The Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom) | Hacker News Reader

The Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom)

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41 pointsvegai18 comments

It mentions the Libertarian over-use of 1984. I've always found this especially ironic, because Orwell was a Marxist who fought with the POUM in the Spanish Civil War. Granted, a Libertarian Marxist, but I rarely see the types this FAQ is addressed towards willing to make the distinction.

And this is unrelated, but I always like to add a nod towards it, if you enjoy Orwell's work, pick up Homage to Catalonia. One of my favorite books, and even if you disagree completely with Orwell's politics, his writing and storytelling is extraordinary.

Libertarianism: the belief that the ideal form of government for a small village scales to societies of hundreds of millions of people.

The problem with articles like this is that they're too patronising to be an engagement with the opposition, and they aren't charitable enough to present the opposing arguments in their strongest form. I say this as someone who mostly agrees with the author.

Also, why is it missing all the obvious case studies in favour of focusing on American ones? If you're going to talk about government healthcare intervention, please please please mention the UK's national health service.

I didn't find it patronizing in the least. As to whether it presented the opposing arguments in their strongest form, that's hard for me to say as I strongly agree with the article and generally find the pro-libertarian arguments to be weak.

As to why the UK national health service isn't discussed - why should it be? The article is pretty specific that it's not intended to demonstrate all statism all the time is perfect, but that some statism some of the time is beneficial.

The fact that a person who agrees with arguments didn't feel personally patronised isn't exactly shocking... Think about the structure and arguments used here, things like "You lose." and "Tricked you.". There wasn't any real need for the childish hostility against some imagined libertarian

If you don't understand why the NHS is relevant to the topic of government healthcare intervention (which is discussed at length) then I'm not sure?

But to other people, libertarianism means that politics must be seen solely as a cosmic battle between the State and the Individual, and that the only solution to this dichotomy is to oppose the State in all its actions.

That is the most extreme definition of Libertarianism that I have ever heard. Most Libertarians that I know are practical. They're not anarchists. Their primary desire is to reduce the size and scope of government.

This isn't actually anti-libertarian or even anti-anarchist. It is written for a peculiar type of person who likes to call himself a libertarian and who hates taxes so much that he doesn't want to pay for government services he doesn't use. Unfortunately, the author already knows that this type of person is more likely to dismiss his FAQ as the drivel of some Soviet Commie-Nazi rather than read it.

The zes and zirs kept getting in the way in this document and caused me to take it less seriously.

Yeah, I prefer the Spivak pronouns myself.

I can't understand people, who reject Non-Aggression Axiom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle).

In my case, I reject armchair deontological ethics in favor of ethics that have at least some grounding in science and empirical examination of the world, so the non-aggression axiom fails for the same reason that Kant's ethics and Christian ethics fail.

Can you explain when "ethics that have at least some grounding in science and empirical examination of the world" conflict with the non-agression axiom?

They may or may not conflict; I just reject it as an axiom. It's possible that there are good reasons to support a society structured around a non-aggression principle, though.

(I don't have a fully worked-out ethical theory, but I'm intrigued by the stuff Sam Harris is doing to try to reduce the gap between ethical theorizing and science.)

Oh, that seems like a pretty reasonable approach to things. Thanks.

Can you give examples of ethics that have some grounding in science and empirical examination of the world?

From a consequentialist viewpoint, any deontological rule is just a heuristic, useful in many contexts at least as a first approximation, but decidedly not without exceptions. Anyone who has really gotten their hands dirty delving into the human morality should have realized that it is way too complex a beast to be able to be reduced to simply categorical rules.

Or, in other words, "for all complex problems, there is an answer that is simple, easy, and wrong."

There are wrong answers available for anything. That does not mean there are not answers that are simple, easy, and right. You might find Epstein's Simple Rules for a Complex World worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Rules-Complex-Richard-Epstein/d...

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