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Mailvox: Sextus say relax

Not being a reader of this blog, Delavagus would have had no reason to know I’d read Sextus Empiricus last October, which is why I’m somewhat more familiar with Pyrrhonian scepticism than he probably assumed. Anyhow, the two questions he presented weren’t difficult to answer, although I leave it to the reader to decide how effectively I answered them.

I’m particularly interested if, after reading [his two posts on ancient skepticism], you still want to charge skepticism with incoherence. If so, (a) what do you think the incoherence consists in? and (b) in what way does Sextus’s argument against peritrope fail?

First, let me point out that I’ve told Delavagus I am quite willing to respond in detail to those two posts on ancient skepticism if he’s willing to allow me to post large chunks of them – properly credited to him, of course – here on the blog so that everyone easily can follow along. But it’s not necessary to go into that level of detail to answer these two questions, although I have to point out that my charge of incoherence was not directed at Sextus Empiricus, the Pyrrhonian school of scepticism, or even skepticism in general, but rather at the professed uncertainty of R. Scott Bakker.

That being said, yes, I do still want to charge skepticism, specifically Pyrrhonian scepticism, with incoherence. In answer to (a), I think the incoherence consists of the inherent contradiction between its arguments and its aims. In Chapter XII What Is the Aim of Scepticism, Empiricus writes: “It follows naturally to treat of the aim of the Sceptical School. An aim is that for which as an end all things are done or thought, itself depending on nothing, or in other words, it is the ultimatum of things to be desired. We say, then, that he aim of the Sceptic is “tranquility of soul” in those things which pertain to the opinion and moderation in the things that life imposes.”

This creates two problems. It should be readily apparent that we can observe here that the Sceptic is claiming knowledge of things that, by virtue of his own philosophical system, he cannot possibly know. If he cannot know that the soul exists, he cannot reasonably aim for its tranquility. If he cannot know what tranquility is, he cannot aim for helping his soul reach that state. If he has no quantifiable metric for the things that life imposes, he cannot know what is excess, what is insufficient, and still less what is that desired moderation. Pyrrhonian scepticism is incoherent as both a philosophy and as a way of life because it is little more than a philosophically offensive weapon that can be trained just as effectively on its own stated purposes as on anything else.

Moreover, it can be shown to empirically fail as well, at least to the extent that it actually exists today. One of the arguments presented by the Uncertainty crowd is that the unquestioning nature of belief certainty is dangerous because it permits people to act freely without remorse or guilty conscience. But what is the most extreme belief certainty if not “‘tranquility of soul’ in those things which pertain to the opinion”? The member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände who was morally certain of the rightness of the Final Solution and liquidated the enemies of the National Socialist regime during the day without losing any sleep over it at night is, by Sextus Empiricus’s own chosen measure, a more perfect Sceptic than the philosophy student who tosses and turns throughout the night wrestling with the troubling question of his own existence. Moreover, in discussing various beliefs with the Uncertainty crowd at Three Pound Brain, (who are not necessarily proper Pyrrhonian School Sceptics by any means), it is readily observable that they possess no tranquility of soul, as they are, by their own admission, deeply bothered by the mere existence of beliefs with which they strongly disagree.

Concerning (b), Sextus’s argument against peritrope fails on three counts. First, he erroneously conflates the subset (his particular philosophy) with the set (all philosophico-rational thought); because there is philosophico-rational thought that is not Pyrrhonian scepticism, all refutation of the latter cannot automatically be taken as any refutation of the former. Second, even if Sextus were correct and charging the skeptic with self-refutation did amount to charging philosophico-rational thought as such with self-refutation, that doesn’t change the fact that since Pyrrhonian scepticism is a subset of philosophico-rational thought, if the charge is substantiated and all philosophico-rational thought is, in fact, self-refuting, then the charge of peritrope against Scepticism must also be correct! It’s not a valid defense. Third, Sextus doesn’t realize that the intended target of Pyrrhonian arguments is irrelevant with regards to its self-refuting nature; it doesn’t matter what he is intending to target when it can be shown that his arguments necessarily also target his own stated aims.

And in conclusion, I note that it is not only the core aims that are susceptible to a valid charge of peritrope, but each of the Ten Tropes that are used to justify Pyrrhonian “suspension of judgment” as well.

Democracy vs Aristocracy

The New York Times asks Tyler Cowen about the present state of the EU:

Today, very few countries in the euro zone are capable of making credible commitments or binding agreements with the others. Quite simply, democracy is having its say. The French soon may elect a left-wing candidate who, in essence, wants to exempt France from fiscal rules and place more fiscal risk on Germany. The Dutch can no longer form a governmental consensus on the budget. The Irish will be putting the fiscal compact up for a referendum, and the Greeks are holding an election in May. Even in Germany there could be problems holding together the ruling coalition.

In general, voters are unwilling to give up their say over policy, or to regard the European Union or euro zone as necessarily superior to national interests. When it comes to the specifics, it appears increasingly likely that at least one national electorate will pull the plug on the entire set of bailouts and austerity programs.

There is no way to pull off the required cross-national agreements. Resources are being drained from euro zone banks, which are contracting their lending to business. This will make the current recession worse, which in turn will necessitate further unpopular policies, including cuts in government spending. Euro zone countries will become more nationalistic in hard times, and more likely to vote against incumbent governments, no matter what the specific issue at stake. It is hard to see a stabilizing outcome, so the best bet is on a crack-up of some of Europe’s major economies, including Spain and Italy.

There is an old saying in economics, namely “no monetary union without a corresponding fiscal union.” It could be added “no fiscal union without a corresponding electoral union.” In the longer run, we will probably end up with none of these institutions.

The euro zone probably was unworkable from the beginning, and now we are seeing why.

What we’re seeing here is the last desperate gasps of democracy as the new aristocratic age struggles to be born. The outcome of the current crisis is far from certain, but at least we’re now able to see relatively clearly what the most likely possibilities are. The collapse of the Dutch government and the surge of the anti-EU National Front in France show that the strategy of the European political elite, which is to offer the people a choice between pro-EU Party A and pro-EU Party B, is no longer working. Even in the UK, which is slightly insulated from the problems of the Euro thanks to its retention of the pound sterling, the popularity of UKIP is now growing rapidly due to the recognition that there isn’t any meaningful euroskepticism in the Conservative Party anymore. (Note to Daniel Hannan – you’re a leader, not a follower, and so it’s time to switch to UKIP).

Since the European masses are turning against the EU, the next tactic of the EU elite will be to suborn leaders like the Socialist Hollande, who are elected on moderately anti-EU promises. I expect Hollande to turn around and stab his left-wing nationalist followers in the back by embracing the austerity programs designed to keep the banks out of default, thus assuring that Marine Le Pen and the National Front will have a real chance of winning the next set of French elections. But the overall pressure is growing, and so when the bait-and-switch tactics fail, the new European aristocracy will turn to the solution they’ve imposed in Italy and Greece, which is to altogether abandon democratic rule. Right now, these aristocratic interregnums are short-term, but no doubt another debt or currency crisis will provide the justification for extending them where they already exist and imposing them where they don’t. The only way they can push for the political and fiscal union for which the monetary union was the bait is by throwing out all but the last vestiges of democratic government.

But the long-awaited nationalist tide is just beginning to rise, which is an excellent thing considering the monstrous and authoritarian nature of the globalist aristocracy. The potential problem is that in order to smash the edifice constructed by the ruling aristocracy, the nationalist pendulum will swing farther than it needs to. Thanks to the machinations of the multiculturalists, there are no shortage of scapegoats readily on hand for the angry and newly nationalistic natives; in fact, one wonders if the elite’s encouragement of mass immigration might have been intended as a means of both distracting and marginalizing the nationalist forces from the start. Either way, it’s already clear that it won’t work; the National Front won 30 percent of the real French vote and similar results will be seen in other elections across Europe.

No patience for debate?

Fresh from being caught out, Wängsty makes what would appear to be a wildly unfounded accusation:

One of the things that has always puzzled me about this fracas is the way the Hate Camp is so bent on perceptions of my ‘emotional distress,’ the idea that they are ‘getting to me,’ or causing me real emotional anguish. And I realized, these are people who want to hurt people they deem ‘immoral.’ They want, quite simply, someone to punish – or a ‘punching bag,’ as ACM has it. Now this is more than a little troubling. But it does explain why they have no patience for nuance or debate. It’s hard to hurt people when their guilt is aired as an open question. If they’re innocent, then you being so bent on hurting them says some pretty nasty things about you.

To which I responded: Is that so? You couldn’t find any of the extensive debates on my blog? Very well, to prove you wrong, I’m pleased to challenge you to a written debate on the causal relationship between certainty, as you have defined it, and war. I suggest three rounds of no more than 2,500 words per person each, and since you have made the claim, I suggest that you go first.

Do you accept?

PS – I readily acknowledge that I still owe Dominic the next round on the existence of gods. And I have worked on it, but I’m not satisfied with it yet. Knowing him, I expect he won’t object, seeing as that it will take only a fraction of the effort to take apart Bakker’s claim than it does to effectively respond to Dominic’s arguments.

A classic hero

You are Aeneas. You’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders but sometimes you just need to focus on the task at hand and stop moaning! Sometimes your relentless drive can make you seem cold-hearted but you are compassionate and a selfless leader.

How very odd! I thought surely I’d end up as Odysseus. Anyhow, the quiz is to celebrate the release of a new edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. And speaking of classics, I have to express my deep gratitude to SL, whom I met yesterday for an excellent three-wine lunch on a beautiful afternoon overlooking the uncharacteristically sunny Langhe. He also gave me a set of the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which is already established in my bookshelf on two shelves just under my cherished Cambridge Medieval History. It makes for fascinating reading, and I’ve already encountered a monastic order, hitherto unbeknownst to me, that I’m considering how to incorporate into the new novel.

This seemed apt

I thought this comment at In Mala Fide was particularly on target in light of the ongoing discussion at Wängsty’s place:

Jonathan Haidt has shown that most liberals are simply people who only care about care/harm and fairness, while discounting loyalty, respect for authority, and purity/sanctity. For liberals there are no transcendent moral values, only utility and fairness. Furthermore, other scholars have found that most people tend to rely less on those latter three moral foundations when they are comfortable and safe. Which means that liberalism is the natural and spontaneous result of living in a safe and prosperous society. Haidt has also found that liberals can’t even understand loyalty, respect for authority and purity/sanctity. So they tend to think their political opponents are just being massive dicks.

The landmark performance of the National Front in France yesterday makes it very clear that conventional left-liberalism can’t survive economic hard times. As unemployment continues to rise and economic pressure intensifies, people will quite naturally become far less indulgent of the various absurdities that the Left continues to push on the populations of the West. It’s simply not credible to argue “immigration is good for the economy” when the youth unemployment rate is north of 50 percent and 50 percent of college graduates are either unemployed or working at jobs for which their degrees are absolutely unnecessary.

History has always been cyclical and it is not different this time. I pointed out that peak atheism corresponded pretty closely with the tech boom, and I think it is safe to conclude that we have likely passed the peak of social liberalism and multiculturalism as well. The problem, of course, is that while some left-liberals will return to sanity, many more will move to the hard left, or what the Communists call “the fascist right” and all of the violence that necessarily entails.

It’s worth noting that according to Haidt, the only arguments to which liberals are likely to convincing are utility-based. You’ll note that those are the sorts of arguments upon which I tend to heavily rely when engaging in discourse with them.

WND column

The consequences of Obama’s culinary habits are considered:

I’ve eaten some strange things in my day. Living in Japan, for example, we occasionally broke our fast with orange juice and octopus tentacles, which most assuredly is not the breakfast of champions. There was the squid pizza at the Pizza Hut, the burned caramelized meatloaf that was a Chinese chef’s gracious, but misguided, attempt to make a hamburger for the American, and live shrimp plucked from the pool, cut in half and served freshly twitching. I tried whale, which is dark maroon and too rich to eat more than a few bites, as well as some bitter sea creatures that are only delicacies by virtue of their rarity; I half-expected that they would glow if we turned the lights out.

Obama really has no one to blame for this but his supporters. If they hadn’t tried to make hay out of Romney’s foolish exercise in canine transportation, Romney’s supporters likely wouldn’t have gotten on Obama’s case for his childhood cuisine.

The immigration transformation

So much for the sexy side of the scientific secular utopia.

As many as 100,000 women in Britain have undergone female genital mutilations with medics in the UK offering to carry out the illegal procedure on girls as young as 10, it has been reported. Investigators from The Sunday Times said they secretly filmed a doctor, dentist and alternative medicine practitioner who were allegedly willing to perform circumcisions or arrange for the operation to be carried out…. The Metropolitan Police said since 2008, it had received 166 reports of people who fear they are at risk of FGM but it has failed to bring forward a single perpetrator. It is the same for all 43 forces across England and Wales with no convictions for the offence ever taking place.

The problem isn’t that immigrant women are getting cliterodectomies, involuntary or not. They would have gotten them in the native countries anyhow and they will continue to get them in Britain. The problem is the possibility that the practice will eventually begin to spread to the British population. No doubt that sounds impossible, but then, I’m sure the idea that Britain would ever become a Christian nation and stop painting their bottoms blue probably sounded crazy to the average druid. What is actually crazy is the fact that feminists refuse to work towards stopping immigration even though tens of thousands of women are having part of their genitals amputated, just as environmentalists won’t protest it even though it necessarily leads to more pollution and pressure on the environment.

Instead, they both continue to embrace the multitudinous advances in cultural vibrancy, such as sex selective abortion and genital amputation.

Wängsty discredits himself

In which R. Scott Bakker conclusively demonstrates that he isn’t merely hypocritical, ignorant, morally blind, and philosophically inept, he also happens to be a confirmed liar:

By way of disclosure, I have to say that I’m most interested in the way you’ve changed your answers to these questions since the last time. We actually speculated about how you might change your rhetorical tactics. You seem to have moved from a bald (and quite embarrassing, I think you realized in retrospect) assertion of exceptionalism (IQ, social regard – I think you even managed to work your wife’s fertility in there!) to one that has more cognitive qualifications (which is something I predicted – my conceptual model must have been bang on that day!).

To which I replied: “As I recall, the previous questions were different, Scott. Why on Earth would you expect me to provide the same answers to different questions? I’ll suppose I’ll have to look up your previous questions and compare them. And before I do, let me point out that this will have some seriously negative implications for your credibility and intellectual honesty if those two sets of questions are not identical.”

I’ve been engaging with Bakker long enough now to know that he is a slippery intellectual snake, and while I’m not perfectly consistent over time, I don’t customarily change my answers to the same question without either admitting or realizing I have done so. So, his claim that I had changed my rhetorical tactics immediately triggered my BS radar. I went back and looked at every single question both he and his readers asked me, and thanks to his description, I had no trouble identifying the one to which he was referring, which I answered in the post entitled The Wangst that Comes After.

Wängsty: “What makes him think he’s won the Magical Belief and Identity Lottery?”

Oh, I don’t know. Out of nearly 7 billion people, I’m fortunate to be in the top 1% in the planet with regards to health, wealth, looks, brains, athleticism, and nationality. My wife is slender, beautiful, lovable, loyal, fertile, and funny. I meet good people who seem to enjoy my company everywhere I go. That all seems pretty lucky to me, considering that my entire contribution to the situation was choosing my parents well. I am grateful and I thank God every day for the ticket He has dealt me. If I’m not a birth lottery winner, then who is? The kid in the Congo who just got his hands chopped off and is getting raped for the fourth time today? To paraphrase the immortal parental wisdom of PJ O’Rourke, anyone in my position had damn well better get down on their knees and pray that life does not become fair.

First, let me say that I’m not embarrassed by my answer to that question in the slightest. I wouldn’t change a word of it if I were asked it again. But I wasn’t. And to prove that, let’s take a look at the questions that I subsequently answered. Here is the complete list of questions Bakker asked of me in the latest go-round. Do you see anything about the Magical Belief and Identity Lottery?

1. Granting two things, that the technologies that science made possible have transformed our world in the past three centuries, and that science, as another human institution, nevertheless suffers many flaws, you’re saying your non-scientific account of science demonstrates that science is not to be trusted… what? At all? More than non-scientific accounts? No differently than non-scientific accounts? [Bakker doesn’t understand that technology drives science more than science drives technology. And it was not a “non-scientific account” that demonstrated peer-reviewed, published science papers from top science labs are about 11 percent reproducible. -VD]

2. Lastly, I will ask you – this one time – to refrain from verbally abusing any one on this site but myself. Are we clear on that? [Sure, we’re clear that you asked. – VD]

3. Are you ever puzzled by the way it always seems to be the other guy that’s wrong? For us outsiders, we can only assume, absent any relevant information, that you are at best ‘in the right’ a fraction of the time (just like everyone else), but that you are duped into thinking you are pretty much right all the time (just like everyone else). What makes you special? My personal instinct – one that I think many others share – is to be skeptical of an individual the degree to which they impress themselves. Why should I make any exception in your case?

So Bakker is trying to claim that a question about the uniqueness of my identity and beliefs is exactly the same as a question about the unusual success of my public track record and thereby score some cheap rhetorical points by claiming that two very different answers to two different questions were actually two different answers to the same question. He then goes on to make the risible claim that this somehow supports his conceptual model and that he had predicted my behavior. But his claims aren’t simply false, they are shamelessly dishonest. While I knew from the start that Bakker was somewhat of a charlatan and prone to intellectually carelessness as well, until now, I only suspected that he would be willing to knowingly lie in support of his utopian ideology. And the sheer stupidity of lying about such an easily checked statement tends to support one of my other suspicions, which is that Wängsty is more educated than intelligent.

Nor can Bakker claim that “what makes you special” is synonymous with his Lottery question, because it was asked in the context of why I believe I am right more than others are, as one can easily see in my answers to him.

Wängsty: Are you ever puzzled by the way it always seems to be the other guy that’s wrong?

That’s hilarious. When I make my annual economic predictions at the start of the year, I always score my predictions from the previous year. Sometimes they’re very good, such as the time I was only off on the change in the median existing home price by $300 when the chief economist for NAR was off by more than $40,000. Sometimes they’re not, such as when I didn’t anticipate the BLS playing games with the employment-population ratio in order to keep the unemployment rate down. But it’s not enough to be stupid, you have to be completely ignorant to think that anyone who meddles in economics could possibly think he’s right all the time. I only wish I was. Unlike academia, there are significant financial penalties for being wrong in the markets. But in general, your question is rather like asking if Bill Belichick if he’s ever puzzled that the other team always seems to lose. He’s a good football coach. I’m a good recognizer of patterns. I’ve been writing op/ed columns for 11 years. My track record is all out in the open and it speaks for itself. I don’t always get it right – I still can’t believe Hillary Clinton didn’t win the nomination – but in that same election, I was the only commentator in a field of 100 to correctly predict that Sarah Palin would be McCain’s vice-presidential choice. And this time around, I correctly anticipated Romney would be the Republican nominee; time will tell if my outlandish prediction that Obama will not be the Democratic candidate in November is correct as well. And note that I made that prediction about 18 months ago; my track record is not a result of playing it safe and obvious.

What makes you special? My personal instinct – one that I think many others share – is to be skeptical of an individual the degree to which they impress themselves. Why should I make any exception in your case?

Because I’m really that good. Look, a lot of people ignored me back in 2002 when I urged them to stay out of the housing bubble and buy gold instead. After housing crashed and gold went from $275 to $1750, a lot of those people subsequently decided that they at least ought to pay attention. Strangely enough, no one is laughing at my prediction of massive worldwide economic contraction anymore. What makes me special? I am not sure. There are certainly others smarter than I am, and more successful than I am. But what I’m very good at is forcing myself to only look at what is there, rather than what I want to be there. In retrospect, most of my errors have been caused by failing to sufficiently adhere to that principle, and that’s how I often pinpoint my interlocutors’ weaknesses: look at what they desperately want to believe is true and you’ll probably find a logical or factual error there. But what many of my readers find amusing about your accusations of certainty is that I have quite openly changed my mind about a number of significant ideological issues. Can you honestly say the same?

It may be illuminating to keep this in mind as I proceed to pin down the snake and vivisect his Moral Uncertainty Principle, armed with little more than a superintelligence and a peculiar definition of “certainty”. Those who find this whole thing amusing will no doubt be interested to know that Mr. Moral Uncertainty appears to have a fairly serious obsession that the alien rape monsters of The Prince of Nothing were not enough to sate, as it appears rape is a major theme of his science fiction work as well.

More handicapable, more better

I tend to doubt that this interesting aspect of immigration is often taken into account when the pro-immigration theoreticians claim that immigration is always a net positive for society:

A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. The Times of India affirmed that “this is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.” The BBC’s research also discovered that while British Pakistanis accounted for just 3.4% of all births in Britain, they accounted for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality. It is not a surprise, therefore, that, in response to this evidence, a Labour Party MP has called for a ban on first-cousin marriage.

It is estimated that one third of all handicapped people in Copenhagen have a foreign background. Sixty four percent of school children in Denmark with Arabic parents are illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system. The same study concludes that in reading ability, mathematics, and science, the pattern is the same: “The bilingual (largely Muslim) immigrants’ skills are exceedingly poor compared to their Danish classmates.” These problems within Islam bring many detriments to Western countries. Expenses related to mentally and physically handicapped Muslim immigrants, for instance, severely drain the budgets and resources of our societies. Look at Denmark, for example: one third of the budget for the country’s schools is spent on children with special needs. Muslim children are grossly overrepresented among these children. More than half of all children in schools for children with mental and physical handicaps in Copenhagen are foreigners — of whom Muslims are by far the largest group. One study concludes that “foreigners inbreeding costs our municipalities millions” because of the many handicapped children and adults.

The problem, of course, is that the transformative effect of immigration goes both ways. The host culture is effected by the immigrant culture, so it is as reasonable to expect that first cousin marriage will be not only legalized, but adopted by segments of the native population as well, as it is to assume it will be banned. So, while this may be good news for those of you who have highly attractive cousins, it’s yet another example of how what passes for progress is actually regressive and detrimental to society. After all, if the host culture cannot be deemed superior to the immigrant culture, it has no grounds for denying immigrants, and everyone else, any cultural tradition they practice. And one need not be a social darwinist to doubt the benefit to any civilized society of importing masses of people guaranteed to be disproportionately mentally and physically handicapped.

Excuse me. Of course, I mean disproportionately mentally and physically handicapable.

Deeper and deeper

The discussion at R. Scott Bakker’s Three Pound Brain has continued and sprouted numerous branches, and yet Wängsty himself has thus far resolutely refused to provide any definition of “certainty” or “uncertainty” despite the fact that his entire philosophical framework appears to rest upon them.  Here is but one of several comments that I have made there in answering the various questions of his commenters even as Bakker continues to avoid answering mine.

Why is he so reluctant to provide definitions for his central terms?  Is he afraid that his entire philosophical edifice will tumble to the ground if he exposes it to criticism?  Or is it only that the certainty of a definition would be less moral than the uncertainty of a non-definition, so he is simply attempting to abide by the ethos of his doubt-filled creed?

First, I’d like to point out that I’ve been answering many questions, whereas Scott still hasn’t deigned to define
certainty or uncertainty for us, which has prevented us from proceeding
with the main subject. So, how about it, Scott? Are you cool with the
dictionary definitions or is Delavagus correct and you have something
else in mind?
Just for the sake of clarity, you advocate attempting to convince
all women to voluntarily not work. You don’t advocate forcing them to
not work, right?
I don’t think it’s necessary to force anyone not to work. Most women
of the important class don’t really want to, not after they have actual
experience of it. But I would go a little farther than simply
attempting to convince women, I advise removing the incentives that
encourage women to enter the labor force and provide them with
incentives to bear and raise children instead.
The basic problem is that since the doubling of women in the labor
force from 1950 to 1975, and concomitant reduction of wage rates,
married women who don’t want to work are forced to if they wish to
maintain the standard of living a one-income family once had.
Is this [changing  positions on the drug war] really an example of you being (proven) wrong, though? It was incompatable with your beliefs.
Yes. A friend pointed out the logical inconsistency to me.
Is there some method by which you could be shown to be wrong on
the womens rights (or even shown to not be so certain of how it aught to
be)? You seem to say your belief changed – but what was the changing
method and can anyone else have a hand in that?
Of course. But it’s unlikely, since I’ve looked at it in more depth
than most. The method involved looking at the societal effects over the
course of the last 90 years, and it rapidly became clear that the
predictions made by opponents of women’s suffrage were largely correct
and those made by its supporters were incorrect. Furthermore, there are
a whole host of problems, mostly rooted in economics, that were never
anticipated by either side.
Seems a legacy argument? Legacy, Eg: Well, if we give all these
slaves freedom, who will work the plantation! Economic ruin! Thus
slavery aught to continue.
No, you’re making the mistake of confusing a forward-looking
perspective with a retrospective one. In the correct analogy to the
case we’re discussing, we’re considering that pro-slavery argument from
amidst the economic ruins. As it happens, that pro-slavery argument was
subsequently proven wrong by events, as were the pro-suffrage
arguments.
if we assume that women are technically human, and we assert that
we value human liberty, shouldn’t we support their desire to work as
much as we would support a man’s desire to smoke some nice (almost)
harmless weed due to both being a special case of general human liberty ?
Not necessarily. This is the common error committed by many of my
fellow libertarians. For example, consider open borders. That
seemingly libertarian position is actually anti-freedom, as there would
be nothing to stop China from sending 30 million Chinese to the UK and
55 million to the USA, gaining voting rights, then voting to sign a
treaty of surrender to the Chinese government. Maximizing human liberty
in the aggregate is not perfectly synonymous with maximizing all
individual human liberty.
However, if he supports bypassing persuasion and going straight
for coercion, things take a decidedly ominous turn. But relying only on
persuasion immediately suggests the practical improbability of the
proposition, and this is why I think it’s proper to feel uneasy about
even theoretically suggesting it. What really is the point to suggesting
a counterfactual that has no chance of being realized?
There is a long gap between persuasion and coercion. As I said, I
favor incentives, not force. But it’s not a counterfactual that has no
chance of being realized. The coercion and oppression of Western women
by force will come if their behavioral trends are not changed, and
changed in the next 30 years. The socio-sexual and demographic trends
are fairly clear. Who would have imagined, in 1973, when wages peaked
and the divorce/abortion equalitarian program was implemented into US
law, that there would be honor killings in the USA and Europe only
thirty years later?
Societies that rest upon structural incoherencies always collapse
sooner or later. Feminist equalitarianism is actually a less coherent
and less realistic ideology than Soviet communism was, and it probably
won’t last the 72 years that the Soviet system did. It’s only been 39
years and the problems are rapidly building up throughout the West.