Notes from: Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010 — Gordon Gauchat Available at: http://www.asanet.org/images/journals/docs/pdf/asr/Apr12ASRFeature.pdf 1) Their position: Science is, and always has been, political. It will remain political, because the economy of the scientific establishment, and academia in particular, represents a large number of people, a great deal of money, large bureaucratic organizations, and a dependence upon the public trough. 2) “the scientific community leverages its credibility and technical expertise to assess and certify social policy and other institutional practices (e.g., military technology, medical developments, and expert advisory panels). A breakdown of this postwar consensus along sociopolitical lines may signal that the authority of science no longer provides sufficient legitimacy to policymakers and government regulators or, paradoxically, that the authority of science has reached its upper limit (Yearley 1994). ” 3) I’m not sure I agree that the conservative position has been articulated in this paper. The problem is that conservatives laud the achievements of science in discovery of the physical world. But they see nothing but the politicization of it in the social and political arenas. Science fits within the conservative concept of man: imperfect and hubristic. Therefore science is a means by which we can overcome our imperfection perception, imperfect comprehension, and hubristic fantasies. Conservatism is scientific: it seeks demonstrated proofs of success via observation before something can be incorporated into the ‘fragile’ social and political system. The question is whether, just as man’s ‘law’ should be ruled by ‘natural law’ to prevent hubris, whether scientific inquiry should be limited by ‘natural law’ to prevent hubris. Meaning, science loses its legitimacy whenever it seeks to hypothesize that it is possible to alter the nature of man by policy. Instead, man’s systems of cooperation must be altered carefully by market forces, which are utilitarian, and ‘scientific’ not utopian and ‘scientism’. Scientism meaning, subject to the errors of scientific reasoning. 4) Conservatives and Libertarians in particular were heavy supporters of science. Science fiction forms the basis for libertarian mythology. Technology is inseparable from the western conservative military tradition, and obsession with technology is probably the primary differentiator of the western man from every other civilization. 5) Science as a process, and as a profession, has a very checkered history. it’s only because most of science’s history relates to the physical world, not the social world, that many and frequent the failures of science are immaterial, and its successes valuable. But when science works on social policy, and when we consider human beings are such victims of hubris and error, and prone to so many biases and cognitive failures, then the cost of those failures is not born by the community itself, but externalized onto the rest of society. Many of whose members are engaged in commerce. Commerce exposes human nature and incentives more accurately than do any other forms of test. And for the commercial sector, whose ‘science of human nature’ is exercised daily. The propositions of science with regard to human nature, and the consequences of political and social and economic policy are UNSCIENTIFIC in its methods, and COUNTER TO THE EVIDENCE in its results. This is why conservatives see science through two methodological lenses: The physical world through observation of the physical sciences — those objects and processes where our senses fail us. And the commercial science, where our senses and their limits are the very means and methods used to build society through voluntary and productive exchange. This is a profound concept that I have only been working on for a few months. Maybe a year. But commerce is the science of human cooperation. Conservatives are commercial. Conservatism is scientific. The physical world can neither learn from the tests imposed upon it, nor can it seek to outwit them. Humans do both. And the members of the scientific community are as subject to those failures because they possess a multitude of incentives, a means of exciting them, and human frailty of reason. Commercial science is brutally scientific. Failures are found early. They are costly to the individuals who explore them. They are beneficial to consumers no matter whether successful or a failure. Economics has failed because of scientism. We already have a science of human nature: it’s commerce. It’s the only science of human behavior that can be trusted. From that perspective, academic science is a religion of mysticism founded on obviously false methodology, seeking to fulfill utopian preconclusions, producing a history of demonstrated catastrophic failures. And as such is an industry, an ideology, and a political movement that has been as damaging to human life as it has been beneficial in the physical sciences. The only catastrophic commercial experiments have been communistic in origin and promoted by academia. They were “anti-scientific scientism.” I would argue, as have others, that science-envy in economics and philosophy was as responsible for the downfall of western civilization as was the nation state. 6) “Parsons (1962) proposed that scientific knowledge, particularly its empirical and universal qualities, is essential to secular institutions. Similarly, Barber (1952, 1975, 1990:40) describes a “special congruence” of science with rational-legal authority and modern societies. Yet, even these scholars envisaged limits to public trust in science, because, in their view, organized science would reach a level of societal prestige and power that would engender public anxiety (Barber 1990; Merton 1938; Parsons 1962). STS scholars have been sharply critical of the “special congruence” of science and modernity on numerous fronts (for a concise summary, see Shapin 2008), but most clearly, the underlying assumption that modernity is irrevocably tied to scientific progress and technical innovation. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the modernist argument translates into a clear and testable hypothesis. Predominately, it forecasts science’s cultural ascendency: a uniform growth in public trust in science over time that may be slowed by a general distrust in power and authority.” In other words, science will cease to be an independent external form of useful heresy, and will become part of the bureaucracy. The libertarian argument is that this is only possible because we publicly fund sciences. Basic research in the physical sciences is useful. The question is whether we should fund practical research or research into the social sciences. And I would argue no. Including economics in that social science. Social and Economic sciences are subject to perverse incentives and so must be part of the “Commercial Science” not physical science. (This would not help with the global warming problem, but it would help with the economics problem.) 7) The author repeatedly makes the mistake of stating that conservatives are skeptical of science. THey aren’t. They’re skeptical of the motivations of scientists. They’re skeptical of the motivations of politicians. They’re skeptical of the use of pseudo-science in the political sphere. Conservatives after all, rely upon NORMS (self-organizing traditions and habits) not articulated, man created, and therefore hubristic rules. Modernity consists of rules. (Weber). 8) I realize that I’m one of the ‘educated’ conservatives, and one of the conservative intellectuals, and one of the ‘new right’ conservative intellectuals at that. So I am able to articulate conservative ideas, and I don’t rely on the same arguments as do social conservatives. (Or classical liberal economists and political thinkers either.) But that’s different from saying that conservatives aren’t rational. It’s purely rational, even if they express the concepts in allegorical language. Conservatives speak in antique speech. That doesn’t mean we can’t understand the content of it. 9) Again, American Conservatives LOVE technology that can be USED by society. They just reject that science can CHANGE society – or man for that matter. Conservatism as a sentiment is a bias in favor of group competitiveness against other groups. 10) OK, Now we get to his argument: “Jacques, Dunlap, and Freeman (2008) have identified an elite-driven movement that is culturally located in conservative think tanks and media outlets and often disputes scientific conclusions to advance ideological or financial goals (see also Oreskes and Conway 2010). Altogether, a wide range of scholarship points to the NR’s intellectual boundary work that successfully distinguishes the conservative identity in terms of a competing base of knowledge that opposes the broader society’s established cultural institutions (Gross et al. 2011).” THis statement contains a number of erroneous assumptions a) “Broader society” tends to AGREE with conservative sentiments. It’s not like ‘liberal’ is anything but a minority sentiment. The society leans conservative. Research confirms that every month. (Pew). b) Yes it’s an elite driven movement.. ALL political movements are elite driven. c) Yes, political movements exist to advance ideological goals. None of these are tests of anything rational. The question is whether conservatives who respect commercial science or anti-conservatives who advocate utopian physical sciences into the social sphere, are RIGHT in their assumptions about what it is possible for human beings to achieve by rational choice versus institutional habit. And by consequence, wht the impact to our civilization and mankind would be. Again, conservatism is scientific. It states that hubris leads to catastrophe. It states that scientism is a mystical religion. And it’s demonstrably true. We have to understand that conservatism in this context means ‘european aristocratic christian commercial manorialism’. Or what we call ‘classical liberalism’. And that it was classical liberalism and its emphasis on commercial society as separate from the church and dependent upon the norms created by the church. 7) “Yearley (1994:252) argues that “there has begun to be a switch from science being seen as a way of increasing production to a view of it as a means of handling risks and of achieving regulation.” The shift toward regulatory science that began in the 1970s could account for conservatives’ growing distrust in science, given this group’s general opposition to government regulation.” Again, this is a progressive interpretation of history. Commerce requires tht all members of an industry are subject to the same rules. Those rules must exist GOING INTO the investment, not after it. If the government allows pollution then comes in later to fix it, then it’s a government cost so to speak. A conservative or a libertarian just wants the government to acknowledge property rights. We understand that in an effort to promote industrialization, governments in the west violated property rights (Took away rights of individuals to sue polluters of all kinds: toxic, light, noise, etc. And failed to force industrialists to clean up after themselves: replanting trees, re-landscaping mines.) This was a government action. The common law let farmers sue industrialists for damages. THe state conspired with industrialists. As such, conservatives and libertarians feel that this process wold be better handled as property rights, rather than as legislation. Because bureaucracy is slow, incompetent and self serving, and drives up costs. (We have that data too.) 8) The rest of the paper goes on to describe the data and the methods used. It’s not of much interest other than it’s based upon survey data — ie:it’s dependent upon human expression rather than OBSERVATION of human action. (Which a commercial scientist would argue is unscientific on its face since people act very differently from how they speak. But may be useful in some way or another. ) I should write a paper on this for one of the rags. But I’ve got other work to do. CONSERVATISM IS SCIENTIFIC AND RELIES UPON COMMERCIAL SCIENCE. Conservatives are skeptical whenever the physical sciences attempt to encroach upon the commercial sciences. One is a process of discovery. One a process of invention. They are governed by different rules. Conservatism is SCIENTIFIC. I don’t know what’s hard about that. WHy do you think westerners invented ‘science’ in the first place? Because they were a minority that relied upon technology for military superiority and financed their superiority through commerce. Commerce is scientific. Westerners are (were) a commercial people. Commerce is scientific. Science as we know it is an outgrowth of commercial society. Sigh. So obvious its painful.
Theme: Deception
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HAVE LOST FAITH IN THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE Notes from: Politicization of Scienc
http://www.asanet.org/images/journals/docs/pdf/asr/Apr12ASRFeature.pdfCONSERVATIVES HAVE LOST FAITH IN THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE
Notes from: Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010 — Gordon Gauchat
1) Their position: Science is, and always has been, political. It will remain political, because the economy of the scientific establishment, and academia in particular, represents a large number of people, a great deal of money, large bureaucratic organizations, and a dependence upon the public trough.
2) “the scientific community leverages its credibility and technical expertise to assess and certify social policy and other institutional practices (e.g., military technology, medical developments, and expert advisory panels). A breakdown of this postwar consensus along sociopolitical lines may signal that the authority of science no longer provides sufficient legitimacy to policymakers and government regulators or, paradoxically, that the authority of science has reached its upper limit (Yearley 1994). “
3) I’m not sure I agree that the conservative position has been articulated in this paper. The problem is that conservatives laud the achievements of science in discovery of the physical world. But they see nothing but the politicization of it in the social and political arenas.
Science fits within the conservative concept of man: imperfect and hubristic. Therefore science is a means by which we can overcome our imperfection perception, imperfect comprehension, and hubristic fantasies.
Conservatism is scientific: it seeks demonstrated proofs of success via observation before something can be incorporated into the ‘fragile’ social and political system.
The question is whether, just as man’s ‘law’ should be ruled by ‘natural law’ to prevent hubris, whether scientific inquiry should be limited by ‘natural law’ to prevent hubris. Meaning, science loses its legitimacy whenever it seeks to hypothesize that it is possible to alter the nature of man by policy. Instead, man’s systems of cooperation must be altered carefully by market forces, which are utilitarian, and ‘scientific’ not utopian and ‘scientism’. Scientism meaning, subject to the errors of scientific reasoning.
4) Conservatives and Libertarians in particular were heavy supporters of science. Science fiction forms the basis for libertarian mythology. Technology is inseparable from the western conservative military tradition, and obsession with technology is probably the primary differentiator of the western man from every other civilization.
5) Science as a process, and as a profession, has a very checkered history. it’s only because most of science’s history relates to the physical world, not the social world, that many and frequent the failures of science are immaterial, and its successes valuable. But when science works on social policy, and when we consider human beings are such victims of hubris and error, and prone to so many biases and cognitive failures, then the cost of those failures is not born by the community itself, but externalized onto the rest of society. Many of whose members are engaged in commerce. Commerce exposes human nature and incentives more accurately than do any other forms of test. And for the commercial sector, whose ‘science of human nature’ is exercised daily. The propositions of science with regard to human nature, and the consequences of political and social and economic policy are UNSCIENTIFIC in its methods, and COUNTER TO THE EVIDENCE in its results.
This is why conservatives see science through two methodological lenses: The physical world through observation of the physical sciences — those objects and processes where our senses fail us. And the commercial science, where our senses and their limits are the very means and methods used to build society through voluntary and productive exchange.
This is a profound concept that I have only been working on for a few months. Maybe a year. But commerce is the science of human cooperation. Conservatives are commercial. Conservatism is scientific. The physical world can neither learn from the tests imposed upon it, nor can it seek to outwit them. Humans do both. And the members of the scientific community are as subject to those failures because they possess a multitude of incentives, a means of exciting them, and human frailty of reason.
Commercial science is brutally scientific. Failures are found early. They are costly to the individuals who explore them. They are beneficial to consumers no matter whether successful or a failure.
Economics has failed because of scientism. We already have a science of human nature: it’s commerce. It’s the only science of human behavior that can be trusted.
From that perspective, academic science is a religion of mysticism founded on obviously false methodology, seeking to fulfill utopian preconclusions, producing a history of demonstrated catastrophic failures. And as such is an industry, an ideology, and a political movement that has been as damaging to human life as it has been beneficial in the physical sciences. The only catastrophic commercial experiments have been communistic in origin and promoted by academia. They were “anti-scientific scientism.”
I would argue, as have others, that science-envy in economics and philosophy was as responsible for the downfall of western civilization as was the nation state.
6) “Parsons (1962) proposed that scientific knowledge, particularly its empirical and universal qualities, is essential to secular institutions.
Similarly, Barber (1952, 1975, 1990:40) describes a “special congruence” of science with rational-legal authority and modern societies. Yet, even these scholars envisaged limits to public trust in science, because, in their view, organized science would reach a level of societal prestige and power that would engender public anxiety (Barber 1990; Merton 1938; Parsons 1962). STS scholars have been sharply critical of the “special congruence” of science and modernity on numerous fronts (for a concise summary, see Shapin
2008), but most clearly, the underlying assumption that modernity is irrevocably tied to scientific progress and technical innovation. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the modernist argument translates into a clear and testable hypothesis. Predominately, it forecasts science’s cultural ascendency: a uniform growth in public trust in science over time that may be slowed by a general distrust in power and authority.”
In other words, science will cease to be an independent external form of useful heresy, and will become part of the bureaucracy. The libertarian argument is that this is only possible because we publicly fund sciences. Basic research in the physical sciences is useful. The question is whether we should fund practical research or research into the social sciences. And I would argue no. Including economics in that social science. Social and Economic sciences are subject to perverse incentives and so must be part of the “Commercial Science” not physical science. (This would not help with the global warming problem, but it would help with the economics problem.)
7) The author repeatedly makes the mistake of stating that conservatives are skeptical of science. THey aren’t. They’re skeptical of the motivations of scientists. They’re skeptical of the motivations of politicians. They’re skeptical of the use of pseudo-science in the political sphere. Conservatives after all, rely upon NORMS (self-organizing traditions and habits) not articulated, man created, and therefore hubristic rules. Modernity consists of rules. (Weber).
8) I realize that I’m one of the ‘educated’ conservatives, and one of the conservative intellectuals, and one of the ‘new right’ conservative intellectuals at that. So I am able to articulate conservative ideas, and I don’t rely on the same arguments as do social conservatives. (Or classical liberal economists and political thinkers either.) But that’s different from saying that conservatives aren’t rational. It’s purely rational, even if they express the concepts in allegorical language. Conservatives speak in antique speech. That doesn’t mean we can’t understand the content of it.
9) Again, American Conservatives LOVE technology that can be USED by society. They just reject that science can CHANGE society – or man for that matter. Conservatism as a sentiment is a bias in favor of group competitiveness against other groups.
10) OK, Now we get to his argument: “Jacques, Dunlap, and Freeman (2008) have identified an elite-driven movement that is culturally located in conservative think tanks and media outlets and often disputes scientific conclusions to advance ideological or financial goals (see also Oreskes and Conway 2010). Altogether, a wide range of scholarship points to the NR’s intellectual boundary work that successfully distinguishes the conservative identity in terms of a competing base of knowledge that opposes the broader society’s established cultural institutions (Gross et al. 2011).”
THis statement contains a number of erroneous assumptions
a) “Broader society” tends to AGREE with conservative sentiments. It’s not like ‘liberal’ is anything but a minority sentiment. The society leans conservative. Research confirms that every month. (Pew).
b) Yes it’s an elite driven movement.. ALL political movements are elite driven.
c) Yes, political movements exist to advance ideological goals.
None of these are tests of anything rational. The question is whether conservatives who respect commercial science or anti-conservatives who advocate utopian physical sciences into the social sphere, are RIGHT in their assumptions about what it is possible for human beings to achieve by rational choice versus institutional habit. And by consequence, wht the impact to our civilization and mankind would be. Again, conservatism is scientific. It states that hubris leads to catastrophe. It states that scientism is a mystical religion. And it’s demonstrably true.
We have to understand that conservatism in this context means ‘european aristocratic christian commercial manorialism’. Or what we call ‘classical liberalism’. And that it was classical liberalism and its emphasis on commercial society as separate from the church and dependent upon the norms created by the church.
7) “Yearley (1994:252) argues that “there has begun to be a switch from
science being seen as a way of increasing production to a view of it as a means of handling risks and of achieving regulation.” The shift toward regulatory science that began in the 1970s could account for conservatives’
growing distrust in science, given this group’s general opposition to government regulation.”
Again, this is a progressive interpretation of history. Commerce requires tht all members of an industry are subject to the same rules. Those rules must exist GOING INTO the investment, not after it. If the government allows pollution then comes in later to fix it, then it’s a government cost so to speak. A conservative or a libertarian just wants the government to acknowledge property rights. We understand that in an effort to promote industrialization, governments in the west violated property rights (Took away rights of individuals to sue polluters of all kinds: toxic, light, noise, etc. And failed to force industrialists to clean up after themselves: replanting trees, re-landscaping mines.) This was a government action. The common law let farmers sue industrialists for damages. THe state conspired with industrialists. As such, conservatives and libertarians feel that this process wold be better handled as property rights, rather than as legislation. Because bureaucracy is slow, incompetent and self serving, and drives up costs. (We have that data too.)
8) The rest of the paper goes on to describe the data and the methods used. It’s not of much interest other than it’s based upon survey data — ie:it’s dependent upon human expression rather than OBSERVATION of human action. (Which a commercial scientist would argue is unscientific on its face since people act very differently from how they speak. But may be useful in some way or another. )
I should write a paper on this for one of the rags. But I’ve got other work to do.
CONSERVATISM IS SCIENTIFIC AND RELIES UPON COMMERCIAL SCIENCE. Conservatives are skeptical whenever the physical sciences attempt to encroach upon the commercial sciences. One is a process of discovery. One a process of invention. They are governed by different rules.
Conservatism is SCIENTIFIC. I don’t know what’s hard about that. WHy do you think westerners invented ‘science’ in the first place? Because they were a minority that relied upon technology for military superiority and financed their superiority through commerce. Commerce is scientific. Westerners are (were) a commercial people. Commerce is scientific. Science as we know it is an outgrowth of commercial society.
Sigh. So obvious its painful.
Source date (UTC): 2012-04-12 08:47:00 UTC
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Baiting? See Saul Alinsky, Strategist Of The Proletarian Left
I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting one of their tactics: baiting. But let’s see where those tactics comes from. Saul Alinsky. Our president’s hero. The western concept of political debate originated in the right of the enfranchised warrior to debate tactics in order to gain consensus on those tactics — since unlike eastern militaries, western tactics required individual initiative. The citizen warrior’s right was predicated on forgoing theft, fraud, and violence, and speaking the truth and only the truth in the process of that debate. If truth was abandoned, error was presumed, passons could be forgiven. But if RIDICULE was employed, then the prohibition on violence for the purpose of debate was forgone, and the ridiculed could fight and kill the man who broke the contract by which we put down our weapons and enter debate. While Marx and marxists were wrong in their understanding of the physical world, of human nature, and of economics, they could be counted upon to adhere to rational discourse and confine themselves to moral criticism. Saul Alinsky was one of the first people to strategically abandon the western principle of honest discourse and promote argumentative ‘the ends justify the means’. To those of us who are from the aristocratic manorial tradition, within which dishonesty, cowardice, or loose and libelous words are reason to end someone’s life, Alinsky’s tactics are a violation of every civic principle, and draw out our basic conservative instinct to kill threats to our hierarchy, social order, and group competitiveness. His strategy (from a lost link) is this: CREATE AN IDEOLOGICAL ARMY OPERATING ON EMOTIONAL ANTAGONISM NOT A PROGRAM OF RATIONAL SOLUTIONS THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO INTELLECTUALLY DEFEND ON THEIR OWN. Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals. Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand. SUN TZU: DECEPTION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN HONESTY Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do. SPEAK IN THE IGNORANT VOICE OF YOUR PEOPLE SO THEY FEEL THEY SPEAK THROUGH YOU Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat. Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. ARGUE FOR BLACK OR WHITE FALLACIES THAT FORCE THE CRITICISM OF YOUR OPPONENT BUT WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR PROPOSE SOLUTIONS Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.” AVOID REASON, IT WOULD ONLY EXPOSE YOUR LACK OF A SOLUTION OR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL REALITY. Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. THE LOWER CLASSES HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO DO, SO GIVE THEM AN EXCUSE TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES AND CELEBRATE A UNITED IDENTITY. SUCH RELIGIONS ARE OPIATES OF THE MASSES. Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.” A MEANINGFUL ARGUMENT IS OPEN TO CRITICISM AND REQUIRES INTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE SOLUTION. INSTEAD, MAINTAIN THE GROUP’S EMOTIONAL AND MORAL ANTAGONISM TOWARD YOUR OPPONENT AND AVOID THE SELF DOUBT THAT WOULD OCCUR IF THEY HAD TO BECOME INTROSPECTIVE. Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues. CONTROL THE INITIATIVE BUT PREVENTING YOUR OPPONENT FROM DETERMINING THAT YOU HAVE NO PROPOSED SOLUTION OTHER THAN THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER. THE RATIONAL MAN CNANOT UNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLISTIC A STRATEGY: OBTAIN POWER. ONCE YOU HAVE POWER YOUR ARGUMENTS DO NOT MATTER. POWER CAN BE OBTAINED THROUGH MORALIZING, CRITICISM AND DISTRACTION. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE OBTAINED BY SOLUTION, ARGUMENT OR REASON. THAT ONLY WEAKENS YOU. Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.” RELY ON TERRORISM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. CREATE FEAR BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR IS A GREATER THAN THE ACTUAL RESULT. PEOPLE WILL ABANDON MAORAL AND TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLES IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ENOUGH FOR THEM TO RESIST YOUR PURSUIT OF POWER. Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation. STICK WITH YOUR ATTACKS, NEVER OFFER SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD ExpOSE YOU TO CRITICISM Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?” DEMONIZE INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT ENGAGE IN REASON. DO NOT ENAGE IN FACTS. SIMPLY DEMONIZE AND RIDICULE THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS POLITICAL POWER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS WILL DIMINISH. Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame. CONTROL YOUR ENEMY’S RESPONSES TO YOU SO THAT HE BECOMES EMOTIONALLY RATHER THAN RATIONALLY ENGAGED AND LOSES HIS ONE REAL STRENGTH: RATIONAL SOLUTIONS. According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
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ALINSKY – STRATEGIST OF THE LEFT I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting
http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.htmlSAUL ALINSKY – STRATEGIST OF THE LEFT
I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting one of the Left’s tactics. But let’s see where those tactics comes from. Saul Alinsky. Our president’s hero.
The western concept of political debate originated in the right of the enfranchised warrior to debate tactics in order to gain consensus on those tactics — since unlike eastern militaries, western tactics required individual initiative. The citizen warrior’s right was predicated on forgoing theft, fraud, and violence, and speaking the truth and only the truth in the process of that debate. If truth was abandoned, error was presumed, passons could be forgiven. But if RIDICULE was employed, then the prohibition on violence for the purpose of debate was forgone, and the ridiculed could fight and kill the man who broke the contract by which we put down our weapons and enter debate.
While Marx and marxists were wrong in their understanding of the physical world, of human nature, and of economics, they could be counted upon to adhere to rational discourse and confine themselves to moral criticism.
Saul Alinsky was one of the first people to strategically abandon the western principle of honest discourse and promote argumentative ‘the ends justify the means’.
To those of us who are from the aristocratic manorial tradition, within which dishonesty, cowardice, or loose and libelous words are reason to end someone’s life, Alinsky’s tactics are a violation of every civic principle, and draw out our basic conservative instinct to kill threats to our hierarchy, social order, and group competitiveness.
His strategy (from a lost link) is this:
CREATE AN IDEOLOGICAL ARMY OPERATING ON EMOTIONAL ANTAGONISM NOT A PROGRAM OF RATIONAL SOLUTIONS THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO INTELLECTUALLY DEFEND ON THEIR OWN.
Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.
Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.
SUN TZU: DECEPTION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN HONESTY
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
SPEAK IN THE IGNORANT VOICE OF YOUR PEOPLE SO THEY FEEL THEY SPEAK THROUGH YOU
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
ARGUE FOR BLACK OR WHITE FALLACIES THAT FORCE THE CRITICISM OF YOUR OPPONENT BUT WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR PROPOSE SOLUTIONS
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
AVOID REASON, IT WOULD ONLY EXPOSE YOUR LACK OF A SOLUTION OR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL REALITY.
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
THE LOWER CLASSES HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO DO, SO GIVE THEM AN EXCUSE TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES AND CELEBRATE A UNITED IDENTITY. SUCH RELIGIONS ARE OPIATES OF THE MASSES.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
A MEANINGFUL ARGUMENT IS OPEN TO CRITICISM AND REQUIRES INTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE SOLUTION. INSTEAD, MAINTAIN THE GROUP’S EMOTIONAL AND MORAL ANTAGONISM TOWARD YOUR OPPONENT AND AVOID THE SELF DOUBT THAT WOULD OCCUR IF THEY HAD TO BECOME INTROSPECTIVE.
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
CONTROL THE INITIATIVE BUT PREVENTING YOUR OPPONENT FROM DETERMINING THAT YOU HAVE NO PROPOSED SOLUTION OTHER THAN THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER. THE RATIONAL MAN CNANOT UNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLISTIC A STRATEGY: OBTAIN POWER. ONCE YOU HAVE POWER YOUR ARGUMENTS DO NOT MATTER. POWER CAN BE OBTAINED THROUGH MORALIZING, CRITICISM AND DISTRACTION. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE OBTAINED BY SOLUTION, ARGUMENT OR REASON. THAT ONLY WEAKENS YOU.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
RELY ON TERRORISM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. CREATE FEAR BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR IS A GREATER THAN THE ACTUAL RESULT. PEOPLE WILL ABANDON MAORAL AND TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLES IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ENOUGH FOR THEM TO RESIST YOUR PURSUIT OF POWER.
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
STICK WITH YOUR ATTACKS, NEVER OFFER SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD ExpOSE YOU TO CRITICISM
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
DEMONIZE INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT ENGAGE IN REASON. DO NOT ENAGE IN FACTS. SIMPLY DEMONIZE AND RIDICULE THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS POLITICAL POWER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS WILL DIMINISH.
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
CONTROL YOUR ENEMY’S RESPONSES TO YOU SO THAT HE BECOMES EMOTIONALLY RATHER THAN RATIONALLY ENGAGED AND LOSES HIS ONE REAL STRENGTH: RATIONAL SOLUTIONS.
According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
AS AN ADDENDUM
Source date (UTC): 2012-04-02 18:02:00 UTC
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Matt Bruenig Uses Advanced Name Calling (Framing) Against Conservatives
Matt has used liberal framing to categorize three different conservative argumentative techniques. Effectively, it’s an elaborate game of name calling. And nothing more. Instead, he ignores all of history, all of the development of thought in philosophy, law, and government in order to reduce his argument to one of simplistic ideology and emotions. Which makes no sense, in particular, because conservatives if anything, are driven by history and use it in daily life — rather than relying on liberal’s primitive animalistic liberal approval and disapproval cues. The dispute between conservatives and liberals can be summarized in this quote from Matt:
The only reason someone does not have enough money to support a child is because of government policies to enact a certain kind of economy. You have to first argue why those policies should be the policies we choose. You never do that. You just assume that the default policy set is a marginal productivity policy set. But that’s not the default set. It is 1 among 100 other policy sets. You still fail to put forward an argument for that set.
Thats the whole problem isn’t it? But a) CAN an economy accomplish this (Looks like no. Not over more than a few generations.) b) Will a society capable of doing so persist (looks like no, and it also looks like the reason that all other urbanized civilizations have died) c) therefore why should those of us who are productive support the breeding of those who are unproductive? It’s a simple question. Why is it that one person has more right to bear children than another person has the right to consume the product of his efforts? This is the fundamental problem between the frameworks. There is no other point of reasoning. And any other approach is dishonest. Especially ‘name calling’. HERE IS OUR THREAD His full article is included at the bottom of this post. (With a few other comments from others thrown in.) A desert is a place without water, and lots of sand. A dessert is a thing you eat after dinner. 🙂 Your ‘just desserts’ are what you achieve based upon your character and your labor. Conservatives seeks to concentrate capital in the hands of those who will best innovate with it. Since innovation is the source of all prosperity, because innovation causes the decrease in prices, and innovation requires the concentration of capital behind those best demonstrably able to innovate. The argument is that less able, more impulsive, more hedonistic people have higher (shorter) time preferences, and are unable or unwilling to delay gratification in order to achieve what conservatives have achieved. Why should a conservative do without, when he had to sacrifice to get something? Why should some people work harder and longer with more discipline than others if only to have to give it away? The competing arguments are that instead of superior ability and discipline, conservatives have superior advantages. The problem is producing some data that supports it. If instead, you want to say that we must accomodate the inferior, then the exchange must be that the inferior should not be allowed to breed in exchange for redistribution. Why should you have what another person has? Why should he do with less, and have less to experiment with, because the proles feel privileged to reproduce like cockroaches? It’s not a complicated argument. all a conservative asks, is ‘what will you give me in exchange’. A progressive asks is ‘give it to me without anything in exchange.’ We have made it culturally impolitic to state the inferiority of proletarians. But that does not mean we actually believe they are equal. Property is the only means by which we can have liberty. And liberty is incompatible with equality. Because we are marginally indifferent. We are unequal in ability. And for every 15 points of IQ we are dramatically unequal in ability in the modern world. The superior are practically superior in every way, and as such, the produce more, and are of more value to society than the inferiors. That we should have charity to the inferiors is not a question. The question is why we permit them to breed if they cannot support themselves. Why should we sacrifice so that others can fulfill their wants without compensation in return? FOLLOWED BY In the end. The point I am making is that you’re correctly articulating EMOTIONAL REACTIONARY arguments but not the CAUSAL arguments that give rise to them. And I’m supplying them: Conservatism is a reaction to the status quo. The status quo conservatives feel affectation for is the aristocratic manorial system with classical liberal institutions. It is an agrarian system where there is little difference between most people that are not reducible to behavioral traits. It may or may not be applicable to the industrial era. We do not know. I have very little confidence in the progressive social democratic model (redistributive socialism) because a comparative analysis of world institutions across history demonstrates the uniqueness of the western model, and the unique ability of the western model to produce innovations that improve the quality of life of all human beings. The problem is, that that western model also includes an implicitly eugenic system. And I am not sure that we shouldn’t consider it carefully. Even if it offends our sensibilities. THe world contains a finite set of resources after all. And our defeat of malthusian forces is a product of harnessing fossile fuels, not a product of our intellect.
I will take your second sentence to mean that I am correctly explaining what conservative philosophical frameworks actually say, but that you think there are other motivations beside the intellectual ones conservatives provide. My post is not trying to talk about what actually motivates conservatives. I know for instance, many self-identified conservatives are secretly (or not so secretly) motivated by racism for instance. Nonetheless, these are the intellectual arguments they put forward. – Matt
(actually they’re a liberal FRAMING of the arguments put forward.) Well, technically I’m saying you’re correctly categorizing three types of conservative arguments, but creating your own labels (framing) in order to obscure the underlying aristocratic (conservative) theory so that you can demonize it as an emotional and selfish rather than rational and social construct, and then claim that you’ve provided an insight simply by failing to use established terms. In other words you’re employing a ‘shifty argument’. Those three categories have been historically discussed in the literature as: 1) Market Competition — instead of political competition 2) Rule of Law (evolving through common law) — rather than rule by political decree, 3) Meritocracy: Meritocratic Service Of Society Through The Voluntary Market — rather than political corruption by political decree. You’re missing four more categories of argument: 4) Balance of Powers (competition between houses of government), and balance between ethical institutions (the church which teaches manners, ethics, morals and myths) and property institutions (the state which adjudicates disputes and ‘discovers’ laws ). 5) Institutional Balance of Class Powers (multiple houses as in the British and pre 1911 US model that allow classes to cooperate) (We artificially call this ‘enfranchisement’ or ‘suffrage’ today.) 6) Social innovation by adopting demonstrated success rather than political experimentation that externalizes failure. (ie: conservatism is scientific) 7) Property is an individual possession which we grant to the government to wisely use for the common good, versus property is communal and ‘lent out’ for utilitarian purposes to individuals for use in achieving the common good. 8) The nuclear family which creates the smallest possible collaborative economic unit for the purpose of raising children, while at the same time undermining both tribal and extended family ties and inbreeding. — (I missed this one, so it’s included here only as reference for the future.) The conservative does not abandon the poor. He just does not support failure. We all need insurance. We do not need to support living an impulsive life at others expense. We understand that there are material differences in intellectual, emotional, and physical ability. And that all people should be protected from suffering through charity. But that does not mean we should desire equality of outcomes – in fact, that would be a perverse incentive. It is true that conservatives like progressives resort to nonsense arguments. But there is nothing virtuous about either party in that regard. It might be argued that conservatives have been right about all the big questions since Burke invented Conservatism in response to the horrors and bloodshed of the French Revolution. It can also be argued that the privileged hide behind conservatism (slavery) when it suits them. But there is no way of arguing that the entire socialistic program was based upon faulty concepts of man and economics and have been relegated to the dustbin of history. We are once again are proving conservatives right – that we are in the early stages of the abandonment of the ponzi scheme of the european welfare state. Just as conservatives have warned. Humans under capitalism do not breed in an ever expanding intergenerational pyramid. So, no I do not think you’re honestly or correctly positioning the conservative argument. I think you’re conducting a dishonest argument through typical progressive framing. Nothing more.
Well done, Curt, you have revealed all conservatives as cold hearted Darwinists. You fool! That wasn’t to be revealed until NEXT DECADE! Seriously, though, Doolittle has DONE little other than feed a false stereotype. This makes me immediately suspicious of where his (if it is even a male) true intentions. The basic difference between conservatives and liberals involves immediate gratification, and is an emotion versus logic argument, which is why it will never end, but also never be resolved. – RTP
?? I’m all over the internet. I use my real name. I belong to two (three) libertarian organizations. I don’t hide or cower. Just use Google for goodness sake. BTW: Aside from using an ad hominem, you are using amateurish language in your posting. The technical terminology in economics is “Time Preference”. The behavioral terminology is “Impulsiveness” or “impulsivity”. The psychological terminology is Gratification -delayed or instantaneous”. For background see Banfield’s “The Unheavenly City” and “The Unheavenly City Revisited”. See Fussell’s “Class” for fun. Banfield was the first (I think) to demonstrate that the urban poor were poor because they have a higher (shorter) time preference. We have since learned that they also have lower IQ’s. And conservatives have said for centuries, that the purpose of civic virtues is to compensate for lower IQ’s and to train the impulsive to have longer (lower) time preferences. We can see that the lower classes are abandoning the civic virtues. (Murray) We can see that not only have physical labors (farming) but now manufacturing and construction are disappearing as reliable means of obtaining an income, and that the lower classes are unable to learn the abstract tools and concepts which in turn is leading to the concentration of wealth in the more intelligent and better educated. We can see that as women enter the work force they are breeding less. We can see that the upper classes are forming a caste. And that the lower classes are forming at least one if not two castes. The question is, what are we going to do about it? We can adopt the conservative strategy and encourage the impulsive to adopt virtues. Or we can adopt the progressive strategy to subsidize the impulsive and their overbreeding. (As the british have done.) One way we end up with a communal society. the other way we end up with castes.
Adam S. i enjoyed this post and then Curt’s comment was the masterstroke that made me love the internet all over again
Thanks adam. Although I will tell you that most conservative intellectuals do not play on blogs. They look for positions in think tanks and magazines (and conservatism is not a verbal system anyway). But my feeling is that magazines preach to the choir, and most conservative arguments are sentimental rather than rational. So I want to fix that. In any way that I can. And blogs are a good way to try. Cheers.
I have been a social worker for 20 yrs. and can tell you not only from my clients and training but also from growing up in poverty – the dependency argument is false and only applies to the middle class, rich and the corporate world who receive many more and undeserved entitlements. – Maria
I don’t think the question is whether we need safety nets as a means of insuring each other against accidents. I think the question is whether you FEEL people have a right to breed children that they cannot afford to support. There is no good reason we need more children in this world. So you FEEL people have that right, then that’s OK. But your feeling ends when someone else’s pocketbook becomes involved.
Of course the only fly in the ointment with your argument is that the proletarians produce everything. A proletarian drilled the oil to make the plastic that another proletarian made into the keyboard that that was delivered to your house by another proletarian that allowed you to type out this great admission of ignorance that you produced a week ago. The car you drive, the sidewalks you walk upon, the planes you fly in… all are produced by the working class. You don’t have a clue of a clue. As far as equality goes the American founders placed it right alongside of liberty. Not because they thought all people had equal abilities but because all people, in order to have liberty, must be equals in the eyes of the law and the government that is based upon those laws. The billionaire and the street person, when dealing with the government must be treated equally, using the same rules and same procedures. In order to guarantee liberty the State has to be an impartial arbiter of justice, ignoring class, ignoring the inequality of achievement of individuals and dispensing justice equally to the rich and poor. – fishskicanoe
RE: Proletarians produce everything. But this isn’t true is it? Look at world unemployment. Even in this recession, unemployment is almost an entirely proletarian problem. Overpopulation. Energy consumption. Pollution. Peak oil. Social security. These are all proletarian problems. The upper classes (middle and up) are barely replacing themselves.
We all know this is what conservatives are thinking but its a tactical error to come out and say it! I will be using your comment to illustrate the real beliefs of conservatives to the people I know who support right wing parties. – GM
It’s not a tactical error. It’s the truth. If you tell conservatives that the reason the aristocratic social model succeeded in producing the world we live in in part because it suppressed the birth rates of the lower classes and increased average IQ by doing so, and they’re offended by that, then you have a convert. I mean, do we all wnat to argue in pseudo moralistic nonsensical terms forever? Or do we want to find a way to solve the issue? All political differences come down to this one problem: the difference in male and female mating strategies, and the different social orders that the two strategies would favor compared to the OUTCOMES of the two strategies, and which OUTCOMES we would favor. So, why is it that a woman has the right to bear children she cannot support, and afford to educate? I think the world would be better off if we had honest discourse.
They cannot support their children because they do not have high enough incomes to do so. Why not? You say because they are not productive enough. Even if we somehow pretend that people are paid according to their marginal productivity, the whole line of analysis is still question-begging. There is no fundamental rule of the universe that individual compensation must be what their productivity is. A system that distributes income on that basis is one invented by government policies. That still leaves the question then: Why adopt Policy Set X (that distributes income according to productivity) over Policy Set Y? An intentional decision was made to implement one set of policies over another. The dispute is about which policy set to enact. All of your analysis proceeds on the question-begging assumption that Policy Set X is somehow the way things have to be. But they don’t. Your job is to actually give a justification for Policy Set X, not to just assume it exists and then talk about some of the impacts of it (for instance, that it creates such poverty among large swaths of the population that they do not have enough money to raise their kids). That is a consequence of the decision to pick Policy Set X over Policy Set Y. It is not a consequence of the nature of the universe, but of government policy selection. You still need to make an argument *for* Policy Set X if you want to avoid question-begging. – Matt Bruenig
They cannot support their children because they are not productive enough to support their children. I do not need to make an argument why people are paid anything. The market proves it. People are paid for their value to others. I’ve articulated the causal difference. That is, that conservatives want a meritocratic society based on performance and progressives want a society that is not. It’s not complicated. OPENING POSTING: Matt. I did not see these replies until running through my Google alerts today. So I apologize for the delayed response. 1) The conservative sentiment (it’s only a sentiment as it is poorly articulated, even by Kirk or Oakeshott) is in support of the aristocratic social order reinforced by the classical liberal institutional model. I am simply explaining that causal relation. 2) In the second paragraph you mention, I’m articulating it in utilitarian rather than moral language. But that utilitarianism is in effect the strategy embedded in the aristocratic model. 3) The solution I’m suggesting is to ask for exchanges, rather than become either reticent, or the victim of encroaching totalitarianism. We must ask for retention of freedoms in exchange for redistribution. I do not know why that is controversial. 4) Whether you agree that the underclasses should trade something in exchange for breeding children that they cannot support is simply a choice. Under the manorial system only the fit could obtain access to land. Without access to land, one could not produce, without production, one could not obtain a wife, without a wife, one could not breed (easily). The entire western cultural corpus is based upon this one unstated but obvious necessity: the need to obtain productive resources, to demonstrate your character in order to obtain them, and late marriage that allowed women to participate in the work force. (More than that. but that will do.) So, I am simply applying the concepts that were the source of our traditions to the current time period, and and articulating those concepts in current terms. CONSERVATISM IS BY DEFINITION SOCIAL DARWINISM in the sense that it is behaviorally meritocratic and genetically meritocratic. (Albiet the market is a lottery and it must be in order to function.) The weather and starvation now do not accomplish what they have in ages past. The point we have to deal with is that under the manorial system we have improved the ‘human capital’ both in classical and medieval times. Since 1850 it looks like we have reduced average european IQ by 5 points. In other words, we’ve taken european descendants from rough parity to ashkenazim and asians to 1/3 of a standard deviation lower. And why does this matter? It matters because the norms it is possible to instill in a population, and therefore the institutions it is possible for a population to operate under, are governed by the distribution of (verbal) IQ in a population. SO if you want your freedom, you have to respect certain realities – physical laws so to speak. Nothing I’ve said here hasn’t been said before in one way or another. The problem is that we are still plagued by the Nazi memory instead of looking at the problem rationally. I do not particularly care which solution we choose. I would prefer that we broke the country up into smaller nations with more similar cultural interests and continued with the american experiment. But as a historian of aristocratic philosophy, I’m articulating in clearer language, WHY conservatives have these ideas — because they are a the habituated remnants of an historical strategy that was eminently successful compared to the three other global traditions. And furthermore, I’m articulating the concepts in conservatism as a defense by the upper classes against the lower classes. I’m acknowledging that societies are bi-modal, and I”m acknowledging that the two cultures that produced the industrial revolution (greece and england) were both aristocratic manorial cultures with a competition between multiple institutions rather than a central government. And that is the secret to the west: the manorial system, competition, and a balance of powers. The fact that this system is NOT dysgenic may be an accident. But it worked. Knowing that all other models have failed. What does one do? MATT’S ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY POSTED HERE FOR REFERENCE
The three big conservative philosophical frameworks by MATT BRUENIG on DECEMBER 20, 2011 · in PHILOSOPHY
The three big conservative philosophical frameworks
Conservatives are pretty shifty in arguments. One moment they appear to be concerned about the poor and how taxes will ultimately hurt them and kill their jobs. The other moment they seem to think the poor don’t deserve anything anyways. Most folks — no matter their political leanings — do not consciously think about the philosophical frameworks that the justifications for their opinions tend to fall in. Although rigid frameworks are probably a bit reductive, they can be useful tools to understand what exactly people are saying. The following three conservative philosophical frameworks can account for almost all of the conservative rhetoric and arguments out there these days. I offer them here to hopefully help those who want to understand and better analyze conservative justifications. Utilitarianism Utilitarian arguments used to be much more prominent among conservative political thinkers. Economists especially relied upon the idea of subjective utility and growth to argue that unrestrained free markets were the way to go. The way this argument works is probably familiar to most. Because low-tax, low-regulation markets generate economic growth while allowing individuals to choose for themselves what to purchase, utility is supposed to be ultimately maximized by conservative economic policies. Milton Friedman, probably the most famous libertarian of the 20th century, was the most prominent advocate of this way of thinking. When asked whether redistribution should be pursued, Friedman’s response was almost never about who deserved what income or the violence of taxation; instead, it was about how taxing the rich would ultimately hurt the poor, undermining the whole purpose of the project. The closest resemblance to this kind of reasoning these days has to be the right-wing rhetoric surrounding “job creators.” Doing anything mildly redistributive through the government is claimed to reduce overall employment, thus hurting the poor. There is a lot to be said in response to this kind of viewpoint, and obviously I am not very moved by it. But for the purpose of this post, just note how the argument works. The problem with moves towards redistribution is not so much that it takes from the productive and gives to the parasites or that the process of redistributive taxation is intolerably forceful or aggressive. Instead, the problem is that it will reduce utility because of the negative economic impacts that follow. While this framework is still around of course, conservatives — especially younger conservatives — have shifted away from it and towards other other philosophical approaches. It has its obvious flaws. The most glaring flaw is that comparatively speaking, strong social democratic countries appear to have generated the best overall utility of any political system implemented thus far. They serve as an empirical check on the idea that redistributive taxes and well-run universal state services are a drag on overall welfare. There are also of course more theoretical objections to the idea that redistribution is always somehow utility-destroying. After all, taking a dollar from a rich person and giving it to a poor person should almost always increase overall utility if done efficiently. Procedural Justice Conservatives who are a bit scared of making the utility argument — as they should be because it is probably the weakest one they have — often fall back on a procedural justice framework to justify their viewpoint. Procedural justice theories rely on the idea that a just economy and political system is one that follows just processes. So long as just processes are followed, whatever outcome that results is necessarily just. The conservative/libertarian thinkers most prominent in this camp are Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, and the super-bizarre internet sensation Stefan Molyneux. The conservative procedural justice account can get pretty complicated at times, but most have probably run into the basic elements of it from time to time. The account emphasizes free exchange, free association, and voluntary agreements. Advocates of it drone on about self-ownership and non-aggression, two qualities that they think libertarian economic processes possess. When someone complains about their terribly low wages and work conditions, these are the guys who retort back “but you voluntarily agreed to work there didn’t you?” Taxation is called theft, aggression, and slavery because it is not consented to. I think this account is probably the strangest one, mainly because as far as I can tell the 19th century anarchist philosophers successfully beat back all the libertarian procedural justice arguments that are now popping back up again. But without getting too involved in that whole discussion, I just hope here to emphasize the way the framework works. The procedural justice position is not concerned with utility and it is not concerned even with giving people what they deserve necessarily. It is only concerned with following just processes even if those processes result in widespread misery. Desert Theory Desert theory has to be the most American of the conservative political theories. It is at the root of the ideology of the American Dream. According to desert theory, we want to design the economy and political apparatus in a way that gives people what they deserve. What do they deserve? Well, conservative constructions of desert theory are generally based upon productivity: you should be paid equivalent to the amount of value you add to the economy. The most famous proponent of desert theory among American conservatives is of course Ayn Rand. In her philosophy, the super-rich basically make everything in the world and they deserve everything they get and probably even more. Paul Ryan, the much-praised House Republican from Wisconsin, is reported to be a huge fan of Rand’s work, possibly explaining his atrocious budget plan which was clearly Rand-inspired. The problems with this approach are numerous and the word “privilege” probably goes the furthest in counteracting this idea. One’s race, class, gender, family, and all sorts of other non-meritocratic things have enormous impacts on how well one does in life. Once this is conceded, the whole desert theory approach becomes very vacuous very fast. Nonetheless, the framework persists in one form or another. When people talk about welfare mothers living off the dole, they typically have in mind some sort of desert theory of justice. When they talk about how rich people work hard and how poor people are lazy, they typically have in mind a desert theory of justice. On the desert view, our aim should be giving people what they deserve from their hard work, not maximizing utility or necessarily following just processes. Conclusion As far as I can tell, these three frameworks encompass about 99% of what comes out of the mouths of conservatives in one form or another. Either they are concerned about utility, just processes, or just desert. Often of course, they jump from one to the other right in the middle of a discussion if they find themselves pinned down. But, now that you know these frameworks, you can at least identify when those jumps are happening and begin to better understand what exactly the conservatives are trying to get across when they argue. -
Matt Bruenig Uses Advanced Name Calling (Framing) Against Conservatives
Matt has used liberal framing to categorize three different conservative argumentative techniques. Effectively, it’s an elaborate game of name calling. And nothing more. Instead, he ignores all of history, all of the development of thought in philosophy, law, and government in order to reduce his argument to one of simplistic ideology and emotions. Which makes no sense, in particular, because conservatives if anything, are driven by history and use it in daily life — rather than relying on liberal’s primitive animalistic liberal approval and disapproval cues. The dispute between conservatives and liberals can be summarized in this quote from Matt:
The only reason someone does not have enough money to support a child is because of government policies to enact a certain kind of economy. You have to first argue why those policies should be the policies we choose. You never do that. You just assume that the default policy set is a marginal productivity policy set. But that’s not the default set. It is 1 among 100 other policy sets. You still fail to put forward an argument for that set.
Thats the whole problem isn’t it? But a) CAN an economy accomplish this (Looks like no. Not over more than a few generations.) b) Will a society capable of doing so persist (looks like no, and it also looks like the reason that all other urbanized civilizations have died) c) therefore why should those of us who are productive support the breeding of those who are unproductive? It’s a simple question. Why is it that one person has more right to bear children than another person has the right to consume the product of his efforts? This is the fundamental problem between the frameworks. There is no other point of reasoning. And any other approach is dishonest. Especially ‘name calling’. HERE IS OUR THREAD His full article is included at the bottom of this post. (With a few other comments from others thrown in.) A desert is a place without water, and lots of sand. A dessert is a thing you eat after dinner. 🙂 Your ‘just desserts’ are what you achieve based upon your character and your labor. Conservatives seeks to concentrate capital in the hands of those who will best innovate with it. Since innovation is the source of all prosperity, because innovation causes the decrease in prices, and innovation requires the concentration of capital behind those best demonstrably able to innovate. The argument is that less able, more impulsive, more hedonistic people have higher (shorter) time preferences, and are unable or unwilling to delay gratification in order to achieve what conservatives have achieved. Why should a conservative do without, when he had to sacrifice to get something? Why should some people work harder and longer with more discipline than others if only to have to give it away? The competing arguments are that instead of superior ability and discipline, conservatives have superior advantages. The problem is producing some data that supports it. If instead, you want to say that we must accomodate the inferior, then the exchange must be that the inferior should not be allowed to breed in exchange for redistribution. Why should you have what another person has? Why should he do with less, and have less to experiment with, because the proles feel privileged to reproduce like cockroaches? It’s not a complicated argument. all a conservative asks, is ‘what will you give me in exchange’. A progressive asks is ‘give it to me without anything in exchange.’ We have made it culturally impolitic to state the inferiority of proletarians. But that does not mean we actually believe they are equal. Property is the only means by which we can have liberty. And liberty is incompatible with equality. Because we are marginally indifferent. We are unequal in ability. And for every 15 points of IQ we are dramatically unequal in ability in the modern world. The superior are practically superior in every way, and as such, the produce more, and are of more value to society than the inferiors. That we should have charity to the inferiors is not a question. The question is why we permit them to breed if they cannot support themselves. Why should we sacrifice so that others can fulfill their wants without compensation in return? FOLLOWED BY In the end. The point I am making is that you’re correctly articulating EMOTIONAL REACTIONARY arguments but not the CAUSAL arguments that give rise to them. And I’m supplying them: Conservatism is a reaction to the status quo. The status quo conservatives feel affectation for is the aristocratic manorial system with classical liberal institutions. It is an agrarian system where there is little difference between most people that are not reducible to behavioral traits. It may or may not be applicable to the industrial era. We do not know. I have very little confidence in the progressive social democratic model (redistributive socialism) because a comparative analysis of world institutions across history demonstrates the uniqueness of the western model, and the unique ability of the western model to produce innovations that improve the quality of life of all human beings. The problem is, that that western model also includes an implicitly eugenic system. And I am not sure that we shouldn’t consider it carefully. Even if it offends our sensibilities. THe world contains a finite set of resources after all. And our defeat of malthusian forces is a product of harnessing fossile fuels, not a product of our intellect.
I will take your second sentence to mean that I am correctly explaining what conservative philosophical frameworks actually say, but that you think there are other motivations beside the intellectual ones conservatives provide. My post is not trying to talk about what actually motivates conservatives. I know for instance, many self-identified conservatives are secretly (or not so secretly) motivated by racism for instance. Nonetheless, these are the intellectual arguments they put forward. – Matt
(actually they’re a liberal FRAMING of the arguments put forward.) Well, technically I’m saying you’re correctly categorizing three types of conservative arguments, but creating your own labels (framing) in order to obscure the underlying aristocratic (conservative) theory so that you can demonize it as an emotional and selfish rather than rational and social construct, and then claim that you’ve provided an insight simply by failing to use established terms. In other words you’re employing a ‘shifty argument’. Those three categories have been historically discussed in the literature as: 1) Market Competition — instead of political competition 2) Rule of Law (evolving through common law) — rather than rule by political decree, 3) Meritocracy: Meritocratic Service Of Society Through The Voluntary Market — rather than political corruption by political decree. You’re missing four more categories of argument: 4) Balance of Powers (competition between houses of government), and balance between ethical institutions (the church which teaches manners, ethics, morals and myths) and property institutions (the state which adjudicates disputes and ‘discovers’ laws ). 5) Institutional Balance of Class Powers (multiple houses as in the British and pre 1911 US model that allow classes to cooperate) (We artificially call this ‘enfranchisement’ or ‘suffrage’ today.) 6) Social innovation by adopting demonstrated success rather than political experimentation that externalizes failure. (ie: conservatism is scientific) 7) Property is an individual possession which we grant to the government to wisely use for the common good, versus property is communal and ‘lent out’ for utilitarian purposes to individuals for use in achieving the common good. 8) The nuclear family which creates the smallest possible collaborative economic unit for the purpose of raising children, while at the same time undermining both tribal and extended family ties and inbreeding. — (I missed this one, so it’s included here only as reference for the future.) The conservative does not abandon the poor. He just does not support failure. We all need insurance. We do not need to support living an impulsive life at others expense. We understand that there are material differences in intellectual, emotional, and physical ability. And that all people should be protected from suffering through charity. But that does not mean we should desire equality of outcomes – in fact, that would be a perverse incentive. It is true that conservatives like progressives resort to nonsense arguments. But there is nothing virtuous about either party in that regard. It might be argued that conservatives have been right about all the big questions since Burke invented Conservatism in response to the horrors and bloodshed of the French Revolution. It can also be argued that the privileged hide behind conservatism (slavery) when it suits them. But there is no way of arguing that the entire socialistic program was based upon faulty concepts of man and economics and have been relegated to the dustbin of history. We are once again are proving conservatives right – that we are in the early stages of the abandonment of the ponzi scheme of the european welfare state. Just as conservatives have warned. Humans under capitalism do not breed in an ever expanding intergenerational pyramid. So, no I do not think you’re honestly or correctly positioning the conservative argument. I think you’re conducting a dishonest argument through typical progressive framing. Nothing more.
Well done, Curt, you have revealed all conservatives as cold hearted Darwinists. You fool! That wasn’t to be revealed until NEXT DECADE! Seriously, though, Doolittle has DONE little other than feed a false stereotype. This makes me immediately suspicious of where his (if it is even a male) true intentions. The basic difference between conservatives and liberals involves immediate gratification, and is an emotion versus logic argument, which is why it will never end, but also never be resolved. – RTP
?? I’m all over the internet. I use my real name. I belong to two (three) libertarian organizations. I don’t hide or cower. Just use Google for goodness sake. BTW: Aside from using an ad hominem, you are using amateurish language in your posting. The technical terminology in economics is “Time Preference”. The behavioral terminology is “Impulsiveness” or “impulsivity”. The psychological terminology is Gratification -delayed or instantaneous”. For background see Banfield’s “The Unheavenly City” and “The Unheavenly City Revisited”. See Fussell’s “Class” for fun. Banfield was the first (I think) to demonstrate that the urban poor were poor because they have a higher (shorter) time preference. We have since learned that they also have lower IQ’s. And conservatives have said for centuries, that the purpose of civic virtues is to compensate for lower IQ’s and to train the impulsive to have longer (lower) time preferences. We can see that the lower classes are abandoning the civic virtues. (Murray) We can see that not only have physical labors (farming) but now manufacturing and construction are disappearing as reliable means of obtaining an income, and that the lower classes are unable to learn the abstract tools and concepts which in turn is leading to the concentration of wealth in the more intelligent and better educated. We can see that as women enter the work force they are breeding less. We can see that the upper classes are forming a caste. And that the lower classes are forming at least one if not two castes. The question is, what are we going to do about it? We can adopt the conservative strategy and encourage the impulsive to adopt virtues. Or we can adopt the progressive strategy to subsidize the impulsive and their overbreeding. (As the british have done.) One way we end up with a communal society. the other way we end up with castes.
Adam S. i enjoyed this post and then Curt’s comment was the masterstroke that made me love the internet all over again
Thanks adam. Although I will tell you that most conservative intellectuals do not play on blogs. They look for positions in think tanks and magazines (and conservatism is not a verbal system anyway). But my feeling is that magazines preach to the choir, and most conservative arguments are sentimental rather than rational. So I want to fix that. In any way that I can. And blogs are a good way to try. Cheers.
I have been a social worker for 20 yrs. and can tell you not only from my clients and training but also from growing up in poverty – the dependency argument is false and only applies to the middle class, rich and the corporate world who receive many more and undeserved entitlements. – Maria
I don’t think the question is whether we need safety nets as a means of insuring each other against accidents. I think the question is whether you FEEL people have a right to breed children that they cannot afford to support. There is no good reason we need more children in this world. So you FEEL people have that right, then that’s OK. But your feeling ends when someone else’s pocketbook becomes involved.
Of course the only fly in the ointment with your argument is that the proletarians produce everything. A proletarian drilled the oil to make the plastic that another proletarian made into the keyboard that that was delivered to your house by another proletarian that allowed you to type out this great admission of ignorance that you produced a week ago. The car you drive, the sidewalks you walk upon, the planes you fly in… all are produced by the working class. You don’t have a clue of a clue. As far as equality goes the American founders placed it right alongside of liberty. Not because they thought all people had equal abilities but because all people, in order to have liberty, must be equals in the eyes of the law and the government that is based upon those laws. The billionaire and the street person, when dealing with the government must be treated equally, using the same rules and same procedures. In order to guarantee liberty the State has to be an impartial arbiter of justice, ignoring class, ignoring the inequality of achievement of individuals and dispensing justice equally to the rich and poor. – fishskicanoe
RE: Proletarians produce everything. But this isn’t true is it? Look at world unemployment. Even in this recession, unemployment is almost an entirely proletarian problem. Overpopulation. Energy consumption. Pollution. Peak oil. Social security. These are all proletarian problems. The upper classes (middle and up) are barely replacing themselves.
We all know this is what conservatives are thinking but its a tactical error to come out and say it! I will be using your comment to illustrate the real beliefs of conservatives to the people I know who support right wing parties. – GM
It’s not a tactical error. It’s the truth. If you tell conservatives that the reason the aristocratic social model succeeded in producing the world we live in in part because it suppressed the birth rates of the lower classes and increased average IQ by doing so, and they’re offended by that, then you have a convert. I mean, do we all wnat to argue in pseudo moralistic nonsensical terms forever? Or do we want to find a way to solve the issue? All political differences come down to this one problem: the difference in male and female mating strategies, and the different social orders that the two strategies would favor compared to the OUTCOMES of the two strategies, and which OUTCOMES we would favor. So, why is it that a woman has the right to bear children she cannot support, and afford to educate? I think the world would be better off if we had honest discourse.
They cannot support their children because they do not have high enough incomes to do so. Why not? You say because they are not productive enough. Even if we somehow pretend that people are paid according to their marginal productivity, the whole line of analysis is still question-begging. There is no fundamental rule of the universe that individual compensation must be what their productivity is. A system that distributes income on that basis is one invented by government policies. That still leaves the question then: Why adopt Policy Set X (that distributes income according to productivity) over Policy Set Y? An intentional decision was made to implement one set of policies over another. The dispute is about which policy set to enact. All of your analysis proceeds on the question-begging assumption that Policy Set X is somehow the way things have to be. But they don’t. Your job is to actually give a justification for Policy Set X, not to just assume it exists and then talk about some of the impacts of it (for instance, that it creates such poverty among large swaths of the population that they do not have enough money to raise their kids). That is a consequence of the decision to pick Policy Set X over Policy Set Y. It is not a consequence of the nature of the universe, but of government policy selection. You still need to make an argument *for* Policy Set X if you want to avoid question-begging. – Matt Bruenig
They cannot support their children because they are not productive enough to support their children. I do not need to make an argument why people are paid anything. The market proves it. People are paid for their value to others. I’ve articulated the causal difference. That is, that conservatives want a meritocratic society based on performance and progressives want a society that is not. It’s not complicated. OPENING POSTING: Matt. I did not see these replies until running through my Google alerts today. So I apologize for the delayed response. 1) The conservative sentiment (it’s only a sentiment as it is poorly articulated, even by Kirk or Oakeshott) is in support of the aristocratic social order reinforced by the classical liberal institutional model. I am simply explaining that causal relation. 2) In the second paragraph you mention, I’m articulating it in utilitarian rather than moral language. But that utilitarianism is in effect the strategy embedded in the aristocratic model. 3) The solution I’m suggesting is to ask for exchanges, rather than become either reticent, or the victim of encroaching totalitarianism. We must ask for retention of freedoms in exchange for redistribution. I do not know why that is controversial. 4) Whether you agree that the underclasses should trade something in exchange for breeding children that they cannot support is simply a choice. Under the manorial system only the fit could obtain access to land. Without access to land, one could not produce, without production, one could not obtain a wife, without a wife, one could not breed (easily). The entire western cultural corpus is based upon this one unstated but obvious necessity: the need to obtain productive resources, to demonstrate your character in order to obtain them, and late marriage that allowed women to participate in the work force. (More than that. but that will do.) So, I am simply applying the concepts that were the source of our traditions to the current time period, and and articulating those concepts in current terms. CONSERVATISM IS BY DEFINITION SOCIAL DARWINISM in the sense that it is behaviorally meritocratic and genetically meritocratic. (Albiet the market is a lottery and it must be in order to function.) The weather and starvation now do not accomplish what they have in ages past. The point we have to deal with is that under the manorial system we have improved the ‘human capital’ both in classical and medieval times. Since 1850 it looks like we have reduced average european IQ by 5 points. In other words, we’ve taken european descendants from rough parity to ashkenazim and asians to 1/3 of a standard deviation lower. And why does this matter? It matters because the norms it is possible to instill in a population, and therefore the institutions it is possible for a population to operate under, are governed by the distribution of (verbal) IQ in a population. SO if you want your freedom, you have to respect certain realities – physical laws so to speak. Nothing I’ve said here hasn’t been said before in one way or another. The problem is that we are still plagued by the Nazi memory instead of looking at the problem rationally. I do not particularly care which solution we choose. I would prefer that we broke the country up into smaller nations with more similar cultural interests and continued with the american experiment. But as a historian of aristocratic philosophy, I’m articulating in clearer language, WHY conservatives have these ideas — because they are a the habituated remnants of an historical strategy that was eminently successful compared to the three other global traditions. And furthermore, I’m articulating the concepts in conservatism as a defense by the upper classes against the lower classes. I’m acknowledging that societies are bi-modal, and I”m acknowledging that the two cultures that produced the industrial revolution (greece and england) were both aristocratic manorial cultures with a competition between multiple institutions rather than a central government. And that is the secret to the west: the manorial system, competition, and a balance of powers. The fact that this system is NOT dysgenic may be an accident. But it worked. Knowing that all other models have failed. What does one do? MATT’S ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY POSTED HERE FOR REFERENCE
The three big conservative philosophical frameworks by MATT BRUENIG on DECEMBER 20, 2011 · in PHILOSOPHY
The three big conservative philosophical frameworks
Conservatives are pretty shifty in arguments. One moment they appear to be concerned about the poor and how taxes will ultimately hurt them and kill their jobs. The other moment they seem to think the poor don’t deserve anything anyways. Most folks — no matter their political leanings — do not consciously think about the philosophical frameworks that the justifications for their opinions tend to fall in. Although rigid frameworks are probably a bit reductive, they can be useful tools to understand what exactly people are saying. The following three conservative philosophical frameworks can account for almost all of the conservative rhetoric and arguments out there these days. I offer them here to hopefully help those who want to understand and better analyze conservative justifications. Utilitarianism Utilitarian arguments used to be much more prominent among conservative political thinkers. Economists especially relied upon the idea of subjective utility and growth to argue that unrestrained free markets were the way to go. The way this argument works is probably familiar to most. Because low-tax, low-regulation markets generate economic growth while allowing individuals to choose for themselves what to purchase, utility is supposed to be ultimately maximized by conservative economic policies. Milton Friedman, probably the most famous libertarian of the 20th century, was the most prominent advocate of this way of thinking. When asked whether redistribution should be pursued, Friedman’s response was almost never about who deserved what income or the violence of taxation; instead, it was about how taxing the rich would ultimately hurt the poor, undermining the whole purpose of the project. The closest resemblance to this kind of reasoning these days has to be the right-wing rhetoric surrounding “job creators.” Doing anything mildly redistributive through the government is claimed to reduce overall employment, thus hurting the poor. There is a lot to be said in response to this kind of viewpoint, and obviously I am not very moved by it. But for the purpose of this post, just note how the argument works. The problem with moves towards redistribution is not so much that it takes from the productive and gives to the parasites or that the process of redistributive taxation is intolerably forceful or aggressive. Instead, the problem is that it will reduce utility because of the negative economic impacts that follow. While this framework is still around of course, conservatives — especially younger conservatives — have shifted away from it and towards other other philosophical approaches. It has its obvious flaws. The most glaring flaw is that comparatively speaking, strong social democratic countries appear to have generated the best overall utility of any political system implemented thus far. They serve as an empirical check on the idea that redistributive taxes and well-run universal state services are a drag on overall welfare. There are also of course more theoretical objections to the idea that redistribution is always somehow utility-destroying. After all, taking a dollar from a rich person and giving it to a poor person should almost always increase overall utility if done efficiently. Procedural Justice Conservatives who are a bit scared of making the utility argument — as they should be because it is probably the weakest one they have — often fall back on a procedural justice framework to justify their viewpoint. Procedural justice theories rely on the idea that a just economy and political system is one that follows just processes. So long as just processes are followed, whatever outcome that results is necessarily just. The conservative/libertarian thinkers most prominent in this camp are Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, and the super-bizarre internet sensation Stefan Molyneux. The conservative procedural justice account can get pretty complicated at times, but most have probably run into the basic elements of it from time to time. The account emphasizes free exchange, free association, and voluntary agreements. Advocates of it drone on about self-ownership and non-aggression, two qualities that they think libertarian economic processes possess. When someone complains about their terribly low wages and work conditions, these are the guys who retort back “but you voluntarily agreed to work there didn’t you?” Taxation is called theft, aggression, and slavery because it is not consented to. I think this account is probably the strangest one, mainly because as far as I can tell the 19th century anarchist philosophers successfully beat back all the libertarian procedural justice arguments that are now popping back up again. But without getting too involved in that whole discussion, I just hope here to emphasize the way the framework works. The procedural justice position is not concerned with utility and it is not concerned even with giving people what they deserve necessarily. It is only concerned with following just processes even if those processes result in widespread misery. Desert Theory Desert theory has to be the most American of the conservative political theories. It is at the root of the ideology of the American Dream. According to desert theory, we want to design the economy and political apparatus in a way that gives people what they deserve. What do they deserve? Well, conservative constructions of desert theory are generally based upon productivity: you should be paid equivalent to the amount of value you add to the economy. The most famous proponent of desert theory among American conservatives is of course Ayn Rand. In her philosophy, the super-rich basically make everything in the world and they deserve everything they get and probably even more. Paul Ryan, the much-praised House Republican from Wisconsin, is reported to be a huge fan of Rand’s work, possibly explaining his atrocious budget plan which was clearly Rand-inspired. The problems with this approach are numerous and the word “privilege” probably goes the furthest in counteracting this idea. One’s race, class, gender, family, and all sorts of other non-meritocratic things have enormous impacts on how well one does in life. Once this is conceded, the whole desert theory approach becomes very vacuous very fast. Nonetheless, the framework persists in one form or another. When people talk about welfare mothers living off the dole, they typically have in mind some sort of desert theory of justice. When they talk about how rich people work hard and how poor people are lazy, they typically have in mind a desert theory of justice. On the desert view, our aim should be giving people what they deserve from their hard work, not maximizing utility or necessarily following just processes. Conclusion As far as I can tell, these three frameworks encompass about 99% of what comes out of the mouths of conservatives in one form or another. Either they are concerned about utility, just processes, or just desert. Often of course, they jump from one to the other right in the middle of a discussion if they find themselves pinned down. But, now that you know these frameworks, you can at least identify when those jumps are happening and begin to better understand what exactly the conservatives are trying to get across when they argue. -
Krugman Is A Racist, Dishonest, Hack
Krugman Is A Racist, Dishonest, Hack http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/03/26/krugman-is-a-racist-dishonest-hack/
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-27 13:51:57 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/184638895839916032
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is a racist, dishonest, political hack
http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/03/26/krugman-is-a-racist-dishonest-hack/Krugman is a racist, dishonest, political hack.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-27 09:51:00 UTC
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Krugman Is A Racist And A Dishonest Hack
Weighted by popularity, Krugman is the most dishonest public intellectual in America. He is a party hack at best. At worst he is nothing more than an anti-white racist. Of course he’s still dangerous. But libertarians and conservatives are dangerous too. Libertarians, because we believe that it is possible for a majority of humans to adopt a rational and meritocratic rather than sentimental and egalitarian political framework, and conservatives because they argue from sentimental, historical, and economic framework that they cannot articulate in rational language and as such, they do not even understand themselves — there is as much danger in stupidity and ignorance as there is in malice and dishonesty. Krugman got the prize for political reasons. Because he could influence the debate. People do listen to him. But until we unite libertarians and conservatives, and until we help conservatives articulate their social strategy the dishonest will win out over the ignorant. Krugman is an anti-white, racist, political hack, who uses an award given to him for political reasons and a podium with a broad reach to distort the public dialog in favor of his malicious agenda. He does not engage his critics. He simply repeats his invectives as a mantra for his supporters, in order to feed their confirmation biases.
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Krugman Is A Racist And A Dishonest Hack
Weighted by popularity, Krugman is the most dishonest public intellectual in America. He is a party hack at best. At worst he is nothing more than an anti-white racist. Of course he’s still dangerous. But libertarians and conservatives are dangerous too. Libertarians, because we believe that it is possible for a majority of humans to adopt a rational and meritocratic rather than sentimental and egalitarian political framework, and conservatives because they argue from sentimental, historical, and economic framework that they cannot articulate in rational language and as such, they do not even understand themselves — there is as much danger in stupidity and ignorance as there is in malice and dishonesty. Krugman got the prize for political reasons. Because he could influence the debate. People do listen to him. But until we unite libertarians and conservatives, and until we help conservatives articulate their social strategy the dishonest will win out over the ignorant. Krugman is an anti-white, racist, political hack, who uses an award given to him for political reasons and a podium with a broad reach to distort the public dialog in favor of his malicious agenda. He does not engage his critics. He simply repeats his invectives as a mantra for his supporters, in order to feed their confirmation biases.