Susan Hogarth wrote: BH> A better metric is the net incidence of aggression that would occur if his policies were adopted. <BH
SH> That would be nice, but would require that we could see the future. <SH <glib> So when you advocate deontological ZAPsolutism, you do so without any clue as to whether there would be a lower incidence of aggression under it? Do you therefore advocate removing from the Platform all of its current vouching that LP policies would actually solve the various "ills" for which it proposes solutions? Do you really conceive of the LP as a sort of church for preaching personal salvation from the temptations of aggression, without regard for the future behaviors of those who don't repent? </glib> Do you not worry that your glib dismissal of counterfactual reasoning and projections about the impact of policy changes will be seen as a blatant intellectual cop-out? And do you see that your "would be nice" comes close to conceding your whole case in the eyes of anyone who doesn't share your willingness to dismiss the future as unknowable? I'm not here to win the argument that the Platform should endorse some flavor of minimal-coercion minarchism as more libertarian than ZAPsolutistism. But I'm not going to concede that the Platform should endorse ZAPsolutism as optimally libertarian, and I'll continue to dispute assertions that it is. More importantly for this forum, I'll continue to dispute the notion that the best way to attract liberty-lovers to the LP involves the Platform endorsing just one of the many principled and self-consistent variants of libertarianism -- even if that variant were my personal favorite. If you really think that the ZAP can define The One True "100%" Libertarianism, then I invite you to enlighten us all on how it nails down these 17 free <http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowinghumans?p=371> variables in libertarian theory. You can even submit your answers on stone tablets if you want. :-) SH> Otherwise we're gambling *other people's lives* on *our guesses*. <SH There's no guesswork in knowing that lives are saved every day by some of the institutions you want to abolish. I could as glibly say that you're gambling lives on your anarchotopian "guesses" (to the extent that you indeed care about net incidence of aggression and not just clean hands). I'd hate to think that the difference between us is that only your actions can ever weigh on your conscience, whereas my conscience feels the (not necessarily equal) weight of both my actions and my inactions. BH> and even runs aground in basic thought experiments such as the Trolley Problem. <BH SH> I love the people who are so noble and willing to think really really hard about hurting other people - but only for their own good. <SH Nope, the Trolley Problem is about hurting some people to save a lot of other people. As libertarians we of course believe that people should not be required to do things "for their own good". (If you want to test just how firmly you hold that belief, try reading the entirety of this <http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf48/papers/thaler.pdf> paper by UChicago's Cass Sunstein.) It's a little odd for a "100% libertarian" to apparently be proud that she doesn't "think really really hard" about minimizing the overall amount of aggression. BH> Again, the child and her doctor both oppose pain, but only one recognizes the necessity of needles. <BH SH> The crucial difference is this: Other people are not my children, and I am not their doctor. <SH The analogy applies to any two people who have a shared opposition to pain but an asymmetry in their knowledge about whether a little intentional pain can prevent a lot of other pain. If you're going to deny that asymmetries can exist across people in terms of their knowledge about what practices reduce the incidence of pain/aggression, then libertarian activism is an odd hobby to pursue. Bob Capozzi wrote: BC> What I've not been able to get an answer on from the anti-reform, status quo elements in the Party is WHY SAY MORE THAN WHAT IS PLAUSIBLE IN THE NEAR TERM. Why not have harmony in the party among the various brands of Libertarians? <BC We can have both. Restricting ourselves to a short time horizon isn't the only way to stay on common ground, and in fact it's a demonstrably suboptimal way in light of the inevitable radical reaction to replacing the Platform with a near-term legislative agenda. I think the radicals are right to protest a Platform that only describes a short-term achievable legislative agenda without also describing the timeless general principles that guided the formation of that agenda. BC> Or, at least, why say it in the PLATFORM? <BC My question is: why put the legislative agenda in the Platform? Why not instead just start writing down the timeless general principles that most less-archists agree on, carefully choosing them to be consistent with both incremental reform and radical utopianism, and stop adding detail when we stray into areas of schism? The Greatest Hits draft <http://marketliberal.org/LP/Platforms/2007.html> platform tries to do exactly that, and I'd be curious what specific criticisms of it Susan and other radicals might have. That seems like a much better use of our time than rehashing the age-old debate between anarchism vs. minarchism or pragmatism vs. anarchotopianism.
