tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post1634324451704540546..comments2024-03-28T16:58:17.705-04:00Comments on Grim's Hall: Inside the Myth of EuropeGrimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-7907556104241698602012-01-03T12:03:10.007-05:002012-01-03T12:03:10.007-05:00we can find common ground with people centuries re...<i>we can find common ground with people centuries removed. This points to a small but crucial moral core that doesn't change,...</i><br /><br />St Paul mentions it, too. It's called "conscience", or--with some nuances--"natural law."Dad29https://www.blogger.com/profile/08554276286736923821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-72322706136940056922012-01-03T02:42:29.804-05:002012-01-03T02:42:29.804-05:00I haven't read this book of Dr. Pinker's y...I haven't read this book of Dr. Pinker's yet. I'll have to find time for it this year. I would be mightily surprised to find he was really an advocate of "free market liberatarianism." He'd be far less popular than he is in pop-science circles if that were the case. I suspect he's being travestied. But on the subject of economics, this reviewer claims he attributes at least some violence to bad economic understanding, and if that's true then Dr. Pinker has a better point than the reviewer admits. <br /><br />In <i>The Blank Slate</i>, I should say, Pinker did exhibit at least some basic understanding of economics...and, more importantly, the way sound economic reasoning contradicts "intuitive economics." It's easy for humans (and, I believe, chimps, but I have no time to check) to pick up the idea that value is something intrinsic in a commodity, and that fair trading is a matter of "equity matching" - so that, in the words of de Sade, "A merchant steals when he sells a sack of potatoes for more than a sack of potatoes is really worth" - and that if the Jews among you (in Europe) or the Indians among you (in Africa) or the Chinese among you (in the Philippines) have grown wealthy by trading, they somehow <i>stole</i> it from you, and there ought to be revenge. <br /><br />The idea that value is subjective, that a trade can benefit <i>both</i> parties, and that the "middleman" can actually make <i>everyone</i> richer - that is counterintuitive - these are real advances in human thought, and if they were more broadly understood and accepted, could prevent a lot of the violence that's taken place in the last century (per Amy Chua's <i>World on Fire</i> and Thomas Sowell's <i>Preferential Policies</i>).Joseph W.https://www.blogger.com/profile/09480728887840887200noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-91070551283248304242012-01-02T19:10:57.570-05:002012-01-02T19:10:57.570-05:00Your formulation is better. The author's gene...Your formulation is better. The author's general point isn't wrong, though -- i.e., that libertarianism has a normative claim about resource distribution. The norm is that you should keep what you earn, unless you choose not to do so. <br /><br />There are a few problems with that claim, even though it sounds reasonable enough on its face. For example, in your own state, there was a time when people came and laid claim to vast swathes of land for cattle. Others wanted to come in later, and said they could more reasonably use the land for farming. The response "I was here first" makes good sense, if there's an endless amount of new land to which one can push on; but when there isn't, there begin to be challenges to the idea that the prosperous man has earned his prosperity. Certainly he invested a lot of labor in that land: but the land he just took. If the farmer is able to do the same, he will also invest labor, and earn on the same terms. But what gives him the right to take the land from the rancher? Well, what gave the first guy the right to take it from the Comanche?<br /><br />That's the plot of <i>Shane</i>, really. It's not that anyone is trying to get a free ride: and it's not even that anyone is wrong. It's that the norm doesn't adequately answer the question, which is why the gunfighters end up having to sort it out. And, really, that's what happened with the Comanche, too.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-75012440987139171462012-01-02T16:37:13.179-05:002012-01-02T16:37:13.179-05:00Libertarianism means believing that those who have...Libertarianism means believing that those who have, should keep? I'd have said it means something more like "those who continue to strive to deserve will continue to receive." The natural state of affairs is not that, absent an intrusive government, people can accumulate good things that will resist decay. The natural state of affairs is that people will do things for each other: intimates will do things for love, without keeping a strict account, and strangers will do things for trade. It takes the intrusion of a government to insist that good things will continue flowing to people who neither accumulate intimates nor do things that other people value.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.com