Another Anonymous comment in the Moot quips that libertopian greed-heads should be forced to pay back the value of the public services on which they relied for their rugged individualist profit-making and then have their citizenship revoked. I realize that the comment was a joke, and definitely I sympathize with the irritation which inspired it, but I want to take the recommendation more seriously than the spirit in which it was intended and use that as a springboard for making, yet again, a few points that I often return to here.
First of all, if citizenship were annulled by error or foolishness few of us could secure it -- and least of all me.
I think that progressives need to actually say out loud and say often that some indispensable public goods are better provided by accountable government than by for-profit enterprise. We need to say that the provision of a legitimate alternate space for the nonviolent adjudication of disputes and to facilitate consensual self-determination is something only democratic governance can do. We need to say that government is funded by taxation, and hence that taxes really are the price we pay for a democratic civilization. We need to say that taxation coupled to representation assures that government is accountable quite as definitively as does the universal franchise and right to seek office.
I find the anti-tax and anti-government zealots truly ridiculous and despicable, but I must say that few who find them foolish do the good service of explaining quite simply why they are wrong, and so it isn't entirely unexpected that greedy, short-sighted, ignorant people (and all of us are prone to these things in some non-negligible measure, surely) get caught up in this sort of destructive foolishness.
I know very few democratic progressives who celebrate or can even explain why progressive taxation is indispensable to democratic society (however unpleasant in the moment of exaction), even if they know better, and it seems to me we all of us abet the know-nothings in their looting spree so long as we fail to set the record straight and stand by it with conviction and educate our young people and fellow citizens into a responsible awareness of these basic facts of political life.
Rather than indulge in fantasies of revoking the citizenship of the foolish or the greedy, I think we should simply criminalize fraud, regulate and render considerably more accountable the provision of public goods, and progressively tax income (including investment income) and property. We should do this in order to (and the echo of our Constitution's Preamble in the following is very much intentional) fund the legitimate execution of laws to which all have equal recourse, to secure such domestic order as is compatible with the free exercise of consensual self-determination among a diversity of peers, to provide for a defense from foreign invasion and aggression, and to promote the health, education, access to reliable information, and general welfare of every citizen so as to produce a scene of legitimate informed nonduressed consent in which we exercise and actualize our freedom peer to peer.
It's no kind of insoluble or intractable problem that many people are stupid, foolish, or wrong (all people at least some of the time, in fact) so long as we are properly protected from fraud, abuse, and criminality, and so long as the diversity of our citizens has secured the equity of the scene of legitimate informed nonduressed consent in which error and abuse are least likely to prosper for long.
I am assuming you are referring to the comment I say strip these fools of their citizenship right after having force them to pay back all the free public services they used and taken for granted since birth.I really hope it was, as you say, a joke. A very dumb one though. If I try to think of precedents in modern history, where citizens have been stripped of their citizenship and forced to do things, I can only think of very bad ones.
ReplyDeleteObviously.
ReplyDeleteThe target of the joke wasn't greedy libertarians in general but those among them who actually want to become “sovereign individuals” by getting a second citizenship or living on some remote island in order to extricate themselves from any political systems that could force them to pay their fair share of taxes and obey reasonable laws that regulate their businesses.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sovereignlife.com/sovereign-individual.html
And the point of the joke was to make people who envy “seasteaders” realize these would-be sovereign individuals have relied on public services for their “rugged individualist profit-making”...
Re those among them who actually want to become “sovereign individuals” by getting a second citizenshipSome nations do not allow double citizenship and will strip of their original citizenship those who have obtained another one. So, there are legal precedents for voiding the citizenship of those who have taken positive and successful action to obtain another one.
ReplyDeleteBut kicking citizens out for what they think, even if they have not done anything against the law, only reminds ma of those very bad precedents I was referring to.
Again, yes, obviously, Giulio. The commenter made a joke, and you're not even speaking to the issue highlighted by the joke on its own terms. Please, could someone talk about the substance of the post? Is that too much to ask?
ReplyDeleteGiulio Prisco: But kicking citizens out for what they think, even if they have not done anything against the law, only reminds ma of those very bad precedents I was referring to.
ReplyDeleteMe: My joke never suggested that we should kick citizens out for what they think. I was half-jokingly suggesting that the we should make it bureaucratically easier but financially more painful for people who are planning to extricate themselves from the political system of their home countries out of pure greed.
This thread makes me want to drive a spike through my head. There actually was substance in the post to which all this incessant repetition of "water is wet" is presumably the response. Quoting the post:
ReplyDeleteI know very few democratic progressives who celebrate or can even explain why progressive taxation is indispensable to democratic society (however unpleasant in the moment of exaction), even if they know better, and it seems to me we all of us abet the know-nothings in their looting spree so long as we fail to set the record straight and stand by it with conviction and educate our young people and fellow citizens into a responsible awareness of these basic facts of political life.
Rather than indulge in fantasies of revoking the citizenship of the foolish or the greedy, I think we should simply criminalize fraud, regulate and render considerably more accountable the provision of public goods, and progressively tax income (including investment income) and property.
We should do this in order to (and the echo of our Constitution's Preamble in the following is very much intentional) fund the legitimate execution of laws to which all have equal recourse, to secure such domestic order as is compatible with the free exercise of consensual self-determination among a diversity of peers, to provide for a defense from foreign invasion and aggression, and to promote the health, education, access to reliable information, and general welfare of every citizen so as to produce a scene of legitimate informed nonduressed consent in which we exercise and actualize our freedom peer to peer.
It's no kind of insoluble or intractable problem that many people are stupid, foolish, or wrong (all people at least some of the time, in fact) so long as we are properly protected from fraud, abuse, and criminality, and so long as the diversity of our citizens has secured the equity of the scene of legitimate informed nonduressed consent in which error and abuse are least likely to prosper for long.By all means, ignore all that and proceed with the endless restatement of the fact that treating a joke about exiling antisocial greedheads as if were a literal recommendation -- which nobody on earth actually thinks it was -- would be tyrannical, and then defending the joke by restating the obvious and reasonable frustration with political ignorance and cynicism among antisocial greedheads that inspired the joke. That sounds like that would be a really good time, and so very illuminating.
Dale, I am not ignoring what you said but since I agree with you there is no point in me saying that I do. However, Prisco is an idiot. Everything you say goes over his head. So I have no choice but to stay on his level in order to help him realize he is wrong even about something as trivial as a joke in the vain hope that it happens so often that one day he realizes that he is probably wrong about more important things...
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I don't understand why you haven't banned him from posting his incoherent rants in the Mundi Moot (like you did that bioconservative wingnut Jon Howard) in order to resolve this issue once and for all!
I'm not annoyed with you "Anonymous" -- apart from your anonymity, which does annoy me, but, you know, no biggie -- I was mostly being very grumpy with Giulio. And you're right, I don't know why I haven't banned him. Maybe I have, actually. I don't know. The truth is, banning people goes against the grain for me, so it's not something I'm very good at remembering, who I've banned and not and so on. Certainly Giulio is highly idiotic. There's a sort of trainwreck quality that often draws me in, though. It's the kind of idiocy that is almost hypnotizing in its relentlessness, its utter consistency.
ReplyDeleteI'm shooting myself in the foot by saying this but you should know that you can modify the settings of your blog to prevent people from posting anonymously... ;)
ReplyDeleteI prefer trackable pseudonymity in online discourse (or even -- *gasp* -- people's actual names, just as here and elsewhere I always stand by my own when proffering up opinions), but there is a place for anonymity, certainly, I would never forbid it, I would just strongly encourage more disclosure.
ReplyDeleteDale wrote:
ReplyDelete> Certainly Giulio is highly idiotic. There's a sort of trainwreck quality
> that often draws me in, though. It's the kind of idiocy that is almost
> hypnotizing in its relentlessness, its utter consistency.
And yet, of course, if the abbreviated resumes attributed to Prisco
on the Web are true (and one presumes they are), e.g.:
http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/expertsurveys/2008survey/future_III_2020_biographies.xhtml
Giulio Prisco, chief executive officer of Metafuturing Second Life;
former department head at European Satellite Centre,
analyst at European Space Agency, and IT specialist for CERN
http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.giulio.prisco
Giulio is a former physicist and computer scientist, and former manager at the
European Space Agency (ESA). He worked at CERN from 1984 to 1988,
ESA from 1988 to 1993, and the European Union Satellite Centre from 1993 to 2005.
then the man clearly isn't literally stupid, in the ordinary
sense of the word.
There's a new book out by a 30-year veteran psychiatrist (i.e., a medical
doctor, who was a surgeon in Viet Nam during the war there in the
late 60s) named Gordon Livingston, who has written a series of what might
be considered "inspirational" books, but with a rather astringent
edge to them: _Only Spring: On Mourning the Death of my Son_,
_Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need To Know Now_.
Anyway the new one is called _How To Love_.
The second part of the book is called "People to Cherish", but the first
part is about (though it isn't literally called) "People to Avoid".
He goes through the list of DSM-IV Axis II personality disorders (e.g.,
"the self-absorbed": histrionics, narcissists, sociopaths, etc.) and
then, before closing, he throws in a category of his own: "fools".
"A group of people to be wary of do not fit into any specific category of
ReplyDeletepersonality disorder. They do not, in general, seek to manipulate or
disadvantage others. They are not necessarily self-absorbed or unkind,
and their intentions are usually benign. And yet they are hard to be around
for long. They are seldom insightful or reflective, though they may
be intelligent and capable of useful work. They tend toward a certain
loquaciousness and are not often good listeners. The quality of their
thoughts combined with an irresistable need to communicate them are
defining characteristics. They are fools.
As we pass through life, experiencing success and failure, acceptance
and rejection, each of us is trying to apprehend how the world really works.
Everthing that happens to us, everything we know or believe, is
integrated into this perception and has some effect on our subsequent
behavior. Intolerance in areas of ethics, politics, or religion is the
hallmark of fools. In its worst manifestations it may lead to violence
against others who hold alternative beliefs.
Other examples of imperfect understanding are people who carry around
misconceptions of what works and what doesn't in any important area of
their lives. If one imagines, for example, that a conspiracy exists on
the part of modern medicine to ignore the benefits of herbal supplements
and 'natural' cures, one is prone to making decisions about one's
health that do not comport with scientific evidence. In its most benign
form this can result in the consumption of all manner of substances
with no health benefits. It can also lead to a desperate and futile
pursuit of expensive and unproven remedies for serious illnesses like
cancer. Similarly, the decision of some parents to not immunize their
children against common childhood diseases because of an unfounded
fear of vaccines endangers their kids and places us all at risk
for the return of illnesses previously on their way to extinction.
Since foolishness depends on context and represents deviance from
some social norm, it is not necessarily a permanent affliction. We are
all familiar with the person who is an outcast in high school but
a major success in later life. The deficits that define a fool -- a
lack of understanding, judgment, or common sense -- are also remediable
by experience and learning. Nevertheless, an established inability,
even as a teenager, to think clearly makes one a poor candidate for
a lasting relationship. People with unconventional beliefs, for example,
UFO spotters or conspiracy theorists, tend to cluster together for
mutual support. Membership in such groups is often a signal that one
is in the presence of someone given to alternative and marginal
views of how the world works.
The important component of true foolishness is a contempt or lack of
understanding for the scientific method as a means of explicating
the world, combined with a belief in miracles that is simply an exercise
of faith. The capacity to think clearly about one's life experience is
a crucial component of a successful life. If one believes that human
affairs are governed by an alignment of the stars and that one's fate
is determined by one's date and time of birth, one is prone to
decision making that is not based on reality.
Our brains can entertain a limited number of ideas simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteIf our consciousness is cluttered by beliefs in magic, ghosts,
paranormal phenomena, alien abduction, or the conviction that we
are influenced by past lives, it is difficult to consider the variables
that actually affect us.
There is a school of thought that truth is a flexible construct,
elusive and subject to interpretation. In at least one area this is
demonstrably not the case. Nature and its laws are intolerant of
fools. When Timothy Treadwell chose to live among the Alaskan grizzlies
for extended periods, he imagined that they reciprocated the affection
and respect that he felt for them. He even gave them names. It
turned out that while he was indulging his naive delusions about these
wild creatures they had also given him a name. That name was 'food'
and his life was ended by a hungry bear. Timothy was a friendly,
well-meaning person, eager to talk endlessly into a video camera in an
effort to educate others about these animals. The saddest part of his
story is that he persuaded a young woman to accompany him on his last
trip to live among them. She was also killed. . .
Often mistaken for stupidity, foolishness can be the province of
highly intelligent people. Recently, a past recipient of the Nobel Prize
[James D. Watson, presumably] revealed sentiments about racial differences
that were widely condemned and caused him to lose his job [he retired
from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the wake of the scandal].
Hearing opinions from public people (usually in areas outside their
expertise) that are demonstrably absurd is common. When a U.S. senator
described the internet as a 'series of tubes,' this was deeply
revealing about his grasp of the world.
Perhaps we would do well to admit that we are all subject to superstitions,
misconceptions, and delusional ideas and so are capable of acting
like fools at times. As with any human failing, foolishness is a matter
of degree. Still, it is sobering to imagine spending any considerable
portion of one's life in the company of a judgmental, bloviating,
talkative fool who is unable to profit from experience and whose
opinions are not reality-based. If you seek examples of this personality
type, you need only spend a little time watching the opinionated blather
that passes for cable television commentary on current events.
Our primary defense against such people, the remote control, is ineffective
if we happen to live with them."
So, then: not literally an idiot, just -- a fool.
(Livingston goes on: "The best of compasses does not point to
true north. We are, in general, unaccustomed to examining our most
fundamental beliefs about the world and the people in it.
Much is made of our demonstrated lack of knowledge about things
that one would imagine would be basic and shared information.
Whenever people are quizzed about elementary scientific facts
(such as the nature of the solar system or the chemical basis
of life), simple geography, or the political arrangement we live
under, the results are frequently and sometimes hilariously
innacurate. Twenty percent of a recent cross-section of
adult Americans were unable to locate the United States on
a map of the world."
Hey! I can do that! Most of it, anyway. Hawaii is somewhere
in the Pacific, right? Um, where's Puerto Rico? ;-> )
> There's a new book out by a 30-year veteran psychiatrist (i.e., a medical
ReplyDelete> doctor, who was a surgeon in Viet Nam during the war there in the
> late 60s) named Gordon Livingston, who has written a series of what might
> be considered "inspirational" books, but with a rather astringent
> edge to them. . .
An interesting man. There's an autobiographical sketch at
http://kappados.wge-hosting.com/Autobiographies/GordonLivingstonBio.htm
at a Web site hosting information about his college graduating class --
Company K2, United States Military Academy (at West Point), Class of 1960 .
I just re-read _Only Spring: On Mourning the Death of My Son_
http://www.amazon.com/Only-Spring-Mourning-Death-Son/dp/1569243514/ ,
which began as a journal kept by the author after his six-year-old
son was diagnosed with leukemia in December 1991 (the little boy died the
following May after a failed bone-marrow transplant from his
father). The author's oldest son had commtted suicide (he had
bipolar disorder) six months before his youngest son's diagnosis.