How libertarian leaning is this forum?
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@fiester there are no countries without taxes. Every country levies taxes. I live in a state that doesn't have an income tax.
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@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Hando-Jin who is holding the majority "to ransom"?
The state and employers, obviously. It's either submit to labor or starve.
It is a natural law that we all must make a living.
Humans lived without this supposed law longer than they lived with it. The entire idea of an economy is generally mean spirited, benefits a minority at the expense of the majority and stands in the way of a healthier cooperation to get our material needs meet.
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@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
It is a natural law that we all must make a living.
It is as much of a natural law that the strong overcome the weak, and that an unorganized mass of people must be governed by an organized minority. Your position basically boils to "coercion I don't like is evil, coercion I do like is natural law".
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@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Kvirion that isn't anyone else's business. My contribution to society is my business and nobody else's. There is no such thing as "society". There are ONLY individuals. Society is just another concept used to justify coercion and compulsion.
What's interesting with people that don't understand the use of methodological individualism in the fields of politics, law or economics, is that they will all tell you in unison that humans are social creatures as their only argument to justify the use of methodological holism and collectivism, like if methodological individualism would prevent them from forming groups or was denying that this is a need for most humans (which of course is a strawman of methodological individualism).
They don't even understand that methodological holism and collectivism are irrelevant in the field of politics, by assuming that society is a tangible and homogeneous thing that has a will/consciousness acting on individuals, and that individuals should submit themselves to this will/consciousness, without ever proving any of it of course. Their position is in fact a metaphysical subjective one, pretty similar to that of Hegel, Marx, Nationalism/fascism. Isn't it funny that all of the totalitarian ideas are collectivist and using methodological holism?
On the contrary, methodological individualism in these field is consistent and demonstrated, as with praxeology or Natural Law which are only concerned with individual behaviors and actions. Imagine in a legal context judging a society (full of innocent individuals) for a crime, and not the specific individuals that did the action/took the decision. That's exactly what collectivism and methodological holism leads to in these fields, and none of the collectivists understand why this doesn't make any sense.
And the beautiful thing is that methodological individualism doesn't even deny cybernetic loops and feedback that flow from collective emergence back to individuals, such as cultures, markets or memes. Only collectivism and methodological holism try to restrict individuality by saying that the group is more important than the individual, methodological individualism doesn't claim any of that.
In summary, methodological holism in these fields is simply a fallacy of composition.
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@Creuset said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Kvirion that isn't anyone else's business. My contribution to society is my business and nobody else's. There is no such thing as "society". There are ONLY individuals. Society is just another concept used to justify coercion and compulsion.
What's interesting with people that don't understand the use of methodological individualism in the fields of politics, law or economics, is that they will all tell you in unison that humans are social creatures as their only argument to justify the use of methodological holism and collectivism, like if methodological individualism would prevent them from forming groups or was denying that this is a need for most humans (which of course is a strawman of methodological individualism).
They don't even understand that methodological holism and collectivism are irrelevant in the field of politics, by assuming that society is a tangible and homogeneous thing that has a will/consciousness acting on individuals, and that individuals should submit themselves to this will/consciousness, without ever proving any of it of course. Their position is in fact a metaphysical subjective one, pretty similar to that of Hegel, Marx, Nationalism/fascism. Isn't it funny that all of the totalitarian ideas are collectivist and using methodological holism?
On the contrary, methodological individualism in these field is consistent and demonstrated, as with praxeology or Natural Law which are only concerned with individual behaviors and actions. Imagine in a legal context judging a society (full of innocent individuals) for a crime, and not the specific individuals that did the action/took the decision. That's exactly what collectivism and methodological holism leads to in these fields, and none of the collectivists understand why this doesn't make any sense.
And the beautiful thing is that methodological individualism doesn't even deny cybernetic loops and feedback that flow from collective emergence back to individuals, such as cultures, markets or memes. Only collectivism and methodological holism try to restrict individuality by saying that the group is more important than the individual, methodological individualism doesn't claim any of that.
In summary, methodological holism in these fields is simply a fallacy of composition.
I don't understand any of your points. Can you simplify?
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@DonkeyDude said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
It is a natural law that we all must make a living.
It is as much of a natural law that the strong overcome the weak, and that an unorganized mass of people must be governed by an organized minority. Your position basically boils to "coercion I don't like is evil, coercion I do like is natural law".
everything is hard. Mises wrote Human Action and in the very first pages he shows that we always want to go from one state to a state of greater comfort and security, and this requires human action.
Coercion and compulsion come from government and private thugs. There is really no difference. Things being difficult and life requiring us to make a living is not coercion or compulsion. It is simply how things are.
Nothing comes to us easily. We aren't living in a land of make-believe where we can simply eat gingerbread from the nearest house.
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@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
It is simply how things are.
People coercing each other is also "how things are". You can justify just about anything with this kind of weasel words.
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@DonkeyDude no it isn't a justification. It's a state of nature that things are scarce and that we all have to earn a living somehow.
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@Ecstatic_Hamster Everyone is interconnected. Even harming yourself harms everyone.
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@dan-dominic Absolutely, modern societal man is far too immersed in the illusion of separation and individuality.
Moreover, even arguing on subjects such as the one in this thread leads nowhere, since everyone will keep a closed and restricted opinion.
The existence of one extreme also depends on the other.
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@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Creuset said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Kvirion that isn't anyone else's business. My contribution to society is my business and nobody else's. There is no such thing as "society". There are ONLY individuals. Society is just another concept used to justify coercion and compulsion.
What's interesting with people that don't understand the use of methodological individualism in the fields of politics, law or economics, is that they will all tell you in unison that humans are social creatures as their only argument to justify the use of methodological holism and collectivism, like if methodological individualism would prevent them from forming groups or was denying that this is a need for most humans (which of course is a strawman of methodological individualism).
They don't even understand that methodological holism and collectivism are irrelevant in the field of politics, by assuming that society is a tangible and homogeneous thing that has a will/consciousness acting on individuals, and that individuals should submit themselves to this will/consciousness, without ever proving any of it of course. Their position is in fact a metaphysical subjective one, pretty similar to that of Hegel, Marx, Nationalism/fascism. Isn't it funny that all of the totalitarian ideas are collectivist and using methodological holism?
On the contrary, methodological individualism in these field is consistent and demonstrated, as with praxeology or Natural Law which are only concerned with individual behaviors and actions. Imagine in a legal context judging a society (full of innocent individuals) for a crime, and not the specific individuals that did the action/took the decision. That's exactly what collectivism and methodological holism leads to in these fields, and none of the collectivists understand why this doesn't make any sense.
And the beautiful thing is that methodological individualism doesn't even deny cybernetic loops and feedback that flow from collective emergence back to individuals, such as cultures, markets or memes. Only collectivism and methodological holism try to restrict individuality by saying that the group is more important than the individual, methodological individualism doesn't claim any of that.
In summary, methodological holism in these fields is simply a fallacy of composition.
I don't understand any of your points. Can you simplify?
Sure, to make it simple, I was just explaining that collectivism or holism aren't consistent in law, politics and economics (although they can probably be in other contexts).
Here is a simple example to illustrate the point: imagine a group of 10 people, in a country of 1 million people, that made a crime. If you apply collectivist methods or holism, you would judge legally the group as a whole, so 1 million people judged for the crime, whereas the people responsible are only 10. This doesn't make sense, but most collectivists don't understand this point whenever we talk about using methodological individualism in these fields.
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@Creuset you can make up the concept of collectivism, but there are only individuals. There is only me. I can be fairly certain of my own existence, but not of yours. There really is no "we."
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@Ecstatic_Hamster said in How libertarian leaning is this forum?:
@Creuset you can make up the concept of collectivism, but there are only individuals. There is only me. I can be fairly certain of my own existence, but not of yours. There really is no "we."
I would tend to think that collectivism is a heuristic and not a concept. However, I wouldn't say that your definition of individuality/individuals "there is only me" is a concept either, you're describing a subjective felt sense and some kind of solipsism which is also a heuristic.
