A standard theme in (propertarian) libertarian thinking is that personal freedom in matters such as choice of sexual partners goes naturally with economic freedom, defined as the lack of state interference with property rights. To summarise this in a slogan, “If you want to keep the state out of your bedroom, you should support keeping it out of your (and others) business as well”. But this is not only a false equivalence, it’s self-contradictory, as can be seen by example.
Suppose A rents a house from B, who requires, as a condition that no-one in class C (wrong race, religion, or gender) should share the bedroom with A. Suppose that A signs the lease, but decides that this contractual condition is an unreasonable violation of personal freedom, and decides to ignore it. B discovers this, and seeks the assistance (or at least the acquiesence) of the state in evicting A. On a propertarian/contractual view, B is in the right, and is entitle to call in the state into the bedroom in question.
And, this is the fundamental problem. Is it A’s bedroom or C’s? If we understand the phrase in its normal sense, no-one including a landlord, has the right to tell you what to do in your own bedroom. But, from a propertarian viewpoint, C’s ownership rights over the bedroom, derived from and ultimately enforced by, the state, trump all other considerations.
Of course, this example stands in for many others like this one
If you really want personal freedom, you can achieve it only by constraining property rights.
John Quiggin 
Quite right. I agree that property rights need to be constrained by society, otherwise there is a creeping tyranny. The ‘libertarian’ view is that they can define their property rights in any way they see fit and big government is then bound to enforce those rights. Others are then ‘free to choose’ whether they accept those defined rights when they purchase or rent. Similarly, if the sucker ‘freely chooses’ to take a job they thereby ‘freely choose’ all the contractual conditions imposed on them by that choice, no matter how contrary to modern conceptions of liberty and personal freedom. Of course, this is supremacy of property rights and obligation of the state to enforce those rights regardless of how they are defined or created that is hardly a state of affairs any of those dead wig-wearing ‘classical liberals’ libertarians claim they are followers of believed in. Humorous is the way that libertarians claim to follow, for example, JS Mill and Adam Smith. Of course, the dead can’t argue with the libertarian interpretation of the views of the dead. And, anyway, the 17th and early 18th century world was quite a different place where those ‘classical liberals’ did not have to consider the many issues we have to consider in the 21st century. In light of the concerns of the 21st no doubt the wig-wearing ‘classical liberty’ ‘founding fathers’ would have modified many of their views.
A correct description of the libertarian position is that it is neo-luddite. The Utopian Neo-Luddite Libertarians want to roll back the world to a glorious past that never existed. Another nonsense is their support of caveat emptor; again a Neo-Luddite position. Caveat Emptor was entirely appropriate in the Roman Empire given the capacity of courts at that time to settle contractual or buying and selling disputes, and also, the variety of power relationships of the time, and the likely non-partisanship of courts of that time anyway. A modern 21st century economy would not function as well if there was a reversion to caveat emptor. Who really can spare the time and expense of checking that what one might expect of a seller, that they are not slyly ripping you off through some deceptive practice, is not taking place, for every business or personal purchase? The Neo-Luddite approach to modern life is simply unsustainable, as is the libertarian approach generally. Like pure communism, there is a reason pure libertarianism has never been tried; it is not capable of trial. It is simply too patently stupid.
Awaiting moderation again! not clear why?
Also, meant 18th and early 19th century…
Property rights would be best limited to the ambit where they protect personal rights without infrininging on others’ rights. To own a residential house in a socially santioned way (paid for, conforms to building codes etc) confers the practical capability to behave as you will within it but still subject to criminal limits (can’t strangle the children etc.).
To own a business (as a capitalist owner) confers the ability to infringe on others’ right by stealing a large portion of the value of their labour. As an example, Alvarado Street Bakery is a bakery located in California. It is is a worker cooperative and the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year. Capitalist owned bakeries in the US pay their workers about $22,000 a year. Thus we can see in this example, that capitalist owners can effectively steal 2/3 of the value of the workers’ labour.
Therefore property rights should be limited to personal possessions and consumption items. Ownership of more than a fair cooperative share of the means of production should not be legal. Once wealth is more evenly distributed by cooperative-capitalist production and attendent progressive taxes then ownership of private possessions is more equalised also and oppression reduced.
“If you want to keep the state out of *your* bedroom, you should support keeping it out of *your* (and others) business as well.”
It may be that we want to constrain the ability of people to make contracts over what their property can be used for, but the statement isn’t self-contradictory at all.
As you’ve stated the situation the bedroom belongs to B. If they are legally forbidden from making contracts with A about how the room will be used, the state is ‘in B’s bedroom’.
It is true that in this situation B, who owns the bedroom, and A, who does not, cannot both have their way with what happens in that property. And if the state sides with the person who owns it and not the person who doesn’t, they are constraining what the person who doesn’t own it can do with it. But that is trivial.
Your ability to cook a meal in your own kitchen does mean that I don’t have the freedom to come in and simultaneously play soccer there. But the solution for keeping the state out of your kitchen isn’t to let me come and hold sports matches there whenever I like.
“If you really want personal freedom, you can achieve it only by constraining property rights”.
If you really want personal freedom you have to have a relationship with something that is in fact, free! Check out the nearest four year old … (it’s all downhill from there) !!!!
You would be better of sticking with a standard ‘positive freedom’ argument.
The freedom to have sex is meaningless if you are 18, have no money and live with your parents who forbid you from doing so. That may be a reason to redistribute income so even people on low incomes have enough property to do the things they really care about.
But it’s not a reason to forbid parents from telling their children they can’t have sex on their own property. That’s an inefficient restriction on property use. Better to redistribute with cash.
The argument that the government will expand freedom here also seems self defeating. If over 50% of voters are in favour of banning property owners from forbidding act X on their property, surely it will be possible to find a property owner who is willing to let you do X on their property. What is more likely to be happening with such bans is a majority of voters imposing their values on an idiosyncratic minority. The majority could already do what they wanted with all the property they owned, but that was not enough for them – they wanted to wipe out those who disagree.
Whose rights are being trampled here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gay-couple-win-bed-and-breakfast-snub-case-2187347.html
The gay couple could have gone almost anywhere else to do what they wanted. Now the bed and breakfast owners don’t have the freedom to turn away people they don’t like from their B&B. They can’t both get to do exactly what they want with that particular building. But while it was always possible for the gay couple to buy a home and live according to their values, it’s now impossible for the bed and breakfast owners to run a B&B and do the same. Greater freedom of property would result in a more liberal society in this case.
Seems like a restatement of the old fact: all interpretations of ‘freedom’ require comstant state intervention to adequately maintain. The only relevant question should be the type and quality of that intervention with the maximization of positive outcomes for freedom in mind. But alas, some interpret intervention and freedom as antonyms… They’re not! Coercion is surely only unjust, when it is *unjustified*?
Libertarians seem to think any constraint on freedom is fine, unless the oppressor is something called The State.
@6
Robert a few things: I’m not sure it’s fair to say that private enjoyment of a property is comparable to entering into business with your property. The first, in which people privately refuse to associate with homosexuals is bigotry, but to be sure, not the sort that ought be interfered with by the state. However, when opening a business, your business activities have an effect on the public world around you; just as a business owner, despite having no contractual relation with most members of a market still have an obligation to adhere to at least the most basic of that markets’ rules, a service provider has an obligation to participate in a socially responsible way. If discrimination reduces the accessibility of accomodation to a certain class of people due to no actual financial limitation, then it is akin to charging a different price for a different person, a crazy sort of freedom.
Not to mention that discrimination is an actual emotional harm, and being turned away for sexuality literally results in an externality of mental illness including but not limited to depression and suicide.
@Ikonoclast
“As an example, Alvarado Street Bakery is a bakery located in California. It is is a worker cooperative and the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year. Capitalist owned bakeries in the US pay their workers about $22,000 a year. Thus we can see in this example, that capitalist owners can effectively steal 2/3 of the value of the workers’ labour.”
Sounds like there’s no need to change the system – workers should just start cooperatives, throw off the ‘capitalists’ who contribute nothing to production, and all will be well.
“The first, in which people privately refuse to associate with homosexuals is bigotry, but to be sure, not the sort that ought be interfered with by the state. However, when opening a business, your business activities have an effect on the public world around you”
In both cases your actions have an effect on the world around you (i.e. Imagine gays couldn’t find friends. That would be worse than not being able to have sex in B&Bs.) so you can’t use that distinction.
“a service provider has an obligation to participate in a socially responsible way”
But not a private citizen? I don’t see a justification for the distinction.
“then it is akin to charging a different price for a different person, a crazy sort of freedom”
That happens all the time. As a utilitarian I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.
“discrimination is an actual emotional harm, etc”
Right but you can flip everything you say around, claim it’s the gays who are discriminating against the B&B owners and causing them emotional harm and it’s all still true. You just care about one side more than the other.
Your whole response, and almost everyone’s response, presupposes that ‘we’ know what is right and wrong with certainty. But the whole reason a liberal society allows people to have a private sphere in which they can try living in ways we disagree with is that we can’t just look up what is right and wrong with perfect certainty in a book somewhere.
Sure, I am an not religious and I strongly disagree with the B&B owners, but we must have a system of laws that follows principles rather than simply lets the majority (even when I am in the majority) be tyrants over those who are different to them.
By allowing the majority to dictate over the minority how they will live we stifle innovation and diversity and switch the process by which culture evolves out of the dynamic melting pot of civil society and free association into a brutal conflict over which group controls the government. I have much more confidence in the former process.
@Robert Wiblin
In principle I agree. If it can be done once it can be done again. I suspect small to middle size business and “boutique” business is the place to start.
Large business, large corporatations, accretions of banking power, the military-industrial complex and general large accretions of capital and power may present more difficult issues. Law changes would still be needed including withdrawal of the fiction that a corporation is an individual and withdrawal of the many forms of subsidies and special treatment that large corporations and plutocrats get. The pretence that large-scale capitalists do not got preferential political and financial treament does not stand up to scrutiny in the modern world.
Capitalists as such, do in fact contribute nothing. All the capital is previously stolen capital accretion taken from worker created value. Genuine entrepreneurs do contribute something (ideas, effort and innovative courage). Most large corporate capitalists (and managers) do not “do” further innovation. They buy up innovative firms and appropriate the innovations which usually are created in small to medium business. A genuine entrepreneur is different from a corporate capitalist. It would certainly take a genuine entrepreneur or two plus other kinds of workers to set up a successful workers’ cooperative.
Cooperative worker capitalism would need to be grown from the ground up while corporate monopoly capitalism was pruned away from the top.
I am fully with you in opposition to corporatist government. I am more skeptical than you that ‘capitalists’ contribute little to the production process. I buy the ’roundabout application of labour’ idea of capital. Someone who works and invests the proceeds is not exploiting workers, they are just applying their labour in a different way.
But I support anyone trying to cut a redundant group out of the production process. If the cooperative model works better than the for profit corporate one, great.
I’ve a feeling that property- libertarians (scrooges like the Koch bros, Murdoch, etc? ) make the error of dislocating and valorising property rights at the expense of that wider suite of concepts that combine to define freedom and rights.
A billionairess has rights to her property, but do these rights necessarily come at the expense of the right to food, water, shelter etc- basics- for others?
Should the concept of my property involve an acknowledgement that includes my right to survival (although not at the expense of others)?
I’d love to see the return of a Kantian counterbalancing of the bugger you jack/red in tooth and claw concept which as actually an impulse against the concept of freedom and rights.
If I wouldn’t live under certain circumstances, have I the right to expect others to tolerate some thing would find unncceptable?
I think property rights are secondary to the right to a life, at least in our theft oriented world where the precondition of a level playing field has been sabotaged and rendered inoperative.
When young and impressionable, I read a libertarian book. The author wanted a government that protected property and enforced contracts. The idea seemed fine to me. Then I imagined someone buying a ring of land surrounding a village. They could choose to not let anyone cross “their” land, or could charge an exorbitant amount for the privilege.
Its a simple example, but shows that this version of libertarianism is fundamentally flawed.
I suspect that most libertarian thought is pushed by people wanting to increase their power.
@12
As a utilitarian, I hope that you can appreciate that the cost to personal freedom for intervening to prevent personal bigotry in the home (criminal sanctions, reeducation, surveillance) outweigh the benefit of letting gays make friends with such folk. Whereas the relative cost of regulating business activity is minor with a net benefit to total freedom (preventing the broader economic effects of culturally-spawned homophobia).
So while I concede strictly speaking the distinction is not based on ‘having an effect on the world around you’, there is a tipping point in which intervention creates more freedom than it impinges upon.
@John Brookes
But surely they should be entitled to do this? And surely big government ought to be obliged to enforce their right and stop anyone who might try to evade paying for the use of their land?
You’re not suggesting that libertarians are intellectually shallow naive bumkins I hope? Surely not! Oh, the horror!
@Chris Gall
But it is an infraction on a libertarian’s personal freedom! And as Milton Friedman said, his support of the market was based on his idea of freedom, rather than his belief that the market is efficient, and he would have supported a free market economy even if he believed it wasn’t the most efficient. The only right that needs to be defended is the right to have and dispose and construct property rights and have big government enforce those rights. Or at least thats the position I have heard libertarians argue. Any other freedom, worth having, relies on and flows from those enforcable property rights. Wonderful isn’t it, like most utopias are.
“I hope that you can appreciate that the cost to personal freedom for intervening to prevent personal bigotry in the home outweigh the benefit of letting gays make friends with such folk. Whereas the relative cost of regulating business activity is minor…”
Not generally. You could report and fine people for expressing bigoted opinions amongst their friends, family, etc, or not making friends with someone because of their sexuality. That too would limit the propagation of ideas you don’t like, if that was your goal. Regulating discrimination amongst businesses is as fraught because you can’t easily prove how decisions are made, especially in employment.
“net benefit to total freedom”
The gay folks in that case gained the not very valuable freedom to have sex in other people’s houses for an average fee even if the owner would want to charge them more (or not let them at all). The B&B owners lost what is to most people a more valuable freedom: to decide who they will let their house to and what they can do while there. It is quite possible that they will suffer more than the gay folks will benefit. After all the gay couple could have just gone to a different B&B whose owner share their values.
As a utilitarian you could only justify that regulation if you have some combination of a) care more about the welfare of the gay couple than the B&B owners, b) are not convinced by the argument that we should tolerate diversity in people’s private spheres.
@Freelander
“And as Milton Friedman said, his support of the market was based on his idea of freedom, rather than his belief that the market is efficient, and he would have supported a free market economy even if he believed it wasn’t the most efficient.”
Actually Freelander he says the exact opposite, see this:
And who is there to stand up for the property rights of descendants of slave owners who were never compensated for the dissolution of their property rights by a coercive government? Those poor folk deprived of a substantial inheritance, if interest and penalties where taken into account.
Those poor libertarian folk find few among the ‘latte set’ to defend them.
@20 I suppose the loud sex in the B&B is not the perfect example of the division I was discussing given that it is reasonable to expect some politeness to the hosts and other guests.
However were that to be selectively applied to homosexuals I would consider it a perfect example.
@20
In regards to the ability to regulate discrimination in business against the ability to regulate personal opinion, I daresay both have relatively long actual histories, demonstrating success in one and failure in the other.
What if the B&B owners find it more unpleasant to listen to homosexual sex than heterosexual sex because of their religious beliefs? Now I am not religious, and I would think their religious reasons for opposing homosexuality would be nonsense. But the whole point of living in a liberal society is that people are free to have preferences and live in ways which other people might think unjustified or stupid. When they are in their own private sphere they don’t have to justify their preferences to you and me.
Once you abandon that peace treaty between cultural groups that disagree, there is nothing to stop politics becoming an unrestricted free-for-all in which I try to forcibly impose my values on you and you on me. If avoiding that kind of winner takes all cultural warfare means sometimes I get denied commercial service by specific firms or people who don’t like me, I’m fine with that.
“Regulating discrimination amongst businesses is as fraught because you can’t easily prove how decisions are made, especially in employment.”
This is a very important point. Even the strictest anti-discrimination laws can’t stop someone simply lying about the reasons for rejecting a customer/employee/etc.
Then there’s the further problem that some discrimination is statistical in nature, sometimes referred to as ‘rational’ discrimination. It’s just a heuristic, not bigotry. Should we even be trying to eliminate that kind of discrimination?
“Its a simple example, but shows that this version of libertarianism is fundamentally flawed.”
Your example relies on very problematic assumptions. I don’t think you can dismiss an entire political philosophy on the back of such an exercise 😉
@Freelander
This is a very good point. Given their perspective on things, you’d think that libertarians would be unable to talk about anything else but compensating indigenous people for stolen wages and the like.
@Jarrah
“This is a very important point. Even the strictest anti-discrimination laws can’t stop someone simply lying about the reasons for rejecting a customer/employee/etc.”
Unfortunately I would like to disagree with that statement. If anti-discrimination laws are extremely strict in a society to such an extent that any public media broadcast that breaches it will enforced resulting to jailing or similar sorts. Overtime this would reduce public’s hatred or fear over cultures or races that differs to them.
How much hatred and fear has Alan Jones or Andrew Bolt created in the Australian public? Especially when the kids are indirectly listening with their families that created false perception when they are in their childhood. When the crime commission annouced that crime rate of children relating to violence is increasing or crimes involving a child killed by their peers; one should wonder why has those events happened.
In the end, yes it contradicts to freedom of speech. However should one that creates such a violent influence over current/future generations with hatred, fear and defamation be allowed to broadcast to the Australian public. Just to make the matter worse, they are most listened radio broadcasters…….
That is very much a matter of opinion. I’d challenge anybody to quantify it in any means approaching objective. In any case most of the hate associated with these guys entails hatred towards themselves by their ideological opponents. This is easier to quantify. You can just do a survey and ask people if they hate Andrew Bolt. Then again you can also do a survey and ask if people hate Bob Brown. In neither case is it clear who generates the hate but it is clear who is hated.
@TerjeP
It’s not who is hated most, it’s about how much hate towards another culture/race one generates. For example, does Bob Brown broadcast to general public that every other culture/race besides their own are evil/lazy/stupid etc? These public hate broadcast is very influential, more so to young kids.
If these public broadcast weren’t allow at least the young generation won’t have a wrong perception about another race. This will not generate a barrier before even trying to communication or making friends between young generations of different culture. Once they understand each other, respect their difference in cultural values and beliefs; how then, when they become employers or human resource managers will they think to turn people off or treat them differently because of discrimination?
I don’t know anybody that does that. I listen to Bolt quite regularly and I know he does not. Recently he was suggesting that Asian students with Asian parents growing up in Australia seem to place a higher premium on education and seem to work harder. That is hardly a suggestion that “the other” is evil or lazy. Nor was it critical. He just said it was different. He was responding to an academic that suggested that the fact that elite schools were dominated by Asian kids was white flight due to racism.
@Robert Wiblin
So he said different things at different time. He was well known for porkies, and talking out both sides of his mouth.
Jarrah #27
So called ‘rational discrimination’ is only rational if you are not in favour of making the world a better place. Call me idealistic but I think it is a worthwhile goal to work toward a world in which there is no discrimination. But I wonder why a libertarian would call discrimination against an individual, based on the statistics of the group, rational?
There is no evidence that discrimination, or racism is hardwired. It is cultural.
I remember when I was a cheesecloth wearing hippie chick, how humiliating, hurtful and unfcknfair it was to be discrimated against because of my choice of dress and lifestyle. Joan Baez tells how back in the 60’s when Bob Dylan was an unknown, and they were on tour, he was refused a room at a motel. At the time, she was the ‘star’ and was able to reassure the motel owners that he was an ok guy despite the hair and clothes. She says that he wrote the song “Masters of War” that night.
Allan Jones encourages people to hate, to be intolerant, to be angry and afraid of things that will not hurt them. He does this for his own personal gratification, not for the good of the country or its people.
As Tom says, it is sad to think that there are children listening to his lies, to his aggression, his rudeness and bad manners. I thought conservatives valued manners and decency. This man needs therapy. I can only wonder how many medications he is on, to be able to sleep at night and to live with himself.
Bolt is more restrained, less obviously in need of behaviour modification but still he spreads irrational fear and loathing of those he deems to be bad people, for his own personal reasons. His obsession with the sins of the ‘white aborigines’ is incomprehensible to me. What is it about?
Aboriginality comes from the way one is raised just as much as it comes from skin colour. If you grow up in an indigenous family, you think the way aboriginals think, and this is not the way we white people think. Aboriginal culture does not encourage competitive behaviour, or any of the character traits that make one successful in this culture. They need all the support we can give if they are to regain their self-respect and self-esteem as a people. They need to be valued if we want them to integrate.
@Freelander
Like to provide a reference to the supposed statement from Friedman, Freelander. There may be one, but at the moment it simply looks like you’re the one who has been telling porkies.
Propertarian is exactly the right way to describe some forms of ‘libertarian’ thinking. Some propertarians are quite open about the fact that the freedom they want is the freedom to control other people’s behaviour.
For example, some employers believe they should be able to tell employees how to behave outside the workplace (see Elizabeth Anderson’s post on Adventures in contract feudalism http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/02/adventures_in_c.html).
Other propertarians complain they’ve been deprived of the freedom to discriminate against and exclude groups of people they disapprove of: http://clubtroppo.com.au/2008/11/23/freedoms-just-another-word-for/
I think John’s right, unrestricted property rights and personal freedom are two different things.
@Tom N.
No. Find it yourself. I imagine you have got all the ‘sacred’ texts. He said it at least once in an interview anyway. But he was a real bait and switch artist. One story for the general population “Free markets are efficient and great for everyone” and another when he said what he really thought “I don’t care whether ‘Free markets’ are efficient or not, or good for the general population or not, they conform to my process justice ideas of ‘freedom’ and that enough for me”. Friedman was simply one of the all time great American hucksters. Back in the 19 Century he would have been travelling the West, occasionally being ‘tarred and feathered’ and run out of town where-ever he had stayed to long.
Actually, the reason Friedman gained his reputation as a great debater was because he always had supporting facts at his fingertips. They were of course his own facts, those he simply made up in support of what he was saying – distortions, half-truths or outright lies. “Capitalism and Freedom” and “Free to Choose” are full of them. That is what makes them such entertaining reads, and so convincing to the callow. Japan is a great example of an economy that followed his advice, and demonstrated that his simple minded quantity theory nonsense is wrong. First following Friedman killed their economy dead. Then his advice was that a bit of QE would re-inflate it. Here we are twenty years later and although the Japanese QE’d themselves silly, in the short run Friedman and his theories are dead, the Japanese are in the longer run and their economy is still dead. Friedman’s disciple “Helicopter” Bernake has been throwing money at the US problem, QE’ing like a madman, and once again demonstrating that Friedman’s simple minded quantity theory ideas were and are rubbish. Of course, no reason to take back his Bank of Sweden prize. After all they gave the prize to Lucas after his nonsense had been well and truly been shown to be cr*p.
Somebody is projecting.
Terje, I assume you meant to use the term ‘projecting’ in the way in which Freud conceptualised this mental process, or are you making up your own version?
Freuds idea referred to feelings and emotions, not to an assessment of another person’s actual behaviour. A subtle but critical difference.
But I am interested in why you listen to Bolt. He is a conservative and I thought you were not, so I’m interewould like to understand why you listen and what you value about his ideas. With reference to his comments on Asian attitudes to education, what did you think his message was?
I am commenting through my hat of course, as I haven’t listened, but I suspect that he didn’t offer any insights about the social, political, philosophical or psychological basis of Asian societies that underpins their values of hard work and achievement. I imagine that his comments would have been couched as a criticisism of progressive education policies and were ‘only’ useful to his listeners in that context; as an argument for not doing anything that might make the world a better place.
I am surprised no one has mentioned the freedom of the payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal et al) to prevent using their services to donate to causes they do not like, such as Wikileaks or OWS.
@Peter T
We have too many American companies having the choice of withdrawing their monopoly services throughout the world at the whim of American politicians. Even the extraordinary law that is being used to undertake an ‘legal’ extraordinary rendition of Assange to Sweden is a law that was introduced at the behest of the Americans. The draconian law was introduced to deal with alleged terrorists, but like all those laws it is being used much more widely. Why should someone be detained and rendered to another country when they haven’t even been charged with anything. Assange has been detained and will be rendered to Sweden because they want to question him. Why can’t they question him in the UK? The whole thing stinks. Why is the government bending over backwards to get the best for a kid who is not denying he brought drugs in Indonesia, yet the government is doing nothing for an Australian citizen, Assange, who hasn’t even been charged with anything, and is being treated like this?
In the latest in breathtakingly immoral actions, the government and opposition got together to pass retrospective legislation aimed at taking the rights away from an alleged ‘people smuggler’ and to stop the court from finding in the ‘people smugglers’ favour. What sort of place has Australia become?
@Julie Thomas
You can listen to the specific program here:-
http://www.mtr1377.com.au/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=10335
I listen to Bolt because I find him insightful and provocative. He calls himself a conservative and on many issues he is, however he takes quite libertarian positions on some issues. For example he says he hates poker machines (conservative) but he says other people like them and he is uncomfortable regulating an activity just because he hates it (libertarian).
One might just as readily ask why I follow John Quiggin when I’m a libertarian and he is a social democrat. The reason is much the same. Sometimes John is insightful and / or provocative. I listen to and read the views of lots of people. I am not defined by who I listen to.
@Julie Thomas
“But I wonder why a libertarian would call discrimination against an individual, based on the statistics of the group, rational?”
It’s rational because it saves time. If, statistically, 7 out of 10 people belonging to group X are unsuitable or undesirable for whatever reason, while 4 out of 10 people belonging to group Y are unsuitable or undesirable, then when you have large numbers of people to deal with it makes sense to ignore/reject anyone belong to group X rather than go to the trouble of finding out if they are one of the 3 out of 10 people who are suitable or desirable.
As I said, it’s a heuristic, not bigotry.
“Call me idealistic but I think it is a worthwhile goal to work toward a world in which there is no discrimination.”
Me too. There’s nothing wrong with being idealistic 🙂 I just don’t think laws that criminalise particular thoughts are the right way to go about it.
@Jarrah
Interestingly as far as I know there are no laws, at least currently, that criminalise ‘thoughts’ (particular or general). If there were such laws they are hardly worthy of discussion because with existing technology such laws are unenforceable.
There are, however, laws covering actions including certain types of speech. Not all actions that are rational for an individual result in net benefit to society or even to the individual. That alone provides a reason for certain laws.
Speech is one of the primary means for sharing thoughts.
@TerjeP
Not all thoughts ought to be shared, and speech is used for purposes other than simply ‘sharing thoughts’. Speech is also a means for deceiving, inciting violence and a variety of other undesirable things. Thoughts are unrestricted by law. Speech and other actions are not.
Terje I don’t have real broadband where I live so it isn’t rational for me to be profligate about clicking on links as I don’t know what my pc will do. Sometimes it just sits there for several minutes seemingly going nowhere and I have no idea whether the link is broken or it is just a huge download. I’ve been waiting 10 years for private enterprise to provide a decent service but it hasn’t happened.
This discrimination toward rural dwellers is irrational because it limits the possibilites for people who choose to live in the country. We could all choose to move to the city I suppose but overcrowded cities create problems that are expensive to fix.
It seems to me though that the rational course would be to pay whatever it takes to build a vibrant and functional rural communities out here. The consequences of a re-invigorated rural sector would be beneficial for all of the country. But one has to be for something to see things that way and you libertarians are only against things.
Anyway, so I haven’t checked out your link to Bolt but I have listened to him on the odd occasion that he is on Counterpoint and I cannot agree with your asssessment that he is ‘insightful’. Like I said with the asian student example, he did not show any insights into the factors that lead to the asian attitudes. All his ‘insights’ are on the basis of his set in stone bias against ‘the left’; all he seems to do is criticise, ridicule, and show contempt for things he doesn’t like.
I would really like to understand why he picks on white aborigines. I just simply don’t understand why he focuses on this issue. How is it insightful? It is divisive, hurtful and of course provocative and why is that a good thing if it is not backed up by any understanding of the people or their culture.
You say you find him provocative and I’ll acccept that as being the most honest and insightful assement you have made about yourself.
Jarrah I can’t see how it is rational to ignore all the negative consequences of discrimination for individuals and societies on the basis of a statistical analysis.
The stereotype effect makes it clear that characterising people in a negative way decreases their abilities and that must have negative effects on the economy. Whether it is a heurestic or bigotry, anyone who aims to be a good person, would not use that sort of rationality.
It seems likely to me that this ‘heuristic’ or ‘rationality’ is a cognitive specialization or problem solving strategy that evolved on the basis of the problems our ancestors encountered. These unconscious ways of thinking are now dysfunctional and I think it is incumbent on thinking people to recognise their bias toward dysfunctional irrationality.