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Month: November 2012

Why Republicans Deserved a Crushing Defeat in the 2012 Presidential Election – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Why Republicans Deserved a Crushing Defeat in the 2012 Presidential Election – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
November 12, 2012
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                If ever there was a party that deserved a thorough electoral defeat, it was the Republican Party in the 2012 United States Presidential election. The party’s abandonment of any semblance of principle, combined with suppression of its principled and intellectual elements, was responsible for the crushing defeat dealt to it by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. While I am no supporter of, or enthusiast for, Obama and the Democrats (I was part of the 1% who voted for Gary Johnson), I must confess that my intense love of justice is satisfied by the extent to which the Republican Party has been punished at the polls. Here, I aim to enumerate the primary reasons why the Republicans lost, and deserved it.

                Reason 1: Suppression of libertarian ideas and people. If ever there was a political movement in the United States that captured the minds and passions of wide segments of the population, it was the movement spearheaded by Ron Paul, which began to pick up momentum in 2007 and which greatly intensified during the 2011-2012 campaign season. The massive enthusiasm generated by that movement among young people and typically non-Republican constituencies would have been enough to result in an electoral landslide for the Republican Party, had it not been ruthlessly combated by the party establishment and its allied news media’s rhetoric, as well as underhanded, fraudulent, and sometimes even violent actions at state primaries, state conventions, and the Republican National Convention.

 Indeed, the rule change enacted by the party establishment at the National Convention, over the vociferous objections of the majority of delegates there, has permanently turned the Republican Party into an oligarchy where the delegates and decision-makers will henceforth be picked by the “front-runner” in any future Presidential contest. Gone are the days when people like me could, through grass-roots activism and participation at successive levels of the party conventions, become delegates to a state convention and exert some modicum of influence over how the party is governed and intellectually inclined. In addition to the suppression of Ron Paul and his supporters, the Republican establishment marginalized and denied debate access to Gary Johnson, one of the most principled and successful Republican governors in history – leading Johnson to favor a Libertarian run for the Presidency instead. Johnson, too, could easily have garnered the sympathies of voters who favor civil liberties, limited government, and an end to wasteful, reckless foreign-policy interventionism.

                 Reason 2: Creation of an alternate reality. In the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” The Republican Party, however, constructed around itself an alternate reality where facts did not matter. Instead, an entirely parallel universe of “facts” was constructed in accordance with party orthodoxy. How ironic it is that the party that was supposed to denounce political correctness in universities and culture has itself fallen prey to the most massive form of politically correct delusion imaginable – a way of thinking where no facts are admissible unless they cohere with a certain preconceived worldview! It is one matter to have a set of normative positions about what is desirable – even if they are wrong or damaging positions but still based on the data of reality. It is entirely another matter to begin to make short-term empirical predictions based on ideology and wishes, rather than the evidence of the senses and the general factual inferences that can be drawn from such evidence. This is why, on the eve of the elections, virtually the entire Republican punditry was predicting a landslide win for Mitt Romney and accusing objective election observers who anticipated an Obama win of exhibiting a left-wing bias. But the malaise goes deeper than that. The entire advertising and rhetorical strategy of the Romney campaign was based on outright, publicly debunked falsehoods – from the claim that Obama “gutted welfare reform”  to the easily refutable allegation that Jeep was relocating its plants from Ohio to China. But when fact-checking services from all over the political spectrum (including truly neutral ones) called Romney out on these outright lies, the fact-checkers themselves were branded as biased by the Republican punditry. The Romney campaign’s blatant distortion of the truth is a leap beyond the typical promise-breaking prevalent in American political campaigns. As David Javerbaum put it, Romney engaged in “quantum politics” – e.g., “Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.” The Romney campaign was based not on the reality of facts, but the “reality” of political polls and interest groups, the question not of what is true but what will please whom. This is what Ayn Rand termed a social metaphysics, and a key reason why I compared Romney to James Taggart in Atlas Shrugged.

                Reason 3. The “lesser evil” mentality. It is interesting, also, that the Republicans never embrace a candidate with more energy, and never behave with such intensity of vitriol toward any doubters or critics, as when the candidate is a man whom they themselves consider a candidate of dubious conservative credentials. Mitt Romney, the oft-styled “Massachusetts moderate“, was surely such a candidate, as numerous conservative Republicans did not hesitate to admit, until Romney seemed likely to secure the nomination. But once the nominating process was trending Romney’s way, many of those same Republicans reacted with every possible tactic to undermine Romney’s opponents and critics. Perhaps the hatred of Obama (and the irrational inflation of Obama as the Evil Communist Atheist Muslim Kenyan-Born “Community Activist” Who Threatens to Destroy the Very Fabric of America by many Republicans) led the reluctant Romney supporters to consider absolutely anybody to be preferable to the strawman Obama they had built up in their minds – and also any means to be acceptable for achieving Obama’s defeat, including lies, fraud, voter suppression, and violence against peaceful critics. It is often the case that the mentality of supporting the “lesser evil” causes people to behave with the greatest evil. Surely, in their behavior on the campaign trail in 2012, the Republicans were by far the more evil party.

                Reason 4. Refusal to differentiate based on true principle. While Romney continued to attack Obama on the basis of factually false trivialities, the substantive principles of Obama’s governance did not come under attack. Completely absent were any criticisms of drone assassinations of American citizens and foreign civilians; the threat of indefinite detention of Americans on US soil; repeated attempts to control the Internet in the name of “cybersecurity” or “intellectual property”; political favoritism and bailouts directed toward large financial institutions; a bizarre and perverse surveillance and “security” state, exemplified by the Transportation Security Administration’s backscatter X-ray machines and grotesque full-body pat-downs;  the continuation of bloody and unsustainable foreign entanglements;  an increasingly impoverishing fiscal and monetary policy; and the escalating devastation caused by the War on Drugs. Of course, Romney did not wish to criticize any of these policies, because he would likely have supported their escalation were he elected. The substantive policy differences between most Republicans and most Democrats have been narrowing over the past three decades. This election cycle, they have been reduced to virtually nil – even as the political rhetoric achieved levels of virulence and polarization unprecedented over the same time period.

                Reason 5. Xenophobia and demonization of “the other”. It is truly unwise for a party seeking to win elections to brand entire vast categories of peaceful persons as undesirable. Yet, in their rhetoric, this is precisely how many prominent Republicans portrayed immigrants, homosexuals, the non-religious, and people whose income is below the threshold for a positive income-tax obligation.  Is it any wonder that many such individuals chose to vote against the Republicans, if only because they wished to secure the defeat of the party that so vocally advertised its intent to oppress them and restrict their rights? Perhaps the lessons of this election will teach the wiser among the Republican pundits and politicians that collectivistic demonization of large numbers of people not only fails to win elections, but it is a generally sordid practice to engage in. Commentators such as Sean Hannity seem to have already shifted their positions on immigration. One can hope that others will follow suit – though I suspect the changes in attitude will be too little, too late, especially with other pundits, such as Bill O’Reilly, decrying the demographic changes and the alleged decline of the “white establishment” in America – a mild expression of the not-so-latent racism and xenophobia that, unfortunately, still plague too many in the Republican Party.

                Fundamentally, the Republicans lost the election because many of them lost touch with any semblance of truth, liberty, and basic human decency. It would be a welcome outcome if the results of this election chasten the Republicans to cease suppressing libertarian ideas and to instead embrace a full-fledged advocacy of civil liberties – especially including the right to engage in peaceful behaviors of which many Republicans may personally disapprove. The success of ballot initiatives permitting same-sex marriage in Maine, Maryland, and Washington, as well as legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, should teach Republicans that their advocated intensification of crackdowns on personal freedoms will find only ever-dwindling support, particularly among young people. Unless the Republican establishment dramatically changes its ways, it will increasingly sink into irrelevance (though not without inflicting tremendous damage in the meantime). And, unless it changes its ways, it will be justified to say of that irrelevance: “Good riddance!”

Illiberal Belief #6: Good Intentions Are Enough – Article by Bradley Doucet

Illiberal Belief #6: Good Intentions Are Enough – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
November 11, 2012
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  There is a tendency among some people to focus almost exclusively on intentions. They may not explicitly believe that motives are all that matter, but they speak and argue as though that were the case. They spend a lot of time praising people they think have good intentions, who they imagine will act in ways that are beneficial to others, while condemning those they think have bad intentions, who they imagine will act in ways that are beneficial to themselves (either disregarding others or knowingly injuring them).There are several reasons why being overly concerned with people’s intentions in this way is misguided. First, it is simply not possible to be sure what another person’s motives are in any given instance. We are not mind readers, so when we infer someone’s intentions from his or her actions and declarations, we do so with a greater or lesser amount of uncertainty. To claim to have knowledge of another person’s mind is simply arrogant. It is sometimes not even possible in certain cases to be sure about our own motivations, much less someone else’s. This is because intentions are complex. We likely have several reasons motivating any given action, some of which even push us in opposite directions.

A second problem with obsessing about intentions is that actions which benefit oneself often benefit others as well. If I work in order to make money, those who voluntarily purchase the product of my labour also benefit, and this is equally true of any voluntary market transaction. This kind of self-interest should be praised as the motor that drives the world to become ever more prosperous, with condemnation reserved for that sub-category of self-interested actions which actually do harm the interests of others.

Finally, it has been said before, but it bears repeating: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Good intentions alone—even redefined to include benign self-interested intentions, and even setting aside the very real knowledge problems involved—are simply not enough. What’s the use in wanting to help the poor, for instance, if the manner in which I choose to do so succeeds only in perpetuating their plight? If one wants to do good, one must actually learn how to do good, or one may very well inadvertently end up making things worse. Instead of wasting time judging people based on what we imagine their intentions to be, we should focus on whether what they are saying makes sense, and on whether the results of their actions are actually good.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
Election Analysis: “Show Me Your Papers!” – Article by Charles N. Steele

Election Analysis: “Show Me Your Papers!” – Article by Charles N. Steele

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The New Renaissance Hat
Charles N. Steele
November 11, 2012
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In my haste to let the religious right have it, I missed something important that suggests the GOP problem is deeper than just religious nuttery: the GOP has systematically refused to address immigration issues seriously.  Worse, they’ve adopted nativist hostility to immigrants and treat immigration as purely a law enforcement issue, one in which “suspicious-looking people” need to be ready to show their papers at any point.
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Hispanics voted almost 3 to 1 for Obama over Romney.  Anyone surprised by this wasn’t paying attention.  In a number of Republican forums this past year Hispanic politicians and party activists — all GOP members — voiced frustration that the primary campaigns were making it difficult for them to feel they had a place in the party.  Recall that the one and only intelligent thing Rick Perry said in his entire campaign was that children of illegal immigrants ought to be able to attend college at in-state tuition rates, since it was better that they be educated and productive rather than welfare cases.  It’s also the only thing for which conservatives raked him over the coals.
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Hispanics are about one sixth of the U.S. population and account for more than 50% of population growth.  Good luck selling them on the idea that Spanish accents and not-quite-white skin are cause for further police inquiries.

In fact, illegal immigration ought to be something conservatives support.  The primary reason people enter the country illegally is to work. Serious academic work dating at least to Julian Simon’s excellent book (available here for free!) have found that immigration, including illegal immigration, is on net beneficial for an economy.  Immigrants work harder and take less in government benefits.  Their work raises wages for non-immigrants.  They have higher rates of entrepreneurial activity.  In the recent financial crisis, illegal immigrants who were subprime borrowers had far lower rates of mortgage default than citizen subprime borrowers.  One would suppose that these would be the sort of people one would want to welcome, not drive away.  One would think these people would be prime constituents for a free-market message.

Certainly there are problems of crime, of crowding of public services, etc., associated with immigration, but many of these are at heart problems of the welfare state, rather than immigration.  Fixing these makes sense; fixating on immigration doesn’t.

If the nativists got everything they wanted on immigration — iron control over impervious borders, strict limits on who can enter, and deportation of 100% of all illegals — no important economic or social problem would be solved and the economic situation would be worse, not better.  But this wish list is impossible; economic forces cannot be legislated away, and neither can the human spirit.

The current Republican position on this issue is best described as stupidity, and one more reason they drove away potential voters.

Dr. Charles N. Steele is the Herman and Suzanne Dettwiler Chair in Economics and Associate Professor at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. His research interests include economics of transition and institutional change, economics of uncertainty, and health economics.  He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 1997, and has subsequently taught economics at the graduate and undergraduate levels in China, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United States.  He has also worked as a private consultant in insurance design and review.

Dr. Steele also maintains a blog, Unforeseen Contingencies.

The Vital Importance of Property in Land: Part 3 – A Rational System of Land Ownership – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The Vital Importance of Property in Land: Part 3 – A Rational System of Land Ownership – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
November 11, 2012
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In this third installment of my short series on land and property rights (see my first and second installments), I aim to outline a rational, libertarian system of land ownership that simultaneously respects each individual’s private property and allows each individual ample opportunities to obtain land of his or her own. This is a system that allows every individual his or her inviolate sphere of action and control, while at the same time ensuring that no individual who strives to obtain land through sufficient exertion will be denied the ability to own landed property.

The rational criterion for how land may be initially appropriated from the state of nature is the first-occupier rule. The first person to transform a piece of land from the state of nature becomes that land’s rightful owner – but only if the land is substantively transformed and put to a use that can be reasonably expected not to terminate at any fixed time. In other words, a person may only initially appropriate that land which the person actually uses and does not expect to stop using entirely. The use may be sporadic and intermittent, but as long as the land is not abandoned altogether and the reasonable possibility of using it remains, the right to ownership remains with the person who first transformed it. A person can indirectly “use” the land by hiring others to work on it or manage it. As long as there exists an economic connection back to the owner, the use criterion is met. The land’s original owner may sell it to others or give the land as a gift. At that time, the new owner obtains the same prerogatives as the original owner had.

The use criterion prevents arbitrary claims over un-transformed land and also minimizes the possibility of conflict by reference to a criterion that relies on an ongoing state of use of the land. If a piece of land becomes completely abandoned by its owner, in the sense that the owner does not himself, or through the employment of others, perform or intend to realistically perform any physical actions on or pertaining to the land, then this land reverts to the state of nature and legitimately may be claimed by any subsequent first occupant. The use criterion distinguishes the libertarian view of land ownership from certain arbitrary legal precedents in many parts of the world – e.g., the “right” of kings in various Medieval and Early Modern European countries to all of the prime forests of those countries, which denied their subjects the ability to obtain any of the produce of the forests without special permission, or the “right” of certain Latin American potentates to vast tracts of completely undeveloped land, on which thousands of people have lived for generations as “squatters” who possess the land de facto but not de jure. The use criterion suggests that it may be the case that laws treat as private property land which should, in fact, be considered a part of the state of nature and opened to be claimed by future first occupants in substance.  This could, in practice, result in considerable upward economic mobility and improvements in standards of living for many people.

In an ideal libertarian system, owned land is truly owned – i.e., it is free of any encumbrances that the owner has not voluntarily entered into. The owner has the complete right to utilize the property as he sees fit, as long as he does not infringe on others’ rights to life, liberty, and property. There may be some role for the law to restrict the use of certain activities that necessarily infringe on others’ rights, such as spilling sewage into a river that runs adjacent to numerous owned plots of land – or emitting disease-causing chemicals into the air. These activities with negative external effects may be permissible in some cases if the affected other individuals consented to their conduct (with their consent possibly accompanied by compensation from the person engaging in the negative-externality-causing activity). Furthermore, the first occupier of a region has a greater prerogative to engage in such activities if the adversely affected neighbors voluntarily move in after the activity was known to be underway. (In other words, the neighbors could have avoided the adverse effects by going elsewhere, but they knowingly chose to move in anyway.)

An ideal libertarian system would have no property taxes or any other taxes that depend on one’s present wealth in any way. Irrespective of what other taxes may exist (and I have elsewhere argued for a system that can fund the government without relying on compulsory taxation at all), the concept of ownership should not be tied with any ongoing payment, unless the property was purchased by means of assuming a debt obligation. Even with regard to debt obligations, foreclosure on a property should be prohibited until the purchaser’s equity has been reduced to zero by an accumulation of amounts equal to the sum of delinquent payments, plus interest at the agreed-upon loan rates.

An owner of land may agree to an easement on the land in the form – for instance – of allowing a utility to place its infrastructure there, or allowing public traffic through a portion of the land. This easement should be entirely voluntary on the part of the owner, and it is legitimate for the owner to request compensation for granting the easement if he wishes. Likewise, the owner may rent the property to others at a mutually agreed-upon price, or, at his discretion, allow others to use or live on the property at no cost. A contractually conferred easement or tenancy may limit the owner’s subsequent ability to deny certain prerogatives to the tenants or parties using the easement, and a free market would facilitate the evolution of contracts that allow such parties the ability to use the land, subject to certain basic conditions, without fear of unilateral or arbitrary cessation of an arrangement on which they rely.

How would roads be built in such a world? How would utility lines be laid? Perhaps a contractually irrevocable perpetual easement might be the way to facilitate such arrangements while fully respecting private property. Instead of being bullied by eminent-domain legislation to sell the land or grant the easement, the owner may be enticed to collect a perpetual stream of income from the private road company or private utility. The road easement would be priced at prevailing market rates – not through a judicial fiat determining “fair market value,” but rather through negotiations based on millions of data points regarding what owners of similar land used for roads have been willing to accept without any compulsion.

As Roderick Long points out, it is also possible for a libertarian view to accommodate a type of “common” land which is neither private nor governmentally owned. This category of commons could be created by means of a private owner opening his land to common use in perpetuity – as in a landowner designating his property a public park or thoroughfare. Such common land does not revert to the state of nature, because it continues to be used regularly – e.g., by means of moving through it. The latest private owner retains a certain degree of rights to the land, in the sense that his designation for how the land may be used must be respected. However, as long as this designation’s terms are obeyed, the latest owner has surrendered his discretion over any particular instance of the common land’s use. The ability of common land to arise could be facilitated by the formation of voluntary cooperatives that purchase private land and declare it to be common. These cooperatives could then also supply services to keep the land in proper order for the purpose to which it is intended to be put. An example of this might be a group of shop owners in a busy urban area deciding to render the street adjacent to the shops to be common, so that any person could approach the shops without paying fees to any party, or being otherwise restricted. The shop owners could form a cooperative to purchase the land constituting the street. The cooperative would then declare such land to be common and would provide maintenance and security services to ensure that the street remains clean and accessible, and that no one significantly obstructs passage.

A true libertarian system would likely lead to the creation of numerous common spaces that would give people without substantial wealth the ability to use land for certain purposes which may bring them economic benefit and enrichment. For instance, it is conceivable that a common working area could be established, where individuals may bring their tools and utilize certain space for the period of their presence – on a first-come, first-served basis.

A legitimate question may arise as to how far up and down a right to legitimately acquired land extends. Again, the boundaries of such ownership should be circumscribed by considerations of use, as well as considerations of personal safety. It is reasonable to conclude that one’s owned airspace does not extend 10,000 meters into the air – which would have restricted the ability of airplanes to pass overhead. However, it is also reasonable to conclude that airplanes should be prohibited from flying at 50 meters above a residential area – even if they do not directly damage any property during a particular flight – because the risk of such damage is too great. The precise amount of owned airspace cannot be given a priori through philosophical argument – but use and safety do set some minimum bounds for the owner to rely on, and a rational legal system would work out the implications of these principles for various types of situations and technological possibilities.

Similarly, to what extent could a land owner lay claim to resources underneath the land? Clearly, one owns the land on which one’s house stands, to a depth that is sufficient to ensure that the house would not subside into the earth. However, does a land owner have the right to a mineral deposit 5 kilometers underneath the land? Perhaps so, if extracting the mineral would require transformation at the surface of the land. However, if a vast underground cave network leads to the mineral deposit from an entrance external to the land’s surface – or if such an access route can be created without any risk to the land on the surface (or the health, safety, or comfort of the owner), then does the owner still have a property right to the mineral – particularly if the owner does not intend to do anything with it and lacks the technical skills in any event? This is again a question that can only be addressed fully by considering the technological possibilities at hand, as well as the circumstances of a particular case. The general principles of use and safety would, however, result in the land owner receiving some claim to most underground resources in most real-world situations.

A libertarian system would penalize violations of others’ private property using Murray Rothbard’s “two teeth for a tooth” rule. In other words, a person who has infringed on another’s rights to property owes the victim twice the amount of the economic harm inflicted. A person who steals a television owes the victim two televisions (or the market value thereof). A person who breaks a window owes the cost of replacing two windows. This treatment both fully compensates the victim and punishes the violator by having the violator forfeit an equivalent item to the item of which the rightful owner was unjustly deprived. Monetary compensation may often be an appropriate way to address this when the property damaged could not easily be conceived of as a discrete unit.  It is important for the punishments for violations of property rights to be proportionate and only directed toward true violators. In other words, there are limits to the kind and degree of force that a property owner may wield to protect his property – depending on the circumstances and the nature of the threat. However, deadly force may be used if the property owner has justifiable reason to believe that his life or the lives of others on his property are threatened. When only inanimate property is threatened, incapacitation of the violator should be pursued instead of deadly force.

The great opportunity-promoting effects of a true libertarian system of land ownership would arise from the absence of any zoning laws and building restrictions – or restrictions of any sort on land use that does not pose negative externalities. Even private associations that attempt to foist such restrictions would be limited by law from prohibiting non-coercive, non-damaging uses of unencumbered property, over which the owner would remain sovereign. Thus, the tyranny of zoning and the tyranny of homeowners’ associations would both be absent in a libertarian system. Rapid economic growth and a flowering of individual expression on private property would result. Furthermore, more convenient economic arrangements  would arise – such as the pre-zoning-era practice of a store owner living with his family on the second floor above the store he owns on the first.  A libertarian system of true private land ownership would result in many more “mixed-use” areas arising, where functions of life and business are not artificially segmented from one another, but rather occur together in such a manner as is most convenient to the residents. Travel times to one’s place of employment would be greatly reduced, resulting in immense savings on transportation costs and improvements in personal safety. More rapid construction would occur, as building permits would not be required.

Under a libertarian system along the lines described above, much land currently in the state of nature would be converted to useful purposes, including the construction of residences for people who find the currently available stock of housing to be too expensive. The massive increase in the supply of housing would cause prices to fall to truly affordable levels for most. Furthermore, the freedom to build would result in an increased and accelerating rate of technological and design innovation – since no third party would be permitted to prohibit a structure for employing unusual esthetic elements or a method of construction that differs from what prevails in the area. More generally, esthetic criteria would never justify coercive prohibition of property use in a libertarian system; only physical harm to other persons would. Ultimately, the result of recognizing a genuine, rational regime of property rights would vastly enhance individuals’ standards of living not just through increased material prosperity, but through the improved satisfaction of living as a true master of one’s own sphere of life and activity.

The Follies of Gun Control – Video by G. Stolyarov II

The Follies of Gun Control – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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A satirical commentary by Mr. Stolyarov on the wildly unrealistic assumptions made by those who wish to restrict private individuals’ gun-ownership rights.

This video is based on Mr. Stolyarov’s essay, “The Follies of Gun Control“.

Remember to LIKE, FAVORITE, and SHARE this video in order to spread rational discourse on this issue.

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“Occupy” Protesters Have Rights, Too – Article by G. Stolyarov II

“Occupy” Protesters Have Rights, Too – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
November 4, 2012
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I am generally skeptical of the “Occupy” movement and have expressed my ambivalence and criticisms here, here, and here in the past. However, for all of my disagreements and reservations, I will defend the rights of fellow human beings when they are infringed. And, without question, “Occupy” protesters have rights, too – rights that have been shamelessly violated in the brutal crackdowns on “Occupy” protests which occurred last year.

In response to my passing mention of the pepper-spraying incident at University of California Davis in November 2011 (for which the University has now offered to generously compensate the victims), Dr. Charles Steele wrote, “Mr. Stolyarov responds that he’s concerned about ‘Occupy’ protesters being pepper-sprayed at UC Davis.  I’m uncertain what this event has to do with the Romney v. Obama choice, but he and I have very different definitions of ‘peaceful.’  My definition of peaceful does not include forcibly blocking public thoroughfares and occupying public spaces so that others cannot exercise their legitimate rights to use them.  It’s shameful that taxpayer money is now going to these ‘victims.’”

First, the facts of the situation do not bear out the allegation that anyone’s ability to use the UC Davis facilities was substantially impeded. The protesters blocked a sidewalk; that is all. Surely, anyone who wished to get from one facility to another could have walked around.

Second, the protesters were students who were paying customers of the university. Even though the right to use public property is a somewhat nebulous area (since it is funded through the payments of large numbers of people with competing preferences), it is clearly the case that a paying user of property – especially one who pays the immensely generous sums that often constitute tuition these days – should have a considerable degree of prerogative, as long as the property is not damaged and remains usable to others. This whole incident is a glaring demonstration of the power asymmetry between universities and their students. What other institution (especially a privately owned and funded institution) would treat its customers in this way? Would any private country club be able to get away with pepper-spraying its donors who happened to be sitting on the sidewalk approaching a golf course (without being in the way of the game)?

It is clear that the protest was not intended to obstruct the everyday goings-on at the university. Rather, like the many special events that regularly occur at every university, it was intended to attract attention to an issue important to students – in this case, the protesters’ grievances, justified or not. There is no evidence that the protesters befouled the grass and sidewalk they occupied, or that they prevented other students and faculty from passing through on unrelated business.

Third, even if the protesters violated a formal rule of the university (which is itself unclear), proportionality was not followed in the response. To physically damage a person for breaking a prohibition whose violation physically hurt no one is clearly not a proportionate punishment. Nor was the attempt to evict the protesters through any kind of force justified with respect to this kind of petty violation (if it was one). Even if it could justifiably be said that the protesters were clearly, unambiguously in the wrong in occupying the sidewalk, they should not have been interfered with forcibly during their occupation. An appropriate remedy would have been to inform them of the nature of their violation and to present them with a subsequent punishment that did not involve bodily harm. Preferably, the punishment should have been related to any alleged harms. Examples could include sidewalk-cleaning duty, or fines that reflect the estimated “economic cost” of the obstruction (if there indeed was one).

But, even more importantly, I fail to see how a clear criterion can be established to delineate which “occupations” of the sidewalk would constitute violations of other people’s rights. With regard to genuine public thoroughfares (e.g., roads and railroads), the delineation can be clearly made with regard to whether the flow of vehicle traffic is obstructed. But, on a mere sidewalk, how long would one need to dally in order to be considered a violator? Would sitting for a mere minute suffice? What about standing for a minute? What about standing for five seconds? What about walking really slowly so that others have to walk around? What about walking really slowly because one has a disability? What about walking at a moderate pace when the culture of the university encourages most people to be ultra-rushed and adopt a rapid pace at all times? What if a person occupies the sidewalk for a much longer time period, but no one else is around to use it? Ultimately, no such arbitrary delineation can be made – and if none can be made, then we must err on the side of permissiveness. The ability for people to peacefully express themselves is too precious for anything less to be done in the attempt to preserve it.

On Moral Responsibility in General and in the Context of Voting – Article by G. Stolyarov II

On Moral Responsibility in General and in the Context of Voting – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
November 3, 2012
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Here, I aim to briefly outline the general nature of moral responsibility as well as its implications for how a person ought to approach voting in an election.

Moral Responsibility in General

The source of all morality is the life of the human individual. As I explain in my video series, “Life as the Origin and Basis of Morality” (see Part 1 and Part 2), the life of the individual is the necessary precondition for any moral system, and therefore the preservation of that life is the foremost moral principle. The principle has to be universalizable to all individuals, or else one’s claim to the legitimacy of protection for one’s own life would be arbitrary and simply a matter of “might making right” (that is, if one can protect oneself against stronger individuals who do not recognize this legitimacy). If, however, one recognizes that the moral primacy of life is an abstract principle that can be applied to every person, then one can justly claim the moral high ground in defending one’s own right to life as an implication of this principle.

The existence of moral responsibility arises from two facts: (i) human beings can choose their actions, and (ii) various human actions can have varying degrees of beneficial or harmful consequences to human life. An action is moral if it benefits the life of any human being (including the actor) without harming any other human being. An action is immoral if it directly and unavoidably harms the life and infringes on the legitimate prerogatives of any human being – even if some other party might benefit from the action. Because each individual human being is an end in him- or herself, no action that “benefits” some people by harming others can be considered moral.  The deliberate and direct infliction of harm upon any person trumps any possible benefit that can be gained from an action. Furthermore, in reality (contrived hypothetical “train-track” scenarios notwithstanding), it is causally impossible for a harm to result in a benefit and for genuine benefit to be unachievable without harm.

Moral responsibility can be a source of both praise and criticism. A person should be praised if he is morally responsible for a beneficial action. A person should be criticized if he is morally responsible for an accumulation of sufficiently harmful actions. It is possible for a generally good person to be morally responsible for a harmful action. This alone does not make the person evil, and a person may compensate for a harmful action through restitution to its victims. Once appropriate restitution has been made, the harmful action should cease to adversely affect our judgment of the perpetrator. However, restitution to persons other than the victims would not suffice, because the benefit of one person cannot outweigh the harm done to another. If irreversible harm has been done, the moral wrong cannot be fully righted, and therefore the perpetrator must always bear some degree of moral responsibility. However, the adverse judgment of the perpetrator can be mitigated if the victim remains alive and decides that the perpetrator can confer a certain alternative benefit that would compensate for the harm without undoing it.

To clarify, this principle does not prohibit or denounce the use of force in order to defend oneself against harm or to punish a wrongdoer who has inflicted harm, as long as the punishment is proportional to the harm and has the effect of preventing future harm committed by such a wrongdoer. However, the retaliatory use of force is only appropriate if directed against genuine wrongdoers, exercised with extreme care for its proportionality, exercised lawfully, and performed without “collateral damage” to innocents. Infliction of harm upon an innocent person is never morally justified, for any goal.

A person is only morally responsible for actions directly within his or her control. A person does not bear any share of “collective guilt” for the actions of others whom somebody deems to be “similar” to that person in some respect. Neither does a person bear any “blood guilt” for the actions of ancestors or descendants. Sometimes a person’s actions may contribute to a larger harm – as when large numbers of people make poor decisions that result in a combined substantial damage to the lives of some innocents. In that case, each person whose actions directly contribute to the harm bears some degree of moral responsibility, in proportion to his or her contribution to the harm. However, in such cases, it is extremely difficult to isolate the contribution of any particular individual, and so the most practical remedy is not restitution, but rather the persuasion of individuals to desist from continuing to contribute to the harm.

Because moral responsibility relates to actual benefit and harm to human beings, there can be no moral responsibility for “victimless” actions, though one can bear moral responsibility for either benefiting or harming oneself. The moral responsibility for harming oneself can only be compensated for through reparations to oneself – i.e., through performance of actions that benefit oneself and undo the harm. Thus, actions that harm oneself alone cannot be undone by adhering to the dictates of others, and so no prohibition or external punishment can ever be appropriate for such actions. This is why a legitimate legal system would only prohibit and punish harm inflicted by an individual upon others and would allow an individual to harm himself without legal penalty. In this way, a class of immoral actions (harms to oneself) ought to be entirely legal. If an action does not damage the life of either oneself or others, then it can be neither illegal nor immoral.

While morality ultimately focuses on consequences, an individual’s intent in carrying out an action can have long-term effects on that individual’s moral standing. It is possible to have ill intent in carrying out an action but, through good fortune, to end up harming no one. In that case, no moral responsibility can exist because no one has been harmed. However, a person who continues to act upon ill intent is extremely likely to cause actual harm through repeated action. Therefore, acting with ill intent is like a game of Russian roulette as far as moral responsibility is concerned. One might escape moral responsibility any given time, but the probability of incurring it in the future is close to certain. Furthermore, acting with ill intent ultimately damages the individual’s capacity to choose morally, as it results in the reinforcement of habits of thought which oppose the preservation of human life and the cultivation of human civilization.  Likewise, good intent can assist an individual in committing moral actions by cultivating habits of thought that render moral choices easier. However, good intent must be reflected in benefits to human life before an action can be considered moral. Good intent cannot absolve a person of moral responsibility for a harmful act, though it should (if aided by an understanding of cause and effect) assist the person in avoiding similar harmful acts in the future.

 Moral Responsibility and Voting

In any scenario of voting, the individuals who participate are numerous, and the outcome results from an aggregation of individual votes. No given person can be said to specifically be responsible for the outcome of the election being one way or another, even if the outcome results from a difference of one vote (because anyone else’s one vote would have had the identical impact). Nonetheless, if the outcome of an election is the rise to office of politicians who perpetrate harmful actions, then the people who voted for those politicians share some of the moral responsibility in the harms – since, without the vote, those politicians would most likely not have come to power (unless they staged a coup). A clear case of this is the moral responsibility of the Germans in 1933 who gave Hitler’s Nazi Party the plurality of the vote. Were it not for this moral sanction, the harms committed by the Nazi Party would never have come to pass. Of course, the moral responsibility of the typical German voter who supported Hitler was slight compared to the moral responsibility of the actual Nazi leaders and their followers who actually partook in carnage and destruction. Nonetheless, by committing an action that clearly demonstrated support for the Nazi Party, even the otherwise peaceful Germans who voted for it helped to make its atrocities possible.

A person who does not vote for a winning candidate (either by voting for a losing candidate or by not voting at all) cannot have moral responsibility for what transpires when the winning candidate is elected, because he did not grant support to and sometimes explicitly opposed the winning candidate. He can therefore justifiably say, of what transpires afterward, that it did not transpire with his approval or assistance. In electoral situations, it is seldom the case that a single person can make all the difference (unless he is exceptionally good at persuasion of vast numbers of people), but a single person can choose not to be part of the problem. This is why a person should always vote his conscience (if he votes at all) and should never support a candidate who might commit incremental harm relative to the status quo, in that person’s view. However, a person could justifiably support a candidate who might bring about incremental benefit, even if that benefit is not as comprehensive as the voter might desire.

It is important to note that voting for a candidate who would commit incremental harm is not justified by the presence of a candidate whom one expects to commit even greater harm. Because harm can never bring benefit, it should follow that the infliction of lesser harms can never avert greater harms. The person who actively supports a move in the direction of harm (relative to the status quo) simply legitimizes the political system’s infliction of harm upon himself and others. By signaling to the political system that he will tolerate a certain degree of incremental worsening of his situation, he invites politicians to gradually ratchet up the degree of harm they cause, as long as they can claim (justifiably or not) that their opponents would bring about even greater harm.

In this case, what is the nature of the moral responsibility of the person who votes for a “lesser evil” in his mind? If the “lesser evil” loses, then there is clearly no moral responsibility if the person did not otherwise engage in harmful behavior to promote the “lesser evil” or to damage those who criticized the “lesser evil.” However, support for a losing “lesser evil” can lead to unfortunate habits of thought that would leave one vulnerable to the entreaties of politicians who intend to inflict harm. Just like ill intent in committing an action leaves one vulnerable to committing harm in the future, voting for a losing “lesser evil” leaves one vulnerable to voting for a winning “lesser evil” in the future. If one votes for an incrementally harmful candidate who wins, then one does share in the moral responsibility of those actions which a reasonable person could have anticipated on the basis of the candidate’s past record, rhetoric (including any tendencies for duplicity and lies contained therein), and character. This moral responsibility is clearly not of the same caliber as the moral responsibility of the politician who actually inflicts the harms, or the enforcers who act on his behalf. Furthermore, because the moral responsibility of voters is always highly dispersed, it is impractical to design appropriate restitution for it. Rather, the sole practical remedy is for the voters in question to recognize the mistake of their prior actions and, in the future, to work to the extent of their abilities to undo the harms of the winning candidate’s actions in office. For instance, a person who recognizes that he was deceived into supporting a “lesser evil” who won can focus his efforts on defeating this politician or similar politicians as the next election approaches. This person could also work at persuading others not to make similar mistakes.

The most reliable way to avoid adverse moral responsibility in voting is to vote for a candidate whom one considers to be an improvement over the status quo in absolute, not relative, terms – and without regard for how others might vote. Morality is not based on consensus, but on objective truth. One’s own understanding of objective truth, and the continual pursuit of improving that understanding, is the best path to moral action and the habits of thought that facilitate it.

As the ISideWith.com survey of voter preferences shows, if voters truly voted in accordance to their understanding of the most preferable courses of action, the American electoral landscape in 2012 would be quite different. For one, the 2012 Presidential contest would clearly be between Gary Johnson and Barack Obama, rather than between Obama and Mitt Romney.