WIAN posts a
discussion of authority claiming that liberals obviously love authority/regulation: See NYC or Portland. This misunderstands the Aretaevian position. In 1 paragraph or less:
For all people, authority imposed upon their ingroup is a massive psychological bad that they will avoid, at notable cost to self. Furthermore, it is much more bad psychologically, to be subject to authority, than it is good to be the wielder of said authority. However, it is not the only bad, so there will be tradeoffs. Authority over the outgroup is morally irrelevant to most folks, and therefore subsidiary to almost all other interests.
For rich liberal New Yorkers...NYC rules don't apply to them. They are a form of class warfare.
- They're rich, and thus all the zoning/environmental laws serve only to impact poor proles.
- Drug laws are an effective way to catch poor proles but not to impact rich people, with differential sentencing.
- Crime is committed effectively only by poor people, and on folks living in poor neighborhoods.
- Environmental laws on individuals (recycling, car emissions) serve to force poor people who can't afford it to live by the rules the rich person was already living by voluntarily.
- 90-99% of laws in NYC have no impact whatsoever on a rich liberal.
- NYC is a great example of how folks hate authority.
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2 comments:
I think you are misunderstanding me. Obviously people are more on board with authority whose rules are a small cost to them than where the rules are a big cost.
My point is that New Yorkers are, all the time, forced to do things that would be repugnant in terms of independence to a hunter-gatherer tribesman. Firstly, it's just not true that all of NYC's residents are happy with all the laws - but they are willing to take the bitter with the sweet. And from the point of view of independence, even worse than their accession to disliked laws is their submission to the authority's power to determine those laws. If a policeman in NYC pulls you over while driving, you don't question his right to do so, you pull over to the side of the road. He will probably be rude to you and may well flex his authority. The New Yorker will passively accept this. The hunter-gatherer would not.
If people really hated authority, they would choose their neighbourhoods on how pleasant and low-key the police were.
It does indeed seem as if we are misunderstanding each other.
It looks to me that New Yorkers are forced to do some things...but that the tribe of rich New Yorkers count it as a small price for keeping the tribe of poor new yorkers in line. Poor New Yorkers are outgroup/other...and the oppressive laws are to protect the rich from the poor.
Autonomy is not the ONLY value, it's just a high value. Ingroup/Outgroup is also a high value for 90% of the population. Trading 3% autonomy in order to reduce outgroup autonomy by 50% is often counted a good deal by folks.
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