Aretae responds to my posts on morality and concludes with:
The only aspect on which there is real disagreement on the ethics issue having improved is the issue of authority. Some folks, be they communists, progressives, conservatives, or reactionaries, think that authority of one human over another is sometimes a good thing. Perhaps this is due to dialectical materialism, or perhaps because of the "natural aristocracy". Others of us…usually libertarians or anarchists…think that the exercise of authority is almost universally net bad.
Is it "universally net bad" for some to have authority over others?
(I’m setting aside, for argument’s sake, my belief that a world in which no one has authority over others is an impossibility)
Let’s take the extreme example of a person who cannot or does not provide for himself.
Such a person is dependent on others.
In the past, this dependency was formalized. Our dependent may have been a slave or a serf. Generally this dependency was formalized through some sort of long-term labor contract (sometimes the contract was voluntary, sometimes it wasn’t).
It’s worth remembering that these contracts placed obligations on both parties. The worker had to work, the owner had to provide for the worker. In some cases, under some systems, significant responsibilities were put on owners (for example, slavery in the American South was very different in practice than slavery in South America).
In the present day US, long-term labor contracts are illegal. Thus our dependent’s dependency is no longer formal. He is now a ward of the state and we’re all supposed to pretend that the situation is temporary or accidental or the product of circumstances (we should certainly stick to the passive voice when discussing his circumstances).
In both cases, our dependent is still dependent. The difference is whether or not someone should have responsibility for and authority over the dependent.
I will be first to admit that some forms of authority over the dependent are bad – the injustices of chattel slavery are well known. However, it does not follow from this that any authority over dependents is intolerable.
Absence of authority over dependents leads predictably to the modern situation. The state helps dependents with no strings attached. Thus, people are given assistance for doing nothing. The less they do, the more they get. Our dependent drifts meaninglessly through life. Perhaps he lapses into a life of crime or perhaps he too lazy even to do that.
Is it clear that this modern situation is better than any authoritative alternatives?
Seems like you’ve got a great argument against state action that any libertarian would agree with. But you seem to be taking the state action as a given, and then suggesting that given the bad state action, we need the also problematic authority?
But isn’t it true that the state action is the base problem?
Most anarchists that I am familiar with start with a premise that long-term labor contracts are prohibited – they never say by whom.
I’d like to see that prohibition lifted.
I don’t really know how to answer your question, since the anarchist position always implicitly or explicitly assumes that long-term labor contracts are prohibited. Rothbard for example, starts his whole political philosophy with the premise that you cannot sell yourself into slavery. Why this is so is never explicitly explained.
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The whole Libertarian/’anarchist’ philosophy involving the use of ‘force’ is nothing more than religious dogma.
Forget the critique of various minutia of the philosophy. Very few people are Libertarian, anarchist, minarchist, et cetera. Most of them can’t agree with each other. Almost all agree that any initiation of force, or use of authority over any individual is almost always some great evil; and sometimes the greatest of evils.
Now, being that so few are inclined to agree with this worldview, and the liklihood of it becoming the dominant philosophy of every single individual on the planet is nil, how exactly do you expect to see your fantasy made reality without forcing it on people?
Even if 90% of the world’s population woke up tomorrow and thought, “You know what would be good for breakfast? Libertarianism.” Even if that happened, and you had a de facto Libertarian new world order, then the remaining 10% tribalists, theocrats, socialists et al are then inducted into a world under threat of force if they do not. Genghis Khan might be able to spew his rhetoric, but as soon as he lays hand on hilt, then he is a dangerous criminal, and it is ok for the Libertarian global hegemony to lop his head off or lock him in a cage.
Libertarianism is Communism with property rights. Utopian, one world nonsense. Of course authority isn’t bad. It’s natural. As in an inherent part of the human condition. Attempting to create a world without ‘authority’ will simply result in a non-formalised method of coercing group A towards certain behavior by group B. A new ‘currency’ of authority will arise. Everyone will pretent to believe in all Libertarian ideals, but everyone will secretely know they are bullshit, fantasist drivel because of the open secret of the nomenklatura. Anyone who speaks out loud about the naked emperor will be a heretic. With no authority demanding that heretics be welcomed within society, and the nomenklatura demanding that they be excommunicated from it, few will speak out.
That eschews the ‘anarchist’ world where there isn’t anything to stop me from simply hiring mercanaries to inflict my will upon my neighbors except my ardent belief in their rights as individuals. As if. Anarchy had another name once upon a time. Fuedalism. Eventually my new fiefdom will clash with a neighboring Lord’s, and I’ll make a deal with him. Among us Lord’s we will create our own social heirarchies, resulting in peerages, or Monarchs, and so too will the nepotist and cronyist mercenary caste, and so will the peasants or helots or whatever.
Of course that will never happen because most non-aspie people already know Libertarianism is bullshit, fantasist drivel without having to experience it. Flattening social heirarchies never works under any motive, no matter who tries it, or how they try to implement it.