tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26856984858604027372024-03-13T15:14:02.201-05:00Zombie JesusUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger565125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-3092169701815380702010-10-27T10:14:00.000-05:002010-10-27T10:14:43.602-05:00There's no such thing as the "radical right"This is a pedantic semantic post. But <em>words mean things</em>, and this is a case where in particular it is important not to confuse and equate two very different versions of the extreme.<br />
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It has become increasingly common to refer to crazy, xenophobic, homophobic, authoritarian, market-fundamentalist right-wing assholes as "radical." Nothing could be further from the truth.<br />
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For what does <em>radical</em> mean? At its core, radical politics has always been about a fundamental change in the basic assumptions underlying society and its functioning. Anarchists looking to demolish both capitalism and the state were radicals. Communists, looking to demolish capitalism by seizing the state were radicals. Even liberals and social democrats, in calling for fundamental changes to certain <em>parts</em> of the functioning of capitalism and government, could bleed into radicalism if given a push.<br />
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But there is nothing about right-wing objectives (of either the blatant fascist state-authoritarian or the closeted libertarian capital-authoritarian varieties) that challenges the current system. Rather, right-wing assholes want to <em>magnify</em> the basic assumptions of our presently-broken society. Don't challenge racism -- expand it! Don't temper capitalism -- strenghtn it! Don't liberate the gays from homophobia -- destroy them! Don't reduce imperialistic militarism -- send it to more places!<br />
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There are two general poles in politics, the democratic left and the authoritarian right. Nobody could claim that even the most radical leftist wants to invent a new society out of whole cloth. But the radical left really is radical, "striking at the root" of the problems of society, as the word originally meant. The "radical" right is deeply conservative and reactionary, built around change only insofar as it is more of the same. The left wants a change in <em>quality</em>, not quantity.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-71032109066814986532010-05-01T08:32:00.001-05:002010-05-01T08:40:19.716-05:00I'm Breaking Up With AppleFor the last month or so I've had iPad Fever. It's a fairly common ailment from what I hear. I've long been a lover of Apple products, and the iPad exemplifies why. It's a masterpiece of industrial and user interface design. It does exactly what it needs to do and does it well. But I'm probably never going to buy an iPad.<br />
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That sound you hear is my wife sighing with relief.<br />
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Every relationship has to be judged, at some point, for its long-term potential. My growing problems with the iPhone and iPad are not the physical products, but the company and future. I don't really have any hesitation telling people they would love a MacBook. But the iPhone and iPad are not MacBooks, and the differences in this case make a difference. Let me illustrate with a small example.<br />
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One of the reasons for my iPad Fever was the idea of iBooks. I love books, but when I say that I mean I love the <i>content</i> of books. I am fairly indifferent to the form factor books come in. The idea of having my entire library with me at all times, with the ability to expand it instantly on demand, is terribly, terribly enticing. I would love to switch almost exclusively to digital books at this point.<br />
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But suppose I bought my iPad and started buying my books through the iBookstore and reading them in the iBooks app. A few years from now, I might have 500 books. Now suppose that I no longer want to use an iPad. Maybe Steve Jobs left Apple and the new CEO drove it into the ground. Maybe some hot new company becomes the "new Apple" and their line of tablets and smartphones is just plain better. So I buy my new device and want to read my books on it.<br />
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I can't.<br />
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Well, that's not strictly true. It's more accurate to say that I can't <i>legally</i>. I am forced to either continue using Apple products forever or break the law to read my books that I purchased. It would be like (and thanks to Cory Doctorow for this analogy) if I bought a special Barnes and Noble bookcase, and it was illegal to shelve any books bought from Barnes and Noble on an Ikea bookcase. Also, I have to read them in a Barnes and Noble recliner.<br />
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DRM is practically useless. If put in this position, I would almost certainly crack the DRM on my books and transfer them illegally, but I shouldn't have to make that choice. Sadly, this applies not only to books, but to movies and some music as well (and other devices, such as the Kindle or Nook, are just as guilty). The iPad is a great media consumption device, but committing any significant amount of media-buying effort to using the iPad makes you either an Apple user for life or a criminal.<br />
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Note that this is not at all the case if I were to do the reverse. That is, I could use any number of non-Apple products with DRM-free media and then, if I decide that I want to plug back into the Appleverse for good I can bring my books and movies and music with me without too much trouble.<br />
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Some might be comfortable with committing to Apple for life. They do, after all, make fantastic products. But we just don't know what the future holds. And for me, there is also just something fundamentally, philosophically wrong in not getting full control of what I buy. Apple's lockdown doesn't only include media. They also act as strict gatekeepers to what software they will allow users to install on their iPhones and iPads. You are, more literally than ever, a user of Apple products, not an owner -- despite paying for them.<br />
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This wasn't always the case. While Apple has always bundled Mac OS exclusively with Mac hardware, once the computer was yours there were no substantial limitations on what you could and couldn't do with it. Nobody was stopping you from running any program you wanted, legally, nor was anybody stopping you from playing or viewing any media -- aside from that which was already DRM'ed, which wasn't really Apple's fault. But in the last few years there has been a steady and clear progression towards a closed ecosystem in which Apple products are no longer the user's, free to do with as she pleases. Apple products are increasingly focused on making an admittedly smooth and enjoyable experience at the expense of genuine ownership, freedom, and in many cases, creativity.<br />
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Equally troubling is the lockdown on development. What we get offered in the iPhone/iPad App Store is only an Apple-approved subset of the apps actually written. But we have no way to install any non-Apple programs without jailbreaking our devices, which is a never-ending cat-and-mouse game with Apple's official OS updates and, they claim, illegal as well. But worse still is the fact that Apple doesn't merely reject apps that are unstable or inferior, they also prohibit competition with their own apps and impose their particular moral vision on the selection. Apple can and does reject apps for any reason it wants, and in doing so, they restrict my choices in ways I'm not comfortable with.<br />
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Don't misread me. Apple is entitled to be a competitive, secretive company. Their vertical hardware-software integration strategy is one of the key reasons for the stability and sheer delightfulness of Apple products. Exercising full control of the experience virtually ensures that for the average user the experience is a great one. I don't think Apple is "evil," nor do I think anyone who wants an iPad or a MacBook is wrong for getting one.<br />
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As for me, I've decided that the Apple ecosystem is one I'm no longer going to be a part of. I will happily let my friends and family continue to use them unaccosted for as long as they are happy to use them. I'm not really going to evangelize on this point unless things get very, very bad. But when it comes time for me to buy a new personal computer just for myself, it's probably going to be a notebook running Linux. And when it comes time for me to buy a new phone (almost 2 years from now, thanks to AT&T's contract) it's probably going to run Android. And when it comes time to buy books, music, and movies online, I'm only going to if when I buy them they're really mine. That's just me.<br />
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So I'm sorry, Apple, I still love you dearly but we can no longer be together. If you get over your DRM addiction and open up a little, give me a call sometime. If I'm computationally single then, I'd love to take you back.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-46539527205045863322010-04-10T23:09:00.007-05:002010-04-11T07:23:48.335-05:00Skeptical VeganismThere are many schisms in the vegan/animal rights movement. Perhaps the one that gains the most attention these days is that between the self-styled "abolitionists" and, well, everyone else. However, there is a more fundamental split among the vegan ranks that doesn't seem to be acknowledged often at all.<br />
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Vegans can be divided into two groups: <i>a priori</i> vegans and skeptical vegans. <i>A priori</i> vegans take veganism as the starting point of any decision involving animals; <i>a priori</i> is the Latin for "prior to," a term routinely used in philosophy to describe knowledge one "just has" before observation and experience. One striking example of <i>a priori</i> veganism comes from Tom Regan, author of <i>The Case for Animal Rights</i>. Regan, attempting to dismantle the utilitarianism of Peter Singer, cites the fact that, depending on the actual consequences, utilitarianism might not provide a strong case for vegetarianism as one of several reasons to reject it as a moral theory. Regan has decided <i>a priori</i> that vegetarianism (which he uses to mean veganism as well) is correct. Veganism isn't merely the logical outcome of his moral theory; the theory is constructed to justify veganism.<br />
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Building a belief system out of one's conviction that veganism is right isn't the only manifestation of <i>a priori</i> veganism. More commonly, vegans will use the definition of veganism as sufficient reason to do or not do some particular thing. Take the anti-consumerist activity known as freeganism. So-called freegans never buy animal products, but will use them if they would otherwise go to waste. A lot of freegans will, for example, go dumpster diving and might eat edible food containing animal products that has been thrown out. An <i>a priori</i> vegan will state without equivocation that this is wrong because vegans don't eat animal products period. Something being "not vegan" is automatically enough to make it wrong. Perhaps it is wrong. But if it is, there is something that makes it so other than not conforming to a particular word's definition.<br />
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We can contrast <i>a priori</i> veganism with skeptical veganism. The word <i>skeptical</i> here refers not to skepticism about the goodness of being vegan, but to the traditional skeptical position of requiring evidence to support one's views. The skeptical vegan is a vegan because veganism is consistent with her considered moral beliefs; if, somehow, it became clear that non-vegan activity was consistent with those considered moral beliefs, the veganism would go, not the beliefs. Some <i>a priori</i> vegans may say this makes the skeptical vegan no vegan at all.<br />
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Another way of distinguishing these positions is to say that <i>a priori</i> vegans see veganism as an end itself, while skeptical vegans use veganism as a means to some other end. Skeptical veganism can arise very simply from common moral judgments: we ought not cause avoidable harm, animal products harm animals, we can avoid animal products, therefore we ought to be vegan and avoid animal products. Veganism is here the means to the end of not harming animals.<br />
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<i>A priori</i> vegans are naturally concerned with not harming animals as well, but they extend veganism to cover cases in which no harm could possibly result. Suppose a vegan comes across a recently dead animal in the deep country. This vegan decides on a whim to eat the animal then and there, and never tells anyone about it. He is clearly not directly causing harm, nor is he contributing to the pervasive belief that animals are property which allows others to cause harm. The skeptical vegan quite probably calls this harmless hypocrite disgusting and may hope he gets diarrhea for his trouble. The <i>a priori</i> vegan, in contrast, calls him immoral. The <i>a priori</i> vegan is perfectly right to say that the hypocrite is not a vegan, at least so long as he keeps such things up. The question is whether being vegan or not actually matters, morally, in cases such as these.<br />
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One suspects there are two reasons for the difference between <i>a priori</i> and skeptical veganisms. First is simply commitment. Anyone who devotes any significant time to a cause is subject to a consolidation and solidification of her beliefs. Most vegans begin from a position of compassion for animals, and likely take the simply steps outlined above to arrive at a position resembling skeptical veganism. But over time, veganism becomes so engrained in their behavior and psychology that it becomes easier to simply use whether or not something is vegan as a proxy for whether or not it actually harms animals, and from there it is a short leap to <i>a priori</i> veganism.<br />
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The other reason for this division applies more to the theories and theoreticians. The difference between <i>a priori</i> and skeptical vegans mirrors, but is not identical to, the difference between duty-based and consequentialist ethics. Duty-based, or deontological ethics proposes that there are specific moral rules that should constrain our behavior. Consequentialist ethics suggests that whether an act is right or wrong depends on how good or bad the outcome is. Consequentialist vegans are pretty much skeptical vegans by default. But duty-based vegans may or may not be<i> a priori</i> vegans. Those that believe that we simply have a duty not to cause unnecessary harm to animals could be skeptical vegans; there could be fringe cases involving animals that do not cause them harm. But those who believe we have a firm duty not to use animals as means to our ends are likely <i>a priori</i> vegans; even an utterly unharmed animal could thus be wronged if it is being used in some way.<br />
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It is probably clear by now that I am a skeptical vegan. I think there are plenty of non-harm-based reasons not to use animal products in most of the hypotheticals above, but "they aren't vegan" isn't one of those reasons. And I would never argue that people <i>should</i> do non-vegan things, merely that they are not always morally wrong if they do. I think taken to logical conclusions, <i>a priori</i> veganism has many silly implications. If using animal products is just wrong, no matter what, the <i>a priori</i> vegan can't use convenience or difficulty of avoidance or even self-defense as an excuse for using, for example, medicine that has been tested on animals. The <i>a priori</i> vegan who avoids certain product brands because they test on animals has no justification for ever shopping at stores that sell meat or leather, or eating at restaurants that serve meat. If the <i>a priori</i> vegan catches household pests and releases them, he can't consistently drive a car faster than five miles per hour for fear of killing insects. For that matter, if we cannot use animals as means to our ends, regardless of if it harms them, even nature photography is forbidden….<br />
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But these are absurd. Scratch an <i>a priori</i> vegan, and no matter her conviction, a subconsciously skeptical vegan lies below the surface. <i>A priori </i>veganism is a conscious belief, but rarely one that extends to its furthest implications. <i>A priori</i> vegans can respond by shifting the goalposts: the original definition of vegan, after all, included an "as far as is possible and practical" clause that can be used to justify essentially whatever the <i>a priori</i> vegan wants it to. But note that "as far as is possible and practical" presents a paradox; it's not practical to never take animal-tested medicine or buy from stores that sell animal products or travel in a bug-killing vehicle, but its certainly possible.<br />
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But more importantly, <i>a priori</i> veganism is intellectually lazy. Perhaps that's part of its appeal, but it requires no thought and there is no context to consider. Skeptical veganism requires consideration and context. Skeptical vegans avoid animal products where it will probably avoid harming animals or contribute to a reduction in harming animals. Skeptical vegans could go on doing so even if <i>a priori</i> vegans decided to kick them out of the vegan club. And <i>a priori</i> vegans can go on claiming the moral high ground even when it matters not at all.<br />
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At least where it does matter, in actual fact, both sides agree.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-61534114805422137072010-01-03T19:00:00.000-06:002010-01-03T19:00:22.716-06:00Switching to Free Software (Sometimes)It's no secret that I'm an Apple fanboy. I bought the iPhone when it was brand new and silly expensive; still sporting that first-generation now. The last two computers I bought were Macs, a final-generation and now defunct iBook and an iMac. We have three iPods in the house. Hell, I lined up for Leopard. That's right: I stood in line for an <i>operating system</i>.<br />
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But lately I've been playing with Linux (dual-booting on the iMac) and other free and open source software. See, as much as I love Mac build quality and user interface design, there's still a nagging problem, and it's not one limited to Macs: most of the software simply isn't mine.<br />
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Proprietary software (including DRMed media like music and movies) isn't owned by you at all, it is licensed to you, with terms and conditions. Technically, when you spend money on proprietary software you're buying a license to use something someone else owns.<br />
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Imagine if you went to the hardware store to buy a hammer. The guy behind the counter rings you up. "This hammer is licensed to you and may be used on five projects. You may not loan it to anybody, nor may you disassemble it. If you violate the terms if this license, we'll sue you for $25,000."<br />
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Unlike any other form of sale in the world, software companies decided that even when you buy stuff from them, <i>they</i> still own it. They call it "intellectual property," but unlike actual property it can't be transferred. Every form of publishing that converts to digital distribution seems to get this same bright idea. First music, then movies, now books and even fonts! They all tell the buyer: "Give us money for our product, but then only use it how we say you can."<br />
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There are alternatives. The term "free software" means free as in speech, not free as in beer. Free software can be bought and sold, but once it's yours it's yours, to do with as you please, down to the source code itself. A lot of high-quality free software is free as in beer, too, from whole operating systems (like the flavors of GNU/Linux) to word processors and web browsers.<br />
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Nobody would claim most free software is always as polished and friendly as Mac software, and Apple still makes some of the best-built hardware around. But when you get free software <i>it's all yours</i>, and that's worth more than all the eye-candy in the world.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-24372695346807867532010-01-02T16:25:00.002-06:002010-01-02T16:26:06.727-06:00Blogging Is DeadBlogging is dead. In a lot of ways, it really is. Yet, at the same time, more people are blogging then ever, in both the traditional sense and with the rise of microblogging platforms like <a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://facebook.com/">Facebook</a> status updates.<br />
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But the old-fashioned blogging died the instant blogging became profitable, or at least helped make other things profitable. In the ancient era prior to 2007 or so, blogs had something special that no other media had. Nobodies were somebody. Blogging was a hobby, not a career, and you were paid in respect, admiration, and influence.<br />
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The problem, if it is a problem, is not that nobody does the good old-fashioned blogging anymore. The problem is that nobody cares. I'm being slightly facetious here; of course some people care. Even the lowliest blog with semi-regular updates has a few dozen followers. But this is all lost beneath the influence of the blogging <i>industry</i>. If <a href="http://technorati.com/">Technorati</a> still means anything, look at the top ten blogs: all are professional, and most are corporate, with the sole exception of <a href="http://boingboing.net/">Boing Boing</a> at the time of this post. Boing Boing remains one of my favorite blogs, but even it isn't quite good old-fashioned anymore. It's a business that makes a substantial revenue for its bloggers through advertising. It's still good old-fashioned in spirit, but certainly not in operation.<br />
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All is far from lost, however. I am certain that in terms of actual numbers, far more people blog today than ever did in the good old days, especially outside the US and Europe. I confess freely to reading and enjoying large numbers of professional and/or corporate blogs, and I follow celebrities of Twitter (of both "real" famous and "net" famous varieties). But I also go out of my way to read the obscure stuff, and it's all still there. People are still plugging away, sharing new ideas and viewpoints, if you dig past the first page of Google results or down the Twitter lists past the top hits.<br />
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We had a taste, from about 2000-07, of a world where the average person's opinion could be as important and disseminated as any news anchor, columnist, or author. The only way to keep that magic alive is to do it. Maybe its harder to rise above the corporate money today, but if you keep saying what needs to be said, someone will hear it. At least I hope so.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-57818144923555999292010-01-02T15:02:00.003-06:002010-01-02T15:29:00.458-06:00My Digital LifeI started blogging in 2004. In internet years, that dates back to prehistory. When I started blogging I wanted it to be easy to find me. My blog was eponymous. I blogged about whatever was on my mind. Things that happened to me, movies I saw, news, politics. It was fun to blog.<br />
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Then I got a job in a traditionally conservative field in a traditionally conservative state and I came to realize that I couldn't say what I wanted anymore. It was just too risky. For all my ideological views that I wouldn't want to work for someone who would fire me for being an atheist, or a socialist, or whatever else objectionable I am, the fact is that I needed that job more than I needed to stick it to them.<br />
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Enthusiasm waned. Eventually, I started a new blog with a new name, so that I could feel free to say whatever I wanted. Two things killed that blog. First, I found that anonymity is hard. It didn't take terribly long before googling my real name brought up my allegedly anonymous blog. Second, I didn't feel free to write whatever I wanted about certain topics, I felt <span style="font-style: italic;">compelled</span> to write about certain topics. I felt like having a blog with a political reference as the title meant I had to be a political blogger.<br />
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This is my third blog. When I set it up a few months ago, I imported all the old entries from my old blogs, and posting has been sporadic at best since then. It's the same old story. I felt like since I was anonymous it wasn't personal, but I didn't feel like I had anything fresh, or even clever, to say about the subjects I'm interested in talking about.<br />
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Well, fuck it.<br />
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It's a new year, and I've decided that anonymity makes this blog <span style="font-style: italic;">more</span> personal. I'm as free as I've ever been to write about whatever I want. My Twitter and Facebook are all locked to maximum privacy, so even if I link to posts here it stays there. If you google me this blog doesn't come up. If you know me personally you can read this and get a look at what I'm thinking. If you're an employer, there's no way to connect it to my name. I am going to use this blog, damn it, and often. I have thoughts, opinions, things to say, and if you've read six paragraphs of me bitching you might be interested enough to read them, too.<br />
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My problem before was that I not only wrote like I had an audience, I wrote like I had to entertain that audience. I'd love an audience, but I want them to be reading what I write because they want to read it, not because I tailored it to get them. Not that I lied or anything; it's more that I didn't say things I was thinking because I didn't want to alienate readers, or because I felt like I was just repeating what they could read, better said, elsewhere.<br />
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So my 2010 resolution to you, whoever you are, why ever you are reading this, is that you will actually have something to read here again. Resubscribe to my <a href="http://zombie-j.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default">RSS feed</a>. Comment on what I have to say, and often. I'm back.<br />
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Until I get bored.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-38174829167453324042009-11-07T08:14:00.003-06:002009-11-07T08:29:42.550-06:00Just some shit I made upRights. I love rights. Civil rights, human rights, animal rights. Gay rights, women's rights, patients' rights, consumers' rights. Rights are useful tools. But let's be honest: rights are just some shit we made up. Rights are an easy, deliberation-free way to trump potentially disastrous decisions, like, say, enslaving people. We made them up because they're useful to achieve something good.<br /><br />But a lot of us think rights are <span style="font-style:italic;">real</span>. People (and sometimes animals) have natural dignity, or inherent value, or some other shit we make up, just by being people (or animals) and we have to respect that magical feature of their existence. But the Universe doesn't care. Absent sentient beings to value themselves and other sentient beings there is no value, and absent people to take offense there is no dignity. Saying a person has inherent value just means <span style="font-style:italic;">we really don't like to hurt people</span>. It isn't a metaphysical fact, a biological fact, another statistic like mass or density. The only measure of value is how valuable it is <span style="font-style:italic;">for</span> someone.<br /><br />Rights aren't the only shit we made up. Just about any exceptionless rule is a good candidate for made-up magical shit. "Lying is wrong." Sure, I can get behind that. You shouldn't usually lie. But why? Did we make <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> shit up? Either lying is <span style="font-style:italic;">just plain wrong</span> and you'd better be honest when the Nazi asks you where the Jews are, or lying is only wrong for some reason. A reason like: because it usually hurts people. And if that's the case, it is the <span style="font-style:italic;">hurting people</span> part that's bad — the lying is just how it happens sometimes. Which means that if lying, in a given case, actually <span style="font-style:italic;">helps</span> people (like, say, those being targeted for genocide) it isn't, in fact, bad.<br /><br />In the end, just about any moral rule boils down to <span style="font-style:italic;">if you do this, people usually get hurt</span>. And that's great, we don't like to hurt people, so we should avoid it. But dogmatic adherence to these rules, this shit we make up to remind ourselves not to do the hurting thing that's <span style="font-style:italic;">actually</span> bad, sometimes causes more bad stuff to happen. Personally, I think it is more important not to hurt people (or animals) than to let them get hurt because we thought the rules were more important than their reason.<br /><br />But maybe I just made that shit up, too.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-11752873818792605702009-10-31T09:05:00.002-05:002009-10-31T09:27:10.709-05:00Reasonable disagreementOne of the hard parts about holding strong opinions is dodging dogma. You have to admit that there is room in any value-based viewpoint for <span style="font-style:italic;">reasonable disagreement</span>. That doesn't mean anything goes, and it certainly doesn't mean that every opinion is equally justifiable. But there can be people who believe in broadly the same things but come to different conclusions.<br /><br />For example, I think that a democratic socialist economy is the best way to secure my values of liberty, equality, and solidarity and to give everyone the best chance at a good life. More moderate social democrats and liberals have the same values, but they disagree on what those values need to look like in practice. It is a <span style="font-style:italic;">reasonable</span> disagreement. We're on the same team, even if I think some things they advocate are misguided or even harmful.<br /><br />Conservatives and libertarians, however, either have different values entirely or mean different things when they use the same words. From the point of view of a socialist, conservatives and libertarians are <span style="font-style:italic;">unreasonable</span>. Their goals are different, their beliefs are different. I don't feel compelled to compromise with them; I want them to change their minds!<br /><br />Of course this only applies in situations where the outcome of these issues affects all involved. Sports fans are as alien to my way of thinking as conservatives are, but their enjoyment of watching other people running around for hours doesn't affect me, so who am I to complain?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-66427108213108505792009-10-17T17:34:00.004-05:002009-10-18T06:35:21.791-05:00Beyond right and wrongThere is a serious problem that moral philosophy faces, and until it is properly confronted the work of ethicists, no matter how interesting and illuminating, is doomed to ultimate failure. This problem goes by the unassuming name of moral realism.<br /><br />Moral realism is the idea, which most of us hold by default, that there are moral facts that are true in the same way that, say, 2 + 2 = 5 is true. It means that saying "murder is wrong" is capable of being literally true or false (and obviously, it is usually said to be true). Most, though by no means all, moral philosophers are moral realists. They believe that while individuals may be mistaken about moral truths, these truths do exist waiting to be discovered through the philosophical endeavor and are glimpsed through our intuitions.<br /><br />Even though I know it is the default, I am frankly astounded this is still considered to be a reasonable position by the bulk of active philosophers, whose collective intellect is admittedly vast. It only takes a moment's thought for anyone who understands evolution to see that moral realism must be an illusion — though disproving it using the methods of philosophy is a challenge.<br /><br />If we evolved our moral intuitions over time from prosocial instincts that proved useful to our primate ancestors, how and when, exactly, did moral facts become real? It seems there are three possibilities.<br /><br />1. God did it. Any serious philosopher has already rejected this joke of an answer.<br /><br />2. Moral facts are features of the universe and always existed. Really? Before there were humans thinking about these things and acting morally, before moral choices were even an option, there were already concepts of right and wrong floating in the ether, waiting for humans to evolve and find them? This is as absurd as god's decree.<br /><br />3. At some point, humans evolved morality and then these facts became real. This at least admits that humans are the genesis of morality. But it still seems rather silly that, if human minds create morality, it could be anything other than whatever human minds create — which means that moral truths can't be "out there" waiting to be discovered, because they can't exist until they are invented.<br /><br />As it turns out, neuroscience shows where "moral truths" come from. When people are placed in an MRI machine and asked moral questions, they give two kinds of answers. First are intuitive answers about things that are "just plain wrong." These are quick emotional responses or gut feelings, and they are remarkably consistent among various people and light up emotional regions of the brain. Second, for complicated or unfamiliar situations, there are cognitive responses based on thinking through the problem that light up the general thinking parts of the brain. What's interesting, however, is that when people's answers to questions go against the typical moral intuition, they do so by cognitive reasoning, not by having different intuitions.<br /><br />Through what is no doubt an astounding coincidence, the emotional gut feeling responses magically map onto the rules, rights, and duties that the various systems of deontological (that is, duty-based) ethics require, regardless of the convoluted logical reasons those systems contain. It's almost as if these moral philosophers just decided that their gut reactions are moral facts and invented a justification for them. My tongue is firmly in cheek, of course: it is obvious that this is precisely what they did. Some plainly admit it, others genuinely believe they derived these facts independently.<br /><br />Equally unsurprising is that when people use their cognitive reasoning to find answers to moral dilemmas, they tend to be consequentialist answers. They override the "rules" and look at the consequences of the acts in question, then choose the act with the best outcome. Nearly everyone agrees with consequentialism to an extent, or in certain cases. We all want to do what's best for people, we just restrain that impulse when our intuition tells us otherwise.<br /><br />Deontologists have to account for the fact that our intuitions are inconsistent. They evolved as convenient mental shortcuts to problems faced by our ancestors over millions of years, and they aren't necessarily suited to the situations we find ourselves in today. As a result, deontologists find themselves invented ever more complicated addenda to their rules, so we get things like "Do not kill, unless a greater good would result from the killing, you do not intend the death of the victim even if it is a foreseeable consequence, and the killing is the result of merely redirecting an already existing threat onto a person previously unthreatened." All this because our ancestors had no indirect ways of killing each other, so we have a evolutionarily useful intuition against "personal" killing, even for a good reason like saving more lives, but not against "impersonal" killing for the same reason. Our mind knows five deaths are worse than one death, but the rightness or wrongness of that depends on how the deaths happen. An arbitrary accident of evolution is promoted to a moral fact by deontological philosophers.<br /><br />Saying something is "wrong" is not saying that there is a fact that this something is wrong, no matter how much we feel like it is the case. Our feeling, even our overwhelming "it just plain is" kind of feeling, is nothing more than an instinct, and that it applies to some situations in the modern world and not to others is arbitrary, except for in the sense that we can pretty well see the non-arbitrary reason it arose in the first place.<br /><br />Following <a href="http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/">Joshua Greene</a>, I think in recognizing this we should do away with "right" and "wrong" in their moral senses. I also agree that we should do away with being for and against things without having reasons beyond gut feelings and prehistoric intuitions. Instead of saying "torture is wrong," we should say "I am opposed to torture because..." and give our reasons. Different people will find different reasons compelling, but only by airing them can we hope for at least some consensus. Saying various things are just plain wrong, when we disagree about those things, gets us nowhere.<br /><br />It's obvious why philosophers are hesitant to do away with moral realism. Aside from the air of authority moral truths bring, they fear that without real moral truths we would descend into nihilism or moral relativism.<br /><br />I don't think this is the case. I think that morality is both subjective (as opposed to objective as the realists have it) and universal (as opposed to relative). That is, while it is true that making a moral judgment is in a sense just giving my opinion, it doesn't follow that I should then accept other people's opinions as valid and shrug my shoulders when we disagree. It is my opinion that everyone should agree with me, after all. What antirealist morality leads to is not relativism but a world in which moral disputes are settled through argument and evidence rather than claiming to have all the answers.<br /><br />And now comes another part that a great number of moral realists also fear: I tend to further agree with Greene that when you strip away prehistoric gut feelings and start basing your moral judgments on evidence, you are naturally led to utilitarianism, or at least some form of consequentialism. I have fairly recently stated opposition to consequentialism because this is a conclusion that I've tried to fight intellectually for some time (literally years, at this point). After all, consequentialism occasionally leads to counterintuitively wrong outcomes. Nobody wants to be thought a monster. But if we accept as we must that there is no real "right" and "wrong," if we accept that intuitively correct outcomes are often arbitrary, all <span style="font-style:italic;">without</span> rejecting our empathy with beings living lives that fare well or ill for them, we find ourselves simply wanting to make those lives go as well as we can.<br /><br />That doesn't mean consequentialism is right (because, objectively, nothing is), but it does mean that consequentialism is almost certainly the inevitable remainder of morality once we are freed from our evolutionary baggage. Consequentialism should be seen then as a goal, but we needn't beat ourselves up if we fail to adhere to bringing about the best consequences in absolutely all cases. It isn't "right." It isn't our "duty." We are animals and will often find our instincts guiding our choices. But consequentialism is making everyone as well as they can be, and that's surely something we can strive for.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-2110683335354925362009-10-12T08:28:00.004-05:002009-10-12T09:10:56.825-05:00A minimum utopia<span style="font-weight:bold;">1. Election reform.</span> All single-seat elections should be held by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting">instant-runoff vote</a>. All multi-seat elections should be held by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote">single-transferrable vote</a>. Consider multi-seat elections for the House and Senate.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. Referendum, initiative, and recall.</span> Any legislative body should be able to put proposed legislation to the people for direct vote. The people should be able to propose legislation directly. Any elected official should be able to be removed from office. Each of these must, obviously, have some procedural system in place as far as quotas needed to achieve them.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3. Modify the Senate.</span> Reorganize the Senate proportionally by state populations. Rather than have Senators serve indefinitely in six-year terms, have them serve only a single twelve-year term. The Senate can remain the "upper" house where more experienced legislators are able to temper the relative madness of the House, but it should not be a place where a few dozen men rule for life. The Senate should be thought of as a politician's final duty, where they go when they are ready for serious service without worry of reelection.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4. Depersonalize the presidency.</span> Celebrity presidents are exciting but polarizing. The presidency should not be a glamorous job, it should be an administrative job. Replace the single president with a seven-person Executive Council, such that there may be divergent views held and voiced in the executive branch, but with the ability to settle them easily by vote.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">5. Single-payer health care.</span> This is so obvious that anyone who disagrees is plainly insane. And stupid. And an asshole.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">6. Workplace democracy</span>. End the concept of working <span style="font-style:italic;">for</span> another person, and replace it with the mandate that we work with each other. All non-family businesses must be run democratically, one person, one vote. This doesn't need to apply to day to day management, but it certainly applies to hiring and firing the people who will do that management. Replace boards of directors chosen by stockholders with those elected by employees. Make all decisions regarding the fate of profit (which rightfully belongs to the people who earned it) democratically decided, such that if there is inequality in income among different employees it exists for reasons acceptable to a majority of those people, whatever they might be.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">7. Social control of investment.</span> This one is by far the one least likely to ever come to pass, even above reorganizing the Senate and presidency. Abolish Wall Street. Use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Schweickart">David Schweickart</a>'s model of Economic Democracy instead: public banks give firms grants rather than loans, and the firms' capital assets are taxed to replenish the supply of investment money which is distributed back to the banks on a regional per capita basis. The public banks can have criteria for giving grants other than mere profitability, such as job-creation and environmental security. While private investment may (or may not) still exist, require that privately-held companies can only be sold to the government, who then convert them into democratic firms with public funding.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">8. Government as employer of last resort.</span> Establish a right to a job, and if the private sector can't find one for you, the public sector will. There are roads that need maintaining, parks that need cleaning, and a never-ending stream of other projects that could certainly use a few million presently-unemployed people.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">9. Strong climate protection</span>. Short term losses are worth it. The GDP won't matter when you're underwater or in famine. Commit to <a href="http://www.350.org/">350 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide</a>. Forget cap-and-trade, levy a straight-up <a href="http://www.carbontax.org/">carbon tax</a> and redistribute the proceeds to everyone.<br /><br />Enjoy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-63981776759236025322009-10-12T08:05:00.001-05:002009-10-12T08:07:02.158-05:00ApologiesLook, I know I don't have a billion readers, so apologizing for not posting in a month and a half is almost unnecessary. But there are people who like to hear what I have to say, and if some small fraction of you have missed me, I'm sorry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-90144920945253990102009-08-24T08:20:00.002-05:002009-08-24T08:30:39.340-05:00American mercyWhile I know he and I share a relatively similar viewpoint, I don't generally turn to <a href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html">Charlie Stross's blog</a> for political insight. He's a science fiction writer — and one of the best, if you ask me. I had the pleasure of sitting at the far end of a table of more than twenty for lunch with him when he was in Austin in 2005. So by "lunch with him" I mean essentially that I was in the same room.<br /><br />In any case, he has written one of the finest blog posts on both the release of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi and, believe it or not, American health care reform I've read. Seriously, <a href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/08/merciless.html">read it</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-30492331998417925752009-08-20T16:53:00.005-05:002009-08-20T17:06:36.100-05:00Abolitionists against health care reform<span style="font-style:italic;">Pretend I am still an abolitionist …</span><br /><br />***<br /><br />All people should have a right to adequate health care.<br /><br />Respecting this right, morally or legally, demands that we abolish the commodity status of health care. Health care is not something that should be bought and sold on the market, but a right afforded all people, free at the point of delivery, simply out of respect for their dignity as people.<br /><br />Because health care should be a right, I cannot support any measure that doesn't treat it as such. Supporting any mere health care <span style="font-style:italic;">reform</span> is to reinforce the commodity status of health care so long as that reform continues to allow health care services to be sold on even the most highly regulated market. We can't focus on how people are <span style="font-style:italic;">treated</span> by the health care industry. It's not how people are treated that is wrong, but that their right isn't being respected.<br /><br />I am totally against the so-called "public option" in health care reform. I know that it will allow a lot of people to gain access to health insurance, but it does not respect people's right to health care. I would be reinforcing the commodity status of health care by supporting a measure that doesn't respect that right. Furthermore, instituting a public insurance option would allow those who have health insurance to feel better about denying a right to health care because it will give the illusion of consideration for the uninsured by allowing some of them to purchase relatively inexpensive government insurance. This will just prolong the struggle to achieve the right to health care. I'm not against individuals helping to pay for uninsured folks' health services if they wish, but I can't support any <span style="font-style:italic;">institutionalized</span> aid to these people. Because that's different.<br /><br />I am also entirely against "single-payer" health insurance provided by the government. Even though this would provide universal coverage to all American citizens, it still wouldn't recognize a fundamental right to heath care. Providers of health services would still be selling those services on a market. We must only focus on the commodity status of care, not merely how people are treated while their rights are denied. I oppose any kind of "happy insurance."<br /><br />As painful as it may be, it would be better for those without insurance to continue to suffer exorbitant health care expenses and to lack access to certain services because this will force those who have insurance to see the horrific cost of not respecting the right to health care. I oppose all consequentialist appeals to the suffering of those people, because a true commitment to rights demands that I not support anything that doesn't respect those rights. Call it "being divisive" if you want, but anybody supporting the so-called "public option" is not an ally but an opponent of the <span style="font-style:italic;">real</span> health care movement in which demanding a right to health care is the moral baseline. The only acceptable solution is to build a movement that can grow to a majority demanding the right to health care.<br /><br />Nevertheless, there may be <span style="font-style:italic;">some</span> incremental reforms that I could support. Perhaps we could start by nationalizing dentistry.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">For the uninitiated, abolitionists are a faction of the animal liberation movement that believes that the abolition of the property status of animals is the only goal that should be sought by that movement. Abolitionists oppose all reforms aimed at improving the welfare of animals, because they won't lead to abolition, they will reinforce the property status of animals, and they will encourage expanded exploitation because they clear people's consciences.<br /><br />I suspect there are abolitionists who can agree with my satirical argument as if it were straight. If so, they live in a world where personal moral purity takes priority over doing the best you can with what you've got. That's not my world.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-29086930177799287362009-08-14T15:16:00.005-05:002009-08-14T15:27:14.154-05:00EuthanasiaForget all the other deather nonsense for a second. It's hard, I know. But do it.<br /><br />Withholding health care from old people is not euthanasia. Nazis killing Jews in concentration camps is not euthanasia. For that matter, killing unwanted but healthy dogs and cats is not euthanasia.<br /><br />Euthanasia is killing in the deceased's actual best interests. A dog that has been hit by a car, suffers unimaginable pain, and faces a few days of agony before dying can be euthanized if she is killed to relieve her suffering. The soldier on the battlefield, shot in the liver and bleeding out, can be euthanized with an extra shot of morphine. And yes, terminal patients who ask for it can be euthanized through so-called "assisted suicide."<br /><br />Grandma dying from not getting dialysis because it isn't economical isn't euthanasia, it's just plain murder.<br /><br />So if Republicans and other various assholes want to accuse Democrats of wanting to straight-up murder people, go for it. Good luck with that. But don't call it euthanasia. Next time real euthanasia is called for to legitimately relieve suffering, the concept will be tainted beyond recognition.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-85810902738823602462009-08-12T15:55:00.003-05:002009-08-12T16:17:20.007-05:00Obama and the socialistsLet's ignore for a moment that, for his entire presidential run, opponents of Barack Obama called him a socialist and now they call him a Nazi, two ideological positions that are literally on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Since such people are still also claiming "Obamacare" will turn the United States into "Russia" or "a socialized state," I think we ought to take a moment and think about the relationship between Obama (and other Democrats) and socialism.<br /><br />I will here refute the claim that any Democrats are socialists. I also make the claim that Democrats (and indeed, everyone else) should become socialists, because socialism is good.<br /><br />First, it's important to be clear: socialism does not mean "state run." The police are entirely state run, but nobody is complaining about "socialized police." The military is totally state run; no sane conservatives want to privatize the Marine Corps. Socialism is an economic concept that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with government at all.<br /><br />Socialism has been many things over the years, but in all of its modern forms it stems from the basic observation that under capitalism, workers do not get the product of their labor. The product is owned by someone else, who then pays some fraction of the money made off of it back to the people who actually made (or did, in the case of services) it.<br /><br />The one thing all serious forms of socialism have in common is the idea that people ought not to work "for" someone else, but may work "with" them. An absolute minimal socialist position would require worker, community, or state ownership of productive enterprises. In modern democratic countries, that is typically expressed as nationalizing the major industries and monopolies for the benefit of all, and switching smaller companies to worker-owned co-ops for the benefit of the workers. Again, this is pretty much a minimal requirement for socialism. It has nothing to do directly with universal health care or social welfare programs, or anything but workers controlling the product of their work rather than absent owners or stockholders who contribute nothing but permission to use their property. Socialist businesses may operate in a market, but the profit goes to the workers or to the public (depending on the system). It does not go to private investors or CEOs.<br /><br />So we can see that no Democrat has ever proposed anything resembling a socialist proposal in Congress, on the topic of health care or anything else. There are no bills calling for the abolition of private capital investment banks, no opposition to the stock market. I have never heard the words "surplus value" uttered on the Senate floor. There are actually Democrats who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, but they've never proposed anything exclusively socialist so it matters little.<br /><br />"Socialist" health care would be more than a public option. "Socialist" health care would be more even than a single-payer system. "Socialist" health care would require that all hospitals, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, and other medical enterprises be owned by the state, the community they reside in, or even the very doctors, nurses, and other staff who work at them. Such enterprises would distribute all "profits" to the people who earned them, rather than to stockholders and executives. It would be a fully public system provided to all residents free at the point of delivery, not public insurance, and certainly not optional public insurance.<br /><br />Even in a "best case" outcome of the current health care debate we are left with a system in which private insurance corporations inject themselves as parasites. Think about it for a second: private insurance doesn't actually do anything to earn its profit. Just as investors in corporations don't do anything to earn interest, nor do landlords do anything to earn their rents. Capitalism allows a class of people to earn money simply by making money available — it gives people money for nothing more than the privilege of already having enough money to spare. We don't need insurance. We need medical care, and there is no reason we can't collectively provide it for ourselves without middlemen. That's socialism.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-39100738901298983782009-08-03T08:48:00.000-05:002009-08-03T08:49:07.955-05:00The burden of proofIt is uncontroversial that nonhuman animals can suffer. Anyone who has ever stepped on a pet's tail knows that animals can be hurt. It should be equally uncontroversial that we ought not cause <span style="font-style:italic;">unnecessary</span> suffering to any animal, human or otherwise.<br /><br />We can all admit this, carnivore and herbivore alike, without specifying what constitutes necessary suffering. Even many committed vegans will say that there are necessary forms of suffering, such as that caused through self-defense. But the default position must obviously be not to cause suffering unless it is necessary.<br /><br />The burden of proof clearly falls on those who are causing suffering. If you eat eggs, the burden of proof falls on you to justify the necessity of eating eggs that outweighs the suffering inflicted on egg-laying chickens. If you enjoy horse racing, the burden of proof falls on you to justify the necessity of horse racing that outweighs the suffering inflicted on racing horses.<br /><br />Note that this argument is utterly independent of any claims for animal rights, though it is certainly compatible with them. This is merely a basic consequence of the commonsense notion that animals have a welfare that ought not be ignored for any but the most necessary reasons. Those reasons may exist, but they certainly do not in the case of any customary use of animals for food, clothing, or entertainment.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-64036544213081888822009-08-02T08:14:00.004-05:002009-08-02T08:25:02.713-05:00GodlessI am an atheist. Atheist, from <span style="font-style:italic;">a-</span> "without" and <span style="font-style:italic;">theos</span> "a god." Without a god. I am godless.<br /><br />I am not merely <span style="font-style:italic;">agnostic</span>. I think the nonexistence of gods can be known to the same degree of certainty as the nonexistence of centaurs or fairies or any other creatures of fable and myth. In each case, no matter the fervent desire of believers, the evidence is nil. We needn't honor the belief in things without (and against) evidence by labelling it with the comforting word <span style="font-style:italic;">faith</span>; the more accurate word is <span style="font-style:italic;">gullibility</span>.<br /><br />I am not merely <span style="font-style:italic;">nonreligious</span>. It is true I think religion strips the rich meaning people can give to their lives and replaces it with hours of wasted praise and prayer and devotion to injustice. It is certainly true I think immersion in religion ruins young minds and leads to embrace of the irrational, from creationism to global warming denial to the belief that people who believe differently deserve damnation. But my opposition to religion is the result, <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> the cause, of my godlessness.<br /><br />I am not merely <span style="font-style:italic;">spiritual</span>. I reject all supernatural explanations of reality and all beliefs in magic. I have no soul, and neither do you. There is no life-force. There is no <span style="font-style:italic;">qi</span>. The universe is not god. There are no spiritual beings, no out-of-body-experiences, and the bright tunnel of light is what the misfiring of an oxygen-starved brain feels like. Nobody can read minds. Nobody can see the future. Nobody can bend spoons with thought. Nobody can heal with their hands. Nobody can cast spells.<br /><br />There are no such things as ghosts.<br /><br />This is it. Look around you. Clench your fists. There is matter and energy embedded in the quantum foam of spacetime, there is blood pumping through your veins, a sloppy biological primate brain shooting electrochemical signals through synapses flooded with neurotransmitters.<br /><br />This is it.<br /><br />A world without god is not hypothetical: we're in it now. Only we can make it a good one.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-87297220426040977392009-07-30T09:13:00.003-05:002009-07-30T09:32:40.023-05:00I love thisBarack Obama says that police "acted stupidly" and gets raked over the coals for calling the Boston police department stupid. Boston police officer Justin Barrett says Henry Gates acted like a "banana-eating jungle monkey" and that in acting like a banana-eating jungle monkey he should have been pepper-sprayed. His lawyer's defense? Barrett didn't say Gates <span style="font-style:italic;">was</span> a banana-eating jungle monkey, only that he <span style="font-style:italic;">acted</span> like a banana-eating jungle monkey.<br /><br />Look, everyone, if you say someone acted in some way, unless you append that with a disclaimer, people are going to assume you mean that's how they are. If what is probably an otherwise smart person acted stupidly, throw in an "I'm not saying the Boston police are stupid, but in this case they seem to have acted that way."<br /><br />Of course, that doesn't really work for Barrett. Saying "While I know he is fact a well-respected professor, in this single instance Gates acted like a banana-eating jungle monkey" doesn't make it any less racist.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-92194045266795584092009-07-26T09:41:00.005-05:002009-07-26T09:51:53.438-05:00Two insanitiesFirst, in "post-racial America," a doctor thought a picture of <a href="http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/teabagging_racist_email_sending_dr_im_not_a_bigot_i_did_a_counseling_day_fo/">Barack Obama as a bone-through-the-nose witch doctor</a> would be an amusing and uncontroversial satire because, see, he had worked with black Boy Scouts this one time:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_RZUfPOfHEtI/Smxr4JP_cyI/AAAAAAAAAQE/kbLBZr6G0h0/s1600-h/obama-witchdoctor-muck.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_RZUfPOfHEtI/Smxr4JP_cyI/AAAAAAAAAQE/kbLBZr6G0h0/s400/obama-witchdoctor-muck.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362779868591256354" /></a><br />Then a proud Medicare recipient writes a <a href="http://www.openleft.com/diary/14352/no-comment">letter to the editor</a> vehemently opposing public health care:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RZUfPOfHEtI/SmxsTD_ASZI/AAAAAAAAAQM/AFmxXe1Te5A/s1600-h/NationalHealthCareLetter.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RZUfPOfHEtI/SmxsTD_ASZI/AAAAAAAAAQM/AFmxXe1Te5A/s400/NationalHealthCareLetter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362780331034298770" /></a><br />I really don't have anything to add to these. Enjoy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-47164285913743443392009-07-24T08:56:00.002-05:002009-07-24T09:04:35.697-05:00Peephole tapes and tribal societyErin Andrews, a reporter for ESPN, was <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jJn12Ca4AkE3MNS58VcBmMkPiJ7AD99J4LLG4">filmed without her permission</a> through some sort of hotel room peephole and the footage inevitably appeared on the Web. The peephole tape obviously raises all sorts of issues about privacy and sex, and most of the attention has been focused on the widespread objectification of Andrews among sports fans and others.<br /><br />I wonder if part of the problem with these sorts of sexual privacy breeches is not our over-sexed media culture, but our prudishness? I'm not speaking individually here — without question individuals have a right to privacy that extends to their bodies. But as a culture, we can barely accept the likes of breastfeeding in public because female nipples are so secreted away that the mere thought of them is sexualized by enough people to make it an issue.<br /><br />At this point, it is fairly incontrovertible among the sane that prohibition fails. When you make something illegal (or inaccessible) you increase the desire to get it, and increase the thrill of trying. If nudity were just a part of public life — not in the service of advertising or for porn, just something one sees regularly — wouldn't the reward for "catching" someone naked diminish? Put another way: do you think that members of tribal society who wear little clothing find the mere sight of a naked person shocking and arousing? Are they constantly in a state of sexual frustration because of all the bodies on display? I suspect not. But the example of these mostly-nude societies demonstrates that attitudes towards the display of the body are malleable.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I can't think of any feasible way to demystify nudity. It's something that just has to happen naturally, I suppose. But if it did, not only would it reduce the demand for privacy invasion, it would reduce the damage done by whatever tom-peepery still occurred.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-8459663511559530222009-07-22T07:31:00.003-05:002009-07-22T07:50:03.252-05:00Public system, private optionWhen I have CNN on for background noise, as I've been known to do, I always find myself catching those anti-public option health care commercials. You know the ones I'm talking about. They are usually paid for by <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Conservatives_for_Patients_Rights">Conservatives for Patients Rights</a> and talk about "government bureaucrats" coming between you and your doctor. Yet, strangely, they don't mention the health insurance companies coming between you and your doctor. It's almost like these conservatives are a proxy for those companies or something. I would have never guessed such a thing was poss — bwahaha! OK, I couldn't keep a straight face anymore.<br /><br />I still find myself in shock when conservative pundits talk about how a public option for health care is going to hurt people because these beneficent health insurance companies (operating in the magical free market that is supposed to optimize prices) won't be able to compete with the federal government. These are the same conservatives who say the government can't even find a cheap way out of a wet paper bag, but somehow, for health care, they will be lean and efficient.<br /><br />I am against a public option. What I want is a public system with a private option. I want everyone (even them darned illegals) to have free health care automatically, with the option to get super-duper insurance if you want it — but since "health care" includes everything required for health, there wouldn't be anything left to super-duper insure.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-77426263078029592112009-07-18T08:01:00.003-05:002009-07-18T08:23:20.438-05:00Practical ethicsI read philosophy and political philosophy for at least an hour a day. I'm not kidding. In addition to books and the invaluable <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/">Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a>, I often run Google searches for terms or people of interest with "filetype:pdf" so I can read all of the papers, articles, and dissertations available online. One day it'll be "responsibility-catering prioritarianism." The next it'll be "Philippa Foot." I read a lot.<br /><br />The biggest lesson I've learned is that most ethical models make a lot of sense, while simultaneously being subject to compromising flaws. Utilitarianism and other forms of <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/">consequentialism</a> capture something that almost everyone intuitively agrees with: you should do what's best. <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/">Kant</a> and other <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/">deontological</a> theorists capture another something almost everyone agrees with: we have duties to one another beyond the "greatest good." Contractualism, be it <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/">Rawlsian</a> or <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism/">Scanlonian</a>, is built on the insight that we are social beings and must justify our actions to one another. The various species of <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/">virtue ethics</a> confront the question that we've all asked ourselves: how do I be a good person? Even so-called "ethical" <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/">egoism</a> arises from an innocuous premise that we seek our own well-being.<br /><br />But none of these theories is compatible with each other absent tremendous mental acrobatics. For that matter, various varieties within each theory aren't compatible with each other. Peter Singer and Brad Hooker are both consequentialists, but their accounts of what we ought to do are incredibly different.<br /><br />On top of all that, biologists and psychologists are uncovering the evolutionary history of morality. There really seems to be a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html">moral instinct</a>, derived from the psychological needs of social great apes such as humans. We have instinctive urges to, say, not harm each other under normal circumstances, to reciprocate when someone helps us, to help others, and so on.<br /><br />It seems to me that the major moral theories are constructed by instinctively feeling one of these urges and running with it to the exclusion of all the others. Utilitarians feel the instinct to promote the general welfare and declare the general welfare is the supreme good — all the other instincts either service this good or are mistaken. Contractualists feel the instinct to reciprocate and declare mutual agreement the basis for morality — the general welfare is merely a side effect.<br /><br />The reason most people don't give philosophy much thought is precisely because most people just go with their gut. We all have a commonsense morality already, and while it can be led astray by experience and culture (see also: the evil of religion), it's good enough most of the time without resorting the lexical rules and utilitarian calculus and so on. Obviously, I wouldn't spend so much of my free time reading about this stuff if I didn't find it both interesting and important, but it must be put into perspective.<br /><br />As it turns out, there is already a moral theory that does a fairly credible job of capturing all of our instincts and even our decision-making process. Unfortunately, it is general enough that, while influential, it is largely rejected by professionals in ethics. This is the pluralistic intuitionism of WD Ross.<br /><br />Ross holds that there are <span style="font-style:italic;">prima facie</span> duties that we have towards others. If there is only one duty in a situation, it is our duty proper and we ought to do it. If there are more than one duty in a situation, the more stringent becomes our duty proper that we ought to do. What makes Ross's duties different from, say, Kantian duties, is that Ross makes no claim to an overarching principle from which duties can be derived and identified. Ross says that <span style="font-style:italic;">prima facie</span> duties are just self-evident, and deciding between them is done simply through the application of moral judgment. Duties are reasons that inform our actions; they are the justifications we might use to explain why we think what we did was right. To Ross, a moral theory should fit the facts as they are, even if it isn't a tidy little package. He compares ignoring our (fully-considered, reflective) intuitions because they conflict with a specific moral theory to refusing to enjoy something beautiful because it conflicts with some theory of aesthetics.<br /><br />You can see why philosophers aren't happy to embrace this idea.<br /><br />But one has to see the parallel between <span style="font-style:italic;">prima facie</span> duties and moral instincts. Ross's canonical list of duties (he says there may be more) includes: fidelity, reparation, gratitude, non-maleficence, justice, beneficence, and self-improvement. These are, remarkably, pretty much the sorts of things one would expect to evolve as aids to group cohesion among a young species of big-headed apes.<br /><br />I think that Ross, ultimately, is right. I disagree with him that morality is part of the "fundamental nature of the universe" in the way that geometry is, but in terms of what morality is on the ground, I think that the idea of potentially conflicting <span style="font-style:italic;">prima facie</span> duties that are resolved by making a judgment call is correct.<br /><br />That doesn't mean I think utilitarians and deontologists and the rest are wasting their time. To the contrary! I think what they do is crucial in unpacking our moral judgments, and I think studying them is part of the duty to self-improvement — the instinct the virtue ethicists latched onto and ran with. It is only by understanding how and why we make choices that we can make them well.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-18565007967239677392009-07-11T08:20:00.005-05:002009-07-11T08:32:02.063-05:00Scientists and animalsThe Pew Research Center has <a href="http://people-press.org/report/528/">a report on the public's view of science</a>, which includes comparisons between the public's and scientists' views on various issues such as politics, religion, climate change, and evolution. It's fascinating reading, and it's interesting to me that when asked which groups contribute "a lot" to society's well-being, scientists are rated above doctors, engineers, and clergy, below only teachers and members of the military.<br /><br />Examining my own beliefs, I find myself, in cases where opinion differs significantly between the public and scientists, agreeing with the scientists in every single case but one: nonhuman animal experimentation. While only 52% of the public supports the use of animals in scientific research, a whopping 93% of scientists support this use. Why?<br /><br />I've got a few ideas.<br /><br />First, some proportion of scientists are obviously the ones doing the research, so it would be rather unlikely they oppose it. But even among those who aren't, I've noticed a certain camaraderie among scientists, and a general sense that each discipline tends to trust the other disciplines to know what they're doing. So while not every scientist experiments on animals by a long shot, they assume that those biologists and others who do are doing so for a good reason.<br /><br />Second, and this is pure guesswork, I would imagine scientists tend towards a vague utilitarianism as a moral philosophy to a greater extent than the general public. This makes sense, as utilitarianism is a very logical and attractive stance on the surface. Scientists tend to avoid the religion-based morality that a large portion of the public follows. In seeking to maximize the aggregate good, utilitarianism removes hard rules that might seem arbitrary or even based in religious-thinking. If scientists are convinced of the import of animal research, then it makes a certain utilitarian sense to sacrifice these animals for the greater good.<br /><br />Ironically, it is science that leads me to oppose the use of animals in scientific research. Science has consistently demonstrated the capacity of many animals to suffer. That animals are similar to us is in fact the essential basis of most biomedical research. The only question is: can causing suffering be justified?<br /><br />Without applying my own moral reasoning to the question, I want to point out that there is good reason to reject the use of animals in research following from two simple axioms that I would think most people share:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">We ought not to cause preventable suffering.<br />We ought to treat like cases alike.</span><br /><br />Animal researchers claim that animal experimentation is necessary because it allows important, often lifesaving medical progress. I am not the sort of animal rightist who is going to deny that animal research achieves these goals. Scientists know better than I do the implications and results of their research. But I will deny that this fact alone makes the research justifiable.<br /><br />Suppose that, for some reason, animals were unavailable for research. Would any animal researcher then support using orphaned, severely mentally-disabled children for necessary medical research? I am not trying to be ridiculous here, my example is very specific — the children are orphaned, so there is nobody else affected by any decision; they are mentally-disabled and so will not ever be autonomous and capable of consent in the sense that adult humans are. Given that humans are animals, these children are similar to animals used in research in every way that could be morally significant.<br /><br />I think using these children in research would still be wrong, because they are still due respectful treatment which, at the very least, entails not causing them suffering and not killing them. I am certain that most scientists would agree that we should not use these children, no matter how necessary the research in question. So how do they justify using animals? If we treat like cases alike, and there is no morally significant sense in which these children and animals are not alike, then we must treat them equally.<br /><br />The only difference between animals and humans of comparable mental development is species membership. And drawing moral lines based on a classification scheme, rather than on the actual characteristics of the things being compared, is arbitrary and irrational. Parsimony suggests that if two animals are similar in mental capacity and ability to suffer, we ought to treat them similarly, and the fact that one is a member of <span style="font-style:italic;">Homo sapiens</span> is irrelevant. The good that might come from harming any of these animals cannot be used to justify their suffering.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-61802928861082601492009-07-08T16:33:00.004-05:002009-07-08T16:52:40.782-05:00One more bit on libertarianismAn often overlooked feature of libtertarianism, stemming from the principles of self-ownership, absolute property rights, and a free-market, is that people in Libertopia can legally sell themselves into slavery. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick">Robert Nozick</a>, super-libertarian philosopher, thinks this is as it should be. One of my favorite illustrations of the idiocy of libertarianism comes from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pogge">Thomas Pogge</a>:<blockquote>The following trialogue is then a realistic scenario within Nozick's libertarian society. A police officer comes upon a couple struggling with each other, the man [a doctor] evidently trying to rape the woman.<br /><br />Woman: Please, sir, please help me.<br /><br />Officer (<span style="font-style:italic;">to Man</span>): Hey, you, let her go at once!<br /><br />Man: Don't get involved.<br /><br />Officer: I must. You are violating this woman's right not to be assaulted.<br /><br />Man: No, I'm not. She is my slave. Here are the papers, signed by herself.<br /><br />Woman: But I was coerced into signing. He said he would not treat my father [for a deadly medical condition] if I refused to sign.<br /><br />Officer: That's not coercion but at most duress. He was at liberty not to treat your father or to ask compensation for treating him.<br /><br />Woman: But my father is dead!<br /><br />Man: The contract says only that I would try to save him, and I did.<br /><br />Officer (<span style="font-style:italic;">to Woman</span>): I'm sorry, ma'am, but I cannot help you.<br /><br />Man: But you could help me in forcing her to fulfill her contractual obligations. She has already scratched me. See if you can tie her hands.<br /><br />(<span style="font-style:italic;">Officer ties Woman's hands, she screams for help as she is being raped. ...</span>)<br /><br />Man (<span style="font-style:italic;">to Officer</span>): I'm glad the police are protecting citizens' rights. Isn't she great? My sons will have lots of fun with her when I bring her home.</blockquote>I'm not saying this would happen in a libertarian society, of course. Maybe people would be more reluctant to sell themselves into slavery, even if they were destitute and desperate. Maybe slaveowners wouldn't be particularly cruel to their human property. All I'm saying is, from the point of view of libertarianism, this is the fair and deserved result of self-ownership and free-market transactions. This is libertarian justice.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2685698485860402737.post-36782424284517819402009-07-07T09:23:00.004-05:002009-07-07T09:45:54.319-05:00Calling bullshit on Bullshit!I was watching some <i><a href="http://sho.com/ptbs">Penn & Teller: Bullshit!</a></i> yesterday. I like Penn and Teller. I liked their show in Las Vegas. I enjoy <i>Bullshit!</i> But there's always that point in nearly every episode (and in some cases, for whole episodes) where Penn starts blathering on about some insane libertarian nonsense. So I'm calling bullshit on <i>Bullshit!</i> — at least the libertarian parts.<br /><br />The problem with libertarianism is in its impoverished and wholly inconsistent definition of liberty. Liberty is one of my personal key values. I understand liberty as substantive freedom to do what one wants to do. Liberty is, in other words, the ability to live the kind of life one wants to live.<br /><br />But libertarians have a much narrower definition of liberty: freedom from coercion. This manifests itself most commonly in their frothy-mouthed hatred of laws, taxes, and government. But only sometimes.<br /><br />Libertarians absolutely <i>love</i> for the government to coerce people with laws and force them into not touching their property. And that brings us to the first great heap of libertarian bullshit: property itself is the greatest infringement upon liberty in the world. If a book is my property, I am restricting the liberty of a full 6.7 billion people to read it. Even if I'm not reading it myself. Even if it's just sitting in a closet. No other person has any liberty to read my book, period.<br /><br />I don't think property is bad or wrong, but I also don't fetishize it. Property is a social norm, something we invented and that only exists because we collectively continue to agree to recognize it. But libertarians can't admit that, because that opens up the possibility that we could invent and collectively agree to recognize all sort of other ideas they hate, like egalitarian access to wealth or (shudder) socialized medicine! So libertarians have invented their own property mythology, involving a magical empty planet where rugged individualists carve up everything among themselves which magically gives them the right to whatever they grabbed and all redistributions that follow happen through the magic of fair and mutually beneficial exchanges. So if you're poor, it's because you're weak and/or stupid — and that's OK. It's a whole lot of magic, even for magicians.<br /><br />This brings us to the second great heap of libertarian bullshit: they only recognize increasing or decreasing liberty when it's their own. This was evident in Penn and Teller's episode on the Americans with Disabilities Act, which horribly, horribly coerces commercial property owners to give access to disabled people. This mandate leaves no room for compassion, they say.<br /><br />Libertarians pretend to want to maximize liberty, but they don't. They are willing to accept the idea that governments coercing the recognition of property rights (and therefore reducing liberty) increases liberty, but unable to accept that governments coercing things like accessibility <i>also</i> increases liberty — the liberty of disabled people to live the lives they want to live. "Waaah, wahhh," whines Penn, "it'll cost a bunch of taxpayers' money!" But he also says the state should stick to courts, police, defense, and corruption. These are things that cost the taxpayers, so he isn't opposed to taxation (that is, coercion) for things he believes in. He's just opposed to taxation for things he doesn't believe in.<br /><br />Penn also breaks out the tired old chestnut that if a store, say, doesn't provide disabled access it will lose customers to those that do. Which brings us to great libertarian bullshit-heap number three: they think free markets just work on their own. Note that he talks about this market correction shortly after mentioning that the number of people who <i>really</i> need disabled access is around 5 million out of the 300 million people in the country. The idea that any reasonable proportion of store owners is going to voluntarily retrofit their property at any expense to attract the 1.6% of potential customers who might need it is absurd.<br /><br />And indeed, if the market truly catered to disabled people, we wouldn't have needed the Americans with Disabilities Act in the first place. We had centuries to let market forces work their invisible hand magic. But libertarians don't care about that. It is more important for a libertarian to not infringe upon property rights than to allow everyone fair access (or liberty) to the basic privileges of life, such as mobility and community. It doesn't matter than the government and society as a whole establishes the rules for the marketplace and therefore is perfectly justified in making requirements for participating in it. Property is sacred and markets always work.<br /><br />Penn and Teller's dumbfuck market fundamentalism also came into full effect in their episode on Wal-Mart. They had plenty of valid criticisms of the anti-Wal-Mart movement, most notably when they pointed out the disgusting elitism and classism of some supporters. But then they pulled the wool over our eyes.<br /><br />They discussed Penn's home town, which fought off a Wal-Mart but found itself sucked dry as people commuted to nearby towns to patronize their Wal-Marts. The Penn and Teller solution: build the Wal-Mart, since people obviously want it. My solution: don't let Wal-Mart artificially lower prices so that any competition is fair. They interview a Wal-Mart employee who is thankful for the store and her wage. And of course she is. As she revealingly says, she needed the money and it was the only job she could find. Libertarians love to pretend that employment is free and fair. Nobody is coerced into taking any given job and everyone involved benefits.<br /><br />But coercion doesn't only come from people or laws. <i>Necessity</i> coerces countless people into doing all sorts of things they wouldn't otherwise. The idea that an employer like Wal-Mart (2009 revenue: $404 billion) and an unemployed person facing the potential for homelessness and starvation come to the bargaining table on fair terms is bullshit. Yes, the employee will accept very low wages. That doesn't mean they weren't coerced. They lacked the liberty to choose their employment and even to negotiate their wage. Fucking idiot libertarians complain when the government takes 25% of their paycheck, but didn't complain when their company's owner took 60% of the money they made the company before even writing the check — because markets always work, the company is the owner's property, and they made a fair contract.<br /><br />Libertarians just don't seem to get why society exists: mutual advantage. People are better off working together, in both the evolutionary sense and in the modern world. To a libertarian, the <i>mutual</i> part of mutual advantage is utterly lost. By privileging a narrow and wildly inconsistent form of liberty and property above all other values, they skew the idea of society into something that doesn't operate for mutual advantage, but for the wealth of the strong, smart, or lucky. And wealth is just a token for liberty to do the things it buys, so the result of libertarianism is the reduction of liberty for the masses and the ability for the few to do virtually anything they want. Wealth inequality <i>is</i> liberty inequality — a true libertarian would be, wait for it, a <i>socialist</i>.<br /><br />So libertarianism is bullshit. Penn and Teller should stick to Jesus and colonics. I'll be watching, anyway.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0