Left-libertarian: someone who is sort-of opposed to the state, but hates the idea of having to work for a living even morebut inaccurate.
I insist that there remains a simple 4-pole explanation of politics:
Conservative/Rightist: Preserve what is good in what we have by not breaking it. Capiche?
Liberal/Leftist: Protect the poor and weak from systems that screw them.
Libertarian: Use/threat of violence is bad/wrong/evil & governments do not deserve special moral status.
Elite: Do things my way.
Left- or Bleeding Heart Libertarian. The government is not the only player using force (RIAA?)/claiming special privileged status and the government is the primary system screwing the poor/weak.
1950's libertarian:
Hayekian/Friedmanite (Milton): Left libertarian + your planned extra change won't work the way you want it to.
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26 comments:
Thanks for the sharing buddy! I have fun......
Sample Analysis
It still comes down to defining terms.
What is the good we should protect?
Who are the weak?
I'm told by others that what Aretea calls gov't violence is really collective enforcement of the social contract.
RSF,
1. The weak are those who are being systematically screwed by the system in place. Currently, it looks an awful lot like the average black male is getting screwed the most. How they're getting screwed, and what could be done to fix it is a hard problem.
2. "collective enforcement of the social contract" is a way of saying: but the violence is ok. There's no question that it's violence, and there's no question that the government is doing it.
3. All the positions have weaknesses, in that some folks disagree with the position. An awful lot of folks, for instance, don't want to help the poor and weak ("they should help themselves")...don't want to proscribe government violence, or don't want to preserve the existing structure.
My opinion: almost everyone has some affinity for ALL 3 of those friendly positions...and the whole debate is over which is more important. Some folks can't argue for preserving the existing good without undermining other positions of theirs...
update:
On a national level, the people screwed the most are the mentally ill and the black male.
On a world level, the people screwed the most are folks living in poor (african/asian)kleptocracies, or war zones. If those folks parents had been imported to america, their annual income would increase by ~50x on average, with consequent improvements in QoL. North Korea and the Sudanese genocide come to mind.
Your categories don't seem to map neocameralism very well. It is unconservative (though rightist), non-liberal (although liberally motivated IMO, and arguably liberal in the sense that it would screw its peons less than any other system), libertarian in sense of thought to reduce violence, but antilibertarian in recognizing the natural fact that sovereigns perforce have special moral status. And it is elitist (but see below).
This suggest there is either a 5th pole, or you've got one or more poles askew.
I do think your characterization of elitism could perhaps use some work. Perhaps you might make an axis for something like:
egalitarianism: everyone should have equal power/wealth/looks
Elitism is then the opposite end of that.
On a national level, the people screwed the most are the mentally ill and the black male.
What metric are we using here? The mentally ill have never faired well. I'd say they fare better now that at any time in history. Somewhat the same for Black males, but I don't find their historical plight especially onerous, all things considered.
Playing from PUA theory...no one likes a loser male...and all the losers here are males (80+% of Mentally ill, and Black males much worse off than black females).
Our societal choices leave us selecting for high-trait (Sanity, Patience, IQ, Grit, Extraversion & Conscientiousness) people. Fine. What about those folks who aren't? Some folks say: those traits are naturally good...if you don't have 'em, you deserve your shitty station.
Other folks (leftists) say: It's mostly an historical accident that these features win this decade...It's very important to be kind to those folks who happen to lose, because they don't have the decade's preferred features. Just like it is good to help out the nerds in a school setting.
You're giving off a vibe that says unless one has some kind of active success, they are living a diminished life.
If those folks parents had been imported to america, their annual income would increase by ~50x on average,
Fine if you import them onto your private property forevermore. Otherwise it is a tragedy of the commons, and you want me to have less.
neocameralism isn't a political driving force, it's a proposed political structure: different thing.
Some people may support neocameralism because they think it would help the poor and weak, some because it would stop the current degeneration in our society, some because it would give them more power, whatever.
As you point out, neocameralism doesn't line up really well with any of those motivations, which may be why it is such a minority position.
Our societal choices leave us selecting for high-trait (Sanity, Patience, IQ, Grit, Extraversion & Conscientiousness) people. Fine. What about those folks who aren't?
I'm reminded of a line from Sin City. A narrator is talking about a huge, ultraviolent bruiser: "He was just born in the wrong century. A thousand years ago they would have thrown girls like Nancy to a guy like him."
Maybe we need some sword and sorcery areas of the planet where the people whose skill sets suit such areas can thrive. Asking the question brings up the fact that there ARE areas of the planet like that. Your nearest mining town for a mild example. So maybe what we need is encouragement for such people to move.
What sort of area would suit some other personality/skill sets is left as an exercise for the reader.
RSF,
1. Objective measures are at worst unclear on the impact on you. Maybe positive...not sure.
2. I accept that you have a personal preference against foreigner imports, of at least many kinds.
3. I wasn't talking about whether we should import them...I was talking about who qualifies as weak in the modern world. Poor foreigners are especially important, because they're usually in really shitty situations 100% through no fault of their own.
4. Your response fits my model very well...You're arguing that X (tragedy of commons concern) is more important than Y (Foreigners are unjustly screwed by system). In this case, I wasn't arguing about what we should do...just explaining how folks (including me) think. It is, I hope, clear that someone who disagreed with you on the order of values (fairness to poor foreigners is MORE important than tragedy of commons concerns) would disagree with you on immigration. And that the disagreement is MOSTLY a value disagreement.
You're arguing that X (tragedy of commons concern) is more important than Y (Foreigners are unjustly screwed by system).
The problem here is that we get a debased commons and there will still be screwed foreigners. Your argument is "to save the village, we had to burn ours down."
The only real way to fix the "screwed foreigner syndrome" is to fix the foreign home land. You tell me this is unrealistic. Not so. Importing them for humanitarian reasons is a fools errand: it helps marginal numbers of people, it offers largely false hope, and it gives a safety valve for the foreign regime not to face capable critics.
RSF,
Let me rephrase your argument, then...so I'm clear that I understand.
Let us call:
p: the probability that foreginers cause a debased commons (rather than an improved one, or a neutral one).
vL: the value to Locals estimated to be lost, if there is a debased commons.
vF: the value to be gained by Foreigners by coming here.
d: the discount with which we should treat value to the foreigners as compared to value to the locals.
You're line is that
vF / d - p * vL < 0
THat's a really easy equation to make true...if you make d large enough, or vL is large enough.
I put d ~= 1 ... p pretty low (~0.1) ... and vL moderate.
Perhaps it's a difference in theory as to why their lives suck so much? I say: because the monied interests in their countries are following BBdM's correct game theory for dictators...wherein the smartest thing they can do is to impoverish their citizens.
Leonard,
I completely missed your comment in my readings...and as such didn't understand dr. pat's response....until just now.
Response:
Neocameralism is fundamentally a hyper-rightist movement. The extension of rightist preservation prefereneces is reactonary reversion approaches. "Let's go back to how it used to be because it worked then." Most rightists, however, are so rightist that even reactionary change constitutes change...and isn't likely to be supported.
Elitism has a lot of room for improvement. I seem incapable of sympathy for those folks. And by elitist, I mean the folks who run the system. I perhaps could have said elites? AFAICT, they're not part of the 3-part triangular system...and their primary motivation is to acquire more power in the center....and ALL government agents fall in that category. No sympathy at all. I think they're vampires. So...yes, I'm sure I do a poor job of describing.
But back to the main point. Neocameralism is super-rightist. thoughts?
vF: the value to be gained by Foreigners by coming here.
For the most part throughout history this has been negative: invasion, colonization, market dominant minorities. Most peoples are instinctively xenophobic. Look at Iraq: get rid of the Christians, get rid of the Jews, put the Sunnis in a ghetto and be happy with the Shia society. No foreigners need apply. Rinse and repeat, and you get 95% of the world.
With US style immigration, you have 10% of newcomers that make a positive contribution. Cheerleaders tell us that this makes it all worthwhile. I'm not so sure.
RSF,
Under one method of analysis (my current fave), there are ~2 ethics, that arise from different game theory.
Baiscally: poor people with limited resources in fixed-pie systems (like, say, Iraq, or a farm) are quite xenophobic. Honestly, it's the game theoretic correct solution to fixed-wealth systems (which are all poor).
Rich people, with expanding resources, especially folks involved in trade are quite xenophilic. And for people in the that system...it's insane not to be xenophilic.
I agree that only rich, wealth-expanding, market-based societies are non-xenophobic...but that's not what you were saying.
2. I think I may not have communicated well(?): vF is the value to the foreigners. Not the value to us generated by the foreigners.
I had read vF as value of foreigners coming here. Adjustment made.
Market oriented, growing economies have been immigration restrictive: Europe and China have magnitudes less immigration than the US.
In the long run we run out of immigrants, as the playing field levels, as things run to equilibrium. The people who can raise up the locals will then have the edge.
RSF,
1. China is crushingly poor. It should be immigration-restrictive, based on psych characteristics of very poor societies. Mexico is much richer (per capita) than china.
2. Europe is also substantially poorer than US. ALSO, Europe has much bigger social welfare programs, and you can't have (a) big social welfare and (b) big immigration. Europe chose big social welfare.
3. There's huge amounts of space before we run out of immigrants....I'm mostly just trying to explain the thought process of the leftist. HUGE value to immigrants. If you don't see large costs, then it's a no-brainer from a social organization PoV. If you do see large costs...it's a hard question.
HUGE value to immigrants.
I'd take the "HUGE" off once the accounting differences are factored in.
This is the liberal penchant for giving away other peoples' money.
Though China is poor, their growth and their wealthy areas did not get that way from immigration.
The wealth differences between us and Europe are slight, and for you to admit that one can't have unlimited immigration into a welfare state makes my point.
How has immigration made California richer? We get some contribution from a few high value immigrants, but the rest are more interested in re-creating the home of their fathers.
RSF,
The huge is on purpose...and I think available by any metric you like. A number of economists have been attempting to qualify the $ value of the institutions evolved over time in the USA...and the rule of law, roads, what historical US folks did...etc. is measured at near $1/2 Million per capita. It's worth probably close to that $1/2 Million for an immigrant to move from a poor country to here. For the very poor, who are operating on $1/day... the value to them of moving to the US is worth perhaps 25x the entire value of what they'll make (in $ equivalent) working for their whole lives. Not calling that HUGE is a rhetorical trick designed to minimize the value to the immigrants.
2. I LOVE the idea of a high-immigration, no welfare system. There's some, uncertain, evidence that high immigration decreases welfare support...which makes it a dual win.
3. China's success has a lot to do with the fact that they have more people than Europe, and more different cultures than Europe...and they can move folks from one place to another based on what the folks are good at. The ONLY thing that makes China's success not called immigration is the extra-large size of China. Ditto movement to rich cities in the USA. It's all immigration... just immigration from different states/cities rather than countries.
4. Euro vs. US wealth differences are on the order of a factor of 2, for the rich countries. In the '90s the Economist was doing some analysis, and placed rich Europe (England, France, etc.) at having an average wealth (PPP adjusted) below the US poverty line. Let's not talk about poor Europe. Norway, with massive Oil Wealth, and a sane investment strategy for Oil Wealth is an outlier. My time in Europe in the 1990s fit this observation very well.
5. California's wealth (at this point) is all in Sili Valley, and Sili Valley is among the highest-immigrant density locations in the country. The best people from anywhere in the world go to Sil valley.
Sili gets the talented tenth. The rest not so much.
I hold that the wealth differences between us and Europe are not linked to immigration.
In-country movement is different than immigration.
I'm inclined to favor immigration-no welfare, but that is not in the cards. It is like the guy who favors government spending with accountability. Good luck getting both.
It's worth probably close to that $1/2 Million for an immigrant to move from a poor country to here.
But is it worth that much to us? Will these institutions be maintained over time by a new people? Why are you so anxious to give stuff away?
RSF,
1. Re: immigrants. The argument:
step 1. Poor foreigners are (through no fault of their own) screwed badly by living in their country, and would be insanely better off living here.
Step 2. The moral calculus suggests that we should then open the borders.
I am addressing, for the last several comments, exclusively point 1. I think that your responses have been substantially around point 2.
I think that it's a legitimate position to accept 1, but reject 2...but it's hard for most folks to do that. However, I think that the facts are such that 1 is obvious to anyone looking. I doubt severely that I'll convince anyone who is anti-immigration that step 2 is a good idea. Instead...I'm hoping to get understanding here...in getting clarity that step 1 is obvious.
2. I don't know how much in-country migration is different from immigration. Is Vancouver->Seattle migration really more different than Texas to Massachusetts? I don't believe it. China has more people, and I'd assume more cultural variation than Texas to Massachusetts
A. I agree that Europe is not poor BECAUSE of immigration restriction. It is also not rich, comparatively. It is certainly not high growth, which was a response to your using Europe as an immigration-point of argument. China's growth is 100% explicable by 2 facts:
1. It was dirt-eating poor
2. It stopped it's idiotic central planning approach.
You don't need ANY other information to explain China's growth.
Does government action with wisdom in application fall into the same category as spending with accountability? Immigration restrictions are government action.
Poor foreigners are (through no fault of their own) screwed badly by living in their country, and would be insanely better off living here.
Okay, so you are making an economic refugee argument here. How many can/should a country take in each year? Who and how should we decide? Can we take a vote?
You also argue that immigrants improve our GDP. That seems like a different argument.
You gloss over some huge dynamics here. As soon as we import poor foreigners, we start to get regression to the mean, and certain attributes of race and culture start to come out.
I realize "I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon", but the immigrants I know made a sideways movement socioeconomically. What percentage of our immigrants make an appreciable jump economically to justify the costs of immigration?
This all seems a bit of a slur against the native population: "don't be satisfied to live and grow on your own increase. You must involve others." It also seems a bit of a slur on poor foreigners: "your country, and by extension you, suck, and there is no hope of betterment in your native land, but we will let you come here and we will better you."
RSF,
I have been trying (rather unsuccessfully, I suppose) to not address ANY of the questions you're bringing up in that first paragraph. Those seem to me to be hard questions. I am instead trying to make clear the magnitude of the difference between living in a place with crappy evolved institutions, and living in the USA (or equivalent). The 1/2 million dollar estimated benefit to living in the USA (or 50x difference in annual income) is enormous.
My experience with immigration is that we let in, for instance, Mexican physicians...who then get work as lawnmowers in the USA because working as a lawnmower in the USA is a better deal than working as a doctor in Mexico, and leaves huge amounts of money to send home to the family.
All I'm hoping to establish is the huge value to the immigrant of being able to immigrate. Not that this means we should do so (I happen to think that we should...but I don't think I can get there from your starting value-set).
2. Denigrating locals? Not at all. ALL wealth comes from one of:
(a) invention (not just big ones, either. Some guy who figures out a 1% difference in how to drill an oil well as a driller can improve the economy by Billions of dollars per year)
(b) accumulation of working inventions
(c) trade / specialization.
I claim that adding people improves (c) for sure, and has some chance of improving (a).
3. Denigrating foreigners? Not at all. They live in a system where the evil folks in their government are screwing them a lot more than the evil folks in our government. Evil bastards with guns in government isn't something I blame on them...and more than I blamed Saddam's victims for living in Iraq (I mean, heck, they couldn't immigrate to Europe or the US ). Also...that screwy system they live in hasn't done a very good job of (b) above, building institutions and accumulating inventions. Not their fault...not fixable quick.
1) It is nice, in a limited way, to raise someone's standard of living via immigration. But this brings up so many other issues I can't dwell on it in isolation.
2) People can be expensive. More people can be more expensive. It is not automatic that in any group the productive will cover all the expenses.
3) A people raise up their government, to some extent anyway.
There is more than gov't involved.
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