THe positive theory behind voting is that different people have different values. The claim that group X shouldn't vote is basically the claim that their values shoudln't count. While I recognize that this is the normal idiotic human position...it's also fundamentally broken. Different people have different values. This is positions ONE.
It's one reason to read actual political scientists, and political philosophers. They understand (in general), that the core problem is how to deal with the fact that different people have REAL different values...and that the position that we can ingore everyone else's values and just try to implement our own, while attractive to the immature, skips the hard problem in politics.
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And, oh yeah, it is clear to me that the decision to give the franchise to women is questionable.
Michael,
I hear you. You're ok with dismissing women's real preference differences from men, except insofar as the men want to not ignore them. I personally find that morally odious.
I'm a libertarian/anarchist. I want the government not to have the power to do much to anyone. And I find it mostly funny when any group that thinks the government should have power gets screwed by the government. Women voting are now making the government screw the men...instead of the historic happy state where the government screwed the women... too damn bad.
Arrgh! Blogger ate my first comment. I hate when that happens.
It was something about how it makes no sense to allow people who pay no tax (except for tax directly related to the social security benefits they expect to receive) to vote for the representatives who will vote for their national defense, entertainment, welfare, roads and bridges, food stamps, and other infrastructure and goodies that they will partake of, but not pay for. It seems to me that it is too late to enact a property ownership paradigm of the franchise, but surely the indigent, who take but do not give, should be barred from participating in the decisions over the bounty that the productive members of our society bestow upon them.
(I said it better last time.)
Michael,
I have your last comment by email, but not on this.
I've argued for years that anyone with a positive net income from government shouldn't vote... Government workers, etc. Incidentally, I would just as soon allow anyone who pays enough tax, net, to vote, regardless their citizenship.
However, my left-ness in my left-libertarianism is primarily around the idea that the real issues with our system are only marginally the poor. Rather, the way in which laws are crafted so as to benefit the already rich and powerful is the core problem. The tax-consumers voting for more tax looks to me strictly like a sideshow designed to distract from the real issues.
Now we arrive at the real problem. The political class and the corporate rent seekers have cornered the market on government largesse, and indeed are involved in the most massive act of theft in the history of mankind. The fact that the votes of the know-nothing unproductive class are abused to support this fraud is only an appendage on the main body of the crime.
The problem with anarchy is that it is a cop out. Humans are selfish and crafty, so leaving things to take care of themselves will never work. It is up to an enlightened electorate to control the base impulses of the power hungry. Since we are not power hungry, we would rather be left alone. We do not have the luxury, IMHO, to snipe at both sides.
I am not a republican, yet I give plenty of cash to republicans. If and when the republicans achieve power again I will retreat to the fringe again, and rail at them from a libertarian-conservative viewpoint, but I do not believe that we few who can think clearly have the right to stand aside and poke holes in both parties. We MUST take a side, when it is clear that the party in power is taking us down a path to doom.
I can abide being stolen from. I can not abide being interfered with unduly. The statist paradigm is the source of all the dictatorships of the 20th century, from Hitler to Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot. We must stand against whoever achieves power, from right or left. Right now the threat comes from the left, but soon enough, the statist right will try to assert itself again. Until then, call me a republican.
and that the position that we can ingore everyone else's values and just try to implement our own, while attractive to the immature, skips the hard problem in politics.
That seems to be the winning position, from political Islam to tribal Africa to American hippy corptocracy.
You want to leave liberals alone... have some place to live in peace. They want to rule you and they want one-world govt (because your exit leads to adverse selection.) They love to rape you with their vote. And as you've said about AA, they hear your reasoning and don't care. They're unconvincable. What's odious is arguing to empower your masters.
Is this some type of signaling? Do you convince liberal friends that you're not one of THEM by espousing this stuff?
Ad homming your opponents as ignorant and/or evil is not going to help here.
The reason why people on both left and right advocate removing the franchise from others is:
(1) that they believe that democracy does in fact do more or less what is promised, namely to represent people. (You agree with here.)
But also,
(2) that they believe that those other people's different preferences are bad for the polity as a whole.
For example, for whatever reason, women as a group vote significantly further left than men. Thus, as a rightist I believe that by abolishing woman suffrage we would improve the quality of policy endorsed by the now half-size giant committee. Of course, this can never happen, so it is foolish and probably even counterproductive to actually advocate. But it is still a direct and logical conclusion to make from the mildest familiarity with actual voting patterns. Not to mention the actual history of voting before and after woman suffrage.
I don't see this as all that hard to understand.
I did touch upon the problem of possibility before. But, since you seem to think it is a "hard problem" to disenfranchise women, it was at least possible historically. And even today we do disenfranchise some people -- felons, children, foreigners. I am curious as to whether you feel these groups should be allowed to vote in America, and if not, on what basis. Certainly they have "REAL different values". Why do you think that Americans should ignore "everyone else's values and just try to implement our own"?
Leonard,
1. I am appropriately chastened. Thanks.
2. Democracy in a 2nd post.
3. OF COURSE they believe the other peoples' different preferences are bad for everyone. Human nature is deeply self-centric. If a person has opinions, they are upwards of 98% likely to find it relatively impossible to believe that other people's differing opinions are valid. Hell, they're upwards of 90% likely to believe that the opinion they held yesterday (before they changed their mind) is insane, and they never really held it.
Saying that a people believes that other preferences are bad for the polity is almost trivially true. nearly everyone believes that their preferences are the only good ones. And we don't have any good meta-reason to believe that any of those positions are correct.
I believe that for you as a rightist, you would improve the quality of policy by removing the women's vote. And it would really suck for the women, because their preferences would go back to being largely ignored. Fundamental rule of getting what you want: if you're not at the negotiating table, you lose.
The proposal (disenfranchise) comes down to: I can get my preferences better satisfied if we completely ignore their preferences. Ummm...yeah, but we have ABSOLUTELY no meta-reason to believe that your preferences are better than theirs.
Leonard,
Also... Here's Moldbug on Justice:
"The first thing we notice about Rawls is the title of his famous book, A Theory of Justice. As I've mentioned before, this is not just hubristic, but actively Orwellian. For about the last 2500 years, the word justice and its various Indo-European predecessors have meant "the accurate execution of the law." Rawls is no more interested in law than I am in dressage, and when he redefines the word justice to mean, effectively, righteousness, one notes with some dismay that he is confiscating a noun with no existing synonyms. But perhaps this was the publisher's decision - maybe A Theory of Righteousness just wouldn't have moved as well."
Not only wrong, but I can't imagine but that it is willfully so. Intended to mislead. Justice was discussed by Plato 2500 years ago, and aristotle, and such. The question of justice is primarily a question about the good, not about the law. Sure...Plato the dictator-apologist, and Hegel the dictator-advocate suggested that a part of justice was fitting into society, and following the law. But they are by no means the only folks discussing the topic.
If Moldbug were right, and we all agreed that justice had to do primarily with the law...the question of whether the law is just would make little sence. OTOH, it makes lots of sense.
?? I think that last belonged in the Rawls thread?
we have ABSOLUTELY no meta-reason to believe that your preferences are better than theirs
I just don't understand this. Of course many groups have such meta reasons. Indeed, I just laid one out above: woman suffrage caused the modern welfare state. Which I, at least, consider a bad thing for everyone -- men, women, children. Yes I am sure you will point out that there is no absolute proof here; certainly it predated, and not by very far, by who can really say what caused what in history? But I am not talking about convincing you; I am merely saying this is some evidence that woman suffrage is bad for the collective. Now, obviously some women -- perhaps even most -- prefer the modern dispensation, even though they complain about it (and men's actions in) like crazy. Still, for you to yell "ABSOLUTELY" in this context just doesn't make sense to me. Absolute means absolute: that there is no reason at all to find leftist voting problematic. (But -- I do!) Or, to put a kindly spin on what you are saying, that not one single woman thinks that woman suffrage should be abolished. (This is false.)
Our meta-reasons would have to be from a neutral value context. One that applies across value-preferences. And that hasn't come even close to having been done.
I don't want to strictly argue against moldbug here...but Moldbug has this problem substantially.
People have different values. You have argued why in your values, a system without women's voting is better. You have NOT explained how in women's values, it is. And I don't think there is one. Your line is...this handles my preferences better. The meta-rationality discussion is about why your preferences are better than others' preferences. And we don't have that.
It is too late to abolish women's suffrage, and the argument against it is arbitrary. OTOH the argument against allowing those who benefit from the welfare state is fairness based - 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for lunch. Right now just under half of Americans are net recipients of federal largesse.
But instituting that one is hopeless too. Hell, we can't even agree that welfare recipients be drug tested. We are witnessing the death spiral of western civilization, and I do not see how that can be stopped. What MAY be possible is delay - allowing Europe to descend into chaos while trying to hold on to some semblance of domestic tranquility in the context of some personal freedom for as long as possible. Now that the technology exists to monitor everybody all the time, it is hard to see how We the People can keep the statists from seizing power and doing just that, and achieving totalitarianism in a way and with an effectiveness never before seen. What we need to do is stave off that outcome as long as we can.
It is not the left, or the liberals. It is power, and any party or ideology that ascends to one-party control will assert their statist tendencies. Staving off the statist disaster will require balancing. Right now a republican sweep might allow for a tiny rolling back of the welfare state, but after a few years of that the republicans will become the enemy too.
Make no mistake about that. It is not party, it is power, and whoever has enough power, no matter their ideology, will fall under the spell of statist power. So we have a moving target, as we try to delay the inevitable.
I was going to reply after reading all the comments, but I found so many things to reply to that I'll do them one at a time.
If a person has opinions, they are upwards of 98% likely to find it relatively impossible to believe that other people's differing opinions are valid.
If you want a great example of this, just get into an internet discussion on food or music. You'll soon find people convinced that their personal preference for (eg.) Jazz, or non-spicy food, is OBJECTIVELY the correct choice, and that anyone who prefers anything else is suffering from some cognitive fault.
We are witnessing the death spiral of western civilization, and I do not see how that can be stopped. What MAY be possible is delay - allowing Europe to descend into chaos while trying to hold on to some semblance of domestic tranquility
I am reminded of the book War and Peace and War which tracks the history of France during the middle ages, which was (apparently) a Malthusian oscillation with the population reaching the carrying capacity of the land (given contemporary tech), followed by chaos, war, famine and plague until the population fell by up to half, then a steady period of peace in which the population rose again.
Anyway, England avoided most of this? How? Because it was very close to France, and France was slightly faster in the cycle. Whenever France collapsed in chaos, England was drawn into the wars... which is another way of saying the surplus English population of landless young men and younger son nobility went off to France in search of loot/glory/opportunity/patriotic duty. Most never returned.
So England got rid of all its surplus mouths too, but without tearing the country apart.
(Younger son nobility being the worst. A noble mouth consumes far more resources than a peasant mouth, and is more likely to disrupt the nation if too many of them are without prospects.)
Once could, perhaps, continue following this cycle up to the Napoleonic wars, or maybe even World War 2, though the 20th century saw the protective barrier of the English Channel losing a lot of its effectiveness.
My long and rambling point is that a collapse in Europe might lead to a drain of such surplus from the New World, allowing the new world to gain another cycle (60 to 100 years typically) before collapsing itself. (If you squint a lot, close one eye, and stand on your left foot, WWII already did this once.)
I disagree so strongly with this that I might start my own blog today on the excuse of answering it in full!
Outline:
1) Women-in-general are deeply, even wildly cared-about by men-in-general. Alliance of interests.
2) Almost all actually differing interests are competitive, within-group conflicts. Some women vs the rest of women. Not women-as-a-whole vs men-as-a-whole.
3) There IS such a thing as illegitimate interests. Libertarians used to get this one right. Three wolves and a sheep voting re: dinner is wrong. OWS *on their only widely publicized terms* ("the 99%!") are just wrong. Rightness is not about democracy.
4) Better decisionmakers >> more perfectly balanced "interests" within the decisionmakers. This is my judgment call that there's usually more to gain, especially long-term, in increasing the sizes of pies than in fighting over diminishing slices. SO MANY (most? almost all?) governmental and other big institutional policy decisions harm almost everyone (compared to some obvious-to-some better policy) to the quirky benefit of some well-organized few. The smarter the selectorate, the less this would happen by accident.
5) For status reasons, each "interest group" (women, say; I scarequote it because they usually don't REALLY have special common interests worth classifying) fear intentional out-in-the-open exploitation by outsiders. What we should way more fear is behind-closed-doors short-term exploitation (like pasteurization laws for Big Dairy, which result anyway in very public status-threatening SWAT raids of small dairies), which is what democracy becomes once it stabilizes enough to even maintain order.
The awareness of the actual selectorate is our main defense against tyranny. This calls for a smart selectorate way more than it does a wildly "diverse" selectorate. Yes, overspecialization in awareness (if my selectorate were truly strawman-homogenous) would be very exploitable; but the selectorate doesn't have to very big to have all important general knowledge be seriously a part of its input; it could be all Jews, and still have ~all skills and awarenesses seriously represented.
A,
1) Care about != care about thier interests. My dad cares about me, but not about my freedom, which matters massively to me.
2. Almost != all. Slave, even pampered, cherished slave is a different line than free person. Segregated streetcars, Women's loss of property via marriage provide strong counterexamples.
3. This isn't an argument about women voting, it's an argument about scope of government action. Agreed, government should have lower scope, it's current scope is illigitimate.
4 + 5. Core of our disagreement.
A. Better decisionmakers = more clearly someone who wins due to government force.
Me: This sucks.
You: "great. It's not me who's losing."
B. Hume/Hayek/Hanson. Decisionmakers CANNOT know enough to be right. The question is whether a decision is made at all. NO is the only positive answer. The existence of the decisionmaker is the problem, not a solution.
C. Fundamental rule of negotiations: If you're not at the table, your interests will be ignored.
D. I'm not actually pro-democracy. If any of the smart males were sane enough to suggest that a small group of smart black women (Tyra + Oprah + Condi) should form the entire selectorate...I'd have a lot less to argue about. Major issue: 10 times out of 10, when someone argues for a position that artificially suppresses some group interest that is not one's own...the purpose is to suppress the other group, and the argument is cover. Your jews-only comes close.
E. BBdM is pretty clear that the size of the selectorate is strongly positively statistically correlated with quality of outcome. Bigger = better. Because, most likely, the smaller selectorate can be purchased, while a larger one can't.
F. The issue with the american system seems to be a too-small selectorate (representational democracy), with the fiction of a large one.
sane enough to suggest that a small group of smart black women (Tyra + Oprah + Condi) should form the entire selectorate...I'd have a lot less to argue about.
I'd sign up for that!
Actually always liked Oprah. Don't know the other two, but I'd happily sign up for the principle of choosing a ruling council of them.
[My captcha this time is 'capped'...obv we're now playing a heads-up limit game.]
3) There IS such a thing as illegitimate interests. Libertarians used to get this one right. Three wolves and a sheep voting re: dinner is wrong. OWS *on their only widely publicized terms* ("the 99%!") are just wrong. Rightness is not about democracy.
3. This isn't an argument about women voting, it's an argument about scope of government action. Agreed, government should have lower scope, it's current scope is illigitimate.
No, my (3) is focused on the question of whether the (small, possibly non-existent) set of women's voting "interests" is even legitimate. I bet there are some legit candidates; you certainly list one re: women being capable of owning legit property. But, I bet there are many more illegit candidates (a la jackals or wolves) for most scarequotable interest groups.
The proposal (disenfranchise) comes down to: I can get my preferences better satisfied if we completely ignore their preferences. Ummm...yeah, but we have ABSOLUTELY no meta-reason to believe that your preferences are better than theirs.
Strongly disagree.
You're veering off way into cultural relativism.
Rightness exists!
Being actually right (about the real-life consequences of proposed policies, which are hotly debated by people who are just wrong) is an actual state of affairs.
I exist!
Andrew,
Is-ought gap.
methods != values. Predictive success is about methods, not about values.
There are differing values.
You're evading the topic.
Fundamental rule of getting what you want: if you're not at the negotiating table, you lose.
Consider modern children.
They have a lot more legal (and actual) freedom from parental abuse today than 40 years ago.
This looks way more like freedom than slavery.
They have no vote.
How did this happen?
Leonard is absolutely right. And, you did not really responding to him, apparently inspiring him to give up entirely on this thread.
Leonard, you are not alone! Plus one to your whole comment here.
Your response to Leonard:
People have different values. You have argued why in your values, a system without women's voting is better. You have NOT explained how in women's values, it is. And I don't think there is one. Your line is...this handles my preferences better. The meta-rationality discussion is about why your preferences are better than others' preferences. And we don't have that.
Nope. He argued actual causation + actual near-universal values.
"No socialist wants to live in a world that I believe socialism would produce." -- David Friedman
I hold that even Ayn Rand would have happily surrendered the vote (for all women) after a week in my bed...
[Current captcha is...'worsib'!]
Children,
Far more constraint on children, especially teens, every year. Bad example for your point. Good for my point.
What adults want teens to value is handled nicely. What teens actually value is prohibited. Exactly what I expect to happen with no seat at the negotiating table.
Is-ought gap.
methods != values. Predictive success is about methods, not about values.
There are differing values.
You're evading the topic
No, YOU are :P
The ultimate reality-testable topic is whether women voting is good for actual womenkind's actual full interests.
I hold that women voting has been really bad for them -- actually worse than it has been bad for me. Yes, it is my wildly reactionary belief that women voting has harmed the median woman in the U.S. signif more than it has harmed this smart playboy interlocutor. They have lost their traditional cultures that support their natural instincts; me, not so much (I'm barely even human!).
Next betting round!
Andrew,
AFAICT, The only reason you believe the values are near-universal are because you, and most of yoru friends, including me, have them. No one I know voted for Nixon...
Universal values: Harm/care, equality/anti-concentrated power. Those kind of values? Everyone does indeed appear to share those. It's the other ones that seem less universal.
I voted for Nixon. Twice.
Michael,
In case that wasn't a troll,
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=i+don%27t+know+anyone+who+voted+for+nixon
Awesome if you're really over 60, though!
Aretae,
Amazing how deep the rabbit holes go!
You & I interpret most every piece of evidence differently...because it's got to fit how we interpret all the other evidence of the world.
Both might be good bayesians!
Both are bad aumanns!
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