----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>
> I don't knowwhat Smithain volintarism is, but obligations are things you
> ought to do because they are commanded by norms you ought to acceot.
=============
Adam Smith. Who commands, who decides the ought? Lawyers and military personnel love those concepts almost as much as moral theologians.
> >
> >
>
> >
> >But there aren't any feasible alternatives that we know of. The question is
> >idle.
> >
> >================
> >What, are you channeling The Iron Lady and Francis Fukuyama already? :-
>
> Fukayama, maybe. But I am not talking about his economics. There are no
> alternatives to liberal democratic politics. In the realw orld you yourself
> would not setiosuly entertain any proposed replacement.
>
> >
> >
> >The constraint on feasibility in the abstract is nothing compared to the
> >fact the US would destroy any attempt to
> >instantiate something that is feasible. \
>
> OK, then we are doomed. I am quite serious.
===================
Given our current level of technological/organizational complexity yes.
>
> One can imagine Mondragon gone global with all sorts of institutional
> >arrangements for bargaining and collective deliberation that didn't rely on
> >bicameralism, a hierarchical judicial
> >buraeucracy, an imperial presidency.
>
> Liberal democracy is not exhausted by the particuakrarrangements that now
> exist in the US. I repeat, probably not for the last time, that liberal
> denocracy means:
>
> (1) Competitive elections for representative government
>
> (2) Universal suffrage
>
> (3) Extensive civil and political liberties.
>
===================
(3a) Liberty of Contract
(3b)Free alienability of property
You're almost there Justin, Posners and Epstein and all the others have you in there sights.
> >Democracy as a dang in sich is quite consistent with non-state
> >contractarianism.
>
> But there si no such thing and for reasons I have explained elsewhere,
> cannot be. ANyway, it;'s not on the map.
==================
And never will be.
>
>
> >Please don't tell me you think the US system with marginal tinkerings with
> >the commerce clause, contract clause and the
> >5th 13th and 14th amendments are all we need to make a Schweickartian
> >economy possible. The place would be just as
> >boring and oppressive as it is now.
>
> No, we need large scale mass movemebts to bring about these changes. Asfor
> boring, socialism is supposed to make life boring for most people--boring,
> safe, and happy. You want interest, go to Ramallah.
======================
To get them the US would be turned into a giant Ramallah.
>
> >
> > >Again fair enough; so why should anyone use moral discourse at all in the
> > >process of collective
> > >deliberation/action to secure majoritarian goals?
> >
> >Because it's sojmetimes effective.
> >
> >=================
> >
> >And oppressive when used by knaves, which democracy was designed to deal
> >with.
>
> So we msut ban everything that can be misused by knaves? Start with
> language, then.
>
> I> t seems liberal democracy is failing
> >even on that score.
>
> Yes, and what is your alternative that is so much better?
====================
Now you're being obtuse. I'm not writing a score of books for you today.
>
> Thus the pervasive skepticism amongst the citizenry that we even live in
> democracy anymore. Or are
> >you going to go Hegelian on me and tell me the actually existing US is a
> >democracy rather than a form of State
> >capitalism with an incredibly shrinking zone of civil liberties.
>
> We have real if limited democracy. Ask people who don't have any.
===================
Let's ask the people who don't have it precisely because of the limited democracy in the US.
>
>
>
> >Theological discourse doesn't work in any epistemic sense I can think of
> >but is effective. Are the factions that employ
> >it telling the truth or are they knaves?
>
> Like Dr, King? Was he a knave?
=================
If we agree theological discourse does not refer and is false then yes. Deceiving others to achieve a semblance of freedom is ok with you and me if, of course, it leads to the kinds of freedom we want. But we can't then turn around and call those who deceive to achieve freedoms that constrain our freedoms a bunch of liars because they hoodwinked a majority to do it. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
>
> A democracy with the majority constituted by effective knaves is not a
> >democracy.
> >
>
> Sez you. We need govt, sez Madison., because we are not angels.
=====================
Governance and government are not identical.
>
> >
> >And it was effective in making pot and coca leaves and lots of other things
> >illegal. Hell they'd go after skateboards if
> >it wasn't for capitalists. You're starting to sound like......a government
> >official......................
> >
>
> I am a government official.
=====================
You are humorless today.
>
> >
> >I don't think we live in a liberal democracy anymore. I'm not alone.
> >
> >
>
> But you are mistaken.
=================== Well there's a paradox of majoritarianism for you. If over 50% of the citizenry no longer believes we live in a liberal democracy what criteria are the minority going to use to persuade them they're wrong if the minority would have to give up an enormous amount of freedoms to allay the majority's assertions?
>
> >
> >Well considering there is no non-political defense of liberalism I'm not
> >surprised. If your moral defense is not widely
> >shared, nor the metamoral method by which you justify and explain your
> >moral stance is shared, what does it mean to say
> >it's objective. Please don't send me fishing for my JL Mackie.......
>
> I told you, I am a moral realist. I don't think the correctness of moral
> views depends on their being widely shared--Mackie's mistake. I sent you my
> paper on this. I also don't think you have toa gree with my ethics or my
> metaethics to cooperate with me on a democartic basis.
====================== See you're an anti-majoritarian on morals so you can preserve some Archimedian point to judge when a majority engages in the use of collective action for the sake of goals you don't like. I smell a double standard somewhere. The moral problem has not been solved any more than Keyne's economic problem has been solved.
>
> >
>
> Why should I foreswear a perfectly good
> >rhetorical strategy taht is sometimes useful as long as I don't insist too
> >hard that those whose disagree with my moral views are vipers who should be
> >exterminated?
> >===================
> >
> >No, just jail 'em whenever the county cops bust 'em. For the sake of your
> >sanity get out of the government Justin.
>
> I;m doing that--gonna go work for a big law firm and make a lotta moola
> defending one robber barona gainst another. I will oppse the war on drugs
> and adovocate legalization, too.
>
> >
> >There are no knockdown proofs in political theory. If there were there'd be
> >no politics; we'd have transcended the
> >tragedies of zoon politikon. All Arrow did was try to formalize some
> >assertions made by Condorcet; I've always read it
> >as more of an proof of the untranscendability of zoon politikon than a
> >disproof of democracy. Usual caveats apply on
> >that; we're not going to be able to resolve the issues he raised on an
> >email list. Hell if we did, we *should* win that
> >goddam prize. In fact somebody did write a book critiquing AT a while back.
> >I'll see if I can find the title.
>
> Yes, so, your point?
>
>
>
> >
> >Seems to me you've obliterated the distinctions between demos, praxis,
> >theoria and that's totally cool with me.
>
> Right, I keep telling you, I'm a pragmatist. Nobody takes this seriously.
=================
Because pragamatism has as many problems as a lot of other epistemic takes on living.
>
> Actually
> >existing US political system in form and content *does* raise serious
> >ground for doubt as to whether our institutional
> >matrix serves the notions of democracy many on this list tacitly share. So
> >in that sense, it seems we're still dealing
> >with democracy as a kind of a dang in sich.
>
> Ding an sich? No, we have a real if limited democracy. Wedo not live under a
> totalitarian dictatorship. We do not even live in an oligarchary. The rich
> have vastly disproportionate power. The politicians are corrupt. Not news.
> That does not mean we have no democracy.
==========================
If we live in a democracy then you've undercut your ability to say the politicians in the US are corrupt. It's not a simple democracy/totalitarianism binary. Because the same mode of argumentation you're using with me in this discussion is the same stance politicians take to deny that what they do is wrong. Now either there are non-majoritarian criteria by which we can decide whether there is a non-identity between the obligation/oughts and the realm of the legal or there isn't or we lack a decision procedure for determining whether there is or isn't, in which case we have Sextus Empiricus' problem all over again. If no majority can achieve a consensus as to whether there is a non-identity how can we have any non-question begging criteria for what is constitutive of corruption?
Like Wittgenstein we've left the US just as we find it.
Gotta run,
Ian