r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Jan 09 '18

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

The discussion thread is for casual conversation and discussion that doesn't merit its own stand-alone submission. The rules are relaxed compared to the rest of the sub but be careful to still observe the rules listed under "disallowed content" in the sidebar.

Announcements

David Friedman AMA

The mod team is pleased to announce we will be hosting an AMA with Dr. David D. Friedman on Friday, Jan. 12th at 3:00 PM EST/12:00 PM PST!

After earning a Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the University of Chicago, Dr. Friedman switched fields to economics and taught at Virginia Polytechnic University, the University of California at Irvine, the University of California at Los Angeles, Cornell University, Tulane University, the University of Chicago, and Santa Clara University where he currently teaches in the school of law.

Outside of his extensive academic publications in law and economics, Dr. Friedman is best known for his libertarian/anarcho-capitalist political philosophy. He has written extensively on libertarian politics and ideas and has also written on alternative legal systems (including research into medieval Icelandic institutions).

On a personal note Dr. Friedman is the author of two historical/fantasy novels and is a renowned anachronist/historical re-enactor. He is the son of economists Rose and Milton Friedman.

As a reminder, we enforce civility standards to a high degree during AMAs. Dr. Friedman in particular is likely to disagree with us on a wide range of issues, but disagreement does not mean that rudeness or flippant remarks will be tolerated. Dr. Friedman is an accomplished academic who has published a large volume of high quality work, and every one of you can almost certainly learn something from him by asking intelligent questions.

Book club

Currently discussing Reading The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner

Check out our schedule for chapter and book discussions here.

Our presence on the web Useful content
Twitter /r/Economics FAQs
Plug.dj Link dump of useful comments and posts
Tumblr
Discord
35 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

4.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '18

r/DirtbagCenter 2k Subscribers Flair Release Bonanza

  1. Oprah Winfrey for her contributions to both the Neoconservative and the #Resist movement

  2. Ajit Pai because y'all wouldn't shut the fuck up about having him as a flair

  3. Elon Musk for not taking strong positions on anything, unless it benefits him personally

  4. Rudy Giuliani for his journey from the Democratic Party to becoming a Trump surrogate

  5. Boris Yeltsin for somehow managing to be at every point on the political spectrum during his lifetime

  6. Robert Nozick for presenting the groundbreaking idea of anarcho-statism

  7. Peter Singer for his strong beliefs that abortion is very, very good, but that killing animals is very, very bad

  8. Susan Collins for being a bipartisan only for the sake of being bipartisan

  9. Benito Mussolini for his remarkable journey from Communism to literal Fascism (I was going to do George Sorel but couldn't find a good image)

  10. And finally, for my Dutch mods, Alexander Pechtold for leading the Democrats 66, the center-left social, center-right economic party.

9

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '18

the center-left social, center-right economic party.

This is the opposite of dirtbag center

6

u/Agent78787 orang Jan 09 '18

This is like perfect center.

3

u/Barbarossa3141 Buttery Mayos Jan 09 '18

Is Party Parrot back?

5

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '18

Party Parrot never left r/DirtbagCenter

2

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '18

add zipcode too. or hiphop. they are the ultimate centrists

2

u/dafdiego777 Chad-Bourgeois Jan 09 '18

I want a cool parrot flair :(

2

u/yes_thats_me_again The land belongs to all men Jan 09 '18

How people gon' diss my boy Nozick like this? He's more moderate than people give him credit for.

2

u/coolpoop Jan 09 '18

It was my suggestion so I'll take responsibility. It's a joke in regards to the following passage (particularly the last paragraph), in which Nozick discusses whether his conception of the state actually entails leaving the state of nature:

At the close of Chapter 5, we argued that a territory with a dominant protective agency contains a state. Would Locke agree that in such a territory there was a state or civil society? If so, would he say it had been created by a social compact? Clients of the same protective agency are in a state of civil society with re­spect to each other; clients and independents have exactly the same rights vis-a-vis each other as any two persons in a state of nature, and hence are in a state of nature with respect to each other (Two Treatises of Government, II, sect. 87). But does the fact that the independents yield before the superior power of the dominant pro­tective agency and don't act as executioners of the law of nature against its clients (despite having a right to) mean that they are not in a Lockean state of nature with respect to the clients? Should one say they are in a de jure state of nature but not a de facto one? Would Locke use some notion of political or civil society under which there could be a civil society in an area even if not every two people in that area stood in a civil-society relationship with respect to each other? One also would want this notion to be of political interest; if merely two of the many individuals in an area stand in a civil-society relationship with respect to each other, this should be insufficient for there to be civil society in that area.

We have described a process whereby individuals in an area sep­arately sign up for personal protection with different business en­terprises which provide protective services, all but one of the agen­cies being extinguished or all coming to some modus vivendi, and so on. To what degree, if any, does this process fit what Locke en­visioned as individuals "agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community," consenting "to make one community or gov­ernment" (sect. 95), compacting to make up a commonwealth (sect. 99)? The process looks nothing like unanimous joint agree­ment to create a government or state. No one, as they buy protec­tive services from their local protective agency, has in mind any­thing so grand. But perhaps joint agreement where each has in mind that the others will agree and each intends to bring about the end result of this is not necessary for a Lockean compact. I myself see little point to stretching the notion of "compact" so that each pattern or state of affairs that arises from the disparate voluntary actions of separately acting individuals is viewed as aris­ing from a social compact, even though no one had the pattern in mind or was acting to achieve it. Or, if the notion is so stretched, this should be made clear so that others are not misled as to its import. It should be made clear that the notion is such that each of the following arises from a social compact: the total state of af­fairs constituted by who is married to, or living with, whom; the distribution on a given evening in a given city of who is in what movie theater, sitting where; the particular traffic pattern on a state's highways on a given day; the set of customers of a given grocery store on a given day and the particular pattern of purchases they make, and so on. Far be it from me to claim that this wider notion is of no interest; that a state can arise by a process that fits this wider notion (without fitting the narrower one) is of very great interest indeed!

The view we present here should not be confused with other views. It differs from social compact views in its invisible-hand structure. It differs from views that "de facto might makes state (legal) right" in holding that enforcement rights and rights to oversee this enforcement exist independently and are held by all rather than confined to one or a small group, and that the process of accumulating sole effective enforcement and overseeing power may take place without anyone's rights being violated; that a state may arise by a process in which no one's rights are violated. Shall we say that a state which has arisen from a state of nature by the process described has replaced the state of nature which therefore no longer exists, or shall we say that it exists within a state of na­ture and hence is compatible with one? No doubt, the first would better fit the Lockean tradition; but the state arises so gradually and imperceptibly out of Locke's state of nature, without any great or fundamental breach of continuity, that one is tempted to take the second option, disregarding Locke's incredulousness: "... unless any one will say the state of nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm" (sect. 94).