> most fuckups that ever happened
How about not blatantly ignoring all the human misery caused by failed extreme free market experiments, such as Pinochet's Chile and 1990's Russia?
How about not blatantly ignoring all the human misery caused by failed extreme free market experiments, such as Pinochet's Chile and 1990's Russia?
So if 1990s Russia and Pinochet's Chile are examples of extreme free market experiments, I'd take the human misery they cause over the human misery of extreme no-market experiments any day.
Anyway, I don't think anyone excuses dictatorships in this thread.
What do you mean?
IIRC, this is not true. It's a contributor, certainly, but Russian life expectancy is substantially lower than other nations with similar alcohol consumption.
However, that doesn't say anything about validity of ideas of free market or communism. What does say a lot though is that some free market proponents have the need to advocate Pinochet.
That's not what ctlby said. Nor is it a reasonable interpretation of his/her words.
In other words, if someone is killing for individual reasons, he is not following any philosophy, because he doesn't need any; he's just crazy or psychopath. Killing for philosophical reasons always happens to protect some social order (albeit sometimes fictional).
If you don't agree, there is a simple solution. Just provide an example of philosophy that causes killing of people and is not in fact collectivist (by any definition you choose, it doesn't matter very much, and that's why I was able to do the bold claim I did).
Or to put it even simpler, it's contradictory to kill another human to fulfil any philosophy of individual freedom.
Hitler killed because he wanted to protect Germans from Jews, Pinochet killed because communists were danger to his social order, and so on. Even Winston Smith from 1984 was willing to kill in order to replace the social system (which is the passage in the book I really like, because it's one of the places that makes it actually morally ambiguous, just like real world).
Now you argue that killing another human being for philosophical reasons is always collectivist according to your [asgard1024's] definition. That does nothing whatsoever to make the quoted statement true.
[Edit: For that matter, I see nowhere where ctlby gave his/her definition of "collectivist", nor where he/she assented to yours definition.]
To your point in this post:
You are kind of arguing a tautology. If someone expresses a moral philosophy (no matter how twisted), but they are the only one who believes it or adheres to it, they're collectivist, because they're trying to motivate other people to follow their code. But if someone doesn't express their reasons as a moral philosophy, "he's just crazy or a psychopath". You dismiss any possibility that such a person is following an inexpressed philosophy. In fact, you have pretty much defined out the possibility of there even being such a thing. From that starting point, you argue that your position is correct, but in fact it was contained in your starting assumptions, so your argument is of no value.
What I said is true of (almost) any definition of "collectivist", including ctlby's.
> You dismiss any possibility that such a person is following an inexpressed philosophy.
Yes, because any inexpressed philosophies were not subject of the discussion; we can't assign killings due to inexpressed philosophies to any philosophy, since we don't know which one.
I mean, show me one non-collectivist philosophy according to which is OK to kill human (except in unavoidable self-defense). There is no such thing - all of them are collectivist.
Individualistic (as opposed to ethical or utilitarian) hedonism: if it brings the holder of that philosophy net pleasure to do a thing, it is right to do it.
Pretty much the most anti-collectivist philosophy possible.
I would like to see an example that would be useful to classify social systems, as ctlby attempted to do. But I don't see it. Once you put "social system" into it, killing happens for collectivist reason.
No, your definition of collectivist is so expansive, everything fits. My reply is trying to communicate something to you, therefore my reply is collectivist (or else I don't understand your definition). But presuming I do understand, I reject your definition as being so broad as to be meaningless.
> I mean, show me one non-collectivist philosophy according to which is OK to kill human (except in unavoidable self-defense). There is no such thing - all of them are collectivist.
The Marquis de Sade had a philosophy. Since there is no God, whatever is, is right. And, hey, nature made man stronger than woman. Therefore man has the right to do to woman whatever he wants. I can't find any sane way to describe that philosophy as "collectivist", but de Sade lived out his philosophy to the extent of torturing women. (To my knowledge, he did not actually kill any, but certainly he was free to do so, according to his philosophy.)
Now, I will agree with you that collectivist philosophies (conventionally defined) are much more likely to say that it is OK to kill an individual, because those philosophies start from the group being important, and the individual not. (That's kind of the definition of collective.) From that starting point, it's really hard to find a way to stop short of "It's OK to kill an individual if it's for the good of the group."
Life is not black and white. The hardline communists were awful. That doesn't mean that hardline capitalists can't also be awful. Maybe they're less awful, in a "rather be kicked in the face than shot in the head" kind of way, but that's not a positive recommendation.
This is not a rational historical comparison (if such a thing can really exist), these are just random numbers shouted in a pub argument, "My guy killed less people than your guy!"...
You're confused. They're examples of free market experiments, however the Pinochet's deaths had nothing to do with the free market and all with his political power.
If you want to see deaths caused by free market, look at e.g. homeless people who freeze on the street during winter.
Chile and the Chicago Boys is a bit disingenuous to regard as outright failure, it's a controversial subject. Keep in mind that the Chicago School are a unique economic position, but they've been oversimplified to "free market" in common discourse.
If you want sources, just scan Brad Delong's blog; there's a decent chance he's making this point at any given time. There was a wonderful example I can't take time time to dig up right now in which an (Chicago-aligned) economist published a paper with outright deceptive priors and when confronted, explained that his goal was to promote an argument, and it was the reader's problem to make counter arguments. You can call that a lot of things, but academic inquiry isn't one of them.
I know this was a typo and you meant "free market", but it was a hilarious typo.
Mariana Mazzucato's work on The Entrepreneurial State makes frequent appearances in these parts, typically in the shape of references to internet startups not really being innovative, because the internet/GPS/touch screens/Siri have roots in government research programs.
All the time: very often advocates of government action tend to predict an association between specific government actions and specific results, rather than ascribing bad results to "government" generally and good results to "the market", drawing both bad and good results from scenarios where government regulation shapes the market; while anti-government advocates like to pretend that there is a symmetry between their non-specific advocacy against government and some opposing advocacy for government, that's not actually the case.
I have literally never seen that kind of analysis of a government program, still less a group of them. But it's essential, so that we can tell whether the predictions of what the next program will do have any basis in reality.
The notion of blaming the ills of 1991-1999 on free markets is absurd. Were free markets going to magically turn the nation of Stalin right around into a bastion of prosperity? Impossible.
You know what turned Russia's condition around? A debased US dollar and the high oil prices it caused. It wasn't Putin or central planning.
And as for Pinochet: a 17 year, violent military dictatorship in a free market. If that's your political system, what you inherently cannot have is a free market. The two are mutually exclusive.