The ideology of post-ideological pragmatism

Permabear

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KyussBishop

The appeal of pragmatism in politics is more in forming policy rather than a wider change in politics, which is deliberately glacially slow for good reasons (so it's not a push to "do something now", it's a guide or anchor to the process of policymaking); you will not get rid of partisanship in politics either, without removing the power of money from politics, which is a difficult task (so this is not the goal either, though it may ameliorate this).

Pragmatism in politics is not 'technocratic'; a technocrat is exactly someone that pretends to take an authoritatively scientific/academic approach to something, but who is using that as an 'appeal to authority' as an 'expert', to push their ideological views (a lot of politically influential economists these days could be considered technocrats).

The role of pragmatism in politics is a more scientific approach to policymaking, which is made a part of the process of policymaking, not left to 'technocrats' or 'experts' to decide; experimental studies, where possible, should be independently undertaken (and left to do their work uninterfered) to determine the efficacy of individual policies, and this should extend to experimental testing where possible (with even greater rigor and scrutiny in process and transparency, as any scientific field).

Some obvious failed policies, like the prohibition of drugs, just don't have the scientific backing to support them, it has been overwhelmingly shown as harmful and counterproductive; putting the proper role of science into politics, as part of the process (and not as a strict guide either), would provide a better and more sensible grounding to debate in politics, which often today can pay little respect to logic or science in policymaking.


This discussion about pragmatism in the actual practice of politics though, is actually far apart from pragmatism in determining your individual politics in the first place.

My 'pragmatic' view of individual politics (which can extend to parties as well I guess, but I doubt it would do so cleanly since there are generally always ulterior motives in politics), is that it is best to focus on individual policies in determining your views, and try to determine which of available alternatives is best (whatever its ideological roots), not to pin yourself to an ideology and use that as a measure of what should be done.

For this, it is essentially important to try and have as clean and unbiased a mode of thought as possible, to maximize your ability to think critically and be honest (to yourself) in your mistakes of judgement etc.; this is hard and you can't be completely free from bias and all, but it is the approach I take to it, and I try to keep my critical thinking abilities sharp.


The process of trying to more scientifically guide policy isn't without it's problems either, as the scientific process itself can be corrupted, as this good article by Ben Goldacre describes about the pharmaceutical industry (also a good example of an industry that should never be free from regulation):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/21/drugs-industry-scandal-ben-goldacre

So even the 'science' is never going to be free from politics, but it will give it more of a grounding anchor when applied well, and another route for the public to judge (and hold accountable) the policymaking.

Eliot Rosewater

KyussBishop wrote: »

My 'pragmatic' view of individual politics (which can extend to parties as well I guess, but I doubt it would do so cleanly since there are generally always ulterior motives in politics), is that it is best to focus on individual policies in determining your views, and try to determine which of available alternatives is best (whatever its ideological roots), not to pin yourself to an ideology and use that as a measure of what should be done.

So what should you use as a measure of what should be done? What defines "best"?

KyussBishop

That depends upon each individual policy, and you have to examine the stated goals of each; the stated aim of the 'war on drugs' is preventing harm to society through prohibition of drugs, and it utterly fails at achieving that, causing greater harm to society, then alternatives such as decriminalization and such.

You also need to examine probable ulterior motives surrounding policies too; in the US, the war on drugs feeds a lot of vested interests throughout the law enforcement industry for one, and is readily usable as a tool for criminalizing people, often poor, for minor crimes (which should not be crimes at all).
The specific ulterior motives of that policy, are a much wider area of discussion and off topic though, so will leave it there.


In any case, the measure of what is best still changes wildly depending upon what policies you're looking at, and I would verge away from trying to create a generalized measure, like what would be found in an ideological framework (unless absolutely necessary for the consistency of a wider, more general set of policies).

Permabear

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KyussBishop

My definition of a technocrat is different to that though; I don't view a technocrat as someone who is simply pragmatic/scientific (and/or with a degree in their area), I view it as a pejorative for someone who is This post had been deleted.[/quote]
Science is pretty heavily susceptible to politics/deception, but conflicts of interest, bias, and corruptions of the scientific process itself especially, are all things that are available to be seen if investigated; if politicians pay service to the idea of more rigorously grounding policymaking on scientific grounds, they can be held accountable based on the rigor of the science/studies they use to guide policy, and would benefit by default with a more well grounded approach to policymaking.

There are plenty of ways to corrupt that process still, but it's a much better anchor to provide (where possible) for policymaking, as it would make it more likely to fall on a progressive path.

SupaNova2

KyussBishop wrote: »

With any policies, you have to examine their stated goals, whether those goals are desirable, and how effective one policy is at those goals than another etc.; I don't aim for applying this kind of systematic qualification of policies universally, just where it is possible (so for some policies, it won't be easily applicable).

In the case of Irish in schools, I think that can quickly be shown to be a bad policy both in the goal of spreading the Irish language (through mandatory learning) being undesireable for the majority of the country, and more scientifically based on data showing that it has utterly failed at this goal as well, since the language is still slowly dying, and because it is actively harmful wasting educational resources on a language of no utility whatsoever.

I think the question that was asked is how do you decide the goal itself, not only judge whether the policy of achieving the goal is the right one. So how do you scientifically judge whether the goal of spreading the Irish language is worthwhile or undesirable?

KyussBishop

Well, the goal (and potential set of goals) changes wildly depending upon what you are dealing with, and the range of policies available in a particular area; there isn't necessarily a set process for determining what the goals should be.

I don't think any one ideological framework should be used for trying to determine the desired goals either; minimizing government interference to start with (and thus taxes), is a good starting goal, but then there are specific instances where government interference is required to mitigate some potential societal damage.


If you take a pragmatic approach to it, a lot of politics revolves around trying to find a balance between damage that can occur in one area of society, against the damage (and potential damage) that would occur with government interfering to rectify/prevent that.

I know that's a very general/basic way to put it, but I guess that would be one way (not the only way, as it's kind of just a starting point) of describing how to set the 'goals', as in trying to find that balance (and coming from a default position of minimizing government, seeing as it's well demonstrable how damaging overreaching political interference can be to society).

There is some 'ideology' behind this, in that you deem preventing harm to society as being a good idea, but that is so general and agreeable a statement that I think it's fair (as a practical matter) not to call it ideological, in the way it's often meant.


Another worthwhile thing to distinguish from, are the goals used to construct an ideology or set of policies, and the goals it/they are applied to; if policies are constructed using goal A, but are then utilized to tackle goal B, it is right to judge them with respect to how they perform for B.

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote:

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I just have a different definition of technocrat, largerly as a pejorative; I'm not applying it to all people that fit your own definition of the word (i.e. people you judge as technocrats, like the above, I don't view as a technocrat pejoratively). Anyway, it's just a minor distinction, that I usually interpret the word differently.

Permabear wrote:

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Even though the thread has gone that way, I didn't start out trying to construct a system of practicing politics, as I distinguished earlier in the thread; the original question is how I'd come to determine my politics without ideology.

I've described already in my previous posts, acknowledging that the scientific process can be corrupted, how that is visible when it happens, and how it's still useful as a grounding.

Permabear wrote:

Actually, I would argue that for most government policies, your scientific approach won't be easily applicable.

Furthermore, in economics and other social sciences, the literature will often be ambiguous. I can show you dozens of economic studies arguing that the minimum wage contributes to unemployment. I can also show you dozens of economic studies arguing that the minimum wage doesn't contribute to unemployment. So, how is a government supposed to base its minimum wage policy (if any) on scientific grounds?

By judging the quality of the studies, and carrying out their own, potentially carrying out experimental tests by shifting the minimum wage itself to look for harm.

If you argue a more evidence-based scientific approach is not practical in some areas, you have to show it not simply assert it. In the case of the minimum wage the evidence of benefit to society is obvious (through the increased wages), and it is the evidence of harm that is dubious and contested; so you have an immediately obvious and quantifiable benefit from it, and very dubious unproven claims of harm (which would primarily only apply to high-unemployment times, where even that can be ameliorated with some policy changes). That's a clear net-benefit to society.

Permabear wrote:

Studies have been carried out to that effect. Numerous studies, in fact. And yet the policy remains in place. Why? Because, despite all the academic research on language use in Ireland, any politician who wished to reverse such a policy would still have to stand up to vested interests, nationalistic ideology, and popular opinion. Is that going to happen? No. The pragmatic politician will recognize when ideology and popular opinion trump academic studies, and will stay quiet.

You seem to be ignoring the distinction I made between the realpolitik and the desired policies; you are also ignoring that the discussion was not spawned as a justification for implementing any specific kind of system, but in determining your own personal politics.

Permabear wrote:

"Compromise only where politically necessary"? So, policies will be based on science, except when we need to compromise science for political reasons — which will be most of the time? Once again, please note that you've re-introduced ideology into your non-ideological system.

There's nothing ideological about politicians needing to compromise to implement some workable policies, while still working in the long-term for their more desired policies separate to the realpolitik.

Again focusing on criticising the implementation of a pragmatic political system, versus the completely different pragmatic determination of your own personal policies.

Permabear wrote:

I don't think most politicians are hugely opposed to "grounding policymaking on scientific grounds," except when the science tells them or the electorate something they don't want to hear. When that happens, ideology will often take precedence over science, and we'll be back to a system that looks very much like the one we currently have.

Probably, but (in the context of the discussion) so what? It's got very little to do with determining your own desired policies, relatively uncorrupted from ideology.

The very fact that politics necessitates compromise, means that it will never (or not for a very long time anyway) be free from ideology; that doesn't mean the formation of non-ideological personal policies is an unattainable or undesireable goal, or that trying to ground the actual practice of politics closer to that is undesireable or impractical.


So yes, a lot of the discussion seems to be moving towards minute criticism of my very rough sketches of a potentially more scientifically-grounded political process (with this thread being my first pass at fleshing out ideas about that), when the practicality (or not) of such a system is pretty removed from being capable of constructing your own relatively non-ideological personal views.

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote:

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This is really a semantic distinction; the dictionary meaning of ideology is roughly "a framework of ideas", so by that definition everything is inherently ideological. The definition of ideology more often used (or 'ideologue' more specifically), which was spelled out more directly in the previous thread, would define it more through the behaviour of a person promoting a particularly ideology, particularly how little respect there would be for logical consistency or empirical evidence etc..
In short, when someone is labelled pejoratively as an ideologue, the meaning isn't that they follow a framework of ideas and thus that's bad, the meaning is that they inflexibly follow a set of ideas, usually without logical consistency or care to evidence.

Another thing you will often find, is that the goals used to construct an ideology, often become the determining measure of how 'good' that ideology is, even when that ideology is applied to different goals.

For instance, if you take my (very general) definition of the goal in politics being 'preventing harm to society', and you take an ideology constructed using completely separate goals, and apply it to that general political goal, then it is valid to judge that ideology based on how well it prevents harm to society.
An ideologue, would insist that it fits the goals used to construct the ideology best, and thus is automatically better in the goal it is applied to as well (judging it by the wrong standards).

Permabear wrote:

Again, if the government is to judge the quality of scientific studies (and what makes it more qualified than professional economists to do so?) how do you know that politicians will not pick and choose the studies that best suit their ideological agendas? And how exactly is the government to conduct experiments on certain people, reducing one group's wages or raising another group's wages to look for adverse effects? Even if the government could do such a thing without provoking rioting in the streets — I imagine that working people might object to being treated like lab rats — how would this government (which is now apparently both legislator and scientific researcher) control for the multiple other variables that could affect the outcome of such experiments? And how does it account for the fact that raising or lowering wages in the short term won't replicate the longer-term effects of such a policy?

It would be in the hands of the general scientific community to make the judgement of the quality of the studies, and to hold government to account based upon the quality of its own judgment of the studies.

You're straw-manning here now as well, trying to discredit the idea of experimentally testing minimum wage changes, inventing completely imaginary disaster scenarios. A simple experiment to start with, is increasing or reducing it by 10% and measuring the corresponding difference over a period of time.
You don't have to control all the variables and provide a perfectly deductive experiment to get useful data, and I don't have to try and spell out every step of a possible experiment (and the problems therein); the advantages/disadvantages of natural/quasi-experiments like this are known and documented, so I don't have to retread ground there.

Permabear wrote:

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These general claims of potential harm aren't conclusively shown, while the benefits of the minimum wage are immediately shown by the increase in wages; no two ways to look at that really.

In my non-ideological system, experiment would be used to test for benefit and harm (even if you can't control all the variables), and if the benefit (which is immediately demonstrable through increased wages) is not counterbalanced by demonstrable harm, then it was a benefit to society.
It's not as lock-tight a process as this, it would have more complicated considerations, but that would be the general measure of it.

Permabear wrote:

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It has spun off in that direction yes, though it originated as a discussion over non-ideological determination of personal policies; I haven't really fleshed out in great detail the implementation of a more pragmatic political system before, so while it's potentially a good discussion, I just haven't researched it in enough detail before to really get into the details of it and step through all the problems and solutions inherent in it.

Permabear wrote:

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Politics will never be free from ideology, but that doesn't mean one party cannot decide their desired policies free from ideology; the necessity for compromise means that someones ideology is always going to creep into the political process, through compromise, but that affects the final implemented policies not parties/individuals state of being 'ideological' or not.

I'm not shifting the goalposts either, as the discussion originated (primarily in the last thread) on discussing personal politics, which is what I've been returning to.

Permabear wrote:

You've previously suggested that the government would serve as the adjudicator of scientific truth on behalf of the state; but who performs an analogous role on behalf of the individual? Does someone who may have no formal education in economics go to peer-reviewed journals to research hundreds or even thousands of conflicting papers on a particular proposed policy? How does he know which research is credible? In fact, how does he make any sense of this research whatsoever? And how does he do the same thing for every policy choice that comes down the pipeline? Are voters to spend their every waking hour doing academic research in libraries, across multiple fields in which they have no formal training, in an effort to reach some unbiased, objective, non-ideological scientific opinion?

I haven't suggested that at all though; government wouldn't be the adjudicator of scientific truth, government would be held to account by scientific truth (through committing to following or being guided by it), by the public and scientific community.

The rest of the post presupposes that people must research their views from the ground up, in minute detail, in order to reach a non-ideological position; this is not the case, as all of science rests upon taking some knowledge for granted, as nobody is capable of researching the complete foundation of all principles (scientific or otherwise) from the ground up.

It is acceptable and a necessity, to delegate the building up or researching of a frameworks credibility to many people, you don't have to do it all yourself.
It should not be delegated to 'technocrats' or faux-'experts' though, as the community aspect of scientific judgement and credibility-determination is essential (even if it's still corruptable).

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote:

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Haven't used the term much outside this and the last thread, but the pejorative is a far more enlightening use of the term, as it usually encapsulates the underlying behaviour of an idealogue and why much of that is negative, rather than just stating ideology as a framework of ideas.

Permabear wrote:

Above, you stated very explicitly that the government would be "judging the quality of the studies, and carrying out their own." Now, it is the scientific community that will be judging the quality of the studies and holding the government to account. Am I the only one who is confused here?

The government would commission their own studies, which would be carried out independently (apart from the study being commissioned in the first place, with everything thereafter uninterfered with).

When deciding policy, the government would need to properly balance the available data/studies in determining which policy is best, and the rigor with which they do that will be held to judgment/accountability by the public and scientific community.
By government directly committing to engage in policymaking on a more scientific, evidence-based foundation, they can be directly held to account by how well they apply that process.

Permabear wrote:

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Where did I precondition it as a temporary change in the minimum wage? You seem out to rubbish the idea of any experimental testing of policies to be honest, so I'm not much of mind to rectify every little problem that can be thought of, when I've already acknowledged limitations to routes of testing.

Permabear wrote:

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I'm sure there's plenty of data available on CPI based inflation, and it would be very easy to correlate alongside the introduction of or a change in the minimum wage; if you can show that, that would be genuinely interesting and something to consider, if not then it's just a "what if" which just speaks of 'possible' harm, not actual.

Also, striving to maximize competitiveness internationally is a good thing, but not when it is pushed to the point of causing damage to society; it needs to be balanced out with respect to potential societal damage.

Permabear wrote:

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I've already explained I'm not trying to achieve some kind of deductive consistency in such experiments, and I've already acknowledged limitations in such methods of experiment, but that there is useful data to be gathered despite that.

Experimentation and research is not a futile endeavor, and conflicting research is not a problem in the process, it is part of learning and refining knowledge (except where research has been politically interfered with, which is pretty common in economics).

Permabear wrote:

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The bailout was an experiment (for all intents and purposes), and it's provided a lot of data that gives lots of retrospective information about the properties and efficacy of that policy.

Due to the massive failure of the mainstream mode of economic thought, there was (and is) no proper plan of action being followed for the economic crisis, and no real way to determine the best course of policy at the time.

As for the CPA, that is a matter not solely by itself, but one point in an entire budget; what presupposes it is the policy of austerity, which is demonstrably harmful to society and unnecessary, and that is entangled in the more complicated politics within the EU right now.
It's a matter of "the EU is forcing you to cut something, so what are you going to cut?", not "is cutting 'x' right or wrong" as no matter what we cut, it's going to harm society (unnecessarily) when the EU should be pursuing a different course.

Permabear wrote:

If I'm reading that correctly, you're saying that the final implemented policies will always be ideological, regardless of whether the people who produced them are ideological. So, what's the meaningful distinction? Ideological politicians will produce ideological policies. Apparently, non-ideological politicians will also produce ideological policies. Either way, we get ideological policies, even though (as you stated clearly above) the whole goal of your new system is to produce non-ideological policymaking.

Not always; on an individual basis, some policies may be affected by compromise and ideology, and others not. There will always be ideology in politics, but it's not going to infect every policy (and who knows, may even be eliminated/balanced-out completely in the future).

Also, you are saying non-ideological politicians will produce ideological policies, when they will not, they will produce non-ideological policies and (for some policies, not all or not necessarily even most) will be forced to negotiate a compromise, which would be a battle they'd be leaving to fight another time.

Just because some areas of politics will be infected by ideology, does not mean it all will be, or that striving to achieve a non-ideological basis in politics is an unworthy goal.

Permabear wrote:

And how do you know that this knowledge you take for granted is not ideological? The entire point of referencing Žižek in the OP was to point out that ideology does not need to be overt; its subliminal and subconscious forms can be transmitted through our language, media, and cultural artifacts. Marxist, feminist, and post-colonial cultural criticism since the 1960s has focused precisely on making visible the embedded ideologies in the knowledge and cultural forms that (white, Western, often male) people take for granted. If these forms of cultural criticism have taught us anything, they have taught us to question these presuppositions of non-ideological objectivity that underpin your entire "new" mode of thinking.

How do you know mathematical knowledge isn't ideological? Or Physics? You have to take some knowledge for granted and accept that others (of repute) have properly validated its credibility, and having to rely on others somewhere along the way does not inherently disqualify the credibility of a set of views.

It's all a matter of credibility; you're right that you need to be vigilant in scrutinizing your own views, and the chain of credibility therein, but you can't disqualify the idea of trying to achieve a non-ideological worldview, by presupposing that corrupt principles always creep into your views somewhere (that would be an assertion without backing).

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Much of your post seems more intent on engaging in condescension and misrepresenting my position, than honestly engaging with my arguments.
Repeatedly, I distinguished non-ideological formation of personal politics, from party politics (where the primary goals can still be constructed non-ideologically), and from actual negotiation of politics (which is not free from ideology); all of which you deliberately ignore.

You also seem to ignore my distinguishing between ideology as "a framework ideas", and ideology as a pejorative, where the ideologue pays little respect to science, pragmatism, empirical evidence, or even logic much of the time.

And also, you try to rubbish the idea of experimental policy testing, through trying to choice-pick policies and problems in the process, when I have already acknowledged its limitations when applied to some policies, and how useful data is still obtained in the process.


This is part of the recurring thing in any thread you discuss in; after a point, when the discussion is sufficiently muddied (and others probably tired of following), you seem to be less interested in engaging in honest discussion, than in misrepresenting peoples views for the opportunity of condescension or personal attack.

I'm happy to continue discussing this topic with anyone who'll respond to my views honestly (if anyone else would even have the patience to pick through these posts), as there's probably still plenty of potential for worthwhile discussion, but I'm not going to discuss where I feel someone is increasingly looking for opportunity to condescend rather than discuss.

Permabear

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The Bishop!

Permabear wrote: »

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OK Permabear. How do you feel about these five issues:

-negative effects of minimum wage.
-trickle down economics. (economic value of low tax on high earners)
-privately run educations benefits over public.
-natural global warming evidence.
-the gold standard.

Would you be prepared to change your view on these five issues in light of overwhelming pragmatic scientific evidence that they are discredited theories if i presented it to you tomorrow?
Would you 'flip-flop' on these issues (as many economists and scientists have done) if i presented you with information which conflicted with what you believe to be true?

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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You've been engaging while selectively ignoring parts of my position to suit your arguments.

Permabear wrote: »

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I have directly addressed this, here:

KyussBishop wrote:

How do you know mathematical knowledge isn't ideological? Or Physics? You have to take some knowledge for granted and accept that others (of repute) have properly validated its credibility, and having to rely on others somewhere along the way does not inherently disqualify the credibility of a set of views.

It's all a matter of credibility; you're right that you need to be vigilant in scrutinizing your own views, and the chain of credibility therein, but you can't disqualify the idea of trying to achieve a non-ideological worldview, by presupposing that corrupt principles always creep into your views somewhere (that would be an assertion without backing).

The airy philosophical notion that you can never personally be free from ideology (in the more used definition of the word, not the bland "framework of ideas" definition) doesn't hold up; it's like saying "you can never be free from bias, so why bother, lets just accept bias".

In the former, it's a lame attempt to excuse adoption of a questionably motivated framework of ideas, and it's analogous latter case would considered a discarding of logic itself, since it can be (incorrectly) used to justify any worldview then.

It's notable, the degree to which you reject the potential use of scientific experiment and empirical data in politics, like it's some unwelcome encroachment into an area that should be ruled by completely abstract theory.

Permabear wrote: »

Curiously, you seem to feel free to brand many of your interlocutors on these threads "ideologues" who "pay little respect to science, pragmatism, empirical evidence, or even logic" — and then you complain that someone is acting condescendingly towards you?

You have explicitly rejected the use of empirical evidence and scientific experimentation in politics (and previously as a method of judging the foundations of Austrian economics), and your arguments in the previous post significantly veered towards the logically-challenged methods of argument of rhetorical condescension, i.e. personal attacks. Seems to fit quite well.

I also don't brand everyone an 'ideologue', because I don't judge everyone solely based on their beliefs like that; I judge based on how they act and justify their beliefs.
Someone could support the flawed ideology of Marxism, but I would not judge them as ideological until I see the lengths they go to support their arguments.

Permabear wrote: »

Frankly, I think your idea that the government should perform "experimental policy testing" on the citizenry to be disturbingly Orwellian in its implications.

Hehe, funny this as adopting the Libertarian society you desire necessitates undertaking a very experimental and radical change in society; I suppose you object to that as well then?

It's interesting how you reject limited-scale testing of individual policies, solely to gauge their effects and potential harm, as intolerable and Orwellian, when you appear to support implementing an entire system of experimental and untested policies.

It couldn't be any clearer an example of how you're disingenuously out to rubbish ideas I put forward, while holding completely separate standards for yourself.

Permabear wrote: »

It should be clear that I'm simply dissecting your arguments, pointing out the numerous pragmatic, logical, and ethical problems with them, and showing you why your vision of non-ideological scientific policymaking is little more than a utopian fantasy. It just doesn't work in the messy real world — as any pragmatist would quickly tell you.

I suppose the increasing rhetoric and condescension in the previous post was just "simply dissecting" my arguments? Or perhaps attacking various straw man arguments I didn't make? Misrepresenting my views in general as well?

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote:

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There's no reason why not, as it's exactly on the realm of how you decide individual policies which determines whether or not it is ideological or attempting to be more pragmatic/non-ideological.

Permabear wrote:

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All this is well and good, but when you reduce this all down to the base societal goals, such as preventing damage to society (which I'm sure is general and agreeable enough to, for all practical purposes, be considered non-ideological in its pragmatic connotation), then this, the base societal goals, is what you have to be consistent with.

A particular ideology may be based upon and constructed with it's own set of goals, but when that ideology is applied towards achieving a different set of goals (such as preventing damage to society), it is judged based on the terms of how it fulfills its targeted goals.

If an ideology is built with goals A, B, C, and applied to tackle problems defined by goal X, it should be judged on how well it fulfills goal 'X', not based on its constructing goals.

Permabear wrote:

Exactly the same dynamic holds true in the political sphere. A libertarian (or even a fiscal conservative) in a heavily socially democratic, state-dominated society such as Ireland is immediately going to be targeted as an "ideologue," while those who advocate for high social welfare benefits and more business regulation will present themselves as "pragmatists." But there's no objective reason to regard an advocate of greater state control as any less ideological than an advocate of less state control.

See, how the debate is framed here is a big part of what causes a real false dichotomy in these discussions; I doubt many people on this forum are generally for state-control, they (very generally speaking) want to pick the policies that are least damaging to society.
Libertarians can relate with this as well because they support state control too, to prevent harm to society, they (generally) also recognize where state control is needed to prevent harm: In policing society, having a monopoly on violence.

Past this is where arguments diverge, with one group arguing lack of (or presence of) a certain policy will cause harm to society, the other arguing it won't; this is all in the realm of testable claims, that can be supported with past data, and further bolstered (or reduced in credibility) through experimentation (where possible).

This is where I get suspicious of arguments trying to undermine the credibility of experimental testing and empirical evidence, because these are readily available ways of truly testing the efficacy of a set of policies, without having to implement them wholesale (which is itself experimental, but recklessly so compared to the smaller-scale alternative).


Again it bears repeating, that how you frame another persons arguments (or the debate in general), greatly affects the ideological slant that can be applied to them; it is the reasons and motives for choosing a particular policy which determines how ideological it is, so you can't just apply an ideology to someone without reference to their reasons/motives (and it's equally false to state their reasons/motives for them).

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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Sure, a lot of things can be regarded as 'damaging society', it's a deliberately extremely flexible/general term (which does not invalidate it as one of the basic goals in politics and most political theory frameworks); the primary issue within it is balancing harm to society inherently caused by government intervention, against harm caused without it (for a particular issue).

The way you frame the debate on public services and welfare, as if the 'only' choices are austerity or borrowing money, is pretty much a (knowingly) false dilemma as well as there are a whole range of policies to choose from (many of which we likely already would have taken if we had our own currency; hell much of the problem we wouldn't be in in the first place were it not for the Euro).
The whole "there is no alternative" argument is bull**** to its core, argued entirely from an ideological standpoint (for both Austrians and neoliberals), and is a completely unbacked assertion.

Also, you support getting rid of social welfare and public services despite the economic crisis; it's convenient to use it alright, as a more immediate excuse for seeking those policies, but you support it as a permanent societal change, even for economic good times.

Try justifying discarding of those policies in a healthy economy, as that is the real test of the integrity of arguments behind it; anyone can use short-term budget scaremongering for an excuse to slash funding for whatever they dislike.

Valmont

Back to ideology though KyussBishop, how do you defend the idea of 'damaging society' from being ideological? Why should we believe that your conception of this is entirely objective and free from ideological influence?

KyussBishop

I didn't say it was though:

KyussBishop wrote:

All this is well and good, but when you reduce this all down to the base societal goals, such as preventing damage to society (which I'm sure is general and agreeable enough to, for all practical purposes, be considered non-ideological in its pragmatic connotation), then this, the base societal goals, is what you have to be consistent with.

It's ideological in that it's one of the base 'ideas' regarding how society should be run, but taking that position does not make someone an 'ideologue' i.e. does not make it ideological pejoratively, in the sense I described here:

KyussBishop wrote:

...distinguishing between ideology as "a framework ideas", and ideology as a pejorative, where the ideologue pays little respect to science, pragmatism, empirical evidence, or even logic much of the time.
...
I also don't brand everyone an 'ideologue', because I don't judge everyone solely based on their beliefs like that; I judge based on how they act and justify their beliefs.
Someone could support the flawed ideology of Marxism, but I would not judge them as ideological until I see the lengths they go to support their arguments.

The definition of ideological I use throughout this thread and the last, is (most of the time) not it's basic "framework of ideas" definition, but its pejorative connotation.

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Your question is loaded, in that it presupposes (it asserts, unbacked) that society = government and a statist approach.

Society is all the individuals in it, so damage to parts of society also damages (directly or indirectly) some of the individuals in it; even when you take an individualist approach to society, you can still make judgements on damage to society by effects policies have on groups of people.

The idea is not ideologically loaded in the way you present, you have framed the question itself in a way that presupposes a particular set of ideological ideas.


When you apply a Libertarian argument to a discussion, and argue that it better benefits, on average, more people than alternatives, you inherently argue a position that is trying to mitigate some damage to society, and which can be judged on those terms.
The very idea that government is more harm than good overall (which I agree with in many areas, just not to the same extreme extent), is itself trying to mitigate general damage to society.

Like I said earlier, it doesn't matter what set of goals an ideology (as a framework of ideas) is built upon, it is the goals it is applied to, which are what it will and should be judged by.

If some Libertarian arguments argue for benefiting some individuals in society at the expense of others (causing damage to society, in a way that is deliberately left unbalanced), I haven't seen that explicitly stated, and it would be good (for sake of clarity and honesty) to see that explicitly stated, if that's the position taken.

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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The very idea that you consider the Libertarian system non-experimental is, to be honest, ludicrous; it's sum is a totally untried/untested (and thus experimental) form of managing modern society.

The pragmatic approach I take, is looking at individual issues and individual policies, regardless of their ideological position, and finding some measure to decide which is less harmful overall.
That is non-ideological, outside of choosing pragmatism and a very general idea of minimization of damage to society as base goals.

That's another aspect which makes a lot of the Libertarian view ideological; it insists on rigidly implementing it's entire framework of ideas, with respect only to the goals used to construct the theory, not the goals it is applied to.

Anyway, I will be away for a time before getting to reply to this again later.

Permabear

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Permabear

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KyussBishop

You're really delving into semantics here; society is, loosely, a group of people, and you don't have to attach nationality, geographical borders, or any other ideological distinction or label to define society.

You could consider the whole planet one big society if you like, where you're only capable of influencing policy in one location at a time; it doesn't matter at all for the sake of deciding individual policies.

Permabear wrote:

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Exactly; that's where experimental testing of policies, collection of data, and scientifically rigorous examination of that data comes in: to determine which policies are best.

Where there is timely (and practical) opportunity to test something on a small scale like that, it is foolish to try an entire system based on untested policies; start small and build it up.

Permabear wrote:

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Again you're presupposing austerity and framing the question here based upon budget constraints imposed by that.

Permabear wrote:

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Here we go putting words in my mouth again, and misrepresenting my position; and with not a hint of acknowledgment of the hypocrisy, of promoting the much more radically experimental system you propose to put in place, that you would subject every citizen to.

The massive hypocrisy in that is clear to see, and you try to pin experimental policy testing with ever-expanding government (just through implication/assertion alone; no backing arguments), when experimental policy testing could just as easily be used to test Libertarian policies in peacemeal, and lead to a reduction of government, a decentralization of society, if that proved better.

You insist then, that the only way to test Libertarianism is to do it all in one go, one massive societal, economic and governmental change, and then see if it works? What is that other than a massive and totally careless experiment, performed on all of society?

I would press that the whole hostility towards experimental testing of policy, is in place because it would very quickly show the growing harmful affects on large portions of the population, of many of the promoted policies.


Semantics aside about defining society: If any of the policies you promote, would harm a greater number of people in a geographic area (or grievously harm a small number), than those it benefits, would you admit that, and would you promote that as consistent with the individualist views of your ideology, and support it yourself?

I just want to get this question out of the way (and I have little hope of a straight-forward answer, as it's these direct questions which always get derailed with semantics), because this is implied by a lot of the promoted policies, and implied by a lot of the individualist-focused theory, but I have not yet seen someone have the honesty or courage to come right out and state it.

Conversely, if anyone pays lip service, or tries to defend policies, in the context that they would not cause the above stated harm in society, then they are implicitly acknowledging that avoiding that is a goal.

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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Again misrepresenting my position, as explained in my above post, and seeming oblivious to how massively experimental, on an enormous scale the system you promote is.

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote:

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What is arrogant about testing policies to determine their effectiveness and how potentially damaging they are? You support performing a massive societal experiment, undertaking completely untried Libertarian policies, and you also push for specific policies in the current system that are based on those Libertarian ideals.

How is that not massively arrogant, in exactly the way you are trying to criticize? Just consider the blatant faulty logic for a moment: It is, by your standards, arrogant to test policies before implementing them wholesale, but not arrogant to simply implement them wholesale?

It's one of the most blatant double standards I've seen in discussion here thus far.

Permabear wrote:

I have proposed freeing people from the yoke of top-down central government so that they can decide for themselves (on an experimental, trial-and-error basis, if they so choose) how they want to live. You are advocating a system that involves social engineers and central planners running experiments on the population so as to determine which policies to impose upon them. And somehow that makes my approach ideological and yours not.

Where exactly did I say anything about social engineers or central planners running experiments? You seem quite happy to make exaggerated assumptions about my views, to try and warp them to fit your argument; straw-men and scaremongering, completely making stuff up that I didn't say.

Also, you don't advocate freeing people from government, because government still has to exist in the society you propose; you advocate a system that removes policy choices, which people cannot then choose to re-adopt.

It's basically "people are free to choose any policy...so long as it's not policy X, Y, Z, etc.", which in many areas leaves you a fairly limited set of policies, that are very arguably often far more damaging than the restricted alternatives.

Permabear wrote:

For the umpteenth time, you trot out this caricature of libertarianism as something that would be imposed on all of society, in a top-down autocratic manner, as if by the Ministry for Imposition of Libertarian Ideology. For the umpteenth time, I'm compelled to remind you that you're utterly mistaken.

How exactly, would the transition to a Libertarian society work, without the involvement of government along the way? Even if you use government to remove a policy or piece of regulation, that is still an imposed policy decision.

Actually, a more general question: How would the transition to a Libertarian society play out at all? What steps would it take?

Permabear wrote:

Again, you are the one advocating that people's social and economic lives should be designed and managed by the state, according to the policies that its social engineers select as being scientifically "best." I'm proposing that people themselves would choose how they wanted to live, through the voluntary association of freely interacting individuals and the spontaneous order generated by the market. Your mode of organization is technocratic and top-down; mine is spontaneous and bottom-up. So when you accuse me (yet again) of wanting to impose harmful, untested policies on people, I have to say (yet again) that you just don't get what libertarianism is all about. Nothing would be imposed on anybody — and that's the very point.

With regards to harm, you can certainly argue that people might make less than optimal choices if they don't have agents of the state constantly clucking around after them with rules and regulations and policies. I don't discount that possibility, but then again, I am not trying to design a utopia in which society has been scientifically perfected by social engineers. I'm happy to deal with the messy reality that people do stupid things and make stupid decisions — and for the record, I don't think that that reality can be eradicated by your scientific planning approach, either.

Ya as suspected, no straight answer here just wriggling around the question. I like also, the implication that "people might make less than optimal choices", as if anything that happens to them would be their fault, with no chance of the society you propose inflicting harm on them.

In general actually, this:

Permabear wrote:

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Is a very roundabout, dancing-around-the-issue kind of way of acknowledging that for some people, they're going to come to harm through this redesigning of society.

This is something in particular, that would make for a very interesting (and not often explored) discussion around Libertarianism: The various ways people are likely to come to harm in such a society, and how those that do (whether through their own fault or not) would be treated. No social safety nets in that society.

Eliot Rosewater

Just to get back to the wider issue.

KyussBishop has described his pragmatic politics as the judging of policies (scientifically/experimentally where possible) free of specific ideology, with the measure of a good policy being how much it minimizes "damage to society".

I think (I'm open to correction) that this is the same as my description in the previous thread:

me! wrote:

Rather, I think what is being said is that basically everyone has a subjective measuring stick that they use to judge policies. Even the most dedicated empiricist pragmatist has to have a measuring stick to convert empirical and circumstantial evidence into policy opinions.

The "measuring stick" is our conception of damage to society.

In the previous thread I argued that this measuring stick, our notion of damage to society, is subjective and fundamentally ideological.

For instance, if one takes Thatcher's view that society is merely the sum of its parts then "damage to society" becomes "damage to individuals". If one takes a strict Nozickian individual rights perspective, then any government action that obliges an individual to do something they do not consent to (like paying tax) is unjustifiable. That action then causes a net damage to individuals and hence (by Thatcher) to society. It thus seems possible to embed individualist political philosophies within the pragmatic framework.

Does that make sense? If so, I think it shows clearly that the pragmatic framework is itself built on ideological considerations: the same framework can be used to produce drastically different policies.

Valmont

KyussBishop, are you really arguing that doing nothing to other people amounts to an 'experiment'? According to what definition of experimentation are you operating on here? How is not doing anything an 'experiment'?

Where was the initial 'experiment' providing support for the idea that experimenting upon large groups of individuals without their informed consent is a good and proper way to treat other people? In presuming the authority to engage in such experimentation, are you not making an ideological pronouncement concerning informed consent and self-determination or indeed that people should be toyed with like experimental variables?

If doing nothing amounts to an experiment, should I ask my participants for their informed consent before I don't do anything to them? This doesn't make any sense to me.

KyussBishop

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

KyussBishop has described his pragmatic politics as the judging of policies (scientifically/experimentally where possible) free of specific ideology, with the measure of a good policy being how much it minimizes "damage to society".

Well, mostly but not quite; the "damage to society" bit is separate, it's all about judging the targeted goal, and damage to society is extremely general.

To be honest, I've had little interest in outlining a pragmatic practicing of politics (even though the discussion went that way mostly), more in outlining pragmatic personal politics.


The amibiguity/generality of 'damage to society' as a base societal goal is a good thing to be aware of and discuss, but it's easy to lose the concept of basic objective measures of such damage in discussing it's meaning and pitfalls therein.

A lot of discussion gets into semantics at this stage usually, while dancing around acknowledgment of likely harm; for sake of practical purpose of discussion, it's acceptable to take the geographic borders of Ireland and all people therein as 'society'.
Some objective measures there of harm to society, from a switchover to a radically new society like Libertarianism, are effects on peoples health over time, effects on poverty, effects on availability of education and...a lot of other stuff, as quite a lot of things can have a measurably beneficial/negative effect on peoples lives (even if you just take health as an example, as education/poverty/work-conditions and a lot of other stuff all affect that).

People might engage in semantic arguments over some of these measures, to try and minimize their importance, but if you do so, do also acknowledge where a Libertarian society greatly impacts (in the negative) in such areas, as I think a lot of that goes unsaid in such minimization.

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

For instance, if one takes Thatcher's view that society is merely the sum of its parts then "damage to society" becomes "damage to individuals". If one takes a strict Nozickian individual rights perspective, then any government action that obliges an individual to do something they do not consent to (like paying tax) is unjustifiable. That action then causes a net damage to individuals and hence (by Thatcher) to society. It thus seems possible to embed individualist political philosophies within the pragmatic framework.

Does that make sense? If so, I think it shows clearly that the pragmatic framework is itself built on ideological considerations: the same framework can be used to produce drastically different policies.

Indeed, I don't think an individualist perspective is incompatible with my definition of a very generalized avoidance of 'damage to society' goal; I think the goal is so generalized, that there aren't many ideologies that wouldn't need to accept it as a goal (hence why, in a practical sense, it can be considered non-ideological, or at least heavily pan-ideological).

I actually think an individualist perspective in society is very important as well, but the important part is that infringement on the individual is not the sole measure of damage to society, you have to consider people in the society as a whole.
So if something, on average, impacts/damages a large number of people in a society, to a significant enough degree, that is justified to act on, so long as the action taken to remedy/prevent the damage does not cause greater damage itself; it's a matter of balance there (hence why, while I acknowledge the damaging influence of government, I view it as less damaging for some areas, compared to alternatives).

Libertarians agree with this, because Libertarians agree to taxes in order to fund a limited government (thus infringing individual rights), because they judge government having a monopoly on violence as less damaging to society overall, than the alternative.


Since my pragmatic framework doesn't contain base political goals such as avoiding 'damage to society', I don't view it as ideologically loaded in that sense; I don't think the idea of avoiding damage to society is really (in a practical sense) ideological either; you could try to restrict the definition of damage, which would certainly push it in a more ideological direction, but I have deliberately kept it very general, and it would be hard to keep consistent in a redefinition (since it would limit what you could apply policies to).

KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

KyussBishop, are you really arguing that doing nothing to other people amounts to an 'experiment'? According to what definition of experimentation are you operating on here? How is not doing anything an 'experiment'?

Where was the initial 'experiment' providing support for the idea that experimenting upon large groups of individuals without their informed consent is a good and proper way to treat other people? In presuming the authority to engage in such experimentation, are you not making an ideological pronouncement concerning informed consent and self-determination or indeed that people should be toyed with like experimental variables?

If doing nothing amounts to an experiment, should I ask my participants for their informed consent before I don't do anything to them? This doesn't make any sense to me.

Heh, if you propose that a switchover to a Libertarian society is not a radical and extreme experiment, you don't fool anybody to be honest.

A policy decision that gets rid of legislation, or that decides to sell public infrastructure to private interests, is very much still a policy decision, not "doing nothing".
Moreso, the deliberate restriction of available policies (ones which can not be reconstructed in the private sphere) is again, very much not "doing nothing".


There is an entire transition to a Libertarian society, which involves making a whole range of such policy decisions; try explaining how such a transition would work, without doing a lot of things.
It's very telling actually, that you have the idea that you don't need peoples permission to perform that transition, to undertake these policy decisions; that is quite Orwellian in itself.


Again also, people take a ludicrously exaggerated misrepresentation of experimental policy testing, as my position; happy to just assume what my views are, or maybe they think they can mindread? (or, I don't know, maybe just knowingly dishonestly misrepresenting me, in order to smear?)

I mean lets say we want to decriminalize drugs: You perform a limited-scale policy experiment, where you decriminalize on a small scale in a particular area and measure its effects, to verify its beneficial nature, before deciding to roll it out full scale.
Is that an intolerable technocratic societal experiment, or is it simply due-diligence in verifying the veracity of a policy, instead of making the stupid decision to just deploy something widescale, without having any idea of if or how well it will work? (a lot like rolling out a completely untested Libertarian society)

Permabear

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Permabear

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Eliot Rosewater

KyussBishop wrote: »

I actually think an individualist perspective in society is very important as well, but the important part is that infringement on the individual is not the sole measure of damage to society, you have to consider people in the society as a whole.

That's your political opinion, which is what I've been getting at. When you travel down towards the foundations of your beliefs you're eventually going to get things like this - fundamental opinions on the relationship between the individual and the government. Your beliefs are formed on that "ideological" base.

(Not that consequentialist considerations are irrelevant. But in saying "you have to consider people in the society as a whole" you're implicitly assuming that if the government doesn't consider them, no one will. Many individualists would argue otherwise.)

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote:

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That is just one of many ways that policies can be tested, nowhere did I state that is how it should be tested or if that is optimal; there's very little controversial about testing policies before implementing them, I'm not advocating a wide scaling testing of absolutely any kind of policy, which seems to be the slant people are trying to attach to my arguments.

It is logically inconsistent to be against the idea of testing a policy before implementation, and at the same time to be in favour of complete adoption of a set of untested policies; if the former is considered reckless or bad, then the latter is grossly more reckless.

The whole argument seems like an opportune one to try and impose a double standard, which (in its logical conclusion) attempts to discredit the testing and thus implementing of any policy, while trying to portray getting rid of laws/regulations etc. as not 'policy decisions' in themselves.

Permabear wrote:

Yet again, freeing people from the one-size-fits-all yoke of central government (and note that I have not advocated removing government entirely, acknowledging that it has a role in defending people's lives, liberty, and property rights) allows for the potential emergence of a multiplicity of policy choices. If people chose to pool their resources and create a socialist or communist commune, nobody would intervene to stop them, as long as participation in that commune remained voluntary. It should be clear, then, that freely associating individuals could voluntarily adopt any policy choices they wanted. The only catch is that they couldn't use the power of central government to coerce other people to comply with or fund their political, social, moral, religious, or cultural preferences.

So in other words, you are saying 'yes', you will be making the policy decision to restrict available policies; you do not have the policy choice of creating e.g. a welfare system in any of those communies, because funding it becomes totally impractical without using taxes.

You're worming around the issue there, with the usual rhetoric that tries to diffuse the issue and divide it into two halves; the society you would impose severely limits policy decisions, it does not give people full choice of policies, it says "you can choose any policy you like; so long as it's not policy X, Y, Z, etc.".

There is no question that this is a massive societal experiment, that has never been done before; the fact that anyone can try to portray it otherwise is ludicrous.

Permabear wrote:

If, for example, a libertarian government were to repeal the regulation that prohibits "happy hour" (selling alcohol at reduced prices for a limited period during the day) they wouldn't be imposing anything. They would be repealing a central dictate and leaving it up to individual publicans to decide for themselves if and when they wanted to vary the price of drinks.

Sorry but no, removing policies that are in place is (by definition) not a politically neutral act; that is imposing a policy decision.

Permabear wrote:

Actually, that tends to be the general route that these discussions inevitably take (culminating with anti-libertarians accusing libertarians of wanting to push grannies off cliffs and send children to work in Dickensian cotton factories) so let's not rehash that tedious argument, please, because that's not what this thread is about. The point here is to discuss whether any mode of selecting policy can ever legitimately claim to be non-ideological.

It's actually a perfect way to test the ideological slant of peoples behaviour really, because denying perfectly testable claims regarding specific policies, is exactly antithetical to the system of pragmatic determination of personal politics that I've been discussing.

It is the reaction to primary challenging questions like that, about the reality of a policies implementation, which shows the dividing line between pragmatic political views and anti-empirical ideological views.

Also, apart from that, this isn't going to be a one-way discussion, where only my views get attacked.

Permabear wrote:

To get back to your claim that non-ideological policymaking would be guided by the principle of "preventing damage to society"

That is not the underlying goal I pin to non-ideological policymaking, it is however, one goal which (for all practical purposes) can be considered non-ideological.

Permabear wrote:

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I argue that the default policy should be non-intervention by government, except where harm occurs in society; where harm comes to society that is not spontaneously resolved by society itself (through private interests, where that is not harmful still in itself), and the benefit caused by government intervention to tackle that harm greatly exceeds the harm of the intervention itself, that seems justifiable.
One of the greater basic measures of harm is peoples health, which most other areas of damage tie into indirectly, so I would put that high up as a measure of harm, and one of the most desirable things to balance.

None of this I posit as lock-tight, requiring rigid following; it's an extrapolation of the basic societal goal I put forward, which may well be balanced against other goals.

Also, you are again pushing a heavily framed point of view over CPA, which presupposes the policies of austerity, and posits it as a dilemma without that wider policy being in question.



A wider question to people posting: Do any of you seriously contend that a switchover to a Libertarian society is not massively experimental, with lots of unknown consequences?

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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Semantics is one of the favourite methods used to avoid answering basic glaring questions; when a discussion devolves into semantics, it is my experience that the majority of the time it is to avoid discussion, to make the thread go through a page or two of semantic wrangling to muddy the waters and avoid answering or acknowledging something.

Not all discussion of semantics is like that, but I get mightily suspicious when semantics is used to avoid direct acknowledgment of likely harm from a policy:
Lets take dismantling social welfare: People would become homeless from this, some would get stuck in a spiral of deteriorating health (including mental health), and some would die from it.

This kind of stuff, you very very rarely have acknowledged directly though; when the question gets pressed, discussion usually gets deflected in any number of directions, to avoid looking at the human cost of many policies.

Sometimes, it even goes so far as trying to dissuade pressing the topic, by using personal attacks, like accusing a poster of hysteria or being overly sentimental; as if real human suffering that would happen from such policies can be ignored and just abstracted away like it doesn't matter.


Anyway, I'm not using that as a representative example, but that is my experience with a lot of semantic and philosophical arguments in some threads; that they get used as a method of avoiding something.

KyussBishop

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

That's your political opinion, which is what I've been getting at. When you travel down towards the foundations of your beliefs you're eventually going to get things like this - fundamental opinions on the relationship between the individual and the government. Your beliefs are formed on that "ideological" base.

(Not that consequentialist considerations are irrelevant. But in saying "you have to consider people in the society as a whole" you're implicitly assuming that if the government doesn't consider them, no one will. Many individualists would argue otherwise.)

My views here are nothing to do with government though; I view society as all the people in society, and this is an extrapolation of how to measure damage to those people.
If the pragmatic policy decision of minimizing a certain kind of harm, judges (or tries to measure) a policy built upon government-based ideology as the best suited, then it is the motive for choosing that policy which determines how ideological it is, and the motive here is neutral to ideology.

It's so general a statement, that avoiding 'damage to society' as a goal, can be considered (practically) non-ideological, crossing many ideological boundaries; if you view damage against individuals as the only damage, then that is a restriction on the general statement and far more ideological.

Leading from this: Do you view damage to the individual as the only damage?


Another thing I discussed earlier is that the pragmatic value of a policy is not the goals it was constructed from (such as preventing damage to society, and taking damage to the individual as the only damage), but the goals it is applied to.
So if you apply an individual-focused policy as a means of preventing damage generally to all people in society, you can judge that individualist policy on the terms of how it affects all people in that society.

More so, Libertarianism subscribes to this and can be judged by it, because it's policies on the monopoly of violence are exactly consistent in this manner (preventing harm to people in society in general).


I'm not sure I put all of that very well/clearly, so please excuse if some of it is a bit obfuscatory

Eliot Rosewater

KyussBishop wrote: »

If the pragmatic policy decision of minimizing a certain kind of harm, judges (or tries to measure) a policy built upon government-based ideology as the best suited, then it is the motive for choosing that policy which determines how ideological it is, and the motive here is neutral to ideology.

But the "judges" isn't! In making that judgement one will factor in what one considers the right (or moral or ethical) relationship between the individual and the state or the individual and society.

(I mean, what you seem to be saying here is that the action of "choosing a policy based on your judgement of all policies" is non-ideological, which is not what I'm disagreeing with.)

KyussBishop wrote: »

It's so general a statement, that avoiding 'damage to society' as a goal, can be considered (practically) non-ideological, crossing many ideological boundaries; if you view damage against individuals as the only damage, then that is a restriction on the general statement and far more ideological.

I think the statement is too general. To take an extreme case: Adolf Hitler believed that his policy of deporting and murdering Jews was avoiding "damage to society" as their presence was corrupting Aryan values. That you, Hitler and I all believe in minimizing damage to society shows that it's a meaningless goal in and of itself.

To employ your pragmatic approach one must then give the phrase "damage to society" a specific meaning -- this is what I'm saying is ideological.

KyussBishop wrote: »

Leading from this: Do you view damage to the individual as the only damage?

No. This thread isn't about my political beliefs though!

Permabear

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Eliot Rosewater

KyussBishop - my argument on this thread has been that your views (and everyone else's) are in some way ideological, being based fundamentally on a certain notion of the proper relationship between the individual and the state. My secondary claim, then, is that you (or anyone else arguing for pragmatism) is simply unaware of their fundamental political assumptions. The following are examples from the "sub-discussion" with Permabear:

KyussBishop wrote: »

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Permabear is proposing the repeal of some regulation, and you're claiming that its benefits are untested. But they're only untested from your frame of reference: from Permabear's perspective, the policies will inevitably be "good" because his running definition of "good" is minimizing the amount of regulation.

Can you not appreciate that different people might simply disagree because of different ideas of what the proper relationship between the individual and society is?

KyussBishop wrote: »

So in other words, you are saying 'yes', you will be making the policy decision to restrict available policies; you do not have the policy choice of creating e.g. a welfare system in any of those communies, because funding it becomes totally impractical without using taxes.

In Permabear's view, taxing individuals without their consent is wrong and (when he's feeling very passionate!) tantamount to robbery. He probably views this statement as a little bizarre: you're complaining that certain policies can't be achieved without breaching what he considers fundamental human rights. It would be like Hitler (!) giving out to a social democrat that his system is ridiculous because it does not allow him to suppress free speech in order to attain his dictatorial ideal of society.

In general you're criticizing that libertarianism restricts policy choices. You could say the same thing about constitutional barriers concerning free speech, racial and gender discrimination, and such things. Society not having the right to, say, ban books about feminism restricts society's policy choices -- but this is hardly wrong, I think?

My point here anyway is that I think you're not appreciating that having a different notion of the relationship between the individual and society leads to different policy opinions, and that this difference is encoded in your pragmatism. You're judging Permabear's opinions by your yardstick of good -- and it is inevitable that you'll think them bad! Rather than meaning the Permabear is an evil tyrant (though this possibility is not necessarily discounted!) it merely says, I think, that you have different fundamental ideas of the social relationship.

There's a crucial symmetry here: by your yardstick Permabear's opinions are bad, and by his yardstick yours are bad. Claiming that he's ideological while you are not is a little unfair I think, considering this symmetry.

KyussBishop

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

But the "judges" isn't! In making that judgement one will factor in what one considers the right (or moral or ethical) relationship between the individual and the state or the individual and society.

(I mean, what you seem to be saying here is that the action of "choosing a policy based on your judgement of all policies" is non-ideological, which is not what I'm disagreeing with.)

I would view the best way to judge it is on as empirical a basis as possible, determining which policy causes least harm; I'm not advocating the policy should judge what is the right relationship between individual and state or state/individual and society, I'm arguing it should be decided in a way agnostic to those ideological concerns.

The judgement can be based heavily on an empirical basis, and the main ideology that is factored in there are your goals (some of which can be so general as to practically non-ideological).

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

I think the statement is too general. To take an extreme case: Adolf Hitler believed that his policy of deporting and murdering Jews was avoiding "damage to society" as their presence was corrupting Aryan values. That you, Hitler and I all believe in minimizing damage to society shows that it's a meaningless goal in and of itself.

To employ your pragmatic approach one must then give the phrase "damage to society" a specific meaning -- this is what I'm saying is ideological.

Well, I fleshed it out some more in my previous posts, that I would take a default position of governmental non-intervention, and explaining a restriction of conditions on where government might intervene. I also positioned the health of people in society, as one of the primary concerns (which multiple policy choices tie into).

What Hitler did was far outside the bounds of these standards, not empirically showing a harm to society caused by people in it, causing massive harm to society by killing a huge number of people (bit of a health concern), with no perceivable benefit to society.

You have to greatly restrict the definition of societal damage, e.g. that only damage to Aryan's counts, for this to be consistent; the power of my definition being so general, is that it's very ideologically unrestricted.

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

No. This thread isn't about my political beliefs though!

No, fair enough; I think that my very general definition of the damage is not that disagreeable between most available ideologies, especially if you take one aspect of it (this is not restricting it to only this aspect) of how things affect the health of people in society. So in this sense, it's so pan-ideological (it's such a basic goal) that it can practically be considered not ideological.

Eliot Rosewater

KyussBishop wrote: »

I would view the best way to judge it is on as empirical a basis as possible, determining which policy causes least harm; I'm not advocating the policy should judge what is the right relationship between individual and state or state/individual and society, I'm arguing it should be decided in a way agnostic to those ideological concerns.

How can one decide the benefit of spending money on a road versus the drawback of having to tax people for it without having a notion of how wrong or right it is to tax people for the good of society?

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote:

This post had been deleted.

You do support that latter case though, you support that for the government having a monopoly on violence, and having taxes collected for that purpose.

Also, you say that if people want to implement a policy, they are free to themselves, but you don't support this because you inherently have removed policy choices from them.

No matter what way you look at it, you would be removing policy choices that can not be recovered. That in itself is a policy decision, and the society it would forcibly create is entirely experimental.

Permabear wrote:

Do you see what you're doing here? I'm proposing that freely associating individuals should be free to choose any policy, or lifestyle, or political philosophy they like — but their right to choose does not give them a right to coerce. You seem to think that I'm unfairly limiting their choices in an ideological way by not granting them the power to compel others; I'm telling you that presupposing the power to compel others is equally ideological.

They do not have a choice though! You have removed potential choices from them.

You also completely support coercion because you support a government monopoly on violence based on taxes, you argue over how much they should coerce, i.e. how big the taxes should be.

Permabear wrote:

This thread has exposed how your stance of "non-ideological pragmatism" is actually rooted in a philosophy of large government issuing policies and regulations that apply to the whole of society (defined as all people in a specific geographical region). Whether the government determines these policies through scientific experiment, or through drawing lots, is irrelevant to the ideological substructure that defines your notion of "society" as well as how you understand the relationship between man and state.

I have stated a pragmatic approach for determining personal politics, it is you who asked me how to describe how it might be implemented in the process of policymaking in government, and who are making the assumption that that is inherent in how it must be done.

Since such a pragmatic approach to politics starts at an individual level, there's no reason why it couldn't be used as part of the process of a community deciding their own policies collaboratively, or whatever other form of policy negotiation you like.

You're also attacking me on semantic grounds, over the definition of society, and taking (purely as a practical matter) a temporary definition of people within a certain geographical border (limited to where policies can actually be influenced), just for sake of practical discussion.
As I said before, you could consider society every person collectively on the planet if you like, it only matters as far as the practical bounds of the discussion.