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Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to sit back and realize that the libertarians were right all along. On security theater and the bailout economy.

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But being right about the problems isn't automatically the same as being right about the solutions...

Being right about the problems is the first step. I would argue providing a bad solution for a problem you know exists is better than providing a good solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

Problem: Hamburger buns aren't noticeable enough. Solution: A cheeseburger with a lightbulb inside.

Problem: Some humans are currently suffering. Solution: Destroy the universe.

It's time for another good idea, bad idea.

Headache? Amputate! It will certainly stop the headache.

> I would argue providing a bad solution for a problem you know exists is better than providing a good solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

I would argue that details matter here and there is no valid generalization here. Neither of these are good things, but which is worse will depend on the details, and specifically how you define "good solution" and "bad solution".

And I would disagree.

Doing the wrong thing for the right reason seems in general to be worse, at least in terms of outcome, than doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Can you give any examples of where you think this isn't the case?

My point was more along the lines of it is wasting time. If you do something bad for the right reason and then later find out it is bad then at least you know that solution was the issue and you can try a different solution next time.

If you do something right for the wrong reason then you have absolutely nothing to learn from and have made no progress at all at finding the correct solution for the problem at hand.

But you could well have done a huge amount of damage before you realise it's the wrong solution. History is full of examples of identifying a problem and putting an entirely inappropriate, and damaging, "solutions"

- the Russian monarchy is bad, let's put a "Communist" dictatorship in place - 1930's German farms can't support its people, let's invade Eastern Europe - modern Britain can't afford to pay for all of the hospitals/schools it needs right now, let's pay the private sector to build them for us, keep paying for them for the next 20 years and then find out that we own none of it - terrorists sometimes communicate on the internet, let's bug everyone's conversations

etc, etc.

But sometimes it is.

Hence the word "automatically".

Criticism of the current state of affairs did not uniquely come from libertarians. Plenty of conservatives and liberals were quite concerned about security theater.

But they have no principled justification to refute it. So they're not helping the situation. They don't have any intellectual firepower.

(The libertarian are also not perfect on these grounds, but perhaps somewhat better.)

What do you mean? Non-libertarians had no justification to refute those things?

Much of that revolves around the issue of whether rights are innate to being human, or are a construction of society.

Hmmm. But how does either stance invalidate or even weaken my "intellectual firepower"?

Well, neither of those stances can be traced back to reality, so neither is correct, so by definition, you have no "intellectual firepower" if you use either one. :)

"You guys should actually follow that Constitution you swore to uphold" is a perfectly valid justification coming from a non-libertarian.

No, and that is exactly my point. You can't invoke the Constitution on your pet issues, but ignore it on other issues, which is what liberals and conservatives have been doing for a long time [1]. I mean, you can, but it's not intellectually convincing. And that's the very definition of a non-principled approach.

]1] At least, that's how I see it; I don't want to try to defend that claim in detail right now. Anyway, I'm not sure it's right to go only back to the Constitution and not further back, to more basic points about liberty. Liberals and conservatives do not support individual freedom, so they have no fundamental ideas to point to; it's just "I want this on this issue, but that on that issue."

Libertarianism is not synonymous with "follows the Constitution", and neither liberalism nor conservatism necessarily implies going against the Constitution.

Obviously, you seem to see things differently, but you are wrong, and having such a narrow view of other people will destroy your ability to understand them or have a productive conversation with them.

> , and neither liberalism nor conservatism necessarily implies going against the Constitution.

I'm not sure I agree with you, but I acknowledge that it's a complex issue and not one I'm interested in trying to hash out on HN. (Which I already stated in my prior comment.)

> Obviously, you seem to see things differently, but you are wrong, and having such a narrow view of other people will destroy your ability to understand them or have a productive conversation with them.

I think that's a really unjustified thing for you to say. Having different opinions about the Constitution does not "destroy my ability to understand [others] or have a productive conversation with them." No offense, but that's a really ridiculous thing to claim.

You were dismissive and insulting, saying that I and the vast majority of others have no principles. I think it was completely justified, because you demonstrated what I was claiming right in the message I was replying to.

> You were dismissive and insulting, saying that I and the vast majority of others have no principles.

I didn't say you have no principles, I said you didn't have a principled defense of the Constitution (or something like that).

So, does you just assume everyone who disagrees with you on politics is automatically insulting? People constantly argue about Constitutional issues and that's perfectly acceptable political talk. If you find that insulting, you're going to have a problem.

> you demonstrated what I was claiming right in the message I was replying to.

I'm honestly completely baffled. I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't know why you think I was "dismissive."

No, I don't just assume everyone who disagrees with me on politics is automatically insulting. I assume that people who insult me are automatically insulting.

I realize you don't know what I'm talking about. You're so out of touch that you can't even see how brash and irritating you're being here.

Don't accuse me of ignoring the Constitution sometimes and leaning on it other times when you don't even know what my positions are. Especially don't accuse me of that, then say you don't feel like defending the position. Don't accuse me of having "no fundamental ideas to point to" when you don't even know what my positions are.

If you don't understand what's wrong with stating "Liberals and conservatives do not support individual freedom, so they have no fundamental ideas to point to", then you're a lost cause. You don't understand others, you don't want to, and because of that, you're going to have zero success in arguing for your ideas.

Do you actually want to convince other people of the merits of your views? If so, you need to change your tactics, big-time. If not, well, the internet has plenty of room for argumentative jerks.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I was just chatting.

You chose to take my position on liberals and conservatives, which disagrees with yours, very, very personally, rather than just saying, "He disagrees with me on politics," which would have been a more appropriate response.

And you've said all kinds of things that clearly are abusive to me... I'm brash, I'm irritating, I'm unable to have a conversation with others...

If you took my disagreement with you over politics as personally insulting, how do you think I'm supposed to take your actual personal insults?

> Don't accuse me of ignoring the Constitution sometimes and leaning on it other times when you don't even know what my positions are.

I am accusing liberals and conservatives of that. So what? That is not personally insulting, rude, or anything else. No reason to get upset.

I don't want to continue this conversation.

"I am accusing liberals and conservatives of that. So what? That is not personally insulting, rude, or anything else."

Because I couldn't possibly be one of those? Because my friends and family couldn't possibly be liberals and conservatives?

95% of the country fits into the "liberals and conservatives" slot. How can you not consider that to be personally insulting?

> How can you not consider that to be personally insulting?

Because I don't expect people to be insulted when I express disagreement with them about politics.

Being able to disagree about politics is absolutely crucial for a functioning democracy.

But a principled approach that relies completely on the Constitution is not very intellectually satisfying either. Libertarians or anyone else that relies completely on constitutionality has to accept the vast majority of the actions of government, since the Constitution grants the government the authority to determine the constitutionality of its own laws and actions. If the Supreme Court says that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to assault weapons, then that is constitutional, at least until the legislature changes the laws, at which point the Supreme Court can again interpret it to mean something else, ad infinitum (or until tricks like judicial stripping get used). They have to accept everything that is or ever was constitutional, like slavery, prohibition, searches and seizures when there is a warrant issued for any reason, direct election of senators, etc. Many "strict constitutionalists" avoid this by appealing to the intent of the forefathers, but then your entire "principled approach" is based on highly subjective interpretations, usually of extra-constitutional writings by various forefathers.

To a libertarian, the Constitution is not a refuge since they're pretty much required to consider it an overreach.

Please, as a progressive which are my pet issues?

I think you're aggregating people in a way that's dishonest.

> I think you're aggregating people in a way that's dishonest.

That's a ridiculous claim. Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you about something is automatically dishonest?

> Please, as a progressive which are my pet issues?

I don't know, but if you're a "progressive," you by definition want to coerce me (and believe me, that's not going to help me any.. I want to live my life under my own judgment).

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