Does a Nanny State make one more or less free? [Liberal / Left Libertarianism Thread]

Chou Toshio

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I believe the answer is: not always, but it is requisite to freedom, and in western liberal countries-- is often a force for it.

So I touched on this in the Marxism/Socialism/Leftism thread when discussing liberalism (as opposed to leftism). Probably the key value difference there is that Liberals value liberty more highly relative to leftists, which put more emphasis on the collective good/welfare. Liberals value welfare, and many leftists also value liberty, but liberals definitively putting liberty over welfare and valuing the individual over the collective.

The two goods are not unrelated in my mind—with the key difference between liberals and right libertarians is that liberty defined as individual freedom is often served better by common regulations and provision of welfare for groups and individuals even at the cost of what the theoretical limitations of their behavior should be on paper.

A really simple example—telling people they are allowed to drive on both sides of the road logically expands the liberties of allowed action on paper, but we would all lose ability to move freely compared to a society where we regulate which side.

In other words the left-liberal position would be that there are many things that we can do as a collective—often through the vehicle of government—that ends up giving the individual more liberty. Rules that make things more efficient by common standards. Transparency laws that inform better decisions in the market, and thus result in more wealth creation and better allocation of capital. Legal protections that free up the limited resource of human time to spend less of it worrying about being harmed or cheated. Safety nets and welfare systems that give individuals more autonomy in their lives and agency to direct their futures. Perhaps most importantly, a firewall between power and money is something we desperately need so that success does not buy more success, and that the marketplace is actually structured for liberty and the pursuit of happiness-- a more even playing field for opportunity.

There are trade-offs between more and less government, but the resulting liberty and welfare from a given policy are likely to be far more empirical, and far less directional.

While the left and right authoritarian quadrants of the political compass have nothing to agree on and no reason to collaborate, I agree with an idea from the embattled former Evergreen professor Bret Weinstein that there is reason that left and right libertarians do.

We share the same value of liberty, and if we're nuanced adults we can observe that neither Karl Marx nor Ayn Rand deliver us working economic systems.

Central Questions of the thread:

-If you disagree that the government has an important role to play in Capitalism, why? Can you justify the extreme position of zero regulation, zero wealth redistribution, or are you ready to admit that what libertarians face in policy, are trade offs.

-Do you see potential for a coming together of left and right libertarians in the US, and an admission that the divides are far less ideological, and far more about specific policy? Can there be unity from groups seemingly as disparate as those who stand close to Bernie Sanders, and those who stand close to Ted Cruz?

-Among specific policy areas where left and right libertarians disagree, what do you see as being the most important (in the US or other western countries)? Where do you see potential for people to come together? How will the current economic realities, globalism, technology, play into the evolution of thought for liberals and libertarians?
 
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McGrrr

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-If you disagree that the government has an important role to play in Capitalism, why? Can you justify the extreme position of zero regulation, zero wealth redistribution, or are you ready to admit that what libertarians face in policy, are trade offs.
My position is that of a minarchist. That is, I advocate a minimalist government which exists solely to protect its citizens, their individual rights, and to enforce the laws of the land. This would provide the environment in which private parties can make superior decisions to a centralised government. I believe that additional intervention becomes a slippery slope argument.

Zero centralised regulation is not a problem per se. In the free market, greed for profit is checked by fear of loss and fear of consequence. Crucially, the government must be able to hold lawbreakers accountable, lest the fear of consequence is mitigated. This fear is what would drive due diligence, corporate governance, and self-regulation.

Imagine a world where everyone starts their life with the same wealth and opportunities. Each person then makes their own life decisions, which will inevitably impact their personal wealth. Some will make objectively better long-term decisions, while others might just be in the right place at the right time. In short, the population that started equal will arrange themselves into some semblance of a fat-bottomed bell curve over time. If you iterate this model through many generations, the tail of that bell curve will become increasingly extreme as wealth compounds. My point is that even starting from "utopia" results in extreme wealth inequality.

When the rich spend their wealth, that money enters directly into the economy. However, when they do not spend their wealth, that is even more productive for society because their savings represent the source of investment. If their wealth is redistributed, these savings will be "squandered" through consumption. The goal, then, should not be to redistribute wealth to reduce relative wealth inequality, but to improve living standards to eradicate absolute poverty. Capitalism is the most effective method of achieving this through job creation and an incentive to work. Charity, being more efficient than government, would assist those unable to work.

-Do you see potential for a coming together of left and right libertarians in the US, and an admission that the divides are far less ideological, and far more about specific policy? Can there be unity from groups seemingly as disparate as those who stand close to Bernie Sanders, and those who stand close to Ted Cruz?
No, you have two echo chambers either side of the divide that seem broadly incapable of critical self-examination. Corporatism is masquerading as Capitalism in America; the right is too ignorant to care, while the left is happy to let Capitalism take the blame. Meanwhile, the government has historically intervened in many significant ways that has influenced corporate and individual behaviour, with moral hazard being the unintended consequence.

-Among specific policy areas where left and right libertarians disagree, what do you see as being the most important (in the US or other western countries)? Where do you see potential for people to come together? How will the current economic realities, globalism, technology, play into the evolution of thought for liberals and libertarians?
The developed world is overdue for the mother of all recessions. Perhaps, when the shit truly hits the fan, we will re-examine the carcass with the benefit of hindsight and find something that will unite left and right.
 
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Chou Toshio

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My position is that of a minarchist. That is, I advocate a minimalist government which exists solely to protect its citizens, their individual rights, and to enforce the laws of the land. This would provide the environment in which private parties can make superior decisions to a centralised government. I believe that additional intervention becomes a slippery slope argument.

Zero centralised regulation is not a problem per se. In the free market, greed for profit is checked by fear of loss and fear of consequence. Crucially, the government must be able to hold lawbreakers accountable, lest the fear of consequence is mitigated. This fear is what would drive due diligence, corporate governance, and self-regulation.
There are a couple points there that I think need to be teased out-- because you saw "zero centralized regulation is not a problem," but have stated that there will be a minimalist government, laws, and lawbreakers. If you have a government at all, and laws, whether you call those laws regulations or not is imo a matter of syntax. Even if your minimalist government exists only to protect personal safety and enforce property rights-- in an ever more complex world, the definitions and protections of property rights become increasingly complicated; as does defining what is/isn't harm to individuals or infringement on those property rights.

I think the end result is that in a complex world (that is every made more complex by increasing developments of knowledge, technology, organizations, institutions), even developing the minimum is bound to become a very complex system of rules and regulations-- especially because there inevitably rise conflicting intuitions/interpretations of harm, morality, ownership, and other principles which humans through their imperfection/organic nature are not situated to perfectly, objectively define.

But rather on nitpicking through the details of a not-quite-disagreement, I am more interested in the area of clear agreement. In your view, as is mine, fear of loss or consequence is absolutely essential and capitalism cannot function properly without it.

In the most immediate examples, the Bush and more actionably Obama administrations not letting losers lose, and not taking scalps (throwing people in jail) following the 2008 collapse was a tremendous failure of government in its most basic function. I think many could agree. Your argument there would be that if the government had done its chartered duty to let the losers lose and divey out the necessary penal consequences, that the system would right itself with reform and self-regulation to prevent further incidence.

In which case the critique is that it is actually leftist impulses to mitigate human harm in the short term (fallout of the crisis/collapse of the banking structure) that prevents actual reform. This is a critique I am definitely open to, and could accept-- though I don't know if emotionally I would be able to pull the trigger if I had been standing in Bush or Obama's shoes.

In other words what we have could just as easily be interpreted as a problem of enforcement rather than a problem of lack of regulation. I think that is more than a fair line of thinking.

I know you had a very harsh critique of Alan Greenspan in the other head. Combined with your criticism of corporatism masquerading as capitalism (which I strongly agree with!), would it be your interpretation that the actions he and others took in preventing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from fulfilling its charter to regulate derivatives was actually anti-capitalist? That this was actually an act of corporatist side-taking where the government failed to inforce the rules it already had that were meant to protect the property rights of the citizenry. That is the interpretation I would make based on the framework you have stated here.

Imagine a world where everyone starts their life with the same wealth and opportunities. Each person then makes their own life decisions, which will inevitably impact their personal wealth. Some will make objectively better long-term decisions, while others might just be in the right place at the right time. In short, the population that started equal will arrange themselves into some semblance of a fat-bottomed bell curve over time. If you iterate this model through many generations, the tail of that bell curve will become increasingly extreme as wealth compounds. My point is that even starting from "utopia" results in extreme wealth inequality.

When the rich spend their wealth, that money enters directly into the economy. However, when they do not spend their wealth, that is even more productive for society because their savings represent the source of investment. If their wealth is redistributed, these savings will be "squandered" through consumption. The goal, then, should not be to redistribute wealth to reduce relative wealth inequality, but to improve living standards to eradicate absolute poverty. Capitalism is the most effective method of achieving this through job creation and an incentive to work. Charity, being more efficient than government, would assist those unable to work.
It actually doesn't sound like we have a disagreement here. I absolutely agree that there will be (and should be) inequality of outcomes. As I said, I'm a capitalist; and having a system of production with capital being distributed out based on investor analysis is one of the most important mechanisms we have for ensuring high productivity and wealth creation.

You even mention what I would agree with should be the goals of welfare-- to improve living standards and eradicate absolute poverty. We don't get rid of inequality; we create an elevated absolute minimum that gives people reasonable agency-- reasonable opportunity to succeed in the marketplace given their individual talents and motivations.


The point of disagreement would be whether this base should be supplied via government or charity. I do think the government has to have a role to organize anything reliable enough to meet the goal.

I don't mean to jump to ideas of policy when we are speaking more about abstract ideals/values, but I personally see some form of UBI or universal tax credit as a better system than a complex system of welfare programs. Many of the activities of the current welfare state, I would agree are better done by charity.

No, you have two echo chambers either side of the divide that seem broadly incapable of critical self-examination. Corporatism is masquerading as Capitalism in America; the right is too ignorant to care, while the left is happy to let Capitalism take the blame. Meanwhile, the government has historically intervened in many significant ways that has influenced corporate and individual behaviour, with moral hazard being the unintended consequence.

The developed world is overdue for the mother of all recessions. Perhaps, when the shit truly hits the fan, we will re-examine the carcass with the benefit of hindsight and find something that will unite left and right.
Unfortunate, but I don't think this is more than a reasonable analysis. It might not be the only one, but probably an unfortunately realistic one. xD

That said, I might have to jump back later if I want to explore further, but I think there are forces at work that may help make the situation less bleak going forward.
 
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Chou Toshio

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No, you have two echo chambers either side of the divide that seem broadly incapable of critical self-examination. Corporatism is masquerading as Capitalism in America; the right is too ignorant to care, while the left is happy to let Capitalism take the blame. Meanwhile, the government has historically intervened in many significant ways that has influenced corporate and individual behaviour, with moral hazard being the unintended consequence.
So before I was short up on time, and chose to focus on the top point of McGrrr's, but coming back to this-- while I think it's an accurate prognosis I don't think it's an immovable one. A change is predicate on some big things happening but then... some big things are happening.

I see the bigger reform having to occur on the left-- as Ben Shapiro would put it, the left has gotten "intellectually fat and lazy," not to mention increasingly divorced from reason and reality. But that also means that the left is attacking its own reasonable voices, and will continue to do so. We saw what happened with Nicholas A. Christakis and Bret Weinstein at their respective universities. We see how the left has treated true liberals like Maajid Nawaz and Ayan Hirsi Ali. Al Franken was one of the clearest and most powerful moral voices among the senators, but yeah.

Incredibly, just over this holiday season the Justice Democrats forced Cenk Uygur & Kyle Kulinkski to resign.
Now, I am no fan of TYT-- I have far greater admiration for Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager than Cenk, even if Cenk and I agree on basically everything economic. The way Cenk aligns with the SJWs, feeds arguments emotionally, and was pretty much just there to enrich himself with progressive talking points--but comparatively speaking he was still a voice of reason amongst progressives. He was a guy who could bring Sam Harris on for a 2 hour discussion and actually make a good-faith attempt to hash out differences. He was a guy who could debate with Ben Shapiro and have a reasonable, adult discussion for a surprisingly long time before devolving to baffoonery (and I mean, Cenk actually beat Ben on the Health Care debate!)-- even Shapiro walked away impressed that the discussion had been as meaningful and substantive as it was.

For all his hypocrisy, Cenk was a voice amongst progressives far more interested in issues than thought policing; and this is where the progressives have here even more starkly drawn the line in the sand. By eliminating Cenk because of a past that he so openly disavowed and moved to reform from, the progressives have basically proven themselves incapable of approving of progress or understanding any moral arc.

Also, Kyle is cool. Unfort.


So as Bret Weinstein puts it-- The libertarian left is going to have a harsh awakening when it is ousted by the authoritarian left. It is already happening. Without Cenk and Kyle, I think that the Justice Democrats will divolve to nothing but SJWs-- the progressive movement will fail to maintain its focus on getting corporate interest out of politics, on making the economic case for universal health/welfare programs, on critical regulations, and that Bernie Sanders is a candidate of limited immigration and US sovereignty. The authoritarian left will only ceaselessly prop up the victim hierarchy and devolve to identity politics even more base than the Clinton campaign.

BUT these ideas still matters. Liberty matters. Reason matters. Even social justice, insofar as we reach it by our sense of justice not coercion, through liberty and not through multi-cultural tribalism. These ideas still matter, and I think that when they are kicked to the curb, the real liberal defenders of these ideas will find that they have to find and create their own identity independent from the mainstream media and authoritarian left estranged from reason.

This is a process that could be fast or slow-- but thanks to the internet there are brilliant minds with mics to steer the conversation.

These are tumultuous times for the left-- but as more liberals fall victim to the witch hunt, as progressives see that they can only fail without people like Cenk and Kyle... who knows, maybe something with actual organization and principle will come forth the mess. I don't think we can completely rule out optimism.

But the way I see it, there needs to be this awakening identity of classical liberalism, left libertarianism-- it has to realize that it encompasses economic centrists and Bernie-style new dealers who realize that they are about liberty and they are not about mindlessly getting rid of capitalism. The liberals have to own capitalism, because it is the system of individual liberty-- that capitalism is not a dirty word, is still the ideal system for individual liberty, and is one that will also deliver for the common good if we can reform political incentives, regulation, and welfare.

Maybe a new, libertarian left that has a succinct and well-articulated identity and strong commitment to liberty and its view of capitalism-- there is room to believe that people who now occupy the much more well-defined right-libertarian space will be better able to see the common ground.
 
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atomicllamas

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This is maybe a little off topic but I’m pretty sure your post is extremely tangential at best so w/e.
The authoritarian left will only ceaselessly prop up the victim hierarchy and devolve to identity politics even more base than the Clinton campaign.
So first off, you do realize what identity politics is right? “Identity politics, also called identitarian politics, refers to political positions based on the interests and perspectives of social groups with which people identify.” If your implication is people on the left vote for positions that are beneficial to their interests, then like yeah? That’s how you’re supposed to vote? If you’re using identity politics in the political boogeyman way where people will vote for parties solely based on demographics, then a) the implication that this is the fault of the left is patently absurd and b) the idea that this is solely a trait of the left is even more absurd. There’s an essay called Donald Trump, the first white president (or something along those lines) that goes into this a little, alternatively consider the best indicators of voting for trump were being white and religious or being white and identitying as “American” (rather than German or Italian or w/e). The right plays identity politics just as much if not more than the left in modern politics, with race (voter ID stuff), gender and sexuality (transgender bathroom stuff was a non-issue until they decided to use it is a boogeyman, trying to maintain employers rights to fire for sexual orientation in as much as the country as possible), religion (pretending shariah law is a threat while implementing a set of policies that attempt to make their own religious views law), and perhaps the most recent is a sense of blind patriotism.

BUT these ideas still matters. Liberty matters. Reason matters. Even social justice, insofar as we reach it by our sense of justice not coercion, through liberty and not through multi-cultural tribalism.
Social justice has literally always been the result of some coercion. Desegregation was coercion. Both in the sense it was coerced by the Supreme Court and in the sense that it was not achievable without MLK (the real one, not the white washed one they teach you about in high school history, see letter from the Birmingham prison) or without the Black Panthers it never would have happened. For a more recent example see gay marriage which was coerced for ~50% of the population. It now has over 60% support, and that will only grow. When it was passed it was legal in 8 states and constitutionally outlawed in over 30, if for some reason the Supreme Court ruling got overturned today those numbers would be reversed. More proof that social justice doesn’t come from some grand sense of justice or coercion, but both. There would be no gay rights movement without Stonewall (coercion) and while Pride is mostly fun now, it wasn’t always, people had to fight for that. To imply social justice comes from just a broader sense of justice and a couple nice conversations is false (and completely ignorant of history), those things help, but some portion of people are always going to have to be coerced (read: dragged kicking and screaming) into the future.

The rest of your post I either somewhat agree with or somewhat disagree with but if you’re gonna call the left “intellectually fat and lazy” don’t follow up with literal right wing propaganda about “identity politics” and “SJWs”. That’s actually intellectually lazy.
 

Chou Toshio

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This is maybe a little off topic but I’m pretty sure your post is extremely tangential at best so w/e.

So first off, you do realize what identity politics is right? “Identity politics, also called identitarian politics, refers to political positions based on the interests and perspectives of social groups with which people identify.” If your implication is people on the left vote for positions that are beneficial to their interests, then like yeah? That’s how you’re supposed to vote? If you’re using identity politics in the political boogeyman way where people will vote for parties solely based on demographics, then a) the implication that this is the fault of the left is patently absurd and b) the idea that this is solely a trait of the left is even more absurd. There’s an essay called Donald Trump, the first white president (or something along those lines) that goes into this a little, alternatively consider the best indicators of voting for trump were being white and religious or being white and identitying as “American” (rather than German or Italian or w/e). The right plays identity politics just as much if not more than the left in modern politics, with race (voter ID stuff), gender and sexuality (transgender bathroom stuff was a non-issue until they decided to use it is a boogeyman, trying to maintain employers rights to fire for sexual orientation in as much as the country as possible), religion (pretending shariah law is a threat while implementing a set of policies that attempt to make their own religious views law), and perhaps the most recent is a sense of blind patriotism.


Social justice has literally always been the result of some coercion. Desegregation was coercion. Both in the sense it was coerced by the Supreme Court and in the sense that it was not achievable without MLK (the real one, not the white washed one they teach you about in high school history, see letter from the Birmingham prison) or without the Black Panthers it never would have happened. For a more recent example see gay marriage which was coerced for ~50% of the population. It now has over 60% support, and that will only grow. When it was passed it was legal in 8 states and constitutionally outlawed in over 30, if for some reason the Supreme Court ruling got overturned today those numbers would be reversed. More proof that social justice doesn’t come from some grand sense of justice or coercion, but both. There would be no gay rights movement without Stonewall (coercion) and while Pride is mostly fun now, it wasn’t always, people had to fight for that. To imply social justice comes from just a broader sense of justice and a couple nice conversations is false (and completely ignorant of history), those things help, but some portion of people are always going to have to be coerced (read: dragged kicking and screaming) into the future.

The rest of your post I either somewhat agree with or somewhat disagree with but if you’re gonna call the left “intellectually fat and lazy” don’t follow up with literal right wing propaganda about “identity politics” and “SJWs”. That’s actually intellectually lazy.
Tangential but relevant both your post and mine). Of course I’ll cede the point that social justice has relied on force in its history by the means cited (thank you for calling me out there)— it’s obviously historically been a means to a good end. And I don’t disagree with groups standing up for their own interests of course not.

That said though, there has to be a spirit of engaging the other side in dialogue. We have to have the ability to come to agreement about facts and work through complex problems.


I have clearly stated in this thread that many of the ideas of the left are some of the most important and substantial.

The thesis I put forth regarding the authoritarian left is that the language and direction of actual liberalism or progressivism is being hijacked by attitudes and activities that cannot maintain the moral ground— and therefore ultimately cannot effectively bring its vision to fruition.

I stand by the ideals of Bernie’s platform, which means I also agree with most every policy the justice democrats are pushing for— do I think they are massively undercutting themselves right before the midterms? Yes.

Do I think that the left is doing it to itself? Again yes— at least the authoritarian left is.



Edit: I didn’t think it was possible for me to love Bernie any more than I already did, but found this clip from 2 years ago— “We need to move beyond identity politics.”

 
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Myzozoa

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My position is that of a minarchist. That is, I advocate a minimalist government which exists solely to protect its citizens, their individual rights, and to enforce the laws of the land. This would provide the environment in which private parties can make superior decisions to a centralised government. I believe that additional intervention becomes a slippery slope argument.

Zero centralised regulation is not a problem per se. In the free market, greed for profit is checked by fear of loss and fear of consequence. Crucially, the government must be able to hold lawbreakers accountable, lest the fear of consequence is mitigated. This fear is what would drive due diligence, corporate governance, and self-regulation.

Imagine a world where everyone starts their life with the same wealth and opportunities. Each person then makes their own life decisions, which will inevitably impact their personal wealth. Some will make objectively better long-term decisions, while others might just be in the right place at the right time. In short, the population that started equal will arrange themselves into some semblance of a fat-bottomed bell curve over time. If you iterate this model through many generations, the tail of that bell curve will become increasingly extreme as wealth compounds. My point is that even starting from "utopia" results in extreme wealth inequality.
I hope I have written this in a way you find comprehensible, it might seem like I'm referring to your thought experiment when I speak of a fat bell curve, but I'm trying to talk about what the bell curve is historically and presently. I don't claim to know the actual distribution of absolute poverty or wealth, if it is fat or not. I have no idea what the actual present shape of the distribution would look like, but I have been made aware that a significant proportion of people are in debt (a state of having negative wealth) and that certain forms of slavery still exist for example in agriculture and in the sex trade. In the paragraphs that follow I'm trying to get at the 'real' historical bell curve, to examine just one end of it:

I feel like you've neglected to unpack the situation on the other side of the fat (relatively) bell curve. In my view, this is historically and presently the debtor's prisoners and the population that exist(ed) as chattel slaves. I don't see how the minimalist government you propose can address the situation for (what I'm just refer to as) 'poor people' because the maximization of profit is achieved through maintaining an environment in which the cost of labor is low and thus (wage)-slavery is efficient. If all the minimalist government is doing is enforcing any contract that comes up, without establishing significant protections for laborers, we'd be back 200 years to when a high percentage of people, even in western europe, worked for only for meals a day.

The (what Im just gonna call) tech capitalist fundamentalists have thought this through and they have all types of 'arguments' I won't be rehearsing in this post about how technological advancement can or will address this flaw by increasing the value of human capital. A 'liberal' proposal has been around quite a while, ironically, since around the same time the debtor-prison become the norm in western europe: increase human capital through education. But 'education', you might say, can also be left to the provision of private parties contracting, but to this I would just say again: without significant protections for workers provided by some external entity (like a democratic government) the workers' conditions with move closer and closer to a situation where the cost of labor, the wages of the laborers, can be coercively (but legally) lowered until an ethically bankrupt situation is legal and normal. Does the government protect contracts that say 'x person will do y work for 2 meals a day' even when there is a famine? This question might as well just be asking: what happens when the markets fail on a commonsense metric but not a practical one? Markets persist, often in disastrous ways, in situations like a famine for example. There will always be markets, but unfortunately there may not always be democratic interventions unto markets.

You might argue that 'charity' could address this situation by redistributing wealth by the decisions of the private choices of the holders of wealth, but this will never address extreme wealth inequality in my view. This is because the holders of this wealth have actually achieved that wealth because of the very fact that the cost of labor (wages) is so low. How could the wealthy have an interest in undoing the conditions by which they created their wealth? Even philosophies of capitalism proclaim that rational individuals act purely out of self-interest. So in my view, some external, non-minimal in terms of philosophy of intervention, entity (such as a government) is needed to ensure that the rights and conditions of the working classes are maintained rather than eroded by as the cost of labor is cheapened in order to maximize profits and/or growth.

To me, present day nation-states are not obviously better or even different than the minimal governments you describe, and in no way would I wish my comments to be taken to endorse any current or historical forms of government. In myriad ways, these entities have served the interests of accumulated capital (corporations) in maintaining a toxic environment for labor historically and presently. Indeed, private entities have effectively captured the governments established over most territories in the 20th century, lending to the perpetration of the most horrible tragedies in history in terms of body count and habitat destruction.

"A war is manufactured with foreign assistance in an African country, (in)conveniently the people living over billions worth of mineral deposits are killed or at best expulsed from their lands, losing them of course in the process. Later, the survivors might be allowed to return to them and work for a pittance mining those same lands which were violently acquired by a corrupt native politician/oligarchic group and foreign (usually Western) financiers and corporations. That´s how capitalism was implanted in the New World and in Africa, and everywhere else that the West has colonized. As the West transitioned to modern capitalism, by the very basis of its incomparably successful colonialist enterprise, it imposed in the starkest, crudest, and cruelest forms, those same systems of capitalism abroad: and indeed colonial and post-colonial capitalism (as predominates in, for example, Africa today) represents the revealed essence of a system based on the inherent and inherited dichotomies between the increasingly over time purely arbitrary control exercised by a miniscule few contra the also ever increasing dispossession of the laboring many--which is precisely the inherent outcome to be expected in the purest, least diluted forms of capitalist economy (i.e. in those systems where the tempering, socializing hand of the government is least)."

a comment on this lovely article lmao (yes, i am embarassed that i read the comments), but it resonated with me when I saw it.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ess-billionaire-entrepreneur-loves-capitalism

"
Meanwhile, the average American worker has less time off than a medieval peasant; one in three UK millennials will never be able to own their own home; and the world’s richest 1% are on track to own two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030. There are lots of statistics like these; there is an abundance of data that suggests capitalism is benefiting the few and letting down the many.

Ultimately, though, capitalism deserves to be loved. Far from enriching a few lucky individuals, it enriches the world. If you don’t believe me, look up the Wikipedia entries for the wealthiest people on the planet. The first sentences of these hagiographies usually include the word “philanthropist”. For example: “Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist … William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, author, philanthropist … Mark Zuckerberg is an American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist ...” Capitalism lets entrepreneurs pay as little tax as possible – then donate some of their billions towards humankind and style themselves as philanthropists.

Forget all the do-gooding, though. The best thing about capitalism is the cool stuff it produces. For example, gold chicken wings! Yes, thanks to Instagram capitalism, while most of the world is starving, the rest of it is eating gold. In Manhattan, you can buy chicken dipped in 24-carat gold. In Melbourne, you can buy burgers in gold buns. In London, you can buy pizza with sprinklings of gold flakes. Some people may see the trend for edible gold as disgusting evidence of the excesses of capitalism, but I view it as a canny survival tactic by the bourgeoisie. After all, the poor are going to think twice about eating the rich when doing so carries the risk of heavy metal poisoning."

ha ha the author, from the blessedly democratic uk, hasn't reckoned that the American poor will already have heavy metal poisoning from the tap water.

Anyway I don't endorse concessions to the interests of accumulated capital in the present moment. Somehow, perhaps through direct action, perhaps through a miracle, I hope such interests will actually be reigned in. I think the nanny state has always existed, and usually for the interests and on behalf of accumulated capital. Corporate welfare and all that, and even charity has become a means of wielding or establishing political economy.
 

Soul Fly

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Jeff Bezos also has 150 billion because we as a society are willing collectively to look the other way while getting pleasured by predatory pricing and Prime delivery on those rad books about Late Stage Capitalism I just ordered. What a steal!
 
I can't speak for which is best for society - that is, "nanny state" govs or less involved ones, as I'm certainly no economist. However, despite being in the purple box of the 4-box ideology chart (right-leaning and libertarian) I am very supportive of government intervention to an extent.

For example, I work at a grocery store and make minimum wage. While it would be nice to have more money, I do not want to be paid more because I believe the value of my labor, and the difficulty in replacing me, is fairly low, and the company should pay me as such. However, for the sake of market stability and other issues, I support the concept of minimum wage. It has some issues like location-dependent value but whatever.

I support many forms of government regulation as long as they are truly necessary and do not strangle the economy. OSHA, environmental protection, tax inspections/audits? Absolutely.

The government, to me, is a framework that makes and enforces laws with the intent of ensuring the Constitution's (and its Amendments, Bill of Rights, etc) framework protects citizens. If this is not accomplished then true freedom is impossible. As a result, a reasonably limited amount of government intervention is a good thing. While I may not always agree with or care about certain issues or areas of involvement that the government addresses, I am happy that they are discussed and considered.

I guess if the nanny state is limited, but strong within its boundaries, it will give people a foundation to build lives upon and let them grow more independent over time. This would ideally not be too much of a burden on the middle class and up. A safety net is one thing, but mandated control over vast areas of life is going too far. The limit must be set and firmly enforced.

Chou Toshio I absolutely agree with your points on left-leaning libertarianism. Aside from the radicals on both sides, which are increasingly authoritarian, most moderates are cool with classical liberalism and dislike identity politics in its many forms. I hope the left works out those issues, because despite leaning right I truly want their ideas to be considered and tested. Ideologies aside, if it makes everyone's lives better and keeps people free I can't complain too much lmao. Another thing: Progress always wins. Always. Which, of course, is a cause championed by the left. Now that communication of ideas is more rampant than ever, it is unstoppable. I'm happy for that. I hope we all progress in a direction that keeps us free and fulfilled, and assuming we continue to move in a helpful way I am optimistic. On that note, remember that most of us in the silent masses are normal and reasonable and want the best for each other. Feeling hopeful is easy when looking to people as neighbors, as brothers and sisters, instead of misguided, loudmouthed idiots.
 

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