This regular feature is back again. The idea is that, over the weekend, you should post your thoughts in a more leisurely fashion than in ordinary comments or the Monday Message Board. On the occasion of the Queen’s Birthday, I’d be interested in thoughts on our relationship to the British monarchy.
Please post your thoughts on any topic, at whatever length seems appropriate to you. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
John Quiggin 
Is it so that the more true and correct and tautological your opinions are then the more likey it is that you have at your disposal the necessary physical force to impose them on those of the weaker mind whose values aren’t as valid?
A simple no will suffice, you don’t need to rabbit on about human rights and such.
Abb1 asks
how could a rational philosophy be based on a manifestly silly assumption like ‘human nature is fundamentally good’ or ‘human nature is fundamentally bad’?
Perhaps most people are not as balanced as you are.
RWDBs hold human nature to be bad and are incredulous that the left are so stupid as not to realise it. This is not just the gun nuts. Hobbes is a case, so is Locke, and of course Machiavelli. So are respected right wing commentors such as Krauthammer or Thomas Sowell. (Actually it seems to me that the tendency to hold human nature bad is deep in the American psyche.)
On the other side, as I already said, if human nature is not held to be fundamentally good, how could anarchy or the state withering away ever be seriously proposed?
Go for a hunt round the blogosphere, I am sure you will find heaps of evidence that people do think these ways.
Thanks, Mike. I don’t know much about this, so I checked some summary pages and apparently you’re correct about Hobbes, with Rousseau, of course, representing the other side.
It’s not that I’m somehow more balanced than others, it’s just that where (and when) I was getting my education we pretty much only studied two philosophers: Marx and Hegel: dialectical materialism. There are no absolutes like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ there, everything is a product of your experience, environment and the circumstances; the good, the bad and the ugly are all in the mix. This is where I’m coming from.
Elizabeth,
Apart from Amnesty International, the international left seems mainly to condemn in principle the use of the death penalty but not to make a big deal about its application.
When was the last time you saw or heard a protest about executions conducted in, for example, the US, Japan or China?
If you’re attempting a comparison with the use of summary execution by the Israeli government, I’ll point out the Palestinian Authority didn’t try these four men in absentia before a secret military tribunal with no defence counsel allowed and no appeal process and didn’t execute them in a manner that resulted in the death of innocent civilian bystanders.
He’ll (Telstra CEO) last 4 years because thats how long he can get away without paying Australian tax.
Ian:
When a country has a 50% tax rate , GST tax, a government run health care system (which seems to kill people) a tax office that took out the best bits out of the KGB manual, a large group of people whio think others owe them a living, a wage struuture controlled by Lawyers ( the Economist this week stated that Australia has the highest minimum wage rate in the OECD, what would you call this? Mis-directed libertarianism?
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The Liberal Party election manifesto?
Again with the erroneous left/right stuff? There are those on both ‘sides’ of that divide that believe that human nature is fundamentally good or bad and others who are indifferent to it.
To my understanding at least, left and right libertarians tend towards the human nature good side and the authoritarians (of both sides) tend towards the human nature bad side.
To me, the reason why people tend to advance theories in which State power (in either or both of the economic and social spheres) is enhanced is because they believe that humans need to be controlled and channelled into ‘good’ things – they do not do it naturally. Those who advocate a reduction in State power are the reverse. It is not a left/right thing, but an authoritarian / liberal (in the classic sense) thing.
To me at least the right liberals and the left authoritarians are the ones with at least some logical consistency – they either believe the individual or the State has the best chance of getting it right.
The right authoritarians (most conservatives) and the left liberals are generally internally inconsistent in one way or another. One lot believes that the State should be able to tell me how to organise my life but not how I spend my money and the others are of the opinion that the State has no business in my bedroom but can tell me how to spend (or give away, mostly to the government as they know best) my money.
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Andrew, having been an anarchist for much of my twenties I have shifted to a more liberal position.
I now beleive that there are two fundamental rationales fro mstate intervention, neither of which are what you suggest.
1. While I distrust the state, I am equally distrustful of private capital. I beleive that the state is necessary to restrain the abuses that arise from unrestricted pursuit of private profit.
2. On a purely empirical basis, during my University studies in economics I came to the conclusion that in some areas – especially those relating to public goods and externalities – state intervention produces superior economic outcomes.
To Andrew, some background logic:
“[People believe that] humans need to be controlled and channelled into ‘good’ things – they do not do it naturally.�
Some do. They are one of the three proactive archetypes I outlined above. Logically, this only makes sense if human nature is bad but trainable. It is the view of the conservative / hierarch, the old right if you like, or, as abb1 posted above (11/6, 9.44), fraternité degenerating to fascism when it gets our of hand. (exponents are Plato, Edmund Burke, etc)
If, however, human nature is immutably bad then govt can’t train people. In that case govt can only be a racket the rulers exploit to advance their bad purposes by imposing on ordinary people. In this case we must advocate minimum govt – which is, of course, the libertarian (new right, neo-con) position of liberté). (Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, etc)
Anarchist don’t want any government. Their reasoning is exactly opposite to the libertarian’s: human nature fundamentally good therefore govt is unnecessary. But if people (such as selfish libertarians or privilege-mongering hierarchs) are not to impose on others then égalité will be needed. (Rousseau, Kropotkin, etc)
I don’t agree with the assertions of your last paragraph.
I am a wary of the word “authoritarian�. I think it is a personality characteristic and can apply to all worldviews. I think you can advocate state authority and not be “authoritarian�.
There’s been previous discussion here about whether nuclear power can “solve” global warming. Personally, I think nuclear energy may be part of a solution at least in soem places but I’m skeptical that its solution in general.
That’s based not on any ideological opposition as it is on the practical and economic limtations on nuclear power.
This opinion piece from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer takes a similar view.
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=8692
– To achieve a 20 pecent reduction in carbon emissions from coal, 1,000-megawatt reactors would need to be built at a rate of 85-90 plants per year this century.
– One respected global energy scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a three-fold increase in carbon emissions between 1997 and 2100, even with an eight-fold increase in nuclear generation. If coal replaced all the nuclear generation in this scenario, carbon emissions in 2100 increase a mere 20 percent. Working the other way, if nuclear power were to replace all coal, carbon emissions would fall 20 percent.