As you all know, I am a
Pazi (that is the Patriotic Capitalist Party for those of you who don't know) who yearns for the days of freedom. And by freedom I mean slavery. Yes, slavery is indeed freedom. Economic freedom with rising tides lifting all boats. You see, as any market fundamentalist can tell you, absent intrusive government regulation, the market will always do the mot efficient thing possible. So logically if for a century, give or take a few decades, slavery was legal in America (not to mention all the time before the revolution) and practiced by people seeking a profit, then slavery must be an economically rational system and therefore just fine. Unless of course you hate freedom, and by freedom I mean slavery, and by slavery I mean capitalism.
Or as my favorite social, Gevlon, says:
People have an inherent FEELING (as opposed to rationally proven/challengable opinion) about what is right or wrong.
Whenever the majority votes "wrong", a social person will consider these voters "wrong" or "evil" and feels urged to punish/change them.
Like you CAN'T accept slavery even if great majority of your country would support it, Frostheim can't accept "these kids ignored my earlier statement and did not respected me enough to care to tell me that they will go for optional bosses"
Yes, slavery is just fine as long as only a minority oppose it.
8 comments:
You're misreading Gevlon. He's not saying that slavery is just fine, only that arguments based on 'feeling' or majority rule are insufficient to justify any stance on the issue.
Where did he attack majority rule? If anything he said the exact opposite, that the majority is right, especially when faced with 'feeling' opposition.
Humans will also tend to add bits like "while I don't support X, your logic against it isn't sound." Failing to do this suggests that he's either not particularly opposed to slavery or he's not human. Or both. I'd guess both, since little else would seem to explain his utter disregard for humanity.
The funny thing about Gevlon (and all Randian free marketers) is that they believe in meritocracy and the free market, but free market capitalism is opposed to meritocracy in most sectors. Human rights, anti-trust laws, public schools, and copyrights are among the socialist hippy commune policies that promote a meritocracy by creating a (more) level playing field for every individual. It's fairly hypocritical for him not to acknowledge this.
More on topic, all Gev seems to be saying here is that our moral convictions run deeper than our herd mentality. Which is a very interesting thing for him to say given his larger account of social motivations. I'd love to hear why he thinks that is.
I tried to look for that quote, and I couldn't find it anywhere except here. Can we get a source?
I could have sworn I'd linked it, but I guess not. Major fail on my part.
http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2010/11/outvoted.html?showComment=1290153725650#c1885868980121293237
"So logically if for a century, give or take a few decades, slavery was legal in America and practiced by people seeking a profit, then slavery must be an economically rational system and therefore just fine"
I think this type of thinking, like Gevlon often uses, is both deeply flawed and dangerous. People have given "reason" or "rationality" a burden too big for it to bear, given it too wide a scope. Reason and ethics are two separate entities, and that is okay. No one should be scared or offended by that. In fact, as you yourself observed, when you equate reason and ethics it often results in a great deal of harm (ie slavery).
Most of what Gevlon claims about how people should behave and think are not based on reason at all, but on ethical/moral values outside of reason. Reason is simply thought and argument, rules for thinking and problem solving. We must insert value and assumptions into the formula before reasoning. Even placing value on reason is outside the scope of reason.
This is getting long, but basically I think labeling everything as either "rational or irrational" is a false dichotomy. There are things that are simply non-rational by nature, and that is okay- even healthy.
Impeccable logic. I bid five copper for Gevlon's scrawny green arse. I've got some uranium I need mining before the pesky government regulators tell me I can't have my own nuclear weapons.
Klepsacovic says:
"Where did he attack majority rule? If anything he said the exact opposite, that the majority is right, especially when faced with 'feeling' opposition."
After rereading, I think you're right about Gevlon's stance on majority rule (but not about 'feeling' as justification). If the best justification the minority can offer is 'feeling', I think Gevlon is accurate; 'feeling' alone seems to indicate a shallow position.
What would a better position be than feeling? Any attempt at economics will lead to tweaking of the system of slavery, but not elimination, which I can elaborate on if you care. If we search for something less material, such as net happiness, average happiness, or whatever other measure you want to use for that desirable idea, you're going to be stuck trying to measure feeling. We could look at how slavery corrupts a society, but again, that's a 'feeling'.
Ultimately life is a whole lot of feelings. To disregard them is a futile endeavor, since they are part of what define us. We can, and should, attempt to manage them to ensure that my feelings now aren't coming at the cost of feelings later, but to pretend that we can just put them all in a convenient box labeled "Irrational: Do not use" would itself be irrational; as absurd as attempting to reject the use of numbers because mathematics is not 100% internally consistent.
I'm not suggesting that all feelings are equally valid. Some are not, such as feelings based on inaccurate information. The 'feeling' that many people have that Obama is a Muslim is pretty damn stupid. Feelings, intuition, gut reactions, these are what guided us through a world that was more than eager to kill us. They can and should be supplemented with logic and fact.
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