U.P., 2013), I am persuaded that the deep prehistory of humankind was not Hobbesian as Steven Pinker and other popular writers would have us believe, and that our future as a species will more and more depend on cooperative strategies rather than the intense competition that has prevailed from the agricultural era onwards. This shift away from extraordinary and often deadly intra-species competition, which arose initially in response to relatively recent Malthusian resource-pressure crises not evidenced in the EEA [environment of evolutionary adaptedness], will be far more compatible with gentler and less rule-bound erotic styles: more bonobo than chimp, if you will. I would argue this as a feminist vision bearing in mind that the erotic governance of bonobo society depends fundamentally on strong female alliances capable of holding males in check.
I admitted, though, that I have little idea of how to plan politically for the achievement of any such exotic utopia – or zootopia! So did I have more rationally defensible grounds for swimming against the tide of public opinion? Something more rooted in the here and now? I continued:
Looking first at the social ills we face in society, there is an urgency to many problems which appears not to concern Nick, or he regards them as a matter for “experts”, people above his pay grade. He wants to help paedophiles deal with the strain of their sexual repression – the hopelessness, the depression, the suicidality – but seems wholly blinkered as regards the social context of their lives. As a result, his remedies are like trying to cure a cancer with a band aid. He ignores, for instance, that the sexually so-called “moral” cultures are the most disastrously violent on earth, as we see from Islamist extremism and kick-ass, gun-toting, America, where sexually repressive, moralistic beliefs are instilled from childhood.
My approach at least engages with discussion of this social context rather than focusing narrowly on “adjusting” the “abnormal” individual to the procrustean bed of a sick society – an enterprise doomed to contribute to the sickness not alleviate it.
Can it be any accident, I ask myself, that all the desperate, at-their-wits-end people turn up at Nick’s door, looking for help he cannot give, whereas the bright, cheerful, upbeat, full-of-ideas folk come to my parties and have a ball…
My blogging for a constituency of “the like-minded” as Nick claimed, is certainly no big deal in terms of what the wider world thinks. Within that constituency, though, something significant does take place… Heretic TOC has a therapeutic function. Sure works for me: despite all the hammering I’ve had in terms of wrecked career, prison terms, missing out on family life, …vilification and sometimes physical attack, you won’t find me depressed or suicidal these days, or drinking too much…
… we are not afraid to critique society vigorously and engage with the media on unapologetic terms. Usually they ignore us; but to dismiss the exercise on that basis as a waste of time and energy is to miss its massive value to us. I fight, therefore I am. To resist is to be alive and to be me… not just the meek, compliant, person our oppressors want us to be.
Back to Roger Lancaster. I started by slagging him off for his lack of answers, or rather his failure to project his own big questions into the future with any conviction. I find Fry’s vision more interesting, even though, bizarre as it will seem to anti-statists, he holds up the European Union as an example of the way forward. He accurately notes that the EU, much derided these days as a corrupt bureaucratic monster, was founded soon after the Second World War in order to secure lasting peace through trade and prosperity.
But for the most part it has worked. It has delivered a peaceful life, backed by relatively efficient governance and the rule of law, for hundreds of millions. Has it resulted in the acceptance of child sexuality and freedom for adult-child sexual relations? No. Is it heading, like national governments, towards risk-averse child “protection” and entrenching a victim culture? Yes. Does the expansion of supra-national institutions like the EU threaten a world monoculture, potentially culminating in the tyranny of the “moral” majority across the globe? Yes.
Does this dystopian vision terrify me? Sure it does. What I share with Fry, though, is the perception that focusing on strategies of human cooperation – strategies developed in our prehistory, as he demonstrates, and now extended into modern statecraft – offer the best long-term hope for a rational, peaceful, future in which loving intimacy for all may be allowed to thrive.
Love and peace, brothers and sisters, love and peace!
[…] me to write an essay elaborating on comments I’d made on his post (February 2015) “Whither the punitive state? Whither go we?“, comments which explored the idea that economic factors could be the real cause of […]
I see that the 100-comment limit has already been overshot, and there’s such a lot of wonderful contributions here that it’ll take me a while to read them all, but I wanted to mention a couple of things.
On Gillick competence: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/law/01/25/circumcision.case/index.html?iref=newssearch
On the state’s role in children’s rights: I found this on Metafilter: “[The Children’s Act 1989] for the first time…put child welfare explicitly on the agenda in boarding schools. Things were already changing before 1989. For example, fagging was largely dying out. The idea that harsh conditions toughened kids up was already a minority view, although it still existed more among parents than staff. But there were no agreed minimum standards, I don’t think, on child welfare as opposed to things like fire safety or specific health and safety regulations. Boarding schools were mostly independent and their ethos on child welfare and the speed at which they were modernising varied a lot.
“Initially, the changes dealt with things like rights to privacy and dignity and comfort. For example, in the school I went to from 8-13, there was a single payphone, open, in a heavily trafficked hallway, which you needed to get permission to use. Showers were taken in front of a supervisory member of staff, who might be as young as 20. And female. The floors of some dormitories were wooden, and prone to giving you splinters when in bare feet. Kids slept in sheets with a woollen blanket. We weren’t cold, but it wasn’t much like home. After the Children’s Act this all changed. Phones were placed in (mostly) soundproof kiosks for privacy, bathing conducted in privacy, floors carpeted, duvets on beds. I should note mine was a good, well managed school with many lovely members of staff who cared deeply about the welfare and education of kids.”
[…] TOC began an exploration of deep waters recently in Whither the punitive state?, which delved into some fundamental questions about the kind of society we are and how we might […]
To Dissident and Lensman
Apologies for not responding like I said I would. Dissident, as you said on GC, politics is not something I particularly enjoy debating especially when I am on sites or in communities where the topic has little to do with such debates. Still I was ready for some back and forths, but lost all interest in doing so which is why I have not said anything. So I apologize for that.
Yet one more example of sex panic and the punitive state, perhaps, neither police nor social workers police on this occasion, but an English school. The school excluded an 11-year-old boy – Liam- from lessons on 5 March, yesterday, for “turning up to his school’s World Book Day celebrations dressed as Fifty Shades of Grey protagonist Christian Grey.” The boy’s mother, herself a teacher, commented: “One of the teachers went dressed as Dexter and I don’t see why sex is seen as more offensive than murder.” For those who have not read the book, the fictional character Christian Grey has a taste for S&M; Dexter Morgan is a murderer. And jolly smart Liam looks too … see: https://uk.yahoo.com/movies/schoolboy-excluded-over-fifty-shades-of-grey-world-112867767001.html
BTW, what does “you are posting comments too quicky pertain to”?
(posted the above on second try, after this comment)
What do you mean? To whom is this addressed?
I have no idee- i got his message after i posted the comment before the last one- no, i do not use methamphetamines, nor do i drink excessive amounts of coffee!
Reply to Jasmine (so that my response won’t be squeezed so thin it looks like it’s been through a compressor):
And please note, Jasmine: I know that you, like me, have a lot to say about this topic, and like being thorough, but it’s hard to honor brevity in my responses if you don’t do the same!
“It would be considerably easier if we were all united in working class industrial unions, because workers already run the industries. These unions would enable us to transition to the new system of social ownership without major difficulty.”
Considerably easier? Sure. Easy? Not on your life! Again: the bulk of the problem is not agreement or even unity – it’s coordinated action. There’s a limit to how far unions can coordinate people when you’re trying to completely redesign the system they live in.
People already work in a coordinate effort. The only way the system is redesigned is in the sense that it would now be producing based meeting the common needs and wants, not as commodities for sale on a market.
“One way thanks to some new technology is to use 3D-printers/replicators to build as many items as possible for people. This constitutes nothing more than the download of a digital code.”
…and the assembly of plastic components. On the one hand: I’m all for the 3D printed world you envision – I’m Free As In Freedom to a fault. On the other hand: that doesn’t address the acquisition and distribution of the underlying raw materials. Those are scarce. Those must be apportioned. It is in this scarcity that Economics continues on….
Easily grown organic material is not scarce. Nor is plastic, or sugar, or the many other simple materials used as the raw materials for 3D printers. Useful metals are finite on Earth, but in the not too distant future we will be capable of flying manned craft to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which has thousands of asteroids with no life and composed of ferrous materials. Just one of the largest asteroids could provide Earth with sufficient metal ore for a thousand years, with no need to strip mine the planet or deplete its own resources.
“Incentive to be innovative and creative would be heavily encouraged in a system of social ownership because life for everyone would be improved with each new innovation in production and distribution.”
I suppose I can see how a gift economy in this sector could spring up given ubiquitous digital communication, 3D printing, and the absence of intellectual property. I tentatively approve of this solution but I’d still like to hold out for more data.
Cool! And finally, no cynical conclusion 😀
“A system bereft of class divisions and a boss class would render fighting for “top dog” status utterly pointless.”
I like Tom’s response to this and I like your response to Tom.
Thanks! I understand your desire not to see things in an overly rosy picture, but I try to remain realistically optimistic. So much is possible if we collectively cooperate and put our minds together to solve the problems we now face, while truly believing it could be done.
To Tom: The regulation of status-seeking through mockery and ostracism isn’t a civilisational thing or even a human thing. As far as I’m aware, all apes engage in both status-seeking (to get more status for themselves) and status policing (to decrease the status of competitors).
Is “civilisational” a word? If not, it should be, because I think it’s cool!
To Dissident: The mere fact that we no longer need to seek status doesn’t mean we won’t.
I don’t believe the type of status-seeking in a classless system of social ownership would be nearly as likely to take on the oftentimes destructive and anti-social forms it takes in a class-divided society based on competition, individualism (as opposed to individuality), engaging in work merely to “make a living,” and production for individual enrichment only. In fact, status-seeking under such a system may take the form of people trying to be the best they can at their chosen vocation, and to reach their fullest potential. This would not be so likely to take on anti-social forms.
Hierarchy has been hard-coded into our DNA over millions of years and a mere change of circumstance won’t make it go away.
I don’t think there is any good scientific evidence for this. I think human behavior is very fluid and adaptable, and tends to change based on the requirements of any given environment we find ourselves in.
It’s been a long time since most of our ancestors were on the savanna but a lot of our behaviour is still modeled after it.
But I don’t think the evidence suggests it’s because we’re genetically “programmed” to behave a certain way, and are thus largely slaves to our DNA. Our behavior is heavily based on living in a competitive, class-divided society based on scarcity, and class-divided systems have existed for the entirety of recorded history.
True scarcity hasn’t existed for a bit over a century, but the economic relations of our latest class-divided system, capitalism, remains, which has thus created artificial scarcity. Artificial scarcity is a way of maintaining a pseudo-scarcity not by limiting people to what modern production capacity, and availability & management of resources, would allow, but based on individual ability to pay.
Autistic people have a hard time perceiving hierarchy/status so we’re less prone to this behaviour and yet I still sometimes introspect and notice I was doing something for status reasons and think “this is so odd…”. Also: Bonobo’s have hierarchy (how else could they be matriarchal?) but it just looks different to us because there is very little violence involved.
I’m not sure bonobos have a matriarchy, but simply show respect for female members of the species. This is not matriarchal, but egalitarian.
“I don’t believe accomplishing this will be anywhere near as difficult as you say, because people already coordinate their efforts for efficient production and distribution today”
However, what you propose is that we replace the free market with a new incentive structure. Incentive structures are really fucking complicated and lead to all sorts of weird results the moment you aren’t looking. We’re pretty lucky with what we got WRT the free market. Trying to build something new will probably have unintended consequences.
I don’t think fear of unintended consequences should make us fearful of embracing change when it’s needed. Fear of change has set us back numerous times, but as individuals and as a society. As for the free market making us “lucky”: I think the many impoverished people, and the numerous homeless people I see sleeping outside in the park right here in the United States in a land of plenty, may indicate otherwise. True, the majority of people in the U.S. these days have Internet, cell phones, iPods, etc., but most of them have them by living beyond their means financially speaking, and frequently lose access to these things at least temporarily when the rent comes due.
“Which is why the great majority of workers need to consciously buck that trend by realizing that there is no major difference between the Democratic/Labour and Republican/Tory Parties.”
This would require that everyone discover this and act simultaneously. Anything less than simultaneous action will fail to solve the problem and possibly make things worse. No one has an incentive to be the first to act. Therefore, no one will act. Achievement unlocked: Coordination Failure. Congratulations! You may now proceed to bang your head against a wall while muttering darkly about what’s wrong with humanity.
Circumstances throughout history have reached turning points where enough people were spurred on by the actions of a few to make viable revolutions possible.
“And please note, Jasmine: […] it’s hard to honor brevity in my responses if you don’t do the same!”
Sorry! Will try harder. However, that means I may have to skip over some of the points you’ve made.
“The only way the system is redesigned is in the sense that it would now be producing based meeting the common needs and wants, not as commodities for sale on a market.”
One of the things I’ve learned from programming is that something which sounds simple in English can be fiendishly complicated when broken down into its component pieces. I very much doubt that “producing based meeting the common needs and wants, not as commodities for sale on a market” is as simple in detail as it is in statement. Not to mention the knock-on effects of removing trade, currency, finance, competition, etc. (I wish to further clarify and illustrate this issue but I must now go on to….)
“Easily grown organic material is not scarce. Nor is plastic, or sugar, or the many other simple materials used as the raw materials for 3D printers.”
Plentiful =/= not scarce. If scarce resources, however plentiful, are not carefully distributed they can be wasted and may not go where they should. Just look at all the food which is produced and wasted under capitalism. There must be some system for making such judgments.
“Cool! And finally, no cynical conclusion”
It’s my job to question every assumption and clarify every possible issue. J’accuse you of being too idealistic 😛
(The old idealist and the young cynic – flipping stereotypes one blog comment at a time!)
“So much is possible if we collectively cooperate and put our minds together to solve the problems we now face, while truly believing it could be done.”
Indeed. I’m just trying to say that the “cooperate” part is hard. After all – some part of this must be hard or it would have happened already (yes, that’s the economics speaking). I argue that the cooperation is the hard part and I point to Game Theory as my reason for considering it so damn hard. I believe this could be overcome if someone much smarter than me (my money’s on Nate Soares) figured out how to solve coordination problems. However, maybe I should give up on fixing politics and just hold out for the singularity because I don’t realistically see this getting done any time soon.
“Is “civilisational” a word?”
Yes 🙂
“I don’t believe the type of status-seeking in a classless system of social ownership would be nearly as likely to take on the oftentimes destructive and anti-social forms it takes in a class-divided society”
I agree. I expect it be more along the lines of virtue ethics (I’m the best possible person at [personality quality]) and/or display (outrageous dress/behviour with a similar effect to birds displaying plumage). However, never underestimate the ways in which keeping up with the Joneses (financially or otherwise) may cause neurosis.
“Our behavior is heavily based on living in a competitive, class-divided society based on scarcity,”
But might it be that we form hierarchical societies because we’re prone to hierarchy and not the other way around? How can we be sure of which way the causal arrows go? (Yes, I’m being cynical again. Deal with it 😛 )
“I don’t think fear of unintended consequences should make us fearful of embracing change when it’s needed.”
I’m not saying have fear. I am saying be prepared and don’t have high expectations.
“As for the free market making us “lucky”: I think the many impoverished people, and the numerous homeless people I see sleeping outside in the park right here in the United States in a land of plenty, may indicate otherwise.”
You mean the ones with drinking water, electricity, and medication that didn’t exist two centuries ago? Or the many people who are in the middle class right now but would have been abysmally poor under feudalism when nearly everyone was poor? Didn’t say it was perfect – just that it’s far better than what one might expect from random interactions between people.
(Dammit! Not short enough! Need practice at this “concise” thing…)
“And please note, Jasmine: […] it’s hard to honor brevity in my responses if you don’t do the same!”
Sorry! Will try harder. However, that means I may have to skip over some of the points you’ve made.
I often have the same difficulty you do, my friend. I know it’s not easy when you have so much to cover and want to be thorough, but ’tis the price we pay for the benefits of brevity 🙂
“The only way the system is redesigned is in the sense that it would now be producing based meeting the common needs and wants, not as commodities for sale on a market.”
One of the things I’ve learned from programming is that something which sounds simple in English can be fiendishly complicated when broken down into its component pieces. I very much doubt that “producing based meeting the common needs and wants, not as commodities for sale on a market” is as simple in detail as it is in statement. Not to mention the knock-on effects of removing trade, currency, finance, competition, etc. (I wish to further clarify and illustrate this issue but I must now go on to….)
Some things are just that simple. Currency, finance, competition no longer have any material or ethical justification in our post-industrial world. We’ve advanced to the point that any type of production for barter is regressive, archaic, and simply non-sensical. Any problems that may arise during the brief transition period could be dealt with, and would IMO be more than worth dealing with based on the benefits of this type of change.
“Easily grown organic material is not scarce. Nor is plastic, or sugar, or the many other simple materials used as the raw materials for 3D printers.”
Plentiful =/= not scarce. If scarce resources, however plentiful, are not carefully distributed they can be wasted and may not go where they should. Just look at all the food which is produced and wasted under capitalism. There must be some system for making such judgments.
There would indeed be such entities in a classless, moneyless system. A combination of people democratically elected to economic planning councils (who would be fully accountable to the people, fully re-callable at any time, and who would have no powers like those of politicians today) and the use of sophisticated computer systems could quite readily accomplish this.
“Cool! And finally, no cynical conclusion”
It’s my job to question every assumption and clarify every possible issue. J’accuse you of being too idealistic 😛
(The old idealist and the young cynic – flipping stereotypes one blog comment at a time!)
Indeed! There is a place for idealism in this world, and a strong belief in what humanity can accomplish if we put our collective hearts and minds to it my old – er, young friend! 😉
“So much is possible if we collectively cooperate and put our minds together to solve the problems we now face, while truly believing it could be done.”
Indeed. I’m just trying to say that the “cooperate” part is hard.
We do that every day we collectively do our jobs. It’s just that under the market system, we do not collectively own and have full access to the multitude of wealth that we collectively work to create.
After all – some part of this must be hard or it would have happened already (yes, that’s the economics speaking).
Not actually. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, every civilization in human history lacked the technological means to produce an abundance for all. When we reached the point where a small surplus was producible, that’s when the first class-divided societies emerged. It’s only within the past 150 years or so that we reached this technological capability, at least in the “First World” nations. But the change hasn’t occurred yet because the global working class has not yet reached the collective requisite psychological state where they’re ready to reject their indoctrinated loyalty to the present system en masse.
However, maybe I should give up on fixing politics and just hold out for the singularity because I don’t realistically see this getting done any time soon.
Why am I not surprised that you’re well aware of the conception of the singularity as described by transhumanists? 🙂
“Is “civilisational” a word?”
Yes 🙂
Woo hoo! My vocabulary is thus expanded 😀
“I don’t believe the type of status-seeking in a classless system of social ownership would be nearly as likely to take on the oftentimes destructive and anti-social forms it takes in a class-divided society”
I agree. I expect it be more along the lines of virtue ethics (I’m the best possible person at [personality quality]) and/or display (outrageous dress/behviour with a similar effect to birds displaying plumage). However, never underestimate the ways in which keeping up with the Joneses (financially or otherwise) may cause neurosis.
I strongly suspect that the type of neuroses that develops in today’s world due to status-seeking will not have a serious match under a class-divided society. Anyone there will have an opportunity to do the best they could at whatever vocation they choose, and they will never be denied the right to work in an area where their talents and interests would make them most effective and happy. And anyone could wear any type of clothing they wanted, of course 🙂
“Our behavior is heavily based on living in a competitive, class-divided society based on scarcity,”
But might it be that we form hierarchical societies because we’re prone to hierarchy and not the other way around? How can we be sure of which way the causal arrows go? (Yes, I’m being cynical again. Deal with it 😛 )
Because, as I noted before, human behavior is adaptable. We tend to form any type of social institutions, attitudes, psychological propensities, etc., that enable us to advance in whatever system we are in. Class-divided societies have hierarchies as their lifeblood. In a classless society, it would be pointless and far from advantageous to attempt to form hierarchies, because that type of system demands cooperation and considers competition to be inimical to forward progress.
“I don’t think fear of unintended consequences should make us fearful of embracing change when it’s needed.”
I’m not saying have fear. I am saying be prepared and don’t have high expectations.
Oh ye of the high cynicism 😛
“As for the free market making us “lucky”: I think the many impoverished people, and the numerous homeless people I see sleeping outside in the park right here in the United States in a land of plenty, may indicate otherwise.”
You mean the ones with drinking water, electricity, and medication that didn’t exist two centuries ago?
As Marxists often point out, capitalism was a progressive system that made many great things possible during the agrarian, pre-industrial era when it was established. It made the Industrial Revolution possible. It caused a lot of misery and mass poverty along the way – and even included chattel slavery in its earlier stages – but it did allow human society to industrialize the world. But now that we’ve reached that point, it no longer has a justification or progressive purpose, and is nothing but destructive. It’s a tottering dinosaur that is threatening all human civilization with constant wars and mass impoverishment that is no longer necessary, and the very biosphere itself is threatened due to the effects on the environment by production for profit.
Or the many people who are in the middle class right now but would have been abysmally poor under feudalism when nearly everyone was poor?
Yet this “middle class” has been rapidly diminishing as the wealth we collectively produce is concentrated further and further into the hands of a tiny minority of the population, who controls 80% of all that wealth.
Didn’t say it was perfect – just that it’s far better than what one might expect from random interactions between people.
To reiterate, it was a progressive system in its day, and allowed us to reach the technological and productive capacity we now enjoy. But it’s now gone from merely imperfect to totally archaic, regressive, and totally destructive to the human race specifically and the biosphere in general. It needs to go, and it no longer deserves a single iota of our loyalty.
(Dammit! Not short enough! Need practice at this “concise” thing…)
As noted, I have the same problem, so I feel your pain here.
“Some things are just that simple.”
Citation Needed
“Currency, finance, competition no longer have any material or ethical justification in our post-industrial world.”
There’s a difference between justified and embedded. All the things I’ve named are just too deeply embedded in our society to rip right out without side-effects.
“There would indeed be such entities in a classless, moneyless system.”
Finally! I finally get to see what’s behind the curtains making the trains run on time. Up until now your future world might as well have been run by ghosts.
” A combination of people democratically elected to economic planning councils (who would be fully accountable to the people, fully re-callable at any time, and who would have no powers like those of politicians today)”
And how would we prevent corruption or greed for power.
>inb4: “Because they’re fully re-callable”. Even if this is true in principle, that doesn’t mean it’ll be true in practice. Many democracies have quickly fallen to coops by their elected leaders.
>inb4: “They will lack sufficient power”. Not so. If they have enough power to keep the trains running on time they’ll have enough power to cement their power to keep the trains running. Connectedly: people (or at least neurotypicals) tend to be more loyal to individuals or groups than to ideals. There will be people willing to support the coop (by force if necessary) even if it means wrecking utopia.
>inb4: “There will be no greed/power-grabs under Communism”. I’ve yet to see any evidence to suggest that these behaviours (observed even in other apes) aren’t bone-deep. As far as our observations can tell us they’re human universals. Having them continue into utopia is the simplest, default hypothesis. Anything else has to justify itself with evidence or risk getting cut by Occam’s razor.
“I’m just trying to say that the “cooperate” part is hard.”
“We do that every day we collectively do our jobs.”
Yes but it’s different! Incentive structures! *Groan* The word limit….
I wish I could just download all of Thomas Schelling’s books (especially Micromotives and Macrobehavior and The Strategy of Conflict) into your brain before we continue because I think there is a large inferential distance and we’re speaking right past each other 🙁
“the change hasn’t occurred yet because the global working class has not yet reached the collective requisite psychological state where they’re ready to reject their indoctrinated loyalty to the present system en masse.”
Yeah. It’s that acting-en-masse bit I’m talking about. However, you seem to identify the issue as being that the working class don’t have the correct psychological state. How so and how does one fix this?
“Why am I not surprised that you’re well aware of the conception of the singularity as described by transhumanists?”
LOL. IDK. Are you surprised to learn that I am a Transhumanist?
“Anyone there will have an opportunity to do the best they could at whatever vocation they choose, and they will never be denied the right to work in an area where their talents and interests would make them most effective and happy.”
Sure. But status is zero-sum and you’ll always end up with people near the bottom who feel shitty because of it (unless we find a way to solve this medically – which would be awesome). Plus let’s not forget that differences of talent/ability are a thing.
“Because, as I noted before, human behavior is adaptable.”
Yes. Our behaviour adapts to our environment. However, we’re talking about an environment that we create. That means our attitudes will be shaped by an environment which is shaped by our attitudes which are shaped by our environment […etc]. A piece of ourselves will continue into the institutions we build to bring about this new world – why would something as universal as competitiveness not sneak itself in?
BTW: Our behaviour isn’t infinitely adaptable. We’ve lived on islands but never learned to breath water. On the psychological side: singing, stories, smiles, competitions, and ceremony/ritual are universal throughout all observed human cultures and have never been adapted away from. I would conclude from this that they’re hardcoded. Status-regulation is also universal. By extension, I’d also expect it to be hardcoded. All our billions of base-pairs have to be coding for something.
“[Modern Capitalism] is nothing but destructive. It’s a tottering dinosaur that is threatening all human civilization with constant wars and mass impoverishment that is no longer necessary, and the very biosphere itself is threatened due to the effects on the environment by production for profit.”
Wow. Now look who’s cynical 😉
If we take into account the fact that war is declining, I’m not sure what “threatening all human civilization with constant wars” is supposed to mean. Threaten as in make us constantly worry about it but hardly ever deliver? I can live with that.
(Other citations if you want them.)
Poverty is also declining. I think for once that my worldview might be rosier than yours because to me the world and it’s progress as it stands look good; if imperfect.
(Won’t comment on the environment because I suspect you’re mostly right. I’ll only point out that the damage is slowing down (though not stopping).)
“Yet this “middle class” has been rapidly diminishing”
…In the developed world & the eastern block. For the rest of us, the middle class is inflating like a balloon 😀
Correction: When I said, “I strongly suspect that the type of neuroses that develops in today’s world due to status-seeking will not have a serious match under a class-divided society,” I meant to say in a classless society. I apologize for this grammatical gaffe.
Just on one point, I am highly skeptical as to when class-divided societies arose.
I think that it started (even at the least, although I haven’t researched this particular point) when humans gave up the nomadic life and “settled down”.
Sometime long ago in prehistory.
I think this corresponds to what Dissident and I believe. I’m pretty sure we agree that class-divided societies began with cultures that could produce surplus value – ie: mostly settled, agrarian societies.
BTW: I’m not sure about prehistory but more recent nomadic cultures have often been somewhat hierarchical (though less so than their settled cousins). (eg: The Mongols)
There are different sorts of nomadism and different degrees of equality/inequality associated with them. The following article on Society is not a bad brief introduction. After hunting/gathering and pastoral, the article continues with agriculture (less mobility and more inequality).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society#Pre-industrial
Hunting and gathering[
The main form of food production in such societies is the daily collection of wild plants and the hunting of wild animals. Hunter-gatherers move around constantly in search of food. As a result, they do not build permanent villages or create a wide variety of artifacts, and usually only form small groups such as bands and tribes. However, some hunting and gathering societies in areas with abundant resources (such as the Tlingit) lived in larger groups and formed complex hierarchical social structures such as chiefdoms. The need for mobility also limits the size of these societies.
Pastoral
Pastoralism is a slightly more efficient form of subsistence. Rather than searching for food on a daily basis, members of a pastoral society rely on domesticated herd animals to meet their food needs. Pastoralists live a nomadic life, moving their herds from one pasture to another. Because their food supply is far more reliable, pastoral societies can support larger populations. Since there are food surpluses, fewer people are needed to produce food. As a result, the division of labor (the specialization by individuals or groups in the performance of specific economic activities) becomes more complex. For example, some people become craftworkers, producing tools, weapons, and jewelry. The production of goods encourages trade. This trade helps to create inequality, as some families acquire more goods than others do. These families often gain power through their increased wealth. The passing on of property from one generation to another helps to centralize wealth and power. Over time emerge hereditary chieftainships, the typical form of government in pastoral societies.
Thank you! I was mostly aware of the above but I’m glad to have seen those specific examples plus it adds info to my previous, terse reply 🙂
Ah, so if I hadn’t asked you to be concise I could have saved myself the trouble of digging out the info to reply to you because you knew it already and could have told us all. Sigh! Maybe one day I’ll get the hang of this moderator thing! 🙂
LOL. Don’t worry, dear. You’re doing a fine job. It’s all about trade-offs 😉
Ta!
Tom,
You are so right. I tell my friends at the Senior Center that the way to a happy/healthy old age is to start a revolution.
I am so heartened by your review of Douglas P. Fry’s “War, Peace & Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views”.
To everyone here read it: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hfh227na7pz03bg/AAAMGprH1ILBoEgHwt3RQM2-a?dl=0
The EU must remain but not necessarily the ECB (European Central Bank) in its present form and its present method of creating money with debt.
God help people.
Linca
Hi Jasmine,
“Wut, mate? Seriously? imprisoned by logic? Is this a non-autistic thing? I’m honestly drawing a blank. I find your romanticism…. disturbing…”
I think you and I may differ on the value of prediction. I don’t think it occurs in a political vacuum – those who wield material power have the means to impose their predictions on the rest of us, even when they turn out to be utterly wrong.
Here are a few examples:
In 2008, as the price of oil surged above $140 a barrel, experts said it would soon hit $200; a few months later it plunged to $30.
In 1967, they said the USSR would have one of the fastest-growing economies in the year 2000; in 2000, the USSR did not exist.
In 1911, it was pronounced that there would be no more wars in Europe; we all know how that turned out.
As the fiercely intelligent journalist Dan Gardner argued in his recent book, Future Babble:
“Face it, experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys. And yet every day we ask them to predict the future — everything from the weather to the likelihood of a catastrophic terrorist attack.”
Gardner is no populist propagandist; his prose may have a light touch but his mind is scholarly and rigorous. Future Babble was described by no less a hallowed figure of science than Harvard psychology professor Stephen Pinker in these terms:
“Future Babble is genuinely arresting… required reading for journalists, politicians, academics and anyone who listens to them.”
Neuroscientists now estimate that the human brain contains around 10 billion neurons (109), all of them activated at the same time. Every single one of these neurons, with their axons and branching dendrites, connects synaptically with 60,000 to 100,000 other neurons. The number of possible combinations per neuron is approximately 10million connections. That’s more than the number of positively charged particles in the known universe (check out Regina Palley’s excellent work on the Mind-Brain relationship). The virtually infinite number of potential neuronal configurations provides for the human brain’s almost limitless information processing capacities and it’s almost limitless capacity for adaptation/change.
This is vastly more complex than calculating the likelihood of flooding in a particular area. I may simply be demonstrating my ignorance, but I know of no algorithm that can reliably forecast future human behaviour. Futurologists command the attention of policymakers but as Gardner able demonstrates, their track record is very far from adequate.
In the domain of human subjectivity and agency, empirical observation of past conduct can never be a reliable a guide to the future behaviour of an individual, as positivist, state-salaried forensic psychologists and their cop servants would have us believe. That’s what I was getting at when I referred to imprisoning people in empirical logic, as the agents of the punitive state invariably do with their dangerously inadequate actuarial risk assessments (I know you concede this point, Jasmine). Once you acknowledge the existence of the Freudian unconscious – that which resists symbolisation and empirical observation yet INSISTS in our daily (and nightly) lives – prediction becomes a ridiculous impossibility.
No one knows in advance who they will fall in love with, for instance, yet this shattering and traumatic (if ecstatic) event changes everything – people literally cast off their former selves and become new subjects. Algorithms may be used (as in online dating websites) to “match” apparently empirically similar people together, but this is hardly falling in love: love involves, precisely, a traumatic fall that shocks us to our foundations, that utterly subverts our apparent empirical characteristics.
The algorithms of actuarial science may be appropriate for the physical sciences, even for “economic” science, but not for the science of human subjectivity, which is by definition unpredictable. We are, I think, less than the full human beings we all could be when we have become slaves to our routines. Even then, there’s always the prospect of unforeseen and unpredictable rupture, epiphany, of a shattering encounter with sublime beauty that changes everything and may even lead us to our own oblivion (just read Thomas Mann’s haunting novella, Death in Venice).
Classical logic of course, has its place. But human beings are far more determined by the logic of the signifier: when we speak, when he put signifiers into a chain, we can never know what the meaning is until the final signifier is in place.
There’s a rather brilliant example from the classic hit US comedy TV series Frazier. Narcissistically wishing to trumpet his ethical superiority on air at the close of his commercial phone-in radio show, he objects to being asked to give advertising messages in his broadcast with these words:
“Hello, Seattle. The people who know me best will not be surprised by what I’m about to tell you. (Speaking theatrically) I … am not a man … who betrays his principles. I am not a man who misleads his listeners and I am not a man who will shrink from a fight. Today I find myself in a fight over the content of my show. But rather than truckle to the forces of commercialism, I’ve decided to take a stand on principle – even if it means …”
At this point, his call editor marches into the recording room, followed by Dr Crane’s sudden realisation that he’s no longer on the air – his show’s time has run out. He asks how much of his message got out. The answer comes in the form of a brutal playback: he only managed to say in public, “People who know me best will not be surprised by what I’m about to tell you. I … am not a man.”
(Try; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXSjsf9SsGQ)
By omitting his closing signifiers, the entire empirical meaning of his intended statement was totally altered yet became a kind of verifiable fact, even though it was totally untrue. Prediction involves projecting the signifiers we have at our disposal in the present into the future, whereas the future holds signifiers we have not yet uttered or encountered, yet which will alter our lives forever. We should, it seems to me, try not to allow agents of the state to predict human behaviour unless we’re happy to shrug off appalling injustices as collateral damage.
.
Sorry, Tom, I droned a little here.
“those who wield material power have the means to impose their predictions on the rest of us”
How does one impose a prediction? Predictions attempt to describe reality; not create it. Believing a particular prediction may influence your actions but the prediction itself does not act upon the universe.
“In 2008, as the price of oil surged above $140 a barrel […] we all know how that turned out.”
I’m tempted to slap [Citation Needed] on all those statements but, in reality, this is unnecessary because examples of individual predictions which are true or false prove nothing. What we’re discussion is prediction itself so only the average rate of success/failure for a particular method of prediction is relevant to whether prediction can be accomplished at all.
‘”Face it, experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys. And yet every day we ask them to predict the future — everything from the weather to the likelihood of a catastrophic terrorist attack.”‘
Indeed. In fact, Nate Silver says something similar in his book The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t: “We need to stop, and admit it: we have a prediction problem. We love to predict things—and we aren’t very good at it.” The thing about Mr Silvers book is that it doesn’t say “throw up your hands in despair.” It says “this is how you make predictions that work.” This isn’t just idle speculation either. While we’re still in the business of providing prediction-anecdotes: Nate Silver predicted the winner of 49 out of 50 states (plus DC) in the 2008 presidential election and correctly predicted every senate race that year. Getting down to methods, Mr Silver’s book outlines the many reasons why people tend to be bad at prediction and how to correct for them. The result is a very solid investigation of human-prediction as an art and science.
“The virtually infinite number of potential neuronal configurations provides for the human brain’s almost limitless information processing capacities and it’s almost limitless capacity for adaptation/change.
This is vastly more complex than calculating the likelihood of flooding in a particular area.”
Having the emergent properties of a system be determined by a very large number of parts doesn’t make the property itself difficult to model if all the little bits are behaving in an orderly, uniform fashion and can be abstracted over. The atmosphere is full of molecules but we can still model the aerodynamics of a plane’s wing. The solar system is full of atoms yet we can model the movement of planets and comets centuries in advance. Neurons are also orderly and uniform. The fact that we don’t directly model them has more to do with the difficulty of isolating their functions and behaviour than anything to do with them being inherently unpredictable.
“Algorithms may be used (as in online dating websites) to “match” apparently empirically similar people together, but this is hardly falling in love”
I think you may be confusing what the algorithm is supposed to do here. The point is to find people you have the highest possibility for falling for after meeting them. Every day you interact with dozens of people in a somewhat random fashion but hardly ever fall for them. Let’s say you fall in love with 1 in every 100 people you meet (I know you don’t like probabilities but please just roll with it). The point of the algorithm is to outperform this. That means that if you fall for 1 in every 10 people you meet via a dating site, the algorithm has been successful by a factor of 10x. That’s pretty solid by Bayesian standards. The algorithm isn’t supposed to cause you to fall in love; just figure out who you’re most like to fall in love with. OkCupid publishes a lot of data about this and, as far as I can tell, they’ve proved their algorithm to be successful by the standard I outlined above.
“By omitting his closing signifiers, the entire empirical meaning of his intended statement was totally altered yet became a kind of verifiable fact, even though it was totally untrue. Prediction involves projecting the signifiers we have at our disposal in the present into the future, whereas the future holds signifiers we have not yet uttered or encountered”
Maybe it’s just because I’m not well-versed in Post Modernism (I tend to toss it away from myself in disgust when the language starts to get more vacuous than is usual for philosophy), but I don’t see what the connection is here between linguistic facts and real-world events. The map is not the territory. I hope there is something more to this than a broken analogy….
BTW: “Empirical” only refers to what can be observed to be true. I don’t see how you can attack “empirical logic” or “empirical [everything else you called this]” as false. If something is false we won’t observe evidence to the effect that it is true. That’s basically empiricism itself. If predictions don’t work then we won’t see predictions coming true and predictions will, therefore, be contrary to empiricism. (I’m not sure if I was particularly clear in this paragraph. Sorry.)
Finally, allow me to make a prediction of my own: If we don’t eventually lose interest or annoy Tom, this debate is going to bottom-out in a philosophical discussion of Free Will and The Self.
>Finally, allow me to make a prediction of my own: If we don’t eventually lose interest or annoy Tom, this debate is going to bottom-out in a philosophical discussion of Free Will and The Self.
Rest assured, Jasmine, nothing in this post of yours annoys me, but the predicted bottoming out might well do! Yes, your post is longer than I would have wished but you have concisely made a series of good and important points: congratulations!
My apologies for putting this reply in the wrong place!
I also just noticed an error in transposition. In my paragraph on neuroscience “109” should read ten to the power of nine, and “10 million” should read “ten to the power of one million.” These quantities are vast.
Don’t worry, Pete. I suspect anyone following this thread will have a good idea of what you meant i.e. a really, really, really big number, far beyond our imagining!
I think you’re right about your last prediction, Jasmine. I’ll try to keep this short(ish) to avoid annoying Tom, or anyone else for that matter.
How does one impose a prediction? Predictions attempt to describe reality; not create it. Believing a particular prediction may influence your actions but the prediction itself does not act upon the universe
The notion that description and construction can be neatly separated is, I think, seriously open to question. When an anti-Semite describes a Jew, he will not be identifying the same features as a resolute anti-racist. He will, though, be constructing a dehumanised monster via his description, which is skewed by the influence of an entirely different (and malignant) master signifier to that used by the anti-racist. None of us can elude the necessity for interpretation when we attempt to describe the Real. We can’t simply read facts off as self-evident axioms.
And where gradients of power exist, as they always do, predictions can very definitely be imposed upon the socially powerless and abjected by those invested with State-sanctioned power, no matter how erroneous and prejudiced by dominant ideological narratives those predictions may be. If we’re going to have prediction, let’s at least subject it to rigorous ideology critique, exposing its assumptions and questioning its terms. What is a “paedophile,” for example? A cop and a MAP will almost certainly give irreconcilably different descriptions (although the cop will seek to disqualify the alternative description as a “cognitive distortion” – i.e., a description that doesn’t conform to the ideologically dominant account of social reality).
Having the emergent properties of a system be determined by a very large number of parts doesn’t make the property itself difficult to model if all the little bits are behaving in an orderly, uniform fashion and can be abstracted over.
The Freudian term for a system of consciousness behaving in an orderly, uniform fashion is “Ego” and it’s full of self-idealising and other-denigrating fictions. Its orderliness is also highly questionable – it’s just that we earn to ignore the myriad disorders, bungled actions, slips of the tongue, crazy dreams that litter it. Here is a sequence from Paul Keegan’s wonderful introduction to Freud’s brilliant Psychopathology of Everyday Life in the New Penguin Freud series:
“Ordinary acts bristle with redundancy – with stumbling, slipping, falling; with dropping things, knocking things over, losing things, pouring things over ourselves, with forgetting each other’s names, addressing each other by the wrong names, mislaying the names of our husbands, of our cities; with forgetting what we intend to do, omitting to carry out tasks, mixing up dates. Our days are full of farcical detour and unscripted subplots. We cannot trust ourselves to post our letters, we make mistakes in the writing, we wrongly address them to those for whose eyes their contents are specifically not intended. We put calls through to the wrong people. We take the wrong trains, register our children with the wrong names, we forget to sign cheques. No sooner do we receive presents than we mislay them. We are inept at dodging each other in the street, and we cannot be relied on to cross an empty thoroughfare without getting run over. More generally, we produce a constant unspecified static: we fiddle with our clothes and our hair, we scribble things, we jingle coins, we hum tunes ‘thoughtlessly’, like Sterne’s Uncle Toby; we make meaningless gestures and movements; we are obscurely ‘impelled’ to perform odd acts, acts which are not quite out actions. We are the landing strips for all these minor furies. And through it all we say – or rather we come out with – the wrong things, with hybrid utterance, with things concealed but struggling for appearance.”
None of us can predict out next Freudian slip, although I can predict with some certainty that we will all have them. The unconscious plays havoc with all notions of expertise and prediction; it may join in with the orderly, uniform fictions of the Ego (as when we accidentally utter an obscenity by mangling a word while trying to say something pious). But it never fits in with them.
Just to add to the confusion, I see that an essay I had been writing elsewhere on the late American actor, Pete Duel, caused me to sign off as “pete.” See what I mean about Freudian slips?
“I think you’re right about your last prediction, Jasmine.”
Really? You declare me to be capable of prediction? Why, I must have transcended reality itself! 😀
“The notion that description and construction can be neatly separated is, I think, seriously open to question. When an anti-Semite describes a Jew, he will not be identifying the same features as a resolute anti-racist. He will, though, be constructing a dehumanised monster via his description, which is skewed by the influence of an entirely different (and malignant) master signifier to that used by the anti-racist. None of us can elude the necessity for interpretation when we attempt to describe the Real. We can’t simply read facts off as self-evident axioms.”
I have never before had to show this much restraint to avoid writing a >5,000 word thesis. It just so happens that I was just having a very similar discussion with my gf three days ago. Let’s see how I can tackle this in as few words as possible….
The map is not the territory. Your own perception of reality will never perfectly correspond to the underlying reality. However, it is very important to remember that reality causes your observations (though through perceptional impairments) but your observations do not cause reality. Your observations + your existing beliefs cause your own mental state but this is your map of the world around you. It is not the territory. You must always keep the concepts of the Noumenal and Phenomenal Worlds separate in your mind (h/t Kant).
When we observe things we edit our internal map. This also occurs when we describe things. The descriptions, labels, and (indeed) signifiers we assign to objects and concepts will impact our own internal mental state. An anti-Semite’s description of me may indeed cause a terrible monster to come into being – but only in their mind. The Jasmine who exists in the Noumenal World will be unaffected by their mental model of her. Likewise, the anti-racist’s mental state would also fail to affect my reality. Labels categorise things within human minds but are not directly connected to the underlying state of the world. There are no inherently “correct” categories.
“And where gradients of power exist, as they always do, predictions can very definitely be imposed upon the socially powerless and abjected by those invested with State-sanctioned power”
In this case I think what you’re saying is that people may be made to believe the prediction even if it’s false; not that state power causes the prediction to be true. If I’ve misinterpreted you here, please correct me 🙂
“The Freudian term for a system of consciousness behaving in an orderly, uniform fashion is “Ego””
I believe there’s a misunderstanding here. I don’t mean to say that consciousness is orderly. I’m saying that the neurons which underlie it are predictable on an individual level. The emergent property of simple parts need not be simple in itself. The molecules that compose a fluid are each orderly on their own but the emergent property of turbulence is one of the most opaque physical phenomena. Richard Feynman described turbulence as “the most important unsolved problem of classical physics”. However, despite being difficult to understand, turbulence can be modeled because it’s parts are orderly. Likewise, the human brain is famously opaque; yet it too can be modeled because the neurons which compose it each run in accordance with consistent physical rules.
“None of us can predict out next Freudian slip”
Give me a scientifically rigorous definition of “Freudian slip”, tons of observational data, and a super computer and I’ll take a crack at it 😉
(Of course, you could argue that there is no rigorous definition of a Freudian slip – but then you can’t complain when we can’t predict something you won’t let us categories consistently!)
We might be suffering from some terminological differences, Jasmine (as I think human beings inevitably do when they seek to communicate with one another). Like everyone else, as soon as I’ve written or spoken something, I can’t control what the receiver makes of it, even if that happens to be at odds with my intentions, because the receiver’s creativity is not subordinated to my desires).
As an admittedly hardcore Lacanian, I would make a sharp distinction between ‘reality’ (which is constituted by imaginary and symbolic mechanisms) and what Lacan called ‘the Real.’ For Lacan, the ‘Real’ corresponds to what Freud called “the unconscious” – the experiences which resist linguistic representation and can only be depicted with fictitious images. The psychoanalytic word for these pseudo-explanatory images is “fantasy”: whenever our language and (ego) understanding fails to capture an experience, an experience that insists yet can’t be placated or subdued, we manufacture spontaneous images to cover over the intolerable blank or void. That the childhood sexuality Freud began describing so soberly has been buried beneath an avalanche of thoroughly reactionary victim feminist ideology is a case in point: if we fail to generate creative new signifiers for a real phenomenon, we end up with viciously coercive, thought-deadening fantasy that actively punishes discovery and inquiry.
Fantasies of social reality can be controlled, marshalled and moulded: those with power over how certain phenomena are represented in the media can manipulate “public” perception and understanding. But the “Real” is always open to interpretation, no matter how coercively authoritarians try to nail certain words to certain images or meanings: there’s always an unbridgeable gap between the signifier (the acoustic image of the word we use to refer to something) and the signified (the concept referred to). The signifier is dynamical and endlessly evolving, sliding beneath the signifier that tries to nail it in place. When you explore the ‘signifieds’ of different individuals in detail, no one identically shares the same set of meanings to signifiers like “brother”, “mother”, “beautiful”, and so on (even “Tuesday” and “pot roast”). This is the true meaning of the phrase “We are divided only by a common language.”
If the Jasmine who exists in Kant’s noumenal world is unaffected by the bigot’s prejudices, her body and life chances will not be immune to their violence and sadistic hatred in the phenomenal, material world of social reality – violence which may terminate her existence in the noumenal.
But when you say “There are no inherently “correct” categories,” I find myself wholly with you.
We might not be so far apart on the issue of orderliness and turbulence; social reality, or rather, those who serve its existing structure of discrimination, division and inequality, depend upon weathering the occasional storms of turbulence to reproduce it relatively consistently from one generation to the next. Turbulence doesn’t necessarily topple tyrants, it doesn’t necessarily expose the corporate dictatorship underpinning our Western democracies (I think Dissident would recognise this immediately). But, borrowing from the work of Alain Badiou, what I have been calling “Event” really can – an effect that seems to come from nowhere, that has eluded empirical counting (as the individual and political unconscious always does), a spontaneous explosion that changes the world irreversibly (falling in love, a new emancipatory political movement that weaves the oppressed together despite former antagonisms, a new scientific paradigm that leaves existing scientific assumptions staggering around looking for an oxygen cylinder, a stunning new art form that shatters prevailing notions of what art really is). If you can predict spontaneity, you’ve destroyed spontaneity. Are spontaneity and contingency an illusion? I personally remain to be convinced.
At root, I’m suggesting that we can’t divorce the scientific inquiry of prediction from those who commission it. Who is asking for what kind of prediction and why? When it comes to MAPS, the answer in unavoidable: those who fund the university research projects and call the shots are those who are deeply invested in a profoundly punitive and oppressive agenda. When it comes to MAPS, or anyone the Punitive State tyrannically designates as a “paedo” or a “danger to children” (which in the UK includes sexually active youths under the age of 18), the intention and effect of pseudo-prediction (“risk assessment”) is discipline, punishment and dehumanisation.
I’m not point scoring, Jasmine. I’m bowled over by your fiercely shining intelligence and critical thinking. But, as you can see, I hope, it’s that very talent that opens up limitless areas for further debate and exploration (although perhaps not here, on this topic, unless we want other visitors to start sticking pins into our effigies).
“We might be suffering from some terminological differences”
You have a concept you refer to as “reality” which corresponds to what I call “the map”. You have a concept of the “Real” which corresponds to what I consider direct sensory experiences (which have yet to be fit into a framework/category/worldview). Do you have any concept which corresponds to what I call “the territory”? The underlying reality which is composed of atoms and the source of our perceptions but which is only imperfectly sensed? The place that (sort of) corresponds to Kant’s Noumenal World? I think part of the issue may be that we are conflating all three of these views of “reality”.
“If the Jasmine who exists in Kant’s noumenal world is unaffected by the bigot’s prejudices, her body and life chances will not be immune to their violence and sadistic hatred in the phenomenal”
True. This is why I distinguish between the bigot’s internal mental state and their actions. Their actions reach me and have effects in the world around them. Their thoughts may cause their actions but do not act directly. The line of causation may run Thought>Actions>Effects but never Thoughts>Effects. It is possible to choose which thoughts and desires you act on; as I’m sure everyone here is aware 😉
“We might not be so far apart on the issue of orderliness and turbulence; social reality, or rather, those who serve its existing structure of discrimination, division and inequality, depend upon weathering the occasional storms of turbulence to reproduce it relatively consistently from one generation to the next.”
Uh… I was actually referring to literal turbulence. As in the random motion of particles composing a fluid. Interpreting literal language as metaphorical – the reverse of autism! 😀
“At root, I’m suggesting that we can’t divorce the scientific inquiry of prediction from those who commission it.”
A fact can be used in any of many ways. Facts give you a greater understanding of the world to use as you wish at your own peril. The Haber Process was originally devised to produce chemical weapons but is also responsible for the Green Revolution which feeds 2 billion people. Same thing with Nuclear Fission for bombs and energy. Let’s object not to efforts to understand the world but to attempts to change it for the worse. That’s the Utilitarian way.
“I’m not point scoring, Jasmine.”
TBH, point scoring would never have occurred to me. By default, I don’t think about status….
“I’m bowled over by your fiercely shining intelligence and critical thinking. But, as you can see, I hope, it’s that very talent that opens up limitless areas for further debate and exploration (although perhaps not here”
Thank you. My email address is jasminerk@hushmail.com, if you wish to continue by email (unless of course Tom is having too much fun spectating and would prefer for us to stay here for now).
>unless of course Tom is having too much fun spectating and would prefer for us to stay here for now
Yes, this is really good stuff so no problem.
Just thought I’d share this with you guys : controversy over homosexual pardon,because its thought that some ‘paedophiles’ may also get pardoned!
Don’t they know many gay men love youth!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/27/homosexual-pardon-delayed-whitehall-fears-paedophiles-simon-hughes-alan-turing?CMP=share_btn_tw
Talk about having your cake and eating it too:
“Campaigners believe that the objections about benefiting paedophiles could be overcome by introducing two amendments to the relevant legislation to make clear that the men would have acted wholly lawfully under today’s law. The amendments would say that the sex took place between men aged over 16 and that they were both consenting adults.”
And those guys who were between 16 and 21 and convicted of gross indecency from 1967 to 1994, plus those guys who were between 16 and 18 and convicted of gross indecency from 1994 to 2001, will not be offered a pardon?
Earlier this year I discussed the topic of Abel and Abel with Adam Powell, who, incidentally, co-founded the Forum for Understanding Minor Attraction. I had not realised there was a second Abel, Tabitha Abel, in the child abuse industry. Adam suggested that I should not be put off as the psychologists running the I Love Children project distanced themselves from Gene Abel. So, after reading Tom’s Sexnet discussion with Nick Devin, I decided to get in touch with Adam once again, as follows:
“Picking up on our ‘Abel’ discussions, you mention … the confusion between Tabitha Abel and the infamous Gene Abel. I was therefore interested in reading today, the following extract from a debate between Tom O’Carroll and Nick Devin:
There will of course, sadly, in these oppressive times be a plethora of those who are battered and broken by all the hostility they face in the media and society generally, and who are not ready for the informal therapy many of us find through Heretic TOC. They need help; but not ‘help’ in the form of systematic brainwashing such as Nick and the VPs appear to endorse. Tabitha Abel, for instance, with whom they had a relationship the last time I checked, runs a clinic with a retrograde approach that even endorses aversion therapies rejected as degrading and inhumane by the gay community decades ago. She is also a Christian evangelist. While religion has to be tolerated, we should draw the line at encouraging its pushers to mind-rape vulnerable sexual minorities. That’s a lesson homosexuals have learned from the ‘gay reparative therapy’ scam.”
Adam in turn sought clarification from the individual who runs the I Love Children website, Gary Gibson, and this was his response:
“My wife’s name is Tabitha Abel. She is listed on our website and is supportive of what I do, but I take full responsibility for the website and what happens in the therapy groups I run. Tabitha does not run a clinic. We are active Seventh-day Adventist Christians, but I hardly think of her as an ‘evangelist’ in any sort of public forum.
Unlike your friend, I have a strong degree of tolerance for diversity of opinions and try to understand where people are coming from even when we disagree. Feinmann0 is probably thinking of Gene Abel, who runs a clinic in Atlanta that uses aversion therapy. I do know him personally and find him to be a very tender-hearted person. I have not had the intestinal fortitude to try his methods, but just yesterday someone who had tried some of his techniques told me it only helped temporarily. While I might suggest someone give it a try and see if it is helpful to them, no technique should ever be forced on anyone. I found the professionals at the ATSA conference were strongly opinionated on both sides of this issue.
I respect Tom O’Carroll’s right to be obnoxious, but I find him to be very vitriolic with anyone who has a different opinion. It is not clear to me whether he wrote the paragraph that Feinmann0 quoted. Whoever wrote it needs to get the facts before they attack other people.
I like Nick and Ethan at VirPed and agree with their stand against adult-child sex, but just because they have a link to our site and we have a link to their site does not necessarily mean we agree on every point. I also have a link to B4U-ACT and plan to attend their workshop, even though I might not agree with everything they say. I have a link to you, but that does not mean I ‘endorse’ your approach. I think people need a variety of resources. Should I remove your contact information from my list of where to get help just because I have a link to B4U-ACT, which has a link to VP, which purportedly has some connection to Tabitha Abel, who happens to have the same last name as Gene Abel, that Tom O’Carroll doesn’t agree with?”
Answer: Let the punitive state wither!
Great blog, Tom. I should mention, however, that I am indeed a Marxist, and it’s important to note that the Soviet Union and other nations of the 20th century that claimed to be “socialist” bore no resemblance to the money-less society of social ownership and cooperative self-governance by workers as espoused by Marx and Engels. The Soviet Union and other variations of Leninism, i.e., state ownership (e.g., Maoism, Trotskyism) was a fully class-divided society that resulted from the fact that the Bolshevik Revolution circa 1917 lacked the all-important technological capability of producing an abundance for everyone. That is the key to achieving a classless society. That explains the huge amount of inequality and barbarity that has plagued the human race since the first class divided system appeared so many millennia ago.
I am persuaded that the deep prehistory of humankind was not Hobbesian as Steven Pinker and other popular writers would have us believe, and that our future as a species will more and more depend on cooperative strategies rather than the intense competition that has prevailed from the agricultural era onwards. This shift away from extraordinary and often deadly intra-species competition, which arose initially in response to relatively recent Malthusian resource-pressure crises not evidenced in the EEA [environment of evolutionary adaptedness], will be far more compatible with gentler and less rule-bound erotic styles: more bonobo than chimp, if you will. I would argue this as a feminist vision bearing in mind that the erotic governance of bonobo society depends fundamentally on strong female alliances capable of holding males in check.
Your above quote is precisely what Marx and Engels fought to achieve, and the Soviet Union accomplished nothing of the sort. It didn’t achieve a classless, money-less society even after industrializing itself, because by that time the ruling bureaucratic class obviously had no intention of ending class rule. Despite how advanced the G8 nations are in terms of productive capability, the working class is not yet psychologically ready to give up the brutally competitive and class-divided system it has been conditioned to accept, support, and even defend. Worse, there are many intellectuals in America who support a fully unregulated version of capitalism that would bring worship and encouragement of selfishness and competition to a new level. It’s this type of inequality which creates the necessity of a coercive force like a state to preserve a semblance of order in the first place. A system described by you and Fry that would not need to rely on a governing state backed up by armed force could only be achieved in such a cooperative system. The EU is still comprised of a system that supports class rule and inequality, and this is why the governing state that is necessary to preserve order is such a mixed bag.
As for Lancaster’s book, the final chapter did indeed have those shortcomings, but IMO the rest of the book was a courageous tackling of victimology and the “drama queen” culture it has fostered which enables the sex abuse panic and witch hunts to flourish. The last chapter’s weak proscriptions may need work, but I do believe the book is very important.
As for Nick’s claims… You do indeed perform a very important service with your blog here, Tom. Many people outside the MAP community notice and appreciate it, and you do it without capitulating to a system that fails all of society on many levels, including children. VP is only capable of being successful by such capitulation, and it willingly fails to address larger issues that the pedophile panic and child abuse are connected to. It also supports stereotypes that only allow MAPs to be accepted if they “toe the line” and refuse to oppose such lies. It also assumes that the Non-MAP majority can be nothing but ignorant, as if an era like the 1970s is something that can never possibly happen again. Heretics have an important place in this world, and the progressive movement of civil rights would be nowhere without people like us who were willing to oppose rather than capitulate to previous status quo mentality.
Thanks for your thanks, and for strong contribution!
A superb response Dissident. And I’m delighted to find a fellow Marxist articulating his argument so lucidly and trenchantly. Were it not for a new resurgence of interest in intelligent Marxist analysis inspired by the likes of Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Terry Eagleton and Bruno Bosteels (amongst others), I’d be claiming we were a dying breed.
I completely agree with your points abut the Soviet Union, btw – Marx always believed that to be a true, libertarian socialist, your society had to be very well-healed, courtesy of the unprecedented productive forces developed and unleashed by capitalism. Social division, systematically entrenched poverty and exclusion can just as easily sow the seeds of fascist reaction as humane and inclusive revolution.
The State, in a rational democracy, should focus on regulating and mitigating the inherent brutalities of globalising capitalism and defend individual citizens against mindlessly majoritarian or bullishly strident minoritarian moral opinion. If that was the kind of State we had, I’d be for it. But it isn’t. So I’m not.
Thank you for your kind words of support, Ben. It’s nice to see a fellow Marxist amongst the MAP community. Our community is filled with brilliant intellectual folks, but I’ve often been disturbed with the number of them developing loyalties to laissez-faire capitalism, as are many brilliant people outside of the MAP community entirely. I just want to make it clear that Marxists who actually follow the system formulated by Marx and Engels do not support the state-dominated variants of Leninism like the former Soviet Union, China, etc., nor are we identical to the “social democrats” who support a more liberalized version of capitalism.
I suspect that most of the people who are inspired by the intelligent Marxist analysis of the scholars you list are more likely to be liberals who fancy themselves radical than actual socialists. I know that most of the ones I run into are. It’s weird to walk into a group of radicals, self-identifying as a liberal, and have to be the one constantly saying “no, really; Marx had a good point about….”
On the other hand, if actual socialists are making a resurgence, I’d love to know where I can find them.
You are right in pointing out that the Soviet Union and similar states were not classless societies. However, I issue to you the same challange which Tom issues Lancaster, if you don’t mind: what does the road to Communism look like? You speak of the necessity of a capacity for abundant production; how is that to be achieved? BTW: What do you mean by “the working class is not yet psychologically ready”?
I was waiting for you to join the fray here, James! 🙂
You are right in pointing out that the Soviet Union and similar states were not classless societies.
This is a VERY important distinction to make.
However, I issue to you the same challange which Tom issues Lancaster, if you don’t mind: what does the road to Communism look like?
Genuine Marxian socialism has to be achieved by the vast majority of the working class fighting for it. This can be done via a combination of the following two things: 1) Widespread political activism from the vast majority, by means of a new political party that exclusively represents worker interests (certainly not the Democratic Party in the U.S. or the Labour Party in Britain); and 2) Equally widespread economic activism within the work place via the formations of new unions that fully support worker interests and work in conjunction with the workers’ political party (certainly unlike the dwindling unions of today, which are run by careerists who work in collusion with capitalists and accept the market system as a finality).
The U.S. Constitution has a provision called Article V that would enable the citizenry to peaceably dismantle the present system and create a new one via democratic consensus vote by the vast majority. This was deliberately installed by America’s Founders in case the new system of capitalism – which was then a progressive system – ever reached the point where it no longer served the interests of the majority. The unions would allow the workers to “lock out” the capitalists from the industrial apparatus once that vote was made, thus granting them the power to back up the consensus mandate. That would also allow for the easy transition from the old system of production for private profit to the new system of production to meet the collective needs and wants.
You speak of the necessity of a capacity for abundant production; how is that to be achieved?
That has already been achieved with the present level of technology. We now possess the capacity for mass production of products and quick distribution to the hands of workers. Newer advances such as 3-D printers make production and distribution even faster, and may point towards the next huge technological advance since the computer revolution. When capitalism replaced feudalism as the dominant economic global order, starting in the Western world during the late 18th century – thanks to the one-two blows of the American Revolution and the French Revolution – it was the most advanced system possible with the limited productive capacity of the time. It was then a progressive system that made sense in a world where scarcity of goods was both real and pervasive, and the simple and relatively inexpensive tools of production at the time made it reasonably possible for many people and families to establish small businesses to earn a living on their own terms. Capitalism helped lead to the Industrial Revolution, which was the next major game changer in the world.
By this time, though, the means of creating wealth had become complex and incredibly expensive, taking the form of factories run by as many as thousands of employees working on behalf of a small handful of owners. The means of production are now so expensive and complicated that workers no longer have a realistic chance of purchasing the necessary tools to earn for themselves; they are now mostly compelled to work for the few capitalists and who own and control the heavily concentrated wealth, produced by the privately owned productive property (i.e., factories) and distribution centers (i.e., stores and shopping malls).
We are now advanced enough in our productive capacity that we can produce an abundance for all with a considerably less amount of labor by everyone per week and year. This means that real scarcity no longer exists, and a system of barter via the use of currency is archaic, regressive, non-nonsensical, and utterly destructive to the world due to the continual need for a market system to expand and consume. There is no longer any material justification for maintaining a competitive system that runs on money, let alone an ethical justification.The ruling capitalist class and their predatory competitiveness no longer serves a useful purpose, because now workers have the potential to use modern technology to liberate themselves not only from want and the fear of want, but from arduous toil, thus freeing them to pursue meaningful pursuits for the collective benefit rather than a simple individualistic concern for “making a living.”
BTW: What do you mean by “the working class is not yet psychologically ready”?
The working class as a whole is not yet displaying any signs on a mass scale of being willing to fight for this type of fundamental change, nor to give up their heavily conditioned loyalty to capitalism. Many are strongly inducted with the belief that “human nature” is responsible for the system, and that as a species we cannot hope to achieve anything better. Many on the Left have the goal of trying to tame capitalism with strong state regulation rather than replacing the system with one that does not leave class rule intact… better than fully unregulated capitalism, I think, but would not eliminate class rule; it’s simply designed to make class rule easier for workers to live with.
Many workers in the U.S. and Britain continue to put their hopes in the Democratic and Labour parties respectively, as do workers in their equivalents elsewhere in the developed world, and are not willing to give a third party a chance, let alone work together collectively to form one at this point in time.
The indoctrinated fetishism for money and capitalism continues to have much loyalty among the intellectuals in America, who consider the ability to acquire as much economic power over others as you can to be a fundamental aspect of personal liberty (note the libertarians).
And many more workers in the West, particularly in America, are simply apathetic, believing nothing they do can possibly make a difference, and simply place all their concerns into living their personal lives, leaving all the major decisions to politicians and other civil servants of the ruling class.
“I was waiting for you to join the fray here, James!”
My apologies for re-disappearing. First there was my birthday then Valentines then studying….
“Widespread political activism from the vast majority, by means of a new political party that exclusively represents worker interests”; ” widespread economic activism within the work place via the formations of new unions that fully support worker interests” and “transition from the old system of production for private profit to the new system of production to meet the collective needs and wants.” all require that we overcome coordination failures. I am of the opinion that failure to coordinate is responsible for the majority of the world’s institutional, political, and even economic problems.
Markets are a mechanism of coordinating the activity of vast numbers of people. They have 2 main advantages:
1) They happen spontaneously once you enforce private property and institute a method of exchange. Therefor, they don’t rely on much outside inference to exist (even if unregulated market can have disastrous side-effects, they at least manage to perpetuate their own existence).
2) They act as a vector pointing populations in the general direction of greater sum prosperity. The only issue there is that vectors have many dimensions and capitalism in its various forms can point at several possible outcomes (inequality comes to mind).
It’s all well and good to say that markets should be replaced or that we need a mass effort to do such but coordinating tons of people is a hard problem! Getting everyone to agree with each other is the easy part! (I’ve always found it darkly ironic that Leftist (who almost universally ignore coordination failure as a problem) often find themselves unable to get along. It’s self-parody!) Game Theory is the field that looks into why exactly this is a hard problem and what methods there are to fix it. As usual, I recommend that everyone everywhere read up on it.
“We are now advanced enough in our productive capacity that we can produce an abundance for all”
While I may accept that meeting everyone’s needs may be possible under a different system of distribution (though this is debatable since replacing capitalism whole-sale is likely to break many parts of our existing system of distribution), I’m not sure if we can meet everybody’s whims. Can all comforts and consumer goods be produced and distributed in such a manner? How are innovation and creativity to be incentivised? Positional and ostentatious goods cannot be distributed this way. It is inherently contrary to their nature. These two classes of goods are intrinsically unequal, yet eliminating them might take some doing because humans are status-chasing by nature.
“There is no longer any material justification for maintaining a competitive system that runs on money, let alone an ethical justification.”
How about a Game Theoretic justification? Again: figuring out new ways of having people cooperate with each other is unimaginably hard. Good will is not enough. Altruism is not enough. Universal love and brotherhood is not enough. It takes intelligence to design a system that doesn’t automatically implode under the weight of it’s own incentives. Far more intelligence than I have, that’s for sure! Can I make another plug for reading about Game Theory? It could seriously change your life (or at least worldview).
“are not willing to give a third party a chance”
First Past The Post systems tend inexorably to Two Party systems. As long as the existing voting structure is in place, the US will have two parties. And the UK will eventually follow suite (it’s on the way).
~Jasmine; AKA the aspiring economist formerly known as James
It’s all well and good to say that markets should be replaced or that we need a mass effort to do such but coordinating tons of people is a hard problem! Getting everyone to agree with each other is the easy part! (I’ve always found it darkly ironic that Leftist (who almost universally ignore coordination failure as a problem) often find themselves unable to get along. It’s self-parody!) Game Theory is the field that looks into why exactly this is a hard problem and what methods there are to fix it. As usual, I recommend that everyone everywhere read up on it.
It would be considerably easier if we were all united in working class industrial unions, because workers already run the industries. These unions would enable us to transition to the new system of social ownership without major difficulty.
While I may accept that meeting everyone’s needs may be possible under a different system of distribution (though this is debatable since replacing capitalism whole-sale is likely to break many parts of our existing system of distribution), I’m not sure if we can meet everybody’s whims. Can all comforts and consumer goods be produced and distributed in such a manner?
We can try a variety of distribution methods, and only retain those that prove to work the best. One way thanks to some new technology is to use 3D-printers/replicators to build as many items as possible for people. This constitutes nothing more than the download of a digital code.
How are innovation and creativity to be incentivised?
Because there would now no longer be financial limits or requirements that currently greatly limit innovation and creativity. Incentive to be innovative and creative would be heavily encouraged in a system of social ownership because life for everyone would be improved with each new innovation in production and distribution. There would no longer be limits connected to the need to make a profit, which can stifle creative innovation in many areas.
Positional and ostentatious goods cannot be distributed this way. It is inherently contrary to their nature. These two classes of goods are intrinsically unequal, yet eliminating them might take some doing because humans are status-chasing by nature.
Humans are only status-chasing by “nature” because this is heavily encouraged by a system that is built on hierarchies and requires winners and losers, as well as bosses and lackeys, by its very operation. Hence, it’s the nature of the system that is at the root of this human characteristic. A system bereft of class divisions and a boss class would render fighting for “top dog” status utterly pointless.
How about a Game Theoretic justification? Again: figuring out new ways of having people cooperate with each other is unimaginably hard.
The way we currently cooperate to run the industries and services is already quite efficient. The problem is the purpose towards which workers are currently forced to keep their cooperative operations beholden towards making a profit for the owners. They are not able to cooperate for the good of society.
Good will is not enough. Altruism is not enough. Universal love and brotherhood is not enough. It takes intelligence to design a system that doesn’t automatically implode under the weight of it’s own incentives. Far more intelligence than I have, that’s for sure! Can I make another plug for reading about Game Theory? It could seriously change your life (or at least worldview).
Jasmine, my friend, you tend to overthink things at times 🙂 I don’t believe accomplishing this will be anywhere near as difficult as you say, because people already coordinate their efforts for efficient production and distribution today, including many who have far less intelligence than you have been gifted with. The problem is simply the fact that we are currently unable to coordinate that effort on behalf of everyone, as opposed to just a small handful of owners.
First Past The Post systems tend inexorably to Two Party systems. As long as the existing voting structure is in place, the US will have two parties. And the UK will eventually follow suite (it’s on the way).
Which is why the great majority of workers need to consciously buck that trend by realizing that there is no major difference between the Democratic/Labour and Republican/Tory Parties. A third party exclusively representing workers’ interests would be akin to our only having two parties.
>Humans are only status-chasing by “nature” because this is heavily encouraged by a system that is built on hierarchies and requires winners and losers
Status-seeking didn’t start with humans, never mind with capitalism: dominance hierarchies are a salient feature of primates and other social animals. The evidence suggests that the overall environment of pre-historic hunter-gatherer societies favoured an egalitarian lifestyle and an absence of opportunities for status based on wealth. This does not, however, mean an absence of status and status-seeking as such, based on such factors as strength, skill (at hunting etc.) and wisdom.
There is no reason to believe our tendency, inherited from our ape ancestors, towards status-seeking, had vanished: rather, I suggest, it had to be suppressed by social means, such as mocking the pretensions of boasters, or anyone getting “too big for their boots”.
As soon as material surpluses began, though, with the advent of settled living, some people managed to corner the resources, acquire bigger houses, “bling” etc, denoting status. This inherent tendency finds expression at the first opportunity, which long pre-dates capitalism.
>Jasmine, my friend, you tend to overthink things at times
I don’t think we can ever bring too much thought or intelligence to the issues. Also, Dissident, isn’t this remark a bit patronising? Doesn’t it imply that your thinking is the only thinking we need?
Status-seeking didn’t start with humans, never mind with capitalism: dominance hierarchies are a salient feature of primates and other social animals.
True, but humans in a post-industrial society do not have a material reason to compete with each other. Amongst members of the animal kingdom, including primates, yes they do, because food and resources can often be scarce. Note that bonobos do not seek status in this manner, but literally make love rather than war. Primates also live a considerably more simple manner than humans, and despite their intelligence compared to other members of the animal kingdom they still do not have the level of sophistication, creative thought, or reasoning than humans. Hence, we can do better even if they cannot.
Further, I think capitalism encourages status-seeking in a very specific way that leads to destructive behavior, including avarice, acquisitiveness, and extreme individualism.
The evidence suggests that the overall environment of pre-historic hunter-gatherer societies favoured an egalitarian lifestyle and an absence of opportunities for status based on wealth. This does not, however, mean an absence of status and status-seeking as such, based on such factors as strength, skill (at hunting etc.) and wisdom.
That is pretty much what I meant, as noted by my statement above. Please also note that I didn’t go into detail on this topic as I could have because I wanted to honor your request for brevity. There is good reason for brevity, and your request is reasonable for many reasons. This, however, is the main reason I tend to make my writings too long: I want to be thorough and avoid the problems that can arise with very terse responses. Some writers are good with making salient points with as few words as possible; alas, I am not.
There is no reason to believe our tendency, inherited from our ape ancestors, towards status-seeking, had vanished: rather, I suggest, it had to be suppressed by social means, such as mocking the pretensions of boasters, or anyone getting “too big for their boots”.
Again, I don’t disagree, I simply didn’t have the space to make these points. I, of course, thank you for doing so, as this is your blog, so you can violate the request for brevity if you want 🙂 But as I noted before, the social conditions wrought by a class-divided system will not be conducive for an environment people who are not often seeking status by some behavioral means, if they aren’t able to do so by purchasing expensive vehicles, etc.
As soon as material surpluses began, though, with the advent of settled living, some people managed to corner the resources, acquire bigger houses, “bling” etc, denoting status. This inherent tendency finds expression at the first opportunity, which long pre-dates capitalism.
It may predate capitalism, but we need to note that capitalism was not the first class-divided society that produced such social environmental conditioning. Capitalism was preceded by feudalism, which in turn was preceded by the ancient slave economies, both of which had a far longer history than capitalism itself, being not more than about three centuries old. Prior to that was the era of primitive communism, but that was mostly before the historical record.
>Jasmine, my friend, you tend to overthink things at times<
I don’t think we can ever bring too much thought or intelligence to the issues.
What I meant by “overthinking” is insisting upon always descontructing something in so many minute details that you actually end up coming to an inevitably cynical conclusion, rather than one that is insightful. Intelligent people can have their quirks too, and I’m sure you know that.
Also, Dissident, isn’t this remark a bit patronising? Doesn’t it imply that your thinking is the only thinking we need?
No, it means you took what I was trying to say the wrong way, because if I thought my thinking was the only thinking we needed, I wouldn’t spend the considerable amount of time that I do reading, mentally digesting, considering, and participating in the discourse from the many individuals both inside and outside of the MAP community whom I frankly believe to be much more intelligent and adroit than myself… including (sincerely) you, Jasmine, Ben Capel, A, David Kennerly, Feinmann, and many other regular contributors to this very blog. That doesn’t mean I won’t occasionally dish out constructive criticism where I feel it’s warranted, much as I have taken more than my own share of it in the past, and then some (and yes, I know you can relate!). If your message here is, “If you’re ever inclined to be hard on Jasmine about anything, I’ll be hard on you in return,” then so noted. I’ll have to live with that. But I will continue to say what I think needs to be said unless and until you tell me I’m not welcome here any more.
I like this reply a lot. On reflection, I think if anyone was guilty of being patronising, it may have been me: Jasmine is more than capable of defending herself; she doesn’t need my “protection”. Also, while your modesty is very appealing, Dissident, in objective terms you do yourself too little credit: your contribution here is nothing short of superb. Long may it continue!
I can understand the view that my “overthinking” leads to an overly cynical result. I simply protest that this may not be a bad thing. I suspect that failing to deconstruct these ideas leads to an overly rosey view which may not correspond to reality.
On the point of intelligence: That’s pretty hard to measure by just reading people’s writing (especially when you throw autism into the mix) but I can be pretty certain that, going by information, you’re clearly more knowledgeable than me.
I don’t mind the fact that Tom defended me (except to whatever extent it made Dissident feel attacked). I’d generally count myself lucky to observe that the SysOp has somewhat paternal feelings for me 🙂
(Obviously I couldn’t go 2 seconds without connecting the concept of “paternal feelings” to the pedophile stereotype 😛 Let it never be claimed that my mind is pure and innocent…)
>Obviously I couldn’t go 2 seconds without connecting the concept of “paternal feelings” to the pedophile stereotype
Ah, Jasmine, the child I never had! I’d have been so proud of you! The innocence of my thoughts is guaranteed, though, by the fact that you are no longer a child: five or ten years ago it would have been a different story! I’m a paedophile, remember, not a hebephile and certainly not an ephebophile. 🙂
LOL. TBH, I’m just teasing/baiting you. I’m the type of person to flirt with absolutely anyone – to the endless frustration of my gay friends 😛
In the catchphrase of British comedian Dick Emory, “You are awful but I like you”: “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJmg-879j5o
“It would be considerably easier if we were all united in working class industrial unions, because workers already run the industries. These unions would enable us to transition to the new system of social ownership without major difficulty.”
Considerably easier? Sure. Easy? Not on your life! Again: the bulk of the problem is not agreement or even unity – it’s coordinated action. There’s a limit to how far unions can coordinate people when you’re trying to completely redesign the system they live in.
“One way thanks to some new technology is to use 3D-printers/replicators to build as many items as possible for people. This constitutes nothing more than the download of a digital code.”
…and the assembly of plastic components. On the one hand: I’m all for the 3D printed world you envision – I’m Free As In Freedom to a fault. On the other hand: that doesn’t address the acquisition and distribution of the underlying raw materials. Those are scarce. Those must be apportioned. It is in this scarcity that Economics continues on….
“Incentive to be innovative and creative would be heavily encouraged in a system of social ownership because life for everyone would be improved with each new innovation in production and distribution.”
I suppose I can see how a gift economy in this sector could spring up given ubiquitous digital communication, 3D printing, and the absence of intellectual property. I tentatively approve of this solution but I’d still like to hold out for more data.
“A system bereft of class divisions and a boss class would render fighting for “top dog” status utterly pointless.”
I like Tom’s response to this and I like your response to Tom.
To Tom: The regulation of status-seeking through mockery and ostracism isn’t a civilisational thing or even a human thing. As far as I’m aware, all apes engage in both status-seeking (to get more status for themselves) and status policing (to decrease the status of competitors).
To Dissident: The mere fact that we no longer need to seek status doesn’t mean we won’t. Hierarchy has been hard-coded into our DNA over millions of years and a mere change of circumstance won’t make it go away. It’s been a long time since most of our ancestors were on the savanna but a lot of our behaviour is still modeled after it. Autistic people have a hard time perceiving hierarchy/status so we’re less prone to this behaviour and yet I still sometimes introspect and notice I was doing something for status reasons and think “this is so odd…”. Also: Bonobo’s have hierarchy (how else could they be matriarchal?) but it just looks different to us because there is very little violence involved.
“I don’t believe accomplishing this will be anywhere near as difficult as you say, because people already coordinate their efforts for efficient production and distribution today”
I’m not saying that isn’t true. I’m saying that this is happening under the Free Market which is itself an emergent property of human interaction and far greater than anything a human mind has consciously devised. I already mentioned elsewhere that one of the greatest things about markets is that they appear spontaneously once a few conditions are enforced. However, what you propose is that we replace the free market with a new incentive structure. Incentive structures are really fucking complicated and lead to all sorts of weird results the moment you aren’t looking. We’re pretty lucky with what we got WRT the free market. Trying to build something new will probably have unintended consequences.
“Which is why the great majority of workers need to consciously buck that trend by realizing that there is no major difference between the Democratic/Labour and Republican/Tory Parties.”
This would require that everyone discover this and act simultaneously. Anything less than simultaneous action will fail to solve the problem and possibly make things worse. No one has an incentive to be the first to act. Therefore, no one will act. Achievement unlocked: Coordination Failure. Congratulations! You may now proceed to bang your head against a wall while muttering darkly about what’s wrong with humanity.
BTW: The fact that the Democratic/Labour and Republican/Tory Parties are identical is not a bug – it’s a feature. It’s the median voter effect and it always happens when there are two parties which means it’ll always end up happening in First Past The Post systems.
One of the things that I have found disappointing in my interaction with Tom has been his inability to respond civilly to those with whom he disagrees. He seems to know two speeds: embrace those who agree with you and go rabid attack dog on those who don’t share your views.
Obviously Tom and I disagree about whether adults should be allowed to have sex with children, though we agree on many things as well. He has attacked me quite rudely in a variety of places. I have offered an olive branch on several occasions. This has caused him to double down on the attacks as he has viewed my pleas for civility as a sign of weakness. Eventually I concluded that he was not interested in polite disagreement and gave up.
This last “debate” started when I reached out to sexnet in hopes of getting help for a 16 year old pedophile who had reached out to us. Tom’s response was that the 16 year old’s problems were largely due to his internalizing the trash about his sexuality that I peddle.
It is almost as if he has not read a single word of what we have said. As Tom well knows, we spend enormous amounts of time telling pedophiles that they should not feel guilt about their sexual interests, and we also work hard to educate the general public about the distinction between sexual interests and sexual actions, in the hopes of reducing the stigma attached to pedophilia. As an aside, Tom was also well aware that Gene Abel had nothing to do with our group, since I explained that to him more than a year ago.
Tom, I renew my request for civility in our discourse. It is possible to agree without being disagreeable. I can do rabid dog as well, but that is not how I prefer to conduct myself.
[humour mode on] “He has attacked me quite rudely in a variety of places.” Nick, this almost sounds like a line from a Carry On film, or from the comedy Up Pompei: “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got in for me.” Well, it appealed to my puerile sense of humour anyway ;o) [humour mode off]
>it appealed to my puerile sense of humour anyway
And mine! 🙂
All things being equal, Nick, the particular subject of disagreement you are alluding to here has proven quite difficult for opposing sides to maintain cordial discussions over. It’s a very emotionally charged subject that goes to the core of both the MAP attraction base and contemporary Western society’s heavily-maintained and most sacrosanct paradigms. This is a major conflict of interests that is very difficult to hold friendly conversations over for any length of time. This is the very reason why MAP support groups like B4U-ACT and youth liberation orgs like NYRA have no official position on the issue.
Personally, when it comes to the subject of sexual contact between the generations, I think both sides of the issue need to give the other side all due understanding for finding it difficult to maintain civility over the course of extended conversations. It’s completely inevitable that at some point during protracted discourse on this topic, each side is going to say something that thoroughly offends the values of the other side.
A superb and most thought-provoking blog post, Tom, most of which I find impossible to disagree with. I loved Roger Lancaster’s courageous book, but like you I was left baffled about how and who would implement his sane and humane proposals for retrofitting the punitive state. Fanatical, obsessive, paedo-eradication, it seems to me, is largely the fraught preoccupation of the very same educated elite he sees as sources of enlightened reform.
One small point – you attribute to me a comment actually penned by Brian Rothery (“He had written that parents, as well as MAPs, sometimes find themselves subjected to unjust treatment at the hands of the state, suffering “harassment from social workers to the point where they are driven to mental breakdown or flight”, then seeing their children taken from them into state custody.”) Like you, I was invited to respond to Brian’s opening article, and he had been motivated to write it by your vivid account of the truly degrading treatment you were subjected to at the hands of cops – petty officials – in your disturbing article about “ARMS.”
But you’re right – I did indeed argue that agents of the State (notably cops, social workers and probation officers, who for the most part are not known for their intellectual acumen or high-level educational attainment) should withdraw and leave their citizens unmolested until they’re adequately equipped with insight into their own irrational drives and sadistic inclinations. Do you really believe that the smiley-faced, fake-polite little fascists who subjected you to that psychological assault respected you as a fellow human being? Do you think that they reflected for one moment on the appalling inadequacy of their intrusive and abusive exercise, which I believe amounts to punishment without law (as I think you do too)?
I won’t interrupt the flow of intelligent and evocatively thought-promoting comments coming in from diverging thinkers, like David Kennerly, Lensman and Jack Summer, to mention but a few, but I’ll use your experience of ARMS to illustrate my point.
This is contemporary State psychology, which is brutish, primitive cartoon psychology. Interestingly, I understand that the British Psychological Society doesn’t endorse the psychological regimes imposed on defenceless individuals by the Home Office – not the SOR, sex offender “treatment” programmes, which I personally think should more properly be seen as State-sanctioned psychological assaults, nor the appalling actuarial risk assessment instruments used by cops and probation officers. The notion that the additional inclusion of “dynamic” risk factors to supplement “static” factors will improve accuracy is a case in point.
A “static” risk factor like a previous conviction can’t be changed? I’ve just burst into flames of rage. The only way Home Office apparatchiks can get away with that quackery is to wholly ignore the evidence of psychoanalysis. ‘Risk’ factors aren’t static; the people who believe in them are. When Freud introduced the concept of nachträglichkeit, causality in human affairs could never be the same again. We are the only creatures who can totally refashion the significance and meanings of “fixed” previous experiences. If I had my willy sucked at the age of 12 by an older boy and enjoyed it immensely, several decades later I can draw from the dominant narrative of the educated elite to redescribe it as horrific ‘historic’ abuse which sabotaged my plans to be an astronaut and particle physicist.
The willy-sucking may be static, in the sense of “it happened and so can’t unhappen,” but the meaning attributed to it is subject to constant revision. To suggest otherwise is brute cynicism of the most idiotic kind – the kind of stuff our cops, social workers and probation officers dubiously accept as scientifically irrefutable evidence. The great Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek once described an idiot as someone who over-identifies with the dominant ideological narrative and fails to question it. I tend to agree.
The attempt to capture “dynamic” risk factors is even more corrupt and misguided. What will happen in practise, of course, is that cops will mull over the interview they have failed to record and feed their State-sanctioned presumptions and prejudices by selecting what fits with received Home Office wisdom about high risk after the event. That’s an exercise that will inevitably involve forgetting, failing to comprehend or even failing to notice whatever you said that doesn’t fit.
Actuarial science has its place. Assessing the risk of flooding will affect how insurance companies load their fees for properties in specific areas. But there’s an incomparable difference between assessing the geophysical risk of flooding for properties in a specific area and assessing individual risk scientifically, which simply can’t be done (and therefore, as scholars like Bernard Harcourt have been arguing vigorously for some time, shouldn’t be done – it creates false illusions of scientific credibility when it’s actually junk science).
Risk factors aren’t “signs”, as idiotic (in Žižek’s sense) cops and social workers believe, or prefer to believe. A sign always means the same thing – a red traffic light always means stop. To attribute a fixed numerical value to a person’s idiosyncratic experience, to render it equivalent to an unrepresentative similarity in a cohort sample group, is vulgar and primitive science. We are creatures of signifiers, not signs. Signifiers are symbols, they point to an always idiosyncratic (and always dynamically evolving) penumbra of meanings acquired through personal, lived experience. To ignore this is to commit extreme violence. The kind of violence the contemporary State metes out routinely on the citizens who pay for their own oppression.
The point I’m getting at is that the State is not neutral, rational or good. It’s thoroughly ideological, and our present western regime of corrupt, empty, “post-political” democracy needs a steady supply of biopolitical monsters like paedo-demons to rouse some modicum of interest from an alienated and through pissed off electorate.
But I don’t eschew the possibility that it could be radically retrofitted to more humane and libertarian ends. Opposing the ideological rigidity (and arrogance) of over-indulged petty officials like cops doesn’t involve support for bloodthirsty maniacs like ISIS. The police will always push for more power, more intrusions into liberty and privacy, more resources. The task of a living, healthy democracy is to keep them in their proper place. We’re currently very far from that entirely modest ideal.
Many thanks for this valuable contribution, Ben, and a couple of apologies at the same time:
1) sorry for the wrongly attributed quote;
2) apologies, also, for failing to alert you to this blog: as you are mentioned in it, it was certainly a discourtesy not to tell you beforehand; I meant to do so and my only excuse is accidental oversight under time pressure; thank you for not taking it amiss.
No need to apologise at all, Tom. It just enrages me to see a humane, highly intelligent and good-hearted person like yourself being subjected to State violence of this crudity..
“Actuarial science has its place. Assessing the risk of flooding will affect how insurance companies load their fees for properties in specific areas. But there’s an incomparable difference between assessing the geophysical risk of flooding for properties in a specific area and assessing individual risk scientifically, which simply can’t be done.”
As our resident Bayesian and Determinist, I must say I very strongly disagree. My main contentions are that:
1) Human behaviour is predictable. One’s behaviour is caused by a multitude of factors but it is caused and may be (imperfectly) predicited by outside agents (eg: conmen).
2) All predictions are probabilistic. Any prediction which can be made may be made by a method which can be represented as an algorithm.
This isn’t to say that an algorithm cannot be poorly put together (as ARMS certainly is) or that it is ethical for the state to be in the business of predicting its citizens actions (dubious). However, to call human-prediction impossible seems unbelievable to me.
Shit! Forgot to switch names on the Kindle!
~Jasmine, AKA the scatterbrain formerly known as James
Hi Jasmine,
Nice to see you again and thanks for your response.
Imperfect prediction may be acceptable in some cases (although I would personally strongly disagree), but when it’s used by agents of the state to restrict the liberty and invade the privacy of people who have served their sentences and repaid their “debt to society,” I find it deeply disturbing. It’s punishment in effect and intent, and it’s also punishment without law, because it’s cunningly and deliberately disguised by lawmakers as public protection/civil regulation.
That means that petty officials get free reign to make up all manner of highly invasive and draconian new rules, none of them statutes agreed upon by the legislature, and impose them on defenceless and powerless individuals.
This is the really disturbing, and I think emancipatory, point: if all predictions are probabilistic and can be more or less captured by an algorithm based on empirical measurements, why did no one predict the French Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, the Egyptian uprising which toppled that bloodthirsty tyrant Musharraf? Why can no one predict when and who one will fall in love with? Why can no one forecast the next shattering paradigm revolution in science? The next revolutionary twist in art? These are all, to borrow Alain Badiou’s term, “events” – occurrences which rupture empirical logic, that seem to come for nowhere, effects which vastly exceed their apparent causes.
To be blind to the Event, to imprison human beings according to spuriously empirical logic, is to deny the uniquely human characteristics of overcoming the odds, of defying and triumphing over what seems inevitable, of refusing to bow to fate, of surviving crushing adversity with one’s compassion and dignity intact.
I like the famous observation attributed to Einstein:
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
As I stated before: ARMS is fucked up. This is a fact about the actions of the state and I don’t think it contradicts my previous broad statement about abilities.
“why did no one predict the French Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, the Egyptian uprising which toppled that bloodthirsty tyrant Musharraf? Why can no one predict when and who one will fall in love with? Why can no one forecast the next shattering paradigm revolution in science? The next revolutionary twist in art?”
As I’ve argued previously: the revolutions listed above were predictable and were predicted; even if not by everyone and with the precise details difficult to foretell. Also: there exist algorithms which can predict the length of a relationship better than professional marriage counselors. Anyway, saying no one has predicted something is very different to saying it is, in principle, impossible. There was a time when many believed that humans were simply not supposed to fly and never could. Then the Wright Brothers happened.
“occurrences which rupture empirical logic, that seem to come for nowhere, effects which vastly exceed their apparent causes.”
Would Tom strenuously object if I were to just copy/paste my discussion of the causes of various revolutions back here?
“To be blind to the Event, to imprison human beings according to spuriously empirical logic”
…..Wut, mate? Seriously? imprisoned by logic? Is this a non-autistic thing? I’m honestly drawing a blank. I find your romanticism…. disturbing….
“the uniquely human characteristics of overcoming the odds, of defying and triumphing over what seems inevitable”
I’m not saying we don’t defy the odds. We do! We beat a 10% probability on 1 out of every 10 attempts! [/sarcasm]
I’m serious: if it worked any other way, we’d just adjust the odds until they were more accurate.
~Jasmine; AKA the Bayesian Rationalist formerly known as James
I am on the road and too busy to object or comment.
ethane72 ===== But in general, what powerful interest group cares whether children have sex with adults? =====
Powerful interest groups benefit when the the public is united in projecting it’s shadow self onto a despised out group. Witches, Jews, homosexuals and communists have all served this role, and now it’s the turn of sex offenders and ‘paedophiles’.
All of these groups have been presented as a threat to children at some time, not just to their bodies, but to their ‘souls’. Fear of metaphysical harm is the touchstone of mass anxiety, and obviously a button that child molesters push very effectively.
The historical emergence of ‘the paedophile’ as culture demon is well documented and closely parallels the emergence of these other out groups. Each emergence has been aided and abetted by, and has benefited particular ideologies, states and powerful interest groups.
In duet with the emergence of ‘the paedophile’ as pariah and demon has been the escalation of a moral panic over childhood sexual experience. This is a reenactment of the childhood masturbation panic that lasted for three centuries and the effects of which reach deeply into the undergarments of our culture today.
It should come as no surprise that states and powerful interest groups also abet and benefit from moral panics. Demagogues know that, to manipulate the public and create unity and conformity, all they need is fear of a common enemy.
If this enemy is shadowy and ‘within’, overt demonstrations of in group values and willingness to surrender personal freedoms are amplified. People will give up things they themselves value if they think it will protect their children from (perceived) harm.
It should also be remembered that one need not even posit special interests. Panic may sustain itself without any benefits at all – a spontaneous disorder if you will. All it would require is inertia caused by no one being willing to speak out against it. This alone could trigger the crappy equilibrium we find ourselves in. That isn’t to say there are no profiteers – simply that they are superfluous to the drama.
For other examples of this principle, cf this.
~Jasmine, AKA the pessimist formerly known as James
A very brief comment before I return to my latest, all-consuming, and ultimately heretical, project.
Those of us who are anti-statist, in the libertarian sense, do not eschew all government.
More often than not, this is a misapprehension promulgated by those who crave government’s mediation in all aspects of our lives (I’m excluding Tom).
Indeed, we libertarians believe that government’s most important purpose, possibly its only legitimate one, is the protection of the rights of the individual.
This includes the protection of the child from his parents, when that should become necessary.
So, the notion that we leave children subject to the tender mercies of the craziest and cruelest mothers and fathers is a strawman which cannot be sustained by a working familiarity with our principles.
We do not regard children as the property of their parents but neither do we recognize the increasing assertions of ownership of them by the state.
Children “own” themselves.
They have rights, as we all do. Each of us possesses precisely the same rights that every other human possesses.
Rights are not given to us by the state nor new ones emerge from our Parliaments or Congress in moments of bureaucratic epiphany.
They are the same, always. We are born with them and we die with them. If we are denied them, it is not for want of their existence, but for their abrogation by tyrants.
Now, back to work…
Precisely and lensman insultingly denounces such a social/economic structure (which is based on freedom) and compare sit to Shariah Law all the while the big state he seems to feel is an arbiter of justice has done nothing but empower bigots and create regimes like the nazis. Which is why there may be some venom to what I say when he makes the hyperbolic claim that libertarian social structure would be disastrous and it implies he knows little of what he is criticizing in regards to libertarianism.
This is a conversation I’d love to continue but I don’t think it would be right for us to use Tom’s blog for what could be a prolonged discussion – maybe we could continue this elsewhere?
There are those, including myself, who would feel benefit from some further discussion between the pair of you (and perhaps others) if you are both up for it. A couple of further exchanges might be enough. If it gets too heated (I do hope not!) I’ll call a halt. As I have provocatively put forward a perhaps surprisingly pro-statist view, I would not want to deter libertarian input.
Ok, Tom – thanks for this opportunity for enlightening myself.
I’d like to kick off by asking David Kennerly and JackSummer a few questions that, admittedly, may seem like beginner’s questions to them, but they’re the questions that arise in my mind most insistently:
1/ Libertarians use the word ‘Freedom’ a lot – isn’t one person’s (or group of persons, or institution’s) freedom always balanced off by the effects of that freedom on other people? The positive freedom is counterbalanced by the negative freedom? Isn’t freedom to do something is always counterbalanced by a question of ‘freedom from the consequences of that action’? Is one man’s freedom to fire a gun and impingement on another man’s freedom not to be shot? Is a corporation’s freedom to give low wages in order to maximise profit an impingement on the freedom of the employee from poverty? Isn’t a father’s freedom to do what he likes within the walls of his house a possible impingement on the freedom of a daughter who doesn’t welcome his advances?
Given that the word ‘freedom’ is only meaningful when grounded in actual acts and actions and transactions (freedom to do a particular thing, freedom from a particular thing) what or who decides which ‘freedom’ wins out in the above examples?
Are the positive freedoms of the powerful more effective under Libertarianism than the negative freedoms of the weak, because, well, the powerful have the power through which they can ensure their freedoms always win out?
2/ how does the free market operate as a mechanism through which a state can protect itself from invasion or other global threats?
3/ how does the free market address such problems as pollution, environmental pillage and other issues where man’s greed has to be restrained for a greater and more long-term good?
4/ what place has Democracy in a libertarian system?
5/ why is Big Government a worse tool for government than Big Corporations? How, under libertarianism, are Corporations prevented from becoming powerful?
6/ I can think of a great many states with strong or reasonably strong governments where life seem pretty good (but, of course, not perfect), ranging from states such as Denmark right ‘down’ to states such as Colombia (which has managed to recently emerge from a period when it was effectively a weak state run for and by drug barons i.e. extreme free-market capitalists).
Can you name any states with weak or no effective governments where the quality of life is noticeably good for most people? The names that occur to me are Somalia, Afghanistan, the Congo, Iraq, the Sudan…
David Kennerly, you state:
“So, the notion that we leave children subject to the tender mercies of the craziest and cruelest mothers and fathers is a strawman which cannot be sustained by a working familiarity with our principles.”
By what mechanisms is this protection carried out?
“Children “own” themselves. They have rights, as we all do. Each of us possesses precisely the same rights that every other human possesses.”
How do free market mechanisms generate rights? How does the free market police these rights? What happens when a right conflicts with the mechanisms of the free market?
Just as one freedom will usually detract from another’s freedom (my right to build where I want on my land may mean you have my garage wall 15cm from your living room window) one person’s rights will detract from another’s freedom (a right to a living wage detracts from an employer’s right to pay what he can get away with) – how are ‘rights’ balanced against ‘freedom’?
Thank you in advance for addressing my questions.
This is the way I see the issue regarding libertarianism, i.e., the aspects I agree and disagree with, just to make things clear. I will also point out that Jack Summers is someone I greatly respect and personally like. He is well aware, however, that capitalism is a system I most certainly do not respect… at all… and I loathe it with a fervent passion. But I’m going to try to address the ‘state issue’ as succinctly and briefly as possible, and I thank Tom for giving this permission.
For starters, as a Marxist I oppose the idea of a state, believing a coercive force to maintain order – with a professional police force and military under the control of a handful of powerful individuals – is only necessary for this purpose in the first place because we live in a class-divided society. The inequality and poverty produced on such a vast scale in a system beholden to a profit motive will encourage the worst traits in humanity: greed, selfishness, extreme acquisitiveness & competitiveness, any number of psychoses, mass mistrust and devaluation of our fellow human beings, etc.
With that said, this is how I feel about the role of the state within the context of a class-divided capitalist system, including where I both agree and disagree with libertarians. I believe, as do the libertarians, that when it comes to matters connected to our personal lives, the state should have minimal intervention. It should act strongly only when it comes to protecting civil rights and constitutional protections, including the protection of minority opinions and lifestyles. In other words, it must protect against both the tyranny of the few and the tyranny of the majority. Freedom of choice above all else in the personal realm must be respected, with prohibition only being enacted against acts that cause demonstrable (note that word) harm, or infringe upon another person exercising their rights. In the realm of personal civil liberties within the context of a capitalist system, I most definitely support “small government.”
However, within the realm of economics, I most vehemently disagree that government should mostly stay out of capitalist operations (if that system is going to be accepted, or exist for the time being). In this realm I fully support “big government” in the sense of regulation of the production for profit system. I believe that strong limits should be placed on how far capitalists should be allowed to go when it comes to pursuing their selfish and brutally competitive agenda to horde the wealth produced by workers under the control of but a handful of people to enjoy to such a hugely disproportionate extent.
Poverty, involuntary unemployment, the quality of the most basic necessities (e.g., food, clean water, shelter, access to health care & education, a clean environment, recreation for psychological health) being limited to individual ability to pay, etc; the effects of a barter system within the framework of a post-industrial society that could produce an abundance for everyone if not forced to operate on a for profit basis need to be controlled. The concept of “freedom” should not be extended to the economic operations of the profit system, because the degree of demonstrable harm that results from mass poverty and inequality are extreme. These negative effects include rampant crime, destruction of the biosphere, massive uncontrolled expansion and imperialism, war over control of privately owned (as opposed to commonly shared) resources, negative social relations due to the fetishism of competitiveness… and ,most of all, increasing attacks on civil liberties by the state apparatus as a pretext to control the disorder that results. Money is a heavily corrupting factor in society, and “freedom” to pursue it with no regulation is a very twisted conception of “freedom.”
Hence, I am totally supportive of “big government” – i.e., a healthy and reasonable degree of regulation – when it comes to the realm of business operations and private control of the industries. Since modern production capabilities now make a barter system archaic and totally unnecessary, that’s all the more reason IMO to insist that if such inequality under modern conditions is to be tolerated, then it needs to be kept beholden to a degree of compassion and ethical limits. A social safety net to control and limit how far capitalists and the for profit mentality can go to pursue their ostensibly self-centered goals is both humane and works towards maintaining a more orderly system. Though I do not support capitalism at all, I believe a governmentally regulated version of capitalism is a much more socially progressive version compared to the alternative. A market is not a human being nor does it operate in accordance with collective human interests, and as such, it lacks the right to be “free” in the same sense as people do. Capitalists may be people, true, but the system itself is not.
Yes, these are the most common responses we get and which reflect little understanding of libertarian principles.
But you’re not alone and it is important that the answers to your questions be better known.
One immediate response I have is: the right to fire my gun (which I do not [and CANNOT legally own!]) is constrained by legitimate criminal laws which infringe on the rights of others to themselves and their property. In other words, my rights end when my fist hits your nose or my bullet hits, or threatens to hit, your body.
So no, rights are not “balanced” against the rights of others, they are clearly and strictly defined by the boundaries of individual liberty in which no claims can be made upon another’s person or property nor can they be compelled to serve the interests of others. By this principle, congruence between one person’s rights and another’s is assured.
Rather than answer the other question, which I simply cannot do now because I’m quite pressed for time, I will refer you to the following:
Let’s start with David Boaz, one of the foremost contemporary Libertarian thinkers:
Cato’s David Boaz Talks Politics, History, and His Path to Libertarianism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTqnuit8Qwg
Exploring Liberty: An Introduction to Libertarian Thought (David Boaz)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPlMhvCGxl4
https://www.theihs.org/what-libertarian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU-8Uz_nMaQ#t=339
Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” is a particularly good read although there are a number of really good works which describe classical liberalism better than I am able.
Milton Friedman, while not entirely libertarian himself (but very substantially so) laid out many of the arguments for classical liberalism, and especially the economic ones, in “Free To Choose” which can be viewed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3N2sNnGwa4
I came to libertarianism principally through my interests in children’s and adolescent’s rights and see within it the greatest possibility for both their freedom as well as their protection.
It seems Tom wouldn’t mind one or two more posts from us. If you’d like you can respond to my response of your first post under this blog. If not then it is fine.
Thanks Jack Summer – I, with my tendency to prolixity, have already taken up a lot of space in the comments section (…too fond of the sound of my own typing…) and am hesitant to add to this. But I’d be very interested indeed to read your take on some of the questions and issues I’ve raised elsewhere in this comments section since my first post.
Just one point to make though – you said in an earlier post:
“the big state he (i.e. me) seems to feel is an arbiter of justice has done nothing but empower bigots and create regimes like the nazi”
I’d argue with the “has done nothing” part of your statement: it’s only true if you ignore the hundreds of states and nations (such as The Netherlands, France, Denmark, Costa Rica, Finland, New Zealand, Colombia, Canada, New Zealand…) where a well run state has produced a high level of well-being and security for its citizens.
I’d be interested to know of any states where there is weak or ineffective government and where it could be said that its citizens have a good level of well-being and security.
I will be responding to the post you made asking questions before. Which will include my jumping of the gun statement about the state never doing anything good. Just give me a couple days to write out the response. Thanks!
While I myself am not a libertarian, I’d like to point out a possible thought which occurs to me: the causation is backward. Might it be possible that strong bureaucratic states grow up around stable, prosperous societies as parasitic entities? I myself do not believe this to be the whole story but it does explain your observation. I happen to have a habit of reversing the causation of any claim to see if other explanations also fit and I’m not sure if anyone has suggested this before. Thoughts?
~Jasmine, AKA the semi-libertarian/semi-socialist formerly known as James
This is, indeed, a viable lie of thought.
In that case; from whence cometh our rights? If they are immalleable and eternal, they must have an objective existence apart from the mental state of any given human being. If they are knowable, they must be observable by some test or investigation. So tell me; where can I find one? What apparatus would I need to perceive it?
Jasmine, AKA the Utilitarian formerly known as James
You highlight a slightly troubling trend in the thinking of many in the paedophile community: the tendency to reduce the complex issues around child sexuality and paedophilia to the simpler, and apparently more tractable, problem of ‘Getting What We Want’; backing any system, however unjust and flawed, if it provides some means by which we can legitimately act on our desires.
This can, when at its most reductive, lead certain amongst us to advocate sharia law (since countries such as Afghanistan and the Yemen have no age of consent, or at lest none that Western law would recognise) or to advocate Libertarian social structures where essentially the State has no say in what happens within the boundaries of your property and within your family.
Both of these solutions are (or would be) horrific for the rights and well-being of children, and for society. Sharia law reduces girl-children to the status of livestock to be auctioned into sexual slavery through dowries, deprived of an education, freedom and a childhood, and subjected to early motherhood.
Libertarianism is really just a mechanism by which those with the most power impose their wishes and desires on those with no power without any moderating influence from a wider society – again, children would be the victims here.
And to me it seems like a no-brainer – I’d rather live in a Europe where child-adult relationships are illegal than an islamic fundamentalist state where they are legal. There are bigger problems for society and the world to resolve than that of my love and desires.
However, having said that, I believe that a society in which sensual or sexual relationships between adults and children were licit would also be a society that more successfully dealt with these bigger problems. I believe that the current hysteria and hatred of child-adult relationships is an unintended consequence of Industrial Capitalism and, to an even greater extent, Consumer Capitalism.
To go on a slight tangent: is it any co-incidence that the rise of public acceptance for the movement for the acceptance of homosexuality coincided with the beginnings of hard-core consumer capitalism? I believe that homophobia was a result of the mind-set that had to be fostered in order for large groups of men to work together in physically demanding industrial jobs – a macho, strength-and-toughness-based mindset. This can be seen in how homophobia suddenly started to disappear and become culturally illegitimate in the 70s and 80s – just when industrial manufacturing was dying off in the UK and the economy was becoming based more on ‘service’ and ‘consumerism’.
The work-force needed to be less ‘strong’ and adopt more gender-flexible roles – the steel workers retraining to work in jobs where the old fashioned ‘macho’ mindset would not be appropriate. Think also how what was considered as ‘homophobia’ was less fear of homosexuals than a contempt for the ‘less-than-manly’ – homosexual behaviour was tolerated, accepted even, provided it were done in a macho context, with manly intent – think of the masturbation competitions in the dressing room after a rugby game, think of the use of male rape as a tool of dominance in prisons. The playground insult ‘poof’ was more about not being ‘hard’ than about anything sexual. These indicate that the homophobia that predominates in heavy industrial economies is about the reinforcement of the values required of the population in order for the economy to function.
So, back to paedophilia… the question is – how does consumer Capitalism produce paedophilophobia? Some possible factors are:
1/ the increased need for an extended education meaning that the limits of ‘childhood’ have had to be extended. ‘Childhood’ is seen as a phase in life when the person needs to be isolated from the demands of life. ‘Adulthood’ used to begin when a boy started work. Nowadays it extends well into the twenties. Add to this a whole set of issues concerning ‘deferred gratification’ that are associated with education and how they bleed into sexuality.
2/ the need for a extremely mobile work force, destroying the extended family and occasionally reducing family to a single mother and a single child. The child ends up bound by one or two very intense relationships that demand exclusivity.
3/ the need for a extremely mobile work force reducing the relevance of the ‘community’ in the up-bringing of a child.
4/ allied to the destruction of the community there is the destruction of ‘public space’ – because of the increased dominance of the motor car – making the outside world a dangerous place for children, plus the shifting of children’s play-spaces away from ‘the outdoors’ – playing fields, streets, woods, playgrounds – to being in front of screens, or if they do venture out of the house it will be to regulated, indoor play factories under the supervision of rigorously-checked adults. Any possibility of mixing with non-family adults is eliminated.
5/ the need for capitalism to reinvent itself. The ‘contract’ which capitalism offered its citizens used to be ‘you work in our factories and we will provide you with wages with which you will be able to obtain the basics for survival’. But with increasing prosperity ‘survival’ is no longer a problem for the huge majority of its citizens – for Capitalism to continue it has had to find another way of keeping us working and spending. Consumer Capitalism exists by making us spend (and therefore ‘work’) in order to satisy non-essential needs. The issue of how these non-essential needs are created and maintained is relevant: we are trained to be ‘consumers’ from an early age – much of this is linked with what is often called ‘sexualisation’ (sex being the most powerful urge that advertisers and product designers can plug into). There is indeed a perception amongst many parents that their children are being ‘sexualised’ against their (the parents) will by some nebulous media/social forces (the internet, pop culture, fashion, the pornification of culture). There is this co-option of children’s sexuality for consumer ends. There is also a feeling of deep fear and insecurity amongst parents which may be projected onto paedophiles or just strangers in general.
6/ an example related to the above point – there’s the rise in ‘cool culture’ – in which all the things deemed ‘cool’ either reinforce the consumer mindset or involve spending (the opposite of ‘cool’ activities include: stamp collecting, bird-watching, train-spotting – none of which reinforce consumer values or involve great amounts of consumption).
7/ the above all contribute to an ‘apartheid of the generations’ under capitalism that was not as present under earlier economic systems – think how schools and work-places act to segregate children from adults; how in affluent societies children no longer share a room with adults, and share a room or bed with their siblings – then compare this to how hunter-gather societies live promiscuously, even how in feudal economies children worked alongside their community and shared their living and sleeping quarters with adults (and farm animals!). Under such circumstances the idea of childhood as a period of sexual ignorance would have been impossible to maintain.
I’m sure that there are other factors – I’m just flipping some close-to-hand tiddles into the cup here…
But, in short, paedophilophobia is a kind of side-effect of consumer capitalism. If we’re to overcome it we need to address some very basic economic and structural factors.
The good news is that there are alternative ways of organising an economy – ways that are in harmony with the environment, that create stability without the need for growth, that will allow life-long education (with the creation of multi-generational schools) and that will allow children to once more become part of an effective local community. A side benefit of such a society would be the increase in interactions between adults and children and the reduction of the strength of the nuclear family – and to a greater acceptance of child-adult friendships and relationships.
This is the ‘Deep Green’ vision of society – it’s a vision that, in a sense, we are obliged to realise if we stand any serious chance of continuing on the path of the Enlightenment… but I won’t go into all this here – I feel I’ve already gone on long enough…
Wow! What a cornucopia of profundity is here!
Lensman, this post is of a length (about 1400 words) and depth that deserves greater exposure than it will get in the Comments space. I am approving it for the Comments immediately, because you start with thoughts that are particularly important in the context of today’s blog and the overall reaction to it. However, I hope you will also consider submitting a guest blog of around 1500-2,000 words focusing purely on the Deep Green vision. There will be no harm in simply reiterating many of the points you have made above, but you might want, additionally, to structure the piece from the intro onwards as a Deep Green view of human intimacy.
Anyway, whether you choose to do a guest post or not, many thanks for today’s splendid contribution!
Thanks for you appreciative comment, Tom, and apologies for my having gone on a bit – it was only once I’d hit the ‘Post Comment’ button that I recalled the spirit of your words from back in December asking commentators to review their posts and do a bit of self-editing on the longer one. If I could I’d have recalled the post and attacked it with my most incisive red pen!
I’d love to contribute a guest post. I’ll have to give myself some time and research in order to really pin things down regarding a Deep Green view of human intimacy. Moreover I’m not sure how happy the Deep Green movement would be to find itself (once again) associated with the ‘spectre’ of paedophilia…
Yes, I would also like reiterate and develop a little my ideas about how ‘attitudes’ are an adaptive phenomena – and also something I didn’t touch on in my comment: the phenomenon and nature of ‘unthinkable’ ideas, and how they relate to economic and social institutions. I think child-adult sensual/sexual relationships are an example of an idea which is, to most ‘normal’ people, ‘unthinkable’, and that such ideas are often those that are most undermining of the current social order. Think of how no writer in ancient Greece or Rome (both societies whose prosperity was based on slavery) ever questioned the moral status of slavery (though many were vocal in promoting the ideals of being a good slave owner). ‘Slavery is wrong’ was an idea whose ‘unthinkability’ was, in retrospect, clearly connected to the economic necessities of those societies.
The roots of the hatred of paedophilia and society’s confusion about child sexuality must lie deeper than other peoples’ attitudes and prejudices (viz feminism and religion). Even if we accept that certain interest groups have been effective in influencing public opinion we still have to ask ourselves why those ideas and beliefs are accepted over competing ideas. Any historian who would try to explain the rise of Hitler, National Socialism and the Death Camps by giving as an ultimate cause that there were a lot of Germans who hated Jews would rightly not be taken seriously – the most convincing explanations are those that address social institutions, economics and the political context of German society. I think we need a similar approach to the understanding of our own problems…
Well, I fear that for the second time today I’m taking up too much room… I’d better interrupt my logorrheic flow and start knocking the dust and rust off the old brain-cogs.
>I’d love to contribute a guest post. I’ll have to give myself some time and research in order to really pin things down regarding a Deep Green view of human intimacy.
Great news! Many thanks.
>Moreover I’m not sure how happy the Deep Green movement would be to find itself (once again) associated with the ‘spectre’ of paedophilia…
A quick google search with “Deep Green” + “paedophilia” discloses a characteristically looney-sounding David Icke forums tirade about a “Deep Green child-killing movement at University of Minnesota”; otherwise not a lot…
You really need to research libertarianism before you talk bad about it. Based on your post you don’t understand it. Same with capitalism, but I notice people have many different opinions of what capitalism is. So I will say free trade is what the world needs. Which is a libertarian ideal. Everything else relies on forcing people to do what others want, which creates conflict.
The state is what empowers people to massively oppress groups of people. Not libertarian ideals. Libertarian views lead to a more free society because it is based off smaller and weaker government. It makes it harder for even the majority to enforce its will on others. Anyway the rest of your post is very hit and miss. The reason for pedophobia is because of the puritanical roots of America and the UK. America is the most powerful country (or was) and pushed it’s puritanical views on the rest of the world. Paedosexuality was gaining ground and because of puritanical push back it failed. Allowing children to embrace sexuality with themselves and adults is very economically beneficial. Consumerist capitalism pushes for it as you can see with the so called epidemic of “sexualized” children. Sexuality makes money.
Sorry, Jack, but while you know I sympathize with the libertarian view of civil rights – and in fact, consider you a staunch and courageous ally along these lines – I do not believe that what applies to the realm of civil liberties should also be applicable to the market system. The inequality, competition, poverty, and crime bred by the for profit system is very oppressive to the vast majority who are not at the top of this economic food chain. Our modern productive methods are so advanced that a barter system is now archaic and highly unnecessary. And I’m speaking as someone who works in a business, and who was once highly pro-capitalism until I learned my lessons the hard way. All forms of inequality are oppressive, and I believe that economic freedom is the most primary type of freedom we can have. I do not consider a “free market” to be true freedom for the vast majority, but only those few who own the businesses that every member of the labor close is forced to work for in order to collect a paycheck that affords them but a meager amount of the collective wealth in society.
That’s fine, if everyone agreed on everything maybe life would get a bit too boring!
I believe the free market gives us the freest society possible. Any other system relies on force to make people do what they may not wish to do. I also don’t see how we live in economically oppressive times in western nations, when the poor can afford cars, phones, tv, internet. Still there are problems, but they are not caused by a free market. Most problems in impoverished areas are because of government regulation. Whether it be the racist/sexist laws of the early to mid/late 1900s banning minority people or women from work or starting business or the classist/ageist laws we currently have standing. Do you know the red tape required to start up a business? All the zoning laws that limit a person’s choice in urban areas? Drug laws that create huge black markets and criminalize consensual selling and acquisition of property. Child labor laws that keep people out of the market so they can be indoctrinated before going out into the workplace. Anything I see that holds the impoverished down, that holds a minority down, that holds a discriminated group down can have its roots be found in the state. Not the market. The market is merely a combination of separate actors, all individuals. It being free mean individuals are free.
Are you a marxist? I like marxist. I have no issues with his views. In fact, if I remember correctly, he felt capitalism was just a step in human economic evolution that would naturally lead toward communism then socialism. The state has no involvement in his theory from what I remember. However feel free to correct me as I have not read any Marx in years.
That’s fine, if everyone agreed on everything maybe life would get a bit too boring!
Indeed, my friend!
I believe the free market gives us the freest society possible. Any other system relies on force to make people do what they may not wish to do.
The free market results in concentrated wealth in the hands of a few that force most people to work for this handful of owners. It forces people to act competitively rather than cooperatively, and most often to choose whatever work is available rather than being guaranteed meaningful work (i.e. the “take anything you can get” mentality). It forces many others to be unemployed if the ruling class has no use for their labor. It also forces most workers to toil for unnecessarily long periods of time in exchange for just a fraction of the wealth they work so hard to produce via the wages system; the lion’s share goes to the idle capitalists as profit. That is most certainly not freedom, least of all freedom from coercive social conditions.
A system of social ownership would enable everyone to choose the work most meaningful for them, and to pursue whatever past times they may wish on their ample leisure time. They would be free from the oppression of material want and insecurity, and not have to work competitively against their fellow human being. Such a system would be naturally orderly, without requiring any force or coercion, and thus far more free than a market system based on production for private profit.
I also don’t see how we live in economically oppressive times in western nations, when the poor can afford cars, phones, tv, internet.
But this often forces many workers to choose between the above or affording their rent and/or food. The inner cities are largely festering slums where people often cannot afford to maintain their utilities, which are major necessities with a price tag on them. Many people go without enough to eat in the United States, and I’ve been there often enough myself. Most workers have to struggle to afford all of the above, often having to go without for varying periods of time. We have no job security, and have to work under authoritarian conditions in the work place that do not remotely resemble a democratic situation. Our social institutions naturally develop in a way that reflects this.
Another important thing you said: “In the western world.” Clearly the far worse conditions in the rest of the world make it quite clear that forcing people to pay for their basic necessities or do without in a world whose productive capacity can produce an abundance for everyone is destructive in huge swaths across the globe. Concern shouldn’t be focused upon one’s own backyard only; that is one way a system that encourages greed and selfishness forces us to devalue others. A system that puts a price tag on everything in a post-industrial society is a dinosaur that needs to be gotten rid of, not maintained and revered.
Still there are problems, but they are not caused by a free market. Most problems in impoverished areas are because of government regulation.
I disagree, and I don’t think the evidence supports this. Government regulation was created as part of the New Deal by Roosevelt to save capitalism from its own predatory rapaciousness. The stock market crash, the subsequent Great Depression, and the many wars that resulted from global competition for control of the resources (as opposed to sharing them and making them common property) made it quite clear that capitalists will run the system into the ground with their avarice if no restrictions on what they can do in their single-minded pursuit of profit above all else. The heavy degree of de-regulation in the U.S. starting in the Reagan years resulted in a considerably greater disparity in the wealth between the classes, and culminated in nation-wide disasters like the near-collapse of the economy caused by the banking system a few years ago… who were bailed out by the government, using largely taxpayer funds collected from the working class.
Whether it be the racist/sexist laws of the early to mid/late 1900s banning minority people or women from work or starting business or the classist/ageist laws we currently have standing.
Problems that, at their core, are due to inequality in the economic sphere. If wealth distribution wasn’t concentrated into the hands of a few, then it wouldn’t be possible for any one group to have the power to oppress another. The state forces of coercion like the police and military work for those who have the most money, who lobby the state apparatus it established to make sure they have the advantage.
Do you know the red tape required to start up a business?
Yes. The largest of which is the sheer economic cost it requires to afford what is necessary to establish and run a business that has a realistic chance of moving someone out of the working class and into the capitalist class. This would not be a concern if everyone collectively socially owned all the industries and services, and did a modest share of the useful work in exchange for full access to the social store we all worked to produce.
All the zoning laws that limit a person’s choice in urban areas? Drug laws that create huge black markets and criminalize consensual selling and acquisition of property.
Yet the wealthy capitalists never lobbied the state to eliminate the Drug War. This was for good reason. Drugs are considerably more valuable if they’re illegal.
Child labor laws that keep people out of the market so they can be indoctrinated before going out into the workplace.
Granted, yes. But that was the result of pressure from the gerontocentric unions that emerged in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. That state could just as easily be lobbied into removing these restrictions. Control over youth as you mentioned is of great importance to the ruling capitalism class, to insure their loyalty to the system, and both the government and private schooling system trains them to be cogs in the realm of business. Ironically, though, the expansion of the market has recently given capitalist supporters a change of tune in regards to keeping youths out of the market. That, however, isn’t due to respect for civil liberties of youths.
Anything I see that holds the impoverished down, that holds a minority down, that holds a discriminated group down can have its roots be found in the state. Not the market.
I totally disagree. The market system has led to concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. This has been aided and abetted by the state, of course, but it’s in the nature of the capitalist system. The latter system has never lead to a level playing field, and isn’t intended to do so. In fact, the state has been established by the capitalist class primarily to enforce class rule, and to bail them out of every major economic crisis they create. A system based on social ownership – which would have no coercive state apparatus – would have the very purpose of creating a level playing field by eliminating class divisions, which are no longer have any justification in a post-industrial world capable of producing an abundance for all.
The market is merely a combination of separate actors, all individuals. It being free mean individuals are free.
It means people have the ability and encouragement to compete against each other in a ruthless manner – especially with no regulatory agency to keep this within certain bounds – for the pursuit of profit. Only a few make it to the top; the rest are forced to work for those few. They are encouraged to consume to a huge extent, and a market system needs to constantly expand. This results in wars over control of resources that could easily be generously shared as competing sets of ruling classes battle each other for the most control. Of course, it’s the workers who have to do the fighting and dying for them. The global world order that results from a market system is not about freedom, but the worst type of oppression. Economic freedom from want would be the most fundamental type of personal liberty that would enable all other forms of freedom to the highest extent.
Are you a marxist? I like marxist [Marx?]. I have no issues with his views.
Yes indeedy I am. But the views I’m espousing here are his views.
In fact, if I remember correctly, he felt capitalism was just a step in human economic evolution that would naturally lead toward communism then socialism.
Yes (though he and Engels used the terms of “communism” and “socialism” pretty interchangeably – they respectively mean “communal” ownership and “social” ownership). It’s the belief of contemporary Marxists like myself that we have now reached that point of productive capacity that we can move on from capitalism to the next advanced stage in economic development, a classless society based on social/communal ownership of the industries and services; just as capitalism replaced feudalism, which replaced the economy of ancient chattel slavery, etc. In fact, this advancement in productive capacity has been the case for a long time now, at least for a century.
The state has no involvement in his theory from what I remember. However feel free to correct me as I have not read any Marx in years.
He felt the state could be taken over by workers and used to create the new system. It represents an apparatus that would be greatly important for the working class to use the Constitution to effect the change, even as we used newly established working class unions to take over the workplaces themselves as the power to back up the vote (an addition made in the late 19th century by Daniel De Leon; his idea of industrial unionism is not supported by all socialists, however). The state would be voted out of existence once the new system was established, as it would then be without further purpose.
“It forces many others to be unemployed if the ruling class has no use for their labor. It also forces most workers to toil for unnecessarily long periods of time in exchange for just a fraction of the wealth they work so hard to produce via the wages system”
I believe the Libertarian answer is that this is not force because it is not caused by an agent. These are the natural consequences of interactions between people. Preventing them would require the conscious intervention of other people and it’s unethical to intervene or at least to force others to intervene. I accept the starting premises but have no inherent issue with intervention because I’m a Utilitarian. I’m just wary of it because it often leads to bad consequences.
“But this often forces many workers to choose between the above or affording their rent and/or food.”
While I’m playing Libertarian’s advocate: a sizable chunk of the price of food in the US is due to agricultural regulation and import tariffs. Both of these are motivated by corporate interests but they’re still anti-Free Market. (It’s important to remember that Monopoly Capital also fears the free market.) On the other hand, rent in cities is massively bloated by a whole parade of bloody stupid zoning laws. Laws that make no sense from start to finish! If libertarians took a hatchet to zoning commissions, the cost of rent would fall through the floor! (However, I’m afraid of what else they might hatchet….)
“Concern shouldn’t be focused upon one’s own backyard only; that is one way a system that encourages greed and selfishness forces us to devalue others.”
Well, speaking on behalf of the Third World, I can say that the #1 way you could help us all out would be to drop your borders completely. Still want to be a good Internationalist? Didn’t think so.
(On the other hand, lots of Libertarians are pro-Open Boarders. They’re the ones who seduce me so sweetly….)
“Government regulation was created as part of the New Deal”
That’s where financial regulation comes from. There are many types of regulations and some (like zoning laws) really do need to be burnt down.
“Yet the wealthy capitalists never lobbied the state to eliminate the Drug War.”
This is another example of the same principle from above: the interests of wealthy capitalists do not perfectly coincide with those of Libertarians.
~Jasmine; AKA the aspiring economist formerly known as James
I apologize for the formatting error early in the post, where I italicized some of my text after my quotes from Jack. Also for a few typographical errors. I’d be glad to correct the formatting problems if there is a possible way to do so.
The state does not enforce rights, it enforces either the will of the majority or of those in power. It’s as simple as that. Civil rights movements took off because the majority of people began to side with them, not because the state decided to enforce the equality it laid out in it’s constitution years prior (referring to America). If you look to the state for change in youth’s rights you will get no where. Change the hearts and minds of society and you will get somewhere and like a cart following the horses the state will likely follow.
As it stands now the state enforces the views of the majority and popular belief as it always does and always will.
Both women and blacks were just as disenfranchised as youth are now, all it takes is a societal shift in thought. I believe it can happen.
>Change the hearts and minds of society and you will get somewhere
Yes, Jack, but that’s the tricky bit. And how can changes in what the people feel be put into effect except through the machinery of the state and its laws? I am not saying government needs no reform. It obviously does, especially in America where politics are in a terrible mess. But ultimately “the state” is the wrong target for anger.
Be careful what you wish for also in terms of hoping to be governed by the will of the people rather than the bureaucrats. It’s the people right now who would lynch us heretics if they could. It’s only the law that stands in the way. Ethane72 makes a couple of good points on this.
The state is the machination that gives people the power to control those they do not like and enforce morals they side with. When the majority sides with a moral stance, those people get voted in, the people with the minority view are crushed, particularly when it is an very opposed minority view. Such as if I decided to allow a future child of mine to partake in a sexual relationship they desired with a paedosexual they liked. My child would be taken from me and I would be jailed. The laws were made and judgements handed down because this particular issue is heated and our side opposed heavily. I was merely saying that the state will not help until enough people force it to help. The state reflects the views of the majority. I guess my opinion on the state biases me. I side only with a small state that handles basic infrastructures and the judicial system essentially. A minarchist like the founding fathers if you will.
What should we do? Youth rights and spreading information as best we can. If the opinions of youth are taken more seriously then when they defend lovers they won’t just be thrown into therapy. Their opinions will be considered. In class I have learned that when a child defends sexual interaction and the person they did it with, we (as therapists) are supposed to tell their parents they have internalized the “abuse” and that no child ever wants this. The child’s opinion is regarded as nothing. Unless it is used to convict the “abuser”. Only if it sides the the sex abuse industry. Spreading information like you do, like others do, like I do. Just so it is there for fence sitters and the open minded to see. I feel a lot more people are at least sympathetic with our side than they let on. Merely because of how the radical on the opposing side act towards this side. Those that aren’t hard core antis react pretty favorably when I discuss these things. Just got to know who to avoid, a lesson I learned years ago after dealing with harassment.
“A minarchist like the founding fathers if you will.”
The thing that always makes me roll my eyes at ‘like the founders intended’ statements is the fact that the question of which founders is left unstated. Jefferson? Maybe. Hamilton? Not on your life.
The founding fathers are not some monolithic body which mysteriously agrees with the political views of whoever invokes them – though you might suspect otherwise if you follow the farce which is American politics.
Jasmine, AKA the Third-Worlder formerly known as James
An even terser response than last nights but necessary given my time constraints:
Libertarian ideals are antithetical to the rule by a majority. Majoritarian impulses can be considered to have been overwhelmingly enshrined in our two respective countries, over time, (with both being “mixed” systems), albeit with somewhat different applications – by policy – between them.
A tyranny by the majority is what I fear most and closest to what we enjoy now.
Part of the problem is that capitalism’s critics seem to think that we are living, currently, in “free market” countries. We are not. Ours are decidedly not bastions of freedom in any sense, including within the marketplace. They are “mixed” systems, at best (but to the benefit of large corporations which are, after all, governmental constructs).
But people think so and, when hysteria reigns supreme in our countries, as they have, some of those who correctly identify hysteria for what it is then MIS-identify the cause of that hysteria. For those who’ve never challenged their own cherished beliefs in socialism/collectivism, capitalism seems, somehow, to be the proximate cause of the hysteria.
We need more respect for individual liberty, not less.
Okay, not so terse, after all.
I fully agree that individual liberty is most important, David. I do not agree, however, that living in poverty and mass inequality regarding access to the collective wealth of society that is socially produced but privately owned by a few affords that liberty. It’s this massive economic inequality that enables the wealthy few to disproportionately affect legislation to their benefit by paying into the campaign coffers of major politicians. The oppressive degree of power possessed by the state is largely a consequence of this, and ironically, the state is also the only thing that bails these wealthy fat cats out when they come close to destroying the economy as in the recent U.S. banking crisis. That is what mass de-regulation brings us.
Like you, I fear the tyranny of the majority, which is precisely what a constitutional democracy is intended to prevent. However, I do not think a tyranny of the few is any better, which is exactly what an economic dictatorship brings us. It’s no wonder that the form of government we live under and our present social institutions – such as the nuclear family unit, relations between the races, genders, and differing age groups, etc. – tend to mirror the hierarchical nature of the economic system in form and function. We need to have equality and freedom from material want, not “freedom” (read: license) to pursue selfish dog-eat-dog goals that promote massive inequality, if we hope to have a system where we’re free from all forms of tyranny… both of the few and of the majority.
But mustn’t there be some limits to permissible behaviour, even in a libertarian state? Murder, rape, theft etc would have to be sanctioned and prevented in some way – and wouldn’t that be ‘rule by the majority’ – the disapproval of murder, rape, theft just being an example of a ‘majoritarian impulse’. Isn’t the alternative to ‘rule by the majority’ in fact ‘tyranny by the minority’?
Given that in a society we have to live together there needs to be some consensus on the morals and rules we live by – and even if we don’t agree with all the rules we can still recognise the need to abide by those rules as part of a larger social contract. The hard part, and the part that I suspect makes Libertarianism seductive as a kind of ‘short-cut’, is having to persuade a society of ethical rules that it disagrees with.
Yes, I suspect that Libertarianism is tempting because it offers a way of short-circuiting that process – “I do what I want to – you do what you want to”. But does that give us licence to do ANYTHING we want? If not, then the whole ‘limits on freedom’ argument returns in a only very slightly different guise.
The short answer is that absolute freedom is neither practical nor desirable.
And if I were to focus the discussion to the topic of child-adult sexual relationships…
I am afraid that my vision of how a libertarian society would make these licit may seem like a caricature to those who’ve thought about this more than me, and I’m happy to be corrected: but isn’t the libertarian position “society’s moral strictures end where my family/private property begins”? So if a father chooses to raise his daughter in a way that means she is relaxed and open to sexual interactions with her father, well, the state has no place to interfere in that.
But what if the father and his next door neighbour’s little girl fall in love with each other? Fine if the next door neighbour shares the same mind-set as the father. But what if he doesn’t? What if HIS morals tell him that if anyone so much as lays a finger on his daughter he’ll ‘take a barrel-full to that prevert’s balls’? How does this conflict of private morals resolve itself?
Moreover, to return to the bosom of the family, what if the father’s wife doesn’t approve of her husband having sexual relationships with their daughter? What if she objects to their daughter being raised in a sex-positive manner? What if the little girl simply doesn’t want to have sex with her father? Whose wishes take precedence? How is this precedence enforced?
It seems that, as far as child-adult sex relationships are concerned, the libertarian system would allow incest – provided that all parties (including non-involved family) consented, or that the parent engaging in it was a dominant enough force in the family to override any qualms amongst the rest of the family (and doesn’t that open up one hell of a huge barrel-full of ethical worms!).
On a different tack – if we were to make two lists – one list of the most paedotopic societies and another of the most paedophobic, off the top of my head I’d put forwards the following: paedotopic societies: Tahiti (as Captain Cook found it), Trobriand Islands, the Marquesas (see Claude Levi-Strauss, Malinowski, Margaret Mead et al), northern Indian communities in the 18th Century (including the Sikkim), the Inuit, Namibian Bushmen, in contemporary Europe – the Netherlands, Denmmark, Scandinavia, also think of anarchist communities where children are raised by the community rather than their biological parents…
and paedophobic societies – well, let’s put the USA and the UK at the top shall we…
It appears that the most individualistic societies, those societies where ‘community’ is the least valued or recognised are the most paedophobic; and those societies where community is the most valued are the most child friendly and paedotopic – most of the societies mentioned would be described as either ‘socialist’ or ‘primitive communist’.
This is because paedophobia is proportionate to the strength of the nuclear family – the more children are raised as part of the wider community, the less they are the ‘private property’ of their parents, the less exclusive and narrowly-defined are the relationships that they are allowed to enjoy. Community is not only good for children, it’s good for the lovers of children.
Thank you for all of your contributions to this important and insightful discussion, Lensman (you truly do your leaders, the Arisians, proud! lol!). But honestly, I am very much in agreement with you when it comes to restoring a system where the community plays a strong role in raising all children, rather than the relatively isolated nuclear family unit, where just one or two adults have near-total control over their biological progeny. In this situation, their kids are little more than their parents’ de facto property, as if their shared DNA is the bio-chemical equivalent of an “ownership tag.” The nuclear family unit and enforced monogamy (or at least monamory) go hand-in-hand with capitalist industrial development for many obvious historical reasons, and is the direct result of children and younger adolescents losing their civil rights – not coincidentally, along with their labor rights – towards the end of the 19th century. This is when the Industrial Revolution – the modern era of capitalism – truly started. Again, it’s no coincidence that youths lost their rights at the same time this great economic change occurred, when adults of all races and both genders were gradually gaining them. As a result, the emerging unions were adult-controlled, and this paved the way for the gerontocentric society we have today.
This also resulted in the establishment of mandatory schooling and the extension of childhood, with the social creation of “adolescence,” a legally recognized transitory period between childhood and adulthood where those belonging to this category could still be deprived of their civil and labor rights. As noted by John Taylor Gatto, the modern mandatory schooling system was more designed to babysit children and young adolescents and keep them out of the labor market than to actually educate them; it doesn’t require 200+ eight-hour days, five days per week, to educate kids.
The systems you referred to as “socialism” and “primitive communism” could easily be translated into an industrial society, only now it would be a system where all citizens – children included – would enjoy an equality of abundance rather an equality of poverty that was the case in its pre-industrial equivalents. Social or common ownership of the industries and services we need to survive – as opposed to private or state ownership for the purpose of private profit – would result in a highly cooperative, as opposed to ruthlessly competitive, system that Tom has spoken of, and which he quoted Fry as standing behind.
This would need to be a system that had no money and didn’t put a price tag on meeting material needs and wants. People living in this type of cooperative system devoid of material want would view working to improve our collective lot as being considerably more conducive to self-interest than the idea of struggling competitively against each other to become one of the “top dogs” of a heavily plutocratic system where profit was the overriding force in society. Democracy and community could not thrive under such a system of extreme inequality and competitiveness, regardless of how “big” or “small” the accompanying state may be. Privately owned and controlled police and military forces would hardly be any less oppressive than those controlled by bureaucrats, especially if you had to pay out of pocket – or via a pernicious insurance system – to achieve even basic protection from the rampant crime and psychoses that would result.
I agree with much of what you say, Dissident. But I think some sort of currency would be essential if we were to maintain the benefits of living in complex, large states – I think the trick is to engineer a society which has the best of both worlds – the ‘primitive communism’ and low ecological impact of small scale, simple societies, with the complexity, security, resilience and capability of a large technologically advanced states.
Such a society would need to maintain, amongst other things, a commitment to education, science and the arts. However there is no reason why education should be the prerogative of the young – why not multi-generational schools? why not true life-long learning? (I dream of a education system where I could work at my degree in a seminar room next door to which is a class of 7 year olds are painting pictures and writing stories, and at break time me and my colleagues would drink our tea sat at tables in the playground where little girls occasionally break off from their skipping games to come chat with the grown-ups and try to get me to join in with their skipping so that they can laugh at my inept attempts 🙂 ).
A relatively minor economic reform could (I’d love to be sufficiently confident to have used ‘would’!) lead to such a society: the Citizens’ Wage (AKA: unconditional basic income, basic income guarantee, universal basic income, citizen’s income): all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, in addition to any income received from elsewhere.
Usually this payment is sufficient to cover survival needs. The wage would be funded by taxation and by returns from nationalised industries – the scheme is surprisingly cheap to run as there would no longer be any need for unemployment benefit and most other social security payments. It would also promote employment and business as it would eliminate the ‘poverty trap’ associated with moving from benefits to employment, and allow people to work for lower wages, or for free (if they wished to work for charities or good causes, or work on their own projects). Employees would also have a stronger bargaining position when negotiating wages since all potential workers would always have the viable alternative of simply not working. It would also encourage enterprise as employers could hire labour more cheaply and more flexibly.
That’s the Citizens’ Wage in an extremely condensed nut-shell.
The long-term results of the Citizens’ wage would be :
1 the creation of an economy whose stability is not reliant on growth,
2 the redistribution of wealth
3 a more creative and less risk-averse business sector
4 more static populations (the need to chase work having been significantly reduced)
5 a society where the arts, leisure and learning were genuine life-long options (multi-generational learning, creativity and leisure)
6 the expansion of the extended family (due to the much reduced need for members to move away from their families)
7 the re-establishment of the community as the primary economic and social unit
Given that this would be happening in the context of a larger political push towards environmental harmony there would also be measures that would be aimed at discouraging consumption (e.g. the control of advertising, taxes on environmentally harmful goods) and encouraging the reclamation of public space for people away from the motor car and private interests (something that has played, in my opinion, a very significant role in the current apartheid of the generations.)
It wouldn’t happen over night but our conception of the ‘adult’ and the ‘child’ would change – for example – there’s no reason in this system why a child couldn’t choose to be part of the labour market, given that she could always return to education whenever she wished to, or she could create her own balance between education and work and leisure; moreover the child would be a child of its community first, its extended family second and its parents last of all – a community built round multi-generational institutions rather than the rigorously age-segregated ones we have in our contemporary society.
Thanks, Lensman, and to everyone who has contributed to this fascinating politico-economic discussion. I am under pressure as a moderator, though, in what is otherwise a busy week, so I would ask for any further contributions to be kep brief in this particular thread especially. Thanks.
I will comply with Tom’s request for brevity in this response.
I like many of your ideas, Lensman, particularly the recognized need for life-long schooling. The idea of schooling being limited to a certain number of years during specific years of your life makes no sense considering how much more there new information there is to learn each year. This is true for those in many different fields. Thank you for your response!
I do like your idea of a Citizens Wage, as it would be a further compassionate step up from the liberal capitalism as espoused by social democrats, and certainly far better than a fully unregulated capitalist system. However, I do not believe there is any need for currency – or business/corporate practices – of any sort in a post-industrial society with the capability of producing an abundance for all. It’s a relic of a time when production was more difficult than it is now, and where true scarcity existed. I admire your open-minded desire to make capitalism much easier to live with, don’t get me wrong. But as a Marxist, I do not see the need for any iteration of business and money/currency/barter any longer, and I believe we need to fully abandon our loyalty to this conception of running the industries if society is to progress as far as modern technology makes it possible to do.
In that case, by what method are the goods to be distributed? How do you move them? How do you request them? How do you decide how much to produce? How do you divvy them up? Let’s not forget that the buck doesn’t stop at the consumer: businesses must ask these questions when getting resources from suppliers and those suppliers must request from their suppliers etc. The complexity of the problem increases exponentially. Especially since certain goods (land, ores, hydrocarbons, timber) are scarce and must be distributed satisfactorily so that other things can be made and distributed. Which firm needs them most? What person/system is there to judge?
This is all reminding me of the fantastically interesting book Red Plenty, which is reviewed here.
In that case, by what method are the goods to be distributed? How do you move them?
As noted in my previous response to you… stores will become free access distribution centers, and we will have other methods such as home delivery and download construction via 3D printers/replicators.
How do you request them?
The same way we do now, in addition to having a direct connection to those who manage the economic planning.
How do you decide how much to produce?
Many methods are possible, including computer analysis of consumption trends, polling workers directly, etc.
How do you divvy them up?
Based upon who wants what, and how great individual needs happen to be.
There is, of course, much more to be said about all of this, but I want to honor Tom’s request for brevity.
>There is, of course, much more to be said about all of this, but I want to honor Tom’s request for brevity.
Thanks, Dissident, for bearing this in mind. I’m going to call a halt to all this fairly soon. The standard of politeness is still high, but persistence will lead to sterile entrenchment. The time is near when contributors will need to give themselves time to absorb and ruminate on opposing points.
If we’re talking about young people having sex, I think we can mostly leave the state out of the picture.
Sometimes we see the state acting on behalf of those who control it — notably tax breaks for the wealthy and favorable rules for big business. Sometimes it acts on behalf of a bureaucracy — for instance, the US has for-profit prisons who will now lobby against reducing the prison population. In Florida police accuse innocent men of seeking underage teens for sex online because they get to seize their assets (http://www.wtsp.com/longform/news/investigations/2014/12/29/10-investigates-problems-sex-predator-stings/20802715/)
But in general, what powerful interest group cares whether children have sex with adults? None I can think of. In the US, some legislators realize that more punitive laws don’t make sense, but are terrified of voter reaction if they are seen as soft on sexual predators. In this case it is the public that leads and the politicians that follow. The primary way to fight injustice here (allowing for differences in what counts as injustice) is winning the hearts and minds of ordinary people. “The state” has little to do with it, except to the extent it follows public opinion — which is what democracy is all about, basically.
It’s the UK police who discourage vigilante action against pedophiles. It’s the courts that sometimes stand up for a pedophile’s civil rights, incurring public criticism.
The motive force is “what powerful interest group cares what (whether) children have sex with adults?”
In our present society, all interest groups, except pro-paedophilia “groups”, if indeed there are such animals.
Allow me to indulge you in a horror-scene film clip (not that I believe you would ever indulge in such cinematic schlop).
This is precisely where emotional force manipulation comes into play (like most things do in the human sphere).
On the continent, rather than on the enclave of ignorance and ininquity called the UK,
Kontrol of thought is the only reason behind it.
So join the fray of reasonable horror-affected humans.