A new sandpit for long side discussions, idees fixes and so on. Unless directly responding to the OP, all discussions of nuclear power, MMT and conspiracy theories should be directed to sandpits (or, if none is open, message boards).
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
John Quiggin 
Another sad attempt to change the topic. And this from the person who has never really thought much about their own thinking when it comes to political matters. I’ll leave you to it.
Terje what is *the topic*?
Where is it written that this Sandpit is for you to pursue your obsession rather than it being totally fine for me to pursue one of my obsessions.
I do have more obsessions than the one you have noticed.
Pursue whatever you want. I’ll leave you to it.
Strikes me that Terje probably already has a ticket — the one Julie and I think he should have — but that he disagrees with it.
That’d explain the very very noticeable absence of denial and also the very very firm reluctance to discuss the issue at all.
@Julie Thomas
If libertarians = Objectivists or Ayn Rand (or La Rouche) proponents, but only one made a claim, then it seems your statement that “Lots of them ….” etc., went beyond the evidence.
Those citing IQ numbers are pretty stupid as the real scale is usually in percentiles or standard deviations.
I could probably make up a test, scaled 0 to 500, under which an IQ score of 220 is below average.
> Those citing IQ numbers are pretty stupid as the real scale is usually in percentiles or standard deviations.
IQ tests are all designed to be scaled the same: mean of 100, sd of 15.
[the real problem with citing IQ scores is that most of the useful/important parts of thinking are training — learned skills — not aptitude/innate-talent. Citing an IQ score, or an “I’m really clever!” or equivalent, indicates that you don’t know this, probably because you’re really bad at those bits and hadn’t realised their importance.]
@Ikonoclast
Sorry for arriving late to this discussion. I just want to mention that the only terrorist arrested after the Mumbai attack, was disarmed and apprehended by a policeman wielding a “lathi” (which is a long bamboo pole carried by policemen in India). The terrorist was armed with some version of a Kalashnikov, which was certainly capable of automatic fire. It would be very difficult for a knife wielding person to even injure a person with a suitable pole, who had some training in how to use it.
So shooting a person with a knife can definitely be avoided in most cases.
The Police, all over Australia, are incompetent at disarming and arresting mentally ill people when they pose a risk to the public. The police shooting of Roni Levi on Bondi Beach in 1997 still stands out as an exemplary police failure. Levi, armed with a knife, was surrounded by six police officers, two of whom shot and killed him. It took his estranged wife two years of agitation to raise the issue of why neither of the shooters was given a drug and alcohol screen at the time after there were clear suggestions made that both police may have been under the influence of one or the other or both.
My view is that the para-militarization of policing is at fault here because it produces an innately hostile attitude among the police towards the community.
@Ivor
Huh? I provided one specific example who quoted such a stupid number that I have never forgotten this example of foolishness, but there certainly were more in my ‘circle’ who had tested themselves and I am sure you could find conversations on the intertubes if you use the appropriate search terms, in which these ‘libertarians’ confirm that they are smarter than the average person.
Yes 220 is a stupid number and quite clearly the person knew nothing about IQ, IQ tests or intelligence.
Did you have a point that I am missing?
@totaram
Thank you. That is what I had in mind. We in the West seem to be obsessed with guns, tasers and capsicum spray for policing. These are all high tech solutions compared to a simple lathi or bamboo pole. Every police car should carry one. Every policeman should be trained in their use for disarming knife wielders in open spaces. They would only be authorised for use on knife-wielders who refuse to drop the weapon. Back-up officers could provide back-up defence for the lathi policeman with more standard weapons. A stab vest / kevlar vest and gauntlets could also be part of the anti-knife equipment.
@Collin Street
When you get to the upper levels of IQ, there are just not enough people in that category for the tests to be validated.
It is increasingly clear that it is other things like personality variables that mediate the expression of the skills that are measured in IQ tests.
@Julie Thomas
Can anyone do this:
Is this the real test? 50% of people are “smarter than the average”. I think we can allow Libertarians this claim (if its relevant).
Quite a while ago, Terje said, on this blog, he comes here to test his ideas, or words to this effect. I have no evidence to suggest Terje wasn’t telling how it is.
Another way of putting it, while other political parties incur the expense of focus groups, advisers, and other policy strategy related matters , Terje gets free critical advice regarding the libertarians from commenters he knows aren’t stupid. This critical advice can be used in at least two ways, setting aside Terje’s own conclusions. Firstly, the information thus collected can be used for policy development, including simple error correction. Second, it can be used for PR purposes (media management).
Of course I might be mistaken (for example, if I assume Terje did not reveal his true preferences instead of assuming, as I did, Terje was telling everybody what he is doing, then all my conclusions are wrong). Assuming I am not mistaken, his method seems to me to be much superior, both in terms of quality of information and in terms of monetary cost, to social science type surveys of attitudes to words because these surveys only provide statistical information at best and do not convey the reasons for the subjects’ answers. I am very confident his method is more effective then dismissing public comment as graffiti instead of analysing the comments, assuming people are telling as it is.
@Ivor
Okay you do have a point that I not only missed but got spiked on it 🙂
I don’t know if it is relevant but it is part of the change of attitude that I saw developing in people that I had previously liked and enjoyed arguing with, that linked Randism – or whatever it was – with the idea that high IQ was the measure of a man/person.
And then like Collin Street noticed about Terje, people began to limit the discussions to the areas or issues that they could ‘win’; they were not so interested in wide ranging discussions.
@Ernestine Gross
That is awesome! It’s like the Necker Cube thing – turn the thing inside out; make the shift from figure to ground.
I use if for error correction. Not in some formal way but certainly informally. I wouldn’t seek to ask people here for help in formulating libertarian policies, that would be utterly daft, but I am interested in hearing the best arguments against such policy so that I can iron out any kinks or improve the approach to presentation. Mostly I’m disappointed to find that people simply want to question my sanity or intellect or morality for holding to positions that they don’t, which seems shallow on their part. Only occasionally do I find somebody who is genuinely interested in reasoned debate. On those occasionally I sometimes learn something useful. There has been some reasoned debate in this thread but any time it gets started there is a cohort of participants (eg Julie) that want to wander off into the long grass and discuss the colour of peoples naval. Doh!
I thought my purpose for being here was self evident. Who doesn’t want to test the strength of their ideas in hostile territory? Most people I suppose. But seriously how can you know an idea is any good or your understanding of it very deep if you have never had to defend it against criticism?
Terje, just in case I didn’t make myself clear earlier, if you think the only change in gun owership in Australia from 1996 was semi-automatic rifles were replaced with non-semi-automatic ones and all firearms were registered, you are delusional. You have no excuse to maintain your ignorance. I’ve provided you with a link to some information and you are on the internet so you are quite capable of researching changes in Australian gun ownership on your own. If you bothered to look at what actually happened in reality instead of making things up or foolishly repeating lies told by others because they sound good to you, you would know that of course a much smaller portion of Australians have access to firearms than before 1996. Why would you think otherwise? What lies were you exposed to that reinforced your delusional state enough to make you embarrass yourself like this on the internet? Come on, show us your evidence. Give us links to show Austalian access to guns is the same as before 1996.
@Terje
Eeew it is all my fault is it that you can’t function at your comfort level in this environment?
Did you know that you are free to ignore comments; even if they are directed right at you and name you specifically, there is no one forcing you to respond.
Likewise Julie.
@Ronald Brak
One of the most significant changes to gun laws, and the one that is credited with reducing the number of suicides, is that firearms and ammunition must be kept in separate locked containers. The presumption is that, if you’re sitting around drunk and depressed, the extra effort involved in loading the shotgun gives you time to think about the permanence of death.
Mandating decent gun safes has also made firearm theft more difficult.
SSAA reckons firearm ownership is now at pre-1996 levels again. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it’s probably based on firearms sales numbers so it would be reasonably reliable.
I still don’t understand why Terje has such a problem with firearms registration, btw – it’s not like it’s a particularly onerous imposition.
I wasn’t far off (I am pleased to note) with my analysis. Terje expanded on the meaning of ‘policy development’, or should I say, his explanation is quite consistent with my intended meaning of the phrase policy development (I distinguish between ideological base and strategies. ‘Policy development’ is another word for strategising in my mental model.)
I am a little disappointed Terje then criticises some commenters using the same (very similar) method he is objecting to. It is so reminiscent of current discourse of people in power. But then, this may also be part of some excercise on his part in aquiring skills in the applied area of politics in contemporary life.
Yes this is a possible cause of the decline in firearm suicide. Although I don’t know who has credited this particular change with “reducing the number of suicides”. The non firearm suicide rate went up for a few years post 1996 as did the total suicide rate. If people were less inclined to shoot themselves they were more inclined to kill themselves in other ways.
Seems logical. Although in his recent testimony to the Australian senate inquiry on firearms John Lott indicated that the lives lost in Australia due to the use of stolen firearms justified the mandated use of safes only if those safes costed less than $6 each. From a public policy perspective the mandate on safes seem hard to justify.
Because unlike firearm licensing it costs a lot to administer with no notable benefit. And because of poor administration and lax security it creates a headache for firearm owners.
The vast bulk of violent acts committed in Australia with a firearm entail a weapon that is unregistered and an individual that is unlicensed. What is the point of making good people jump through pointless hoops that bad people just walk around?
I looked at your link. There is no useful data there.
That data is not useful.
There is no data there to speak of. Unless I’m looking at the wrong link.
So it is still not useful.
@TerjeP
But but but I *like* responding to you. Why would I ignore you?
Every so often you say something interesting that I can use in my policy development – well in the discussions I have with my neighbours, about how the current govt has no idea if it is neo-liberal and all the ladies who come to my craft group now understand that term, or if it is conservative.
Terje you wrote to Ronald: “I looked at your link. There is no useful data there.”
That doesn’t sound like you are looking for a discussion. What did you say you came here for?
That’s just not true.
I am a firearms owner. It causes me no inconvenience, let alone actual headaches. It doesn’t cost much to administer, either. In SA, at least, I front up to the local police station with my new purchase and the permit to acquire and give them $25 (from memory). That probably pays for the costs of data entry (done at the time) and the occasional audit of the contents of my safe.
The point of this, of course, is to make sure that people who seem to be legit don’t use legally-acquired firearms to commit crimes. (Or at least, not very often, and generally get caught when they do.) This is, of course, particularly important with handguns.
A few gun owners whine about this, of course – there’s alway a few whingers in any group. One complaint is that, even if you already own firearms of a particular class, you still have to wait for 14 days (or whatever) to buy another. As one of my sons quipped, it’s not a good look to say, in the gunshop, “But I’m angry now!”
@David Irving (no relation)
David, whether or not one has an easy means of topping oneself plays an important role in suicide. Minor barriers can play a very useful role in reducing suicides. Easier access to firearms appears to account for a considerable amount of the higher success rate of males who attempt suicide as opposed to females.
Firearm ownership is not back to 1996 levels. The SSAA also appears incapable of thinking clearly. Fewer people own guns and fewer store them in their homes than in 1996. There has been an increase in the average number of guns possessed by those who do own guns. In 2014 there were 49 private individuals in Queensland who owned more than 100 guns, up from 32 in 2013.
And another thing the SSAA appears to have ignored is that guns wear out. Guns owned by farmers, roo shooters, and shooting clubs can see a lot of use and so, in time, need to be replaced. There was an uptick in gun purchases in 1996 as people replaced guns that had been banned. It took time for this new capital stock of guns to depreciate and so of course this resulted in a dip in gun purchases later followed by an increase.
Also, they need to account for guns exported from Australia.
@Ernestine Gross
Yes, it is quite interesting. We can have no idea how genuine each of Terje’s comments are. He could, for example, advance weak, medium, strong and outrageous versions of his policy development ideas. Then he could sit back and analyse responses and see “how much he can get away with”, “how far he take people” and so on. These are the instincts of a demagogue.
Then he can test what sort of tactics work best to silence or confuse gun ownership opponents. He has tried a few such tactics on me. I think he has found me obdurate in this matter and totally opposed to his position. But no doubt he has found that he can exhaust my patience and that I will eventually no longer reply to his BS (when I realise he places zero stock on empirical evidence other than on misrepresenting data by the most extreme cherry-picking).
The interesting thing (to me) in all this is Terje’s disinterest in objectively demonstrable truth: for example, the solid statistical correlations between high gun ownership / gun-carry and gun deaths. In my observation people uninterested in truth always place personal power as a higher value than both truth and the rights of others.
Terje has advanced no argument as to why his “freedom to carry guns” position should trump my freedom to live in a society of low gun ownership. I hold this freedom very dear because I know that the facts demonstrate I and my family are much safer in such a society (and much safer in a gunless household). This is statistically speaking of course. People are statistically safer wearing seatbelts in cars but people wearing seat belts can still die in car accidents and rarely a seatbelt can actually contribute to a death that would not have occured with no seatbelt. But these latter are outlier events.
In criticising my “fear of guns” (which is really a fear of too many idiots carrying guns) Terje likened it to fear and prejudice against homosexuals or Muslims. There is a great fallacy in equating a position to limit inanimate but potentially dangerous objects with a prejudicial position to limit or infringe on the basic rights of certain groups of people. Terje’s thinking is littered with these kind of absurd fallacies.
@David Irving (no relation)
“In SA, at least, I front up to the local police station with my new purchase and the permit to acquire and give them $25 (from memory).”
David, in my suburb our local Police Station has a sign on the door which basically says this (I can’t remember the exact wording).
“Leave weapons for surrender or registration in your vehicle. An officer will accompany you to your vehicle and retrieve them.”
I think it’s a gentle reminder to not walk into a police station carrying a weapon. That could be a bad idea and give the wrong impression!
@Ikonoclast
“freedom to carry guns” position should trump my freedom to live in a society of low gun ownership. I hold this freedom very dear….”
I can’t find a logical reason either. I also hold the freedom of living in a society with low and strictly licenced gun ownership very dear, although for a different reason. I don’t trust a society with a laissez-faire attitude to gun ownership on the grounds of self-defence because, to make sense of it, I have to assume everybody assumes everybody else is a potential lethal foe. My prior is not contradicted by empirical evidence regarding the danger.
The old English police force, without firearms but funny hats and always happy to assist a stranger to find their way around in London, is my ideal image of a civil society.
In my opinion, a strictly licenced gun ownership is akin to strictly licenced plumbers, doctors, …. The onus of proof is on the applicant within an institutional environment of accurate record keeping.
@TerjeP
Terje, you write:
.
Oh yes you are. Your naivete about political philosophy is what relieves me from worrying too much about ideologues like you. All of the political imagination is, to some degree or another, utopian; all of your posts here are utopian in so far as they are testing the political imagination and the possibilities for change. EP Thompson described utopias as a realm for ‘the education of desire’ which is exactly how you use your posts here at JQ’s; to test ideas, to educate yourself in the nature of other people’s desire, to see what sort of fit you can make between your own ideas of what constitutes freedom and the ideas of others.
A profoundly utopian project.
What intrigues me about fascists masquerading as freedom fighters is the way that they cannot acknowledge any type of widespread and deeply held political consensus when that consensus conflicts with their own deeply held views about how the world ought to be. Take gun laws in Australia, for example: it ought to be clear to anyone but the profoundly ideologically driven that there is a solid consensus in Australia that our current gun laws are a ‘good thing’.
Terje, though, you dispute this by arguing for a particular version of freedom, what is known as the ‘freedom to’ over and against the notion that is embedded in the social agreement around current laws, which is the idea of ‘freedom from’. These are known as the positive and negative conceptions of freedom, around which there is a truly vast literature. Do dip a toe in the waters.
The point is that you cannot understand the social solidarity around laws that guarantee a negative idea of freedom, freedom from. The history of industrial society is little more than one vast struggle by people to assert the primacy of the negative concept of freedom: freedom from poverty, hunger, the poor house laws, the coldness of charity, starvation, degradation, humiliation, disrespect and any other degradation you can imagine.
This social solidarity informs the core of Australia as well, as we know from our own history, and underpins popular rejection of Abbott’s mean spirited libertarian agenda. He’s like a drunk dentist who unerringly hits the root nerve every time and then wonders what is wrong with his clients.
But back to you. You say that you use the term libertarian as it is currently understood which gives me the clue as to your intellectual abilities: wide and shallow, like a soup dish. If I were a libertarian of any sort, I’d know plenty about the entire history of libertarianism. If I wanted to say that I am an anarchist, which I am not, I’d know my Kropotkin from my Bookchin (the latter as self described ‘ anarchist and libertarian socialist’).
So it appears to me that you don’t really know your own backstory. This is the clue to the fact that you are not serious, a mere political dilettante. Not enough knowledge to be taken seriously.
In the near future, ecologically informed social democracy will get rid of ‘libertarians’ like you like a brown dog deals with fleas.
@jungney
I don’t know about EP Thomson or any other political theorist, but I do know, the notion of utopian, as used in the following quote from your post, is not a necessary, or even interesting because game theory and in particular its application in mechanism design is sufficient.
“all of your [Terje’s] posts here are utopian in so far as they are testing the political imagination and the possibilities for change” (Term in square brackets added).
“,,, informed social democracy…”. I’ve come to the at least temporary conclusion that all political parties, which want to have a chance of success now and in the foreseeable future will be social democratic in nature. Differences in shade or emphasis are no problem for social democracy, IMHO. (Having the odd libertarian who shouts ‘freedom’ at times is not without benefit for a society, IMHO. So I don’t agree with your dog and fleas prognosis.)
@Ernestine Gross
Whenever I engaged with game theory I felt a sense of rage. I think it is a classed response.
And David, one very obvious thing I didn’t mention is that Australia’s population is 23% larger than it was in 1996.
In the perfect world libertarians will be brushed away like fleas. How ironic.
Of course it’s clear that the majority of Australians are inclined towards the status quo on firearms. But that is true not just of firearms but almost any policy area you care to name.
@Ernestine Gross
I am still unfortunately ignorant of your kind of game theory which might also be called interactive decision theory or the modeling of competing behaviors of interacting agents. Please recommend any books on this theory accessible for the layperson. (My kind of game theory is the theory of computerised games but enough of that.)
I am interested in what your kind of game theory would have predicted from about 1991 onwards about our chances (as world of disparate nations) of successfully dealing with reducing CO2 emissions to ameliorate climate change? I assume that if the theory was accurate it would have predicted we would fail as we have in fact failed to date.
Could such game theory have been used in any way to avert this failure? I assume not as the world, as geotrategically competing nations or blocs, had no realistic political way of avoiding some kind of competitive dilemma. Short to mid term avoidance of real CO2 amelioration conferred a short to mid term relative economic advantage even though everyone would have been better off in the long run if all had emeliorated CO2 emissions.
Your phrase “application in mechanism design” has piqued my interest. I am not sure what you mean here but you might mean political and economic mechanism design within a polity or jurisdiction to deal with competing interests. The world has the problem of multiple juridictions. What kind of mechanism design(s) could span polities and how could it be done? Clearly, we can agree on some things (say Maritime Law) but are these situations where all benefit from uniformity and none suffer serious costs other than say training, implementation and compliance costs. But compliance to emissions limits can involve serious economic costs well beyond training, implementation and compliance costs. Can game theory help there?
@jungney
I can’t see anything wrong with individuals trying to make sense of various observations by whatever means available to them. Comparing notes at various stages is useful too, IMO.
What is a “classed response”?
@TerjeP
Well, yeah. Medicare, affordable education, child care, water and sewage, power supply, the provision of clean drinking water etc and so on. Australia is a profoundly communalist culture by nature and by historical necessity. What do you not understand about that? Our communalism has failed so far around the inclusion of Indigenous Australians but we’re at sixty per cent by my calculus, so we’re getting there.
You must feel like a minority of one. You’ve drunk the individualist kool aid, which was first brewed by Locke and Hobbes, and subscribe to an atomistic view of human existence in which we cannon and carom off each other like billiard balls. This is a wrong view of humanity. We are overwhelmingly social; left alone by authority and power, we prefer to immerse ourselves in intimate family social relations. We don’t bounce off each other, we meld and blend, our relations are fluid and porous.
Our capacity for language, which is entirely social by definition, evidences our species being as social animals rather than the self maximising, asocial, rational liberals of your philosophy. You cannot have a language of one. The idea of liberal individualism runs against the evidence of politics, all of sociology, anthropology, history, archeology, paleontology, both Western and Eastern philosophy and any other of the studies of humanity you could name.
You are wrong.
@Ernestine Gross
My classed respone to game theory derives from my (angry) and totally intuitive reaction to the notion, carried forward by game theory, tht there is some fundamental level at which all humans are the same. This idea emerged much later in Rawls’s ‘veil of ignorance’ in which he explored various scenarios, derived from game theory, which were designed to enlarge what an ‘ordinary’ person might do in a given set of conditions. He was destroyed by critics who argued that there is no such thing as an unclassed, ungendered, unsexed etc perspective.
So, when I was educated about game theory, as a classed, gendered and sexed person, I was enraged by the idea of a universal subjectivity, an essential human, one not subject to the reflexive construction of their own history.
A classed response is one that rejects the reductionism of the social sciences, psychology included, which reductionism promotes the idea of a universal subject, a knowable subject, because there are always relations of power between the observor and the observed.
@jungney
I take a different tack. I am willing to give interactive decision theory a hearing. It grates on me to call it “game theory” only because that phrase has a different specialised meaning for me. Humans are not all the same. Neither are we all entirely different. Class and gender matter but so do universal human characteristics. All science proceeds by abstracting shared or univeral characteristics or “laws” and by categorisation. Doing all this correctly or validly is a matter of avoiding crude reductionism and remaining aware of systems and emergent phenomena. But that is just my opinion.
I don’t think I have ever suggested that humans are anything other than social. We collaborate enormously and would die like flies if we didn’t work together. Perhaps you are thinking of some other philosophy. Or some straw man.
Jungney wrote
Which Terje read as
Remarkably different. Different to the point that I think communication is not possible.
@TerjeP
“I don’t think I have ever suggested that humans are anything other than social”.
Why not be sure about this? Check it out and provide a statement in which you acknowledge that this sociality is the important thing about us humans. Can you point out any comment you have made in which you acknowledge that humans are ‘social’?
The only attitude toward your fellow human that I have noticed you expressing is that the other people – those not like you – are stupid and lazy and the only problem with the society that Thatcher said doesn’t exist is that other people just make the wrong choices. But of course, none of us are fully objective or capable of perfect recall so I’m prepared to be wrong if you can present some examples of your realisation that humans are social.
Have you also realised that we humans do like to cooperate – that is what makes us happy – are you happy Terje? – and do you also realise that we should aim to raise our children so that they do not indulge their human tendency to be selfish and greedy and think of themselves as being entitled to the very best at the expense of others who seem to be less able?
Nobody understands what your philosophy actually is. Do you understand that? You can’t seem to present it in a coherent and consistent argument or statement; all you offer is a list of undefined terms.
I agree Collin, the term I think for ‘communication is not possible’ is ‘incommensurablity’.
Libertarianism is an umbrella term. I like to quote from Wikipedia so here goes (it saves me typing and re-phrasing);
“Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association and the primacy of individual judgement.”
“Libertarians generally share a skepticism of authority; however, they diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing political and economic systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling to restrict or even to wholly dissolve pervasive social institutions. Rather than embodying a singular, rigid systematic theory or ideology, libertarianism has been applied as an umbrella term to a wide range of sometimes discordant political ideas through modern history.”
“Although some present-day libertarians[clarification needed] advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights,[3] such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources, others, notably libertarian socialists,[4] seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production in favor of their common or cooperative ownership and management.[5][6] While minarchists think that a minimal centralized government is necessary, anarchists propose to completely eliminate the state.”
So, Terje would have to tell us what kind of libertarian he is for us to know much formally about his position. There are wide strands of libertarianism in my thinking and yet I vehemently disagree with many of Terje’s ideas. There is a sense in which I could be regarded as a libertarian socialist or a Marxian Autonomist. Clearly the political term “Autonomism” refers to people being autonomous not automatic. 😉
At the same time, there is a considerable amount of my thinking that emphasises communalism. So there is a tension and a set of paradoxes and competing concerns in my social and political thinking of which I am aware and continually try to sort out. If I were to point to what I think is a fundamental difference between Terje and many other thinkers here, it is that Terje is not aware of the paradoxes in his own position. He seems to think it is all simple, straightforward and resolved.
@TerjeP
Terje, a major part of the problem is your view that libertarianism is what you say it is rather than a philosophy with history. So, you claim that you have never inferred that humans are anything but social without apparently knowing that Hobbes infamously proposed that his inquiry into humanity in ‘a state of nature’ should commence thus:
No, let’s not Thomas because it is perhaps the biggest bum steer in all modern philosophy to found a political system on pure fiction. He then goes on the suggest that all human life in a state of nature, prior to the rise of sovereign authority, was “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” Which notion flew in the face even of the evidence and continues to do so.
So how do Libertarians deal with the coercive power of Capital?
Do they deny it?
Or is their concept of libertarianism restricted to a market socialist mode of production?
Hobbes was a man who had not raised children.
Darwin was somewhat involved in the raising of is children and did spend time with them and incorporated some of the insights he gained from this pursuit into his theory.
Women and some men will tell you that the only way to start an inquiry into ‘what’ humanity is in its state of nature is to begin with the child and look at how every new life is an individual whose nature is primed to respond to and absorb the culture into which they are born.
@Julie Thomas
Well, yes. I meant to add about the Hobbesian state of nature where bourgeois spring fully formed from the ground like mushrooms, not from women, that Hobbes thereby set liberalism on its fatal collision course with feminism several hundred years on. Liberalism, and I suspect most variants of the Terje school of libertarianism, just cannot see the specificity and singularity of women’s biological being as reproducers and nor account for the way in which that has counted against women in a world populated by human mushrooms with testes.