Paternalistic Tyranny is still Tyranny
Who in his or her right mind would choose to elect a tyrant that, when in office, will start dictating things like:
…government programs to help people “quit smoking, to get more exercise, to eat right, to take their vitamins.”
The only parental tyranny acceptable is my mother’s, and even she knew at some point to lay off and let me make my own decision. The believe that the government’s proper role is to be a Paternal Tyrant combined with well documented approach of “The goal justifies the means” should be a major factor in a decision not to vote for such candidate.
Tags: 2008 Elections, Hillary Clinton, The nanny stateRelated posts
Rogel @ March 24, 2008
I’d say you’re too extreme. If it said “government programs to force people “quit smoking, to get more exercise …” then you’d be right, and it would be tyranny. But there’s nothing wrong with programs to support people to get a better life for themselves. It’s good for the population, and in the long run good for society and for government. In a country which is good for its citizens, gym membership should be free (or highly subsidized) much like education and healthcare are free. Otherwise, what you get is a society of ignorant and sick people. That’s not good for anyone. If people want to quit smoking, society should give them as much help as possible, because it’s good for everyone in the long run. (Yes yes, even if it’s out of taxpayer money).
I know you don’t agree with the opinion that I expressed above, but you should understand that things are not black and white, both opinions have good points, and calling such policy tyrannical just makes you look extreme and unreasonable.
You are correct Elad, the position I express here sound extreme. But is it really?
Eled,
):
A sign that your comment was pretty good one is that it made me think about it long after I response to it. I had asked myself is extremism is necessarily wrong and what constitute extremism. And in the back of my head was the famous quote of one of my political heroes (and I don’t have many
Hi Rogel,
> The only real advantage that government
> has, is its monopoly on the legal
> means of coercion.
Not just. It also has a large budget that it can spend for helpful purposes. I know that that’s not the way you would like it to be, but that’s the way it is today. So, government can indeed spend money on free education, health, etcetera. Without coercing anyone into anything. I simply don’t understand why you view subsidization as coercion to an act. You are not coerced to go to the gym. You are just coerced to pay taxes, which pay for free gyms for everyone (for example).
> When government passing a law it has the ability to enforce it.
I promise you that no law will force people to go to gyms. Can you give any prior example of laws forcing adult people to perform some activity in an unreasonable way. (E.g. taking driving lessons to get a drivers license is not unreasonable. Forcing adults to go to the gym is unreasonable).
> Do you think that it is proper to
> enforce gyms use, vitamins and other
> things that are “good for you”?
I repeat. No one is enforcing anything. Why do you insist on that?
> You assume that these goodies are
> being given free, but this is a
> grave mistkae - you are paying
> for them the full amount when you
> pay taxes.
Firstly, the _public_ pays for them when they pay taxes. Which would make it more likely that people will go to the gym (since it’s now effectively free — they pay for it whether they go or not), which will make for a healthier and better society, QED.
Secondly, people will pay less since everyone will effectively have gym subscriptions. Libraries would be horrendously expensive if they were not publicly funded, and were only paid for by private citizens buying subscriptions. On the other hand, libraries are reasonably well-stocked, partly due to government funding. Apply the same logic for gyms. (Again — I know you object to public funding of these things; but still the claim you made is incorrect — we will pay less for public gyms with our tax money than we would pay with private subscriptions, even collectively, since when many people use a commodity, its price drops).
> However, you are loosing you ability to
> say “No, thanks”.
No we are not losing this ability. You can just not go to the gym. You are not being coerced to go to the gym.
> Why not housing, food (only healthy food
> obviously), furniture, cars etc?
If many people have cheap furniture our society is not a worse place to live in. If many people are unhealthy, our society is a worse place to live in. (I’m guessing that an unhealthy society also has smaller GDP, but I don’t have evidence).
About housing, I believe that government should take care of basic housing for people who cannot take care of that themselves. That seems like a good balance. Things are not black and white, they’re a tradeoff. You’re pushing examples to absurdity, but I do not advocate communism. I advocate Educated and well-thought use of tax money in order to improve society by subsidizing and proving public welfare. You can argue with that, but you can’t call it tyranny.
> And why not let the state make
> sure that your behavior is moral
> (moral behavior is crucial for
> healthy society, isn’t it?)
Again, you’re talking about coercion. I’m talking about subsidization. These are not the same thing. subsidization means taking away your tax dollars in order to fund public goods. This is only a very specific type of coercion, which I know that you do not agree with, but is very normative and reasonable. We can argue about it, but in any case, it is _not_ the same type of coercion that tells you what is moral and what is not, or coerces you to go to the gym (this type of coercion is unreasonable, since it limits your freedom to an unproportional degree)
> So maybe tat state should run
> a program that will suggest moral
> behavior?
We already do that. It’s called the school system.
(And psychologists play a similar role, as do priests, social workers, etc).
> I guess calling Clinton tyrannical
> seems extreme and unreasonable
> - but it isn’t.
This is where we disagree.
Hi Rogel,
I only saw your second comment after I posted my second comment.
Thanks for your kind words. If I made you think, I have made my weekly quota (my SHVUIIT
). It’s certainly interesting arguing with a well-thought liberterian, because it ceases to be about right and wrong, and starts to be about priorities, morals and beliefs. I cannot say that your ideology is wrong, although I very harshly disagree with it. In my moral system, I am willing to pay more taxes in order to have a more equal and well-off society. I believe that libertarianism, or even current-day American-style capitalism, will lead us to a world similar to that described in H. G. Wells’s book “The time machine”. But I see your point, and I see that with a different system of values, or, alternatively, with a different prediction of the future, one might legitimately and with full conscience choose to be libertarian.
The reason I took this chance to respond to your post is that while I can’t say that your general position is false, I can definitely say that I think the position you made in your post is false, for the reasons that I outlined in my comment.
It would be an interesting exercise to try to explicitly note the reasons for our respective beliefs, and at least try to understand the other side better. I have some knowledge of libertarian ideology, but not quite enough. What do you believe will happen if we really follow the libertarian ideology? This decomposes into two questions: 1. how do you see your ideal society; and 2. what do you really predict will happen if we apply libertarian ideals and policies? In this second question I ask you to be as scientifically-honest and pragmatic as possible. What will really really happen? In reality?
Elad,
Hi Rogel,
I would love to read a separate post on these topics!
Also:
1. The disagreement about the meaning of the word “free” is what in Hebrew people call “semantica”. That is, it’s just about different uses for the same word, and I don’t agree that your type of use is better than mine. I call “free” whatever people do not have to directly pay for. Your use of the word free is for anything that people do not pay for even indirectly. (Whether there exist such things is a different matter. It’s quite hard to come up with examples. Can you?). Both uses are valid, and from now on in our discussion I’ll make sure to denote which one I mean. However, you cannot take hold of the word and allow it only to be used for what you call “free”.
2. I made a mistake in asking what the libertarian ideal world is, or what you really think will happen if libertarian policies are adopted. I meant to ask what _your_ ideal world is, and what you really think would happen if _your_ suggested policies were implemented. I would also be interested in libertarian views of various streams, but that’s only a second priority. Since it’s a discussion between me and you, I’d love to hear your personal take on it. It also means that both of us are held responsible for what we advocate, and cannot simply say “this is what other people think, not me”.
I have some experience with talking to the guys at the “daily capitalist” site (in Hebrew), and I quit the discussions there because they seem to represent a model of libertarianism that is as concise and thought-out as swiss cheese. I am delighted to read your posts since at last I see someone that presents opinions that are coherent and thought-out (though, in my eyes, still very bad for society, but as I said before, that’s up for discussion). I may finally have my hopes up to get to the bottom of it and understand what would make someone take a political view advocating a society that for me seems so entirely different from how a society should look. So I’ll be awaiting your post!
…and after writing the long comment I saw this post which is worth reading.
Hi Rogel,
> Our disagreement about what
> constitute “Free” is all but semantic.
> […] than we both agree that none of
> these service is ever free. […] When
> something is being paid by taxation the
> voluntary provision of making the exchange
> fair doesn’t exist anymore.
You are correct. The wage of trainers (if gyms were made public), or of teachers, doctors, policemen and such in current day society, is set to some extent by government. It is affected by supply and demand, though, much like doctors’ pay is today. If you don’t pay enough, not many people will be doctors, and you would get a healthcare crisis (as we are experiencing today). As with healthcare and education, you would have a private system working alongside the public system, so that you have private trainers working alongside governmental ones. Therefore, I don’t see what’s so bad about some trainers being employed by government. No one is coercing anything on the trainers. The only person in this scheme being coerced is the citizen, being coerced to pay taxes to fund public gyms. I have given justification for this and will give more justification below.
I don’t see what fair exchange has anything to do with this issue. When I get service from a policeman or a judge, do I have fair exchange? Why is it reasonable in your system to have government employ judges and policemen and army, but not anyone else? Just because they keep money free? In my system, education and health are just as important to freedom as free commerce is. Thus, I would like the public to be well-educated and healthy, and I think that the state should take money from the citizens to build a healthier and more educated society.
> In addition you should prove that
> paying for services via taxes is more
> efficient than when paying voluntarily.
> I, obviously, will argue the opposite
> and provide a long list of groundwork
> and arguments to support my argument
I never claimed that paying for services via taxes in more efficient than paying voluntarily. I only claimed that when more people use a commodity, its price per person drops, so providing free gyms for everyone might be more efficient than providing them just for few people. See the comparison to public libraries that I made in my comment from 2:08 pm.
I partially agree that government-provided services are less efficient than private ones. Monopolies tend to be inefficient, and free competition (which is regulated in some ways) can be a much more efficient system. Indeed, I think that the best way to run public hospitals, schools, gyms and such might be to run them as independent units, with, say, some voucher system. I’m not communist. I think capitalism is a great thing, and that moderate capitalism and reasonable welfare can co-exist wonderfully.
(By the way, about co-existence of welfare and capitalism: such a country would not be the most competitive, and will certainly be less competitive than a country in which people work extremely hard for 40 years and die young. However, I would much rather live in the former than in the latter, even at a cost of reduced competitiveness).
> For me the moral question is more
> important - and I think that it is
> immoral to take, at a gun point
> (at this is what taxes are), one’s
> fruits of labor for the needs of other.
I know that that’s what you believe. And that’s exactly the point where we disagree. I do not believe in absolute freedom above all. I believe that a healthy society is more important than absolute freedom. I believe that absolute freedom is by definition impossible in an unhealthy and uneducated society.
I believe that we are dealing with a system of tradeoffs, where you’re trying to have enough government support in order to build a better society, and enough government non-intervention in order to build a competitive, efficient and financially-liberal society. I think that the exact calibration is a matter for the public to decide. I think that your opinion, which advocates extreme freedom, is not inside the reasonable spectrum. Life is not black and white. The public has to decide on the level of gray that it wants to live in, on the right mix of capitalism and welfare. You are advocating something which, if implemented, would, in my estimate, greatly damage society.
This is why I think that the most important question to ask you is what do you really believe will happen if the policies you advocate are implemented. Because I think that the policies you suggest are suitable for your moral priorities, but would cause disaster is actually implemented.
> I assume that you regard Tax as natural
> force, something that we are destained
> to live with (and at arbitrary rate).
I most certainly do not. You make it sound like it’s 1984. It’s not. Tax is a sum of money that society decides to collect, through government, from its citizens, in order to build a better society. Saying that I advocate tax at arbitrary rate is absolutely false and demagogic. I advocate that society decides what public services are important, and provide them. I think that a healthy society would decide that at least it supports free education, healthcare and a reasonable level of welfare.
> The question isn’t the tax but
> the spending - once you conclude that
> the there is no room for government
> spending on anything but protecting
> human rights and on dispute
> resolutions (court system) - the
> question about the existence of
> taxes is solved.
I know that that’s what you believe and advocate. This is exactly the point of our disagreement. Again, I have to ask: what do you really think would happen after your policies were implemented?
About your comments on the daily capitalist: I agree. I enjoyed many of the posts written by Redler. The problem is that in the comments section I find myself arguing with Rotem.
Elad,
it seems that you are assuming that it is necessary for societies to flourish to be regulated by governments. This is the main fallacy of your argument since societies are better functioning when they are self regulated and are not coerced. Additionally you keep insist that something that is being payed through taxes is somehow "Free" while when it is being paid voluntarily it isn’t. The only argument you make in favor of of coercing people to pay the tax for, lets keep the original example, gym service is that the high volume will reduce the price. You are ignoring the fact that for people that did not intended to use the service the price is still higher, You also ignore the ocean of evidences that demonstrate that public service are actually cost more, not less, despite the high volumes.
Lets keep examine the concept of "Free". Responding to my argument about fair exchange of values you wrote:
but in fact soldiers, policemen and judges can’t negotiate their compensation, they cannot go on a strike and when the state doesn’t have enough of them it can draft (which is the ultimate coercion) its citizens to do these jobs. Does your utopian society based on slavery? Protecting Human Rights is the only moral justification for any government and is the base for the exceptions involved with the profession of soldiers, policemen etc. Free societies make an additional effort to minimize the coercion involved with those professions by making them voluntary and add social recognition, and benefits, to emphasize the importance the society see in those profession. expanding it to gym trainers will do the opposite than just society.
You also suggests a mix of
such mix cannot co-exist for two main reason: practically the government, by nature, is monopolistic entity (We can expand this point but for the purpose of the comment it will be as axiom). Therefore any industry that is being occupied by the government loose all its private "players" - if you believe that central, nationalized economy is better this is the route you are going to take. The second reason against the suggested mix is morally - since governments are, by nature, coercing entities - they are writing laws and enforcing regulations, expanding government involvement (and its coercion) to areas that aren’t protection of Human Rights is immoral.
but which public? in what level? should it be the entire country? the county? the neighborhood? and what if the majority of the public support measures like blocking content on the internet, not allowing same sex marriage and prayers in public schools? how do you ensure that only Your concept of what is good for the public is being coerced by the state?
The answer, of course, is to minimize the areas in which government is being involved. In other words, if you want to live in a free society you should be willing to live people alone to live their way and to set a very few limits on their freedom. The fact that your intentions are good, and their purpose is only to make everyone’s life better doesn’t change the fact that you are limiting peoples liberty. I’m sure that the religious parties in Israel believe, very much like you, that the limitation they suggest on other people’s freedom are only going to make the society better. Why is your approach better?
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