Compassion in a free society

[I Shrugged]

Article by Robert and Elizabeth Bernard Higgs:
http://www.independent.org/publications ... asp?a=1058

Abstract:
A widely embraced social taboo against aggression is necessary, but probably not sufficient, to achieve and keep a free society. Empathy and charity for the down and out also play vital roles.


This is something I've struggled with intellectually.  Especially coming to libertarianism from the Ayn Rand point of view, which the authors mention specifically.  I find the argument to be persuasive.

[Pointedstick]

A strong article, with good points being made, especially the one that a society without much compassion for the worst-off will quickly be destroyed by them once they get organized. The historical appeal of genuine revolutionary communism is a testament to this.

However, I'm not sure the kind of person demanded by this assessment actually exists. People most interested in helping others tend to be nosy busybodies who are unproductive of much economic value, and those most interested in production and freedom tend to be cold, penny-pinching loners (guilty as charged). While the intersection of these personality traits is possible, it is rare. I'm not hopeful.

Semi-related: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ot ... idealists/

[rickb]

Perhaps not unrelated:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovi ... reat-ceos/

"...the absence of empathy, which is the definition in psychology of a psychopath, you will always get malevolence"

I haven't read any Ayn Rand lately (decades ago), but as I recollect Ayn Rand's heroes have no empathy whatsoever.  Ergo, they're clinical psychopaths.  This makes a lot of sense to me. 

I worked hard.  I should eat filet mignon and drink premiere cru wine.  You?  You can do the same if you work hard like me.  If you don't, it's only natural that you should eat shit and die.

Sounds like a psychopath to me.

I'm not saying that all libertarians are psychopaths, but I'd guess that more people who profess to be libertarians than the general population would measure as lacking empathy. 

[Pointedstick]

i have only read atlas shrugged, so i cant speak about all the caricatures in all her books but it seemed to me that the heroes in that book didn't lack empathy, they just refused to let empathy rule their reason. they felt for the men who had nothing.. but instead of letting that feeling lead them into accepting theft and the doomed to fail ideas of the poor being entitled to the benefits of other peoples work.. they instead wanted to be creators, innovators and employers and provide opportunity for those poor to work and provide for themselves.

putting reason before empathy is not quite the same as not having any.. i don't see any reason why libertarians would measure any more likely than the norm for lacking empathy.. i would expect politicians (people driven to power) regardless of how liberal or empathetic they sound in speeches (or which party the are in) to be more likely to be devoid of actual empathy.

putting reason before empathy is not quite the same as not having any

That right there is the core of the liberal misunderstanding of libertarianism.

[madbean]

I worked hard.  I should eat filet mignon and drink premiere cru wine.  You?  You can do the same if you work hard like me.  If you don't, it's only natural that you should eat shit and die.

Sounds like a psychopath to me.

I'm not saying that all libertarians are psychopaths, but I'd guess that more people who profess to be libertarians than the general population would measure as lacking empathy.

I first learned about libertarianism through Harry Browne's excellent anti-war writings, wherein I first learned of the prime directive of libertarianism - the non-aggression principle. How that translates into a form of psychopathology involving a lack of empathy is beyond me.

[rickb]

I worked hard.  I should eat filet mignon and drink premiere cru wine.  You?  You can do the same if you work hard like me.  If you don't, it's only natural that you should eat shit and die.

Sounds like a psychopath to me.

I'm not saying that all libertarians are psychopaths, but I'd guess that more people who profess to be libertarians than the general population would measure as lacking empathy.

I first learned about libertarianism through Harry Browne's excellent anti-war writings, wherein I first learned of the prime directive of libertarianism - the non-aggression principle. How that translates into a form of psychopathology involving a lack of empathy is beyond me.

Non-aggression is an admirable principle.  IMO, where at least some libertarians go off the rails is when they start arguing that taxation to fund any kind of social safety net is aggression directed toward the taxpayer.  The expressed attitude is what's mine is mine, and the government never has any right to take anything of mine. 

Old people with no savings?  Too f-ing bad.  They should have worked harder/saved more/whatever. 

Starving children in the street?  Again, too f-ing bad.  They should get a job.

This attitude looks like lack of empathy, whether it's based on reason or psychopathology.  People's financial circumstances are not always under their control.  Immense wealth is nearly always at least as much due to good luck as due to hard work.  The inverse is true as well.

One could certainly argue that existing social safety nets are too generous and should be scaled back or modified.  However, this is entirely different from the extreme libertarian stance that all safety nets should be abolished.

Reread the line from the abstract of the article that started this thread:

A widely embraced social taboo against aggression is necessary, but probably not sufficient, to achieve and keep a free society. Empathy and charity for the down and out also play vital roles.

Libertarians get the non-aggression part right.  But they (at least sometimes) morph that into a completely unempathetic disregard for the down and out.

[moda0306]

The question I would ask libertarians, who I would admit are often more rational than libs/cons, is to what ends are you employing your rationality in this discussion?

Usually, it's one of these three things:

1) To their own subjective personal happiness/preferences (selfishness, for lack of a better term... I say this without judgment... like Ayn Rand style).

2) To some sort of preferred utilitarian outcome (high GDP, maximum societal happiness, safety, etc)

3) Acknowledgement and respect for certain Kantian-esque "rights-based" arguments that respect consistency of behaviors toward one another.


Like us all, they still tend to bounce around these preferences.  If you take your typical hardcore libertarian, usually they lean heavily on #3, but then use the fallacy of composition to bounce into #2 due to people's natural motivation to maximize #1 (this is HB, to a large degree, except he spent very little time moralizing about #3 and just accepted private property as a given).

The problem is, and we've seen it here, it's almost impossible to be 100% consistent without reaching points where your arguments don't "work" anymore for anything that would resemble a reasonable response.  To the degree a libertarian might give his rational argument that his policies will create a functional utilitarian ideal, we can poke tons of holes in that, because they almost always rely on fallacy of composition.  To the degree that they simply prefer personal autonomy, we can point out that it is just their preferred EMOTIONAL state driving their opinion, rather than a rational societal structure.  And to the degree that they want to lament about rights, you can easily point out to them that property rights, especially in any sort of workable modern form, are a huge utilitarian societal fabrication with only modest fundamental connection to human achievement.  And that in many cases their rational position for rights in that sense has very loose grounding.

Then the typical dance from point to point occurs, where libertarians (and, in fact, most people with die-hard political opinions) bounce from selfish arguments, to utilitarian arguments, to rights-based arguments as soon as they start to get pushed into the corner on their rational opinion.


It's the same problem we have with liberals and conservatives... it's just not usually as bad, because usually libertarians are rational enough to know a good argument when they see it.  They're rational to some ends sometimes, but those ends change.  Even their preference for personal liberty is 1) emotional in nature (personal preferences = a state of well-being, as HB would put it), and 2) up to some debate on how to actually define in a world where so much of our land and resources are claimed as property and sold for profit.


A libertarian may be accused of being "cold" because they put their rationality ahead of their empathy.  But this is only rational to certain ends as opposed to others.  If those ends change when you approach their positions from a different angle (going from a personal preference for liberty to a utilitarian argument that universal liberty will make us all happier overall, and then to an argument that it is a fundamental right that can't be violated), it's probably emotion at work, and the "rationalizing" comes later.  So if they are rational towards certain ends, but those ends change on subjective emotional preferences, then how rational are they, really?

I'll repeat myself...  Libertarians aren't the only ones who do this.  In fact they do it a lot less than other folks.  It's just disappointing as they don't realize their doing it (often), but have the rational wherewithal to if they really tried.

[Mountaineer]

The question I would ask libertarians, who I would admit are often more rational than libs/cons, is to what ends are you employing your rationality in this discussion?

Usually, it's one of these three things:

1) To their own subjective personal happiness/preferences (selfishness, for lack of a better term... I say this without judgment... like Ayn Rand style).

2) To some sort of preferred utilitarian outcome (high GDP, maximum societal happiness, safety, etc)

3) Acknowledgement and respect for certain Kantian-esque "rights-based" arguments that respect consistency of behaviors toward one another.


Like us all, they still tend to bounce around these preferences.  If you take your typical hardcore libertarian, usually they lean heavily on #3, but then use the fallacy of composition to bounce into #2 due to people's natural motivation to maximize #1 (this is HB, to a large degree, except he spent very little time moralizing about #3 and just accepted private property as a given).

The problem is, and we've seen it here, it's almost impossible to be 100% consistent without reaching points where your arguments don't "work" anymore for anything that would resemble a reasonable response.  To the degree a libertarian might give his rational argument that his policies will create a functional utilitarian ideal, we can poke tons of holes in that, because they almost always rely on fallacy of composition.  To the degree that they simply prefer personal autonomy, we can point out that it is just their preferred EMOTIONAL state driving their opinion, rather than a rational societal structure.  And to the degree that they want to lament about rights, you can easily point out to them that property rights, especially in any sort of workable modern form, are a huge utilitarian societal fabrication with only modest fundamental connection to human achievement.  And that in many cases their rational position for rights in that sense has very loose grounding.

Then the typical dance from point to point occurs, where libertarians (and, in fact, most people with die-hard political opinions) bounce from selfish arguments, to utilitarian arguments, to rights-based arguments as soon as they start to get pushed into the corner on their rational opinion.


It's the same problem we have with liberals and conservatives... it's just not usually as bad, because usually libertarians are rational enough to know a good argument when they see it.  They're rational to some ends sometimes, but those ends change.  Even their preference for personal liberty is 1) emotional in nature (personal preferences = a state of well-being, as HB would put it), and 2) up to some debate on how to actually define in a world where so much of our land and resources are claimed as property and sold for profit.


A libertarian may be accused of being "cold" because they put their rationality ahead of their empathy.  But this is only rational to certain ends as opposed to others.  If those ends change when you approach their positions from a different angle (going from a personal preference for liberty to a utilitarian argument that universal liberty will make us all happier overall, and then to an argument that it is a fundamental right that can't be violated), it's probably emotion at work, and the "rationalizing" comes later.  So if they are rational towards certain ends, but those ends change on subjective emotional preferences, then how rational are they, really?

I'll repeat myself...  Libertarians aren't the only ones who do this.  In fact they do it a lot less than other folks.  It's just disappointing as they don't realize their doing it (often), but have the rational wherewithal to if they really tried.

It seems you have done a marvelous job of describing one of the unintended consequences of a post-modern society where an internal subjective "self-source" is supreme instead of a commonly held and valued external objective source of right, wrong, and behavior. 

... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

Mountaineer,

If there was such a thing as a widely-accepted source of morality, OR an objective source of morality, much less the combination, I might know what the heck you're talking about. 


Not to mention all the people that operate on a "self-source" and then rationalize it with what they think thier "objective source" would want.

[Mountaineer]

Mountaineer,

If there was such a thing as a widely-accepted source of morality, OR an objective source of morality, much less the combination, I might know what the heck you're talking about. 


Not to mention all the people that operate on a "self-source" and then rationalize it with what they think thier "objective source" would want.

The one who counts is patient.  Resistance is futile. 

... Jean Luc

[MachineGhost]

This is something I've struggled with intellectually.  Especially coming to libertarianism from the Ayn Rand point of view, which the authors mention specifically.  I find the argument to be persuasive.

You have to consider that Rand was traumatized by her Soviet experience so it modified her thinking into a rigid, uncompromising, extremist belief system that is simply at odds with reality.  Altruism is biologically hardwired into humans (and mammals) because it is a necessary and positive attribute for humanity to grow and flourish.  Civilization would not exist without it.  If you want a world without altruism, then you'll have corporate fascism, injustice, torture and cryonism.  Remarkably similar to what we have today in certain quarters where the almighty profit is valued above all else by a minority class (Wall Street, Congo Republic, China, etc..) and losses are passed onto all the majority "little people", if they're not outright murdered, dismembered or simply left to starve to death.  You ought to look up the history of what it was like several hundreds of years ago where infanticide and child sex slavery were widespread, gruesome public executions were entertainment, etc..  A one dimensional number cannot possibly quantify and encompass the WHOLE entire spectrum of the human experience, especially the most heinous.

[MachineGhost]

One could certainly argue that existing social safety nets are too generous and should be scaled back or modified.

As an evolved post-modern libertarian, I find the above statement to be comical, ideological Libertarian-but-Republican-in-the-closest-or-whenever-the-motherland-is-attacked juvenile tripe.  So much of the LibertRepub ideology rests upon the hollow illusion of scarcity.  Scarcity in resources, scarcity in money, scarcity in labor, scarcity in socio-economic class, scarcity in education, scarcity in wealth, well shit, scarcity in literally everything plus "I'm getting mine so fuck you!", but the geniuses that the LibertRepubs think they bloody are.  It is very cynical and psychopathic viewpoint of the world, indeed.

[MachineGhost]

I'll repeat myself...  Libertarians aren't the only ones who do this.  In fact they do it a lot less than other folks.  It's just disappointing as they don't realize their doing it (often), but have the rational wherewithal to if they really tried.

That's the difference between being a true free thinker and an ideological extremist.  The ideologically striving DON'T WANT to address their hypocrisy because it will poke holes in their rotten foundation and when your entire world view is based upon that, it is very painful have one's mental house of cards collapse.  Almost nobody except a true free thinker will voluntarily go through that process.

I don't see anything wrong with jumping from 1, 2 or 3 though.  Any reason is valid as a reason as long as it is reasonable.  And rationality is NOT the same as reason.  Reason is reasoning from all sources of data no matter how treasonous; rationality is being consistently logical about the data whether or not your head finds it way up your ass.  Libertards are the latter.

[Stewardship]

Article by Robert and Elizabeth Bernard Higgs:
http://www.independent.org/publications ... asp?a=1058

Abstract:
A widely embraced social taboo against aggression is necessary, but probably not sufficient, to achieve and keep a free society. Empathy and charity for the down and out also play vital roles.


This is something I've struggled with intellectually.  Especially coming to libertarianism from the Ayn Rand point of view, which the authors mention specifically.  I find the argument to be persuasive.

What's the conflict?  Ayn Rand was against Moochers who claim your product by tears, and looters who take it from you by force.  The above article is not talking about either.  Galt's oath reads "I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."  The linked article isn't saying we should do that either.

[Stewardship]

However, I'm not sure the kind of person demanded by this assessment actually exists. People most interested in helping others tend to be nosy busybodies who are unproductive of much economic value, and those most interested in production and freedom tend to be cold, penny-pinching loners (guilty as charged). While the intersection of these personality traits is possible, it is rare. I'm not hopeful.

Semi-related: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ot ... idealists/

I find your perspective incredibly sad, Pointedstick!  I hope it changes someday.

[Pointedstick]

However, I'm not sure the kind of person demanded by this assessment actually exists. People most interested in helping others tend to be nosy busybodies who are unproductive of much economic value, and those most interested in production and freedom tend to be cold, penny-pinching loners (guilty as charged). While the intersection of these personality traits is possible, it is rare. I'm not hopeful.

Semi-related: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ot ... idealists/

I find your perspective incredibly sad, Pointedstick!  I hope it changes someday.

I hope so too. But so far I haven't seen a lot of evidence to convince me otherwise. Have a read on the related thread I mentioned; I think it's a fascinating topic but it does kind of depress me a bit.

[Stewardship]

Maybe read some Chicken Soup for the Soul or something 

[MachineGhost]

Well, PS, you went from an ultra liberal whackjob enclave to an isolated conservative whackjob flyover country.

I'd argue you don't really have enough experience in between but a polarized one.

Granted, conscious capitalists are a minority right now.  But they do exist.  And they are growing.  Give it some time.

[Pointedstick]

Well, PS, you went from an ultra liberal whackjob enclave to an isolated conservative whackjob flyover country.

You must be thinking of Mississippi or something. I'm in New Mexico.

I do plan to be a "conscious capitalist" myself sometime soon.