Bioschock fanpage

[WouldBeCreator]

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[Human Shield]

No, the social sciences are the studies of human action. Economics is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of things of value.

Human behavior is not dictated nor predicated on economics, wealth, ownership, or the desire for any of these, but on what people believe and what they want.

If human behavior were simply about economics, half the world wouldn't persist in policies and beliefs that inhibit economic growth.

"Economics is not about goods and services; it is about human choice and action." -Ludwig von Mises

Economics is based on praxeology. ALL human action is dictated by economics, every person is part of the economy, economics is about human choice.

Pursuing things that inhibit economic growth is done in self-interest, businesses that want legal protections, special interest groups that want benefits, or do-gooders that think it is better.

Human action doesn't stop in politics, the same greedy people now have power to pass laws instead of work for their gains. Economics has public choice theory.

The best argument against capitalism as it has been developed modernly is that it fails to account for irrational human desires and ultimately results in unhappiness as a result, even though it may perfectly account for rational human desires. Put another, capitalism has a tendency to commodify *things* but fails to commodify *feelings* and as a result produces systems that efficiently addresses our corporeal needs without addressing our psychic / spiritual needs at all.

Capitalism does no such thing. Letting them be free doesn't limit against other areas.

How could freedom in any way be more dehumanizing then following a rigid state system?

You may say that's simply an irrational argument -- since it's an argument predicated on human unreason -- but I don't think it was irrational for Odysseus to tie himself to the mast, even though doing so constrained his ability to act in accord with his desires.

Such actions display his desires.

Economics doesn't judge the desire as rational/irrational but how the human goes about doing it (it a rational way). If you want to kill yourself, a .44 magnum is a rational choice.

The market works violence on human institutions -- like nations, towns, religions, families, marriages, etc.

Charities were highest when government was least.

Are you are saying that those institutes only exist while being held together by force and if people are allowed to be free they fall apart? I don't know how you are defining "market".

To paraphrase him, the satisfaction of our needs created new needs and thus replaced biological needs with artificial ones and natural relationships with unnatural ones.

Humans by nature always imagine a more preferable state. You think we would be better off working with our hands on pre-industrial farms?

Another example is the failure of capitalism to treat human relationships properly, most notably the family. Old capitalism propertized family -- wives and children -- and modern capitalism has degenerated further, by propertizing reproduction and intercourse. Modern capitalism has made marriage an economic arrangement,

Why do you confuse capitalism with the state?

where marriages are preceded with contracts arranging the distribution of assets on dissolution, and where the law's only intervention when marriage is terminated is to decide where the property (and propertized children) will go Neither capitalist notion of the family seems "natural" in the sense of biological or in the sense of "god-given."

Having people write their own contracts (which you are limiting to what the state allows) is less "natural" then forcing people to follow one way?

I happen to think that humanity lies in commitments and in community (linked, but distinct concepts), and I don't think capitalism, from efficient breaches and emininent domain in the law to prostitution and ultradense cities in societ, handles either of those things very well.

You realize that "community" efforts to do things without property rights and privatization results in total failure?

 

[vazquez595654]

No country with a McDonalds has ever invaded another country.

Besides," Peace is best preserved not my statesmen but by capitalist"

-Disreali (17th century British Prime Minister)

Capitalism has done the opposite of what communism has done. There is a reason why the U.S., Japan, and U.K. are thriving and Cuba (at least until Castro dies), North Korea, and Venezuela are piss poor.

Teh Nawledge!

 

[kingcomrade]

No country with a McDonalds has ever invaded another country.

Umm...you sure about that? Because I can think of a dozen just off the top of my head. Now I suppose that one could work if you substitute "invade" with "try to conquer and annex"

 

[Sirbolt]

Hmm, interesting discussion.

I haven't seen any rational argument about how a system that enforces natural human rights (and why some defend it so as a religion) can go too far. It it trite to say extremes are bad.

Natural human rights? No such thing exists. Unless you believe in moral objectivism, that is.

 

[vazquez595654]

Umm...you sure about that?

invade

1. To enter by force in order to conquer or pillage.



I am sure.

 

[kingcomrade]

2) To encroach or intrude on; violate
3) To overrun as if by invading; infest
4) To enter and permeate, especially harmfully.

Try again.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

[]

 

[vazquez595654]

2) To encroach or intrude on; violate
3) To overrun as if by invading; infest
4) To enter and permeate, especially harmfully.

Try again.

I am talking with respect to foreign policy in mind.

 

[kingcomrade]

...yeah? And?

 

[Human Shield]

Hmm, interesting discussion.

I haven't seen any rational argument about how a system that enforces natural human rights (and why some defend it so as a religion) can go too far. It it trite to say extremes are bad.

Natural human rights? No such thing exists. Unless you believe in moral objectivism, that is.

Can you do something with your body without asking someone else? If someone has a "right" they don't have to ask a higher authority.

If you agree to owe me $100, I have a right to it. If you want to kill me and I say no, you wouldn't have the right to do so.

By nature of our ability to reason we can declare we have rights. Natural rights are negative, as in "not be interfered with".

And how do you know there aren't moral absolutes?

 

[WouldBeCreator]

McDonald's began in 1940. Surely we "invaded" Germany and Japan, even in the first definition of the word? I think the point you're looking for is that no liberal democracy has ever made war on another liberal democracy and (arguably) have never begun a war with anyone except to prevent that other country from making war on someone else. That is, no liberal democracy has ever attacked another country with the stated goal of conquest or ethnic cleansing.

 

[Sirbolt]

Can you do something with your body without asking someone else? If someone has a "right" they don't have to ask a higher authority.

If you agree to owe me $100, I have a right to it. If you want to kill me and I say no, you wouldn't have the right to do so.

By nature of our ability to reason we can declare we have rights. Natural rights are negative, as in "not be interfered with".

And how do you know there aren't moral absolutes?

But that is a subjective right and not an objective one, there is no "basic human" right that is not based upon assumptions and consensus.

By nature of my ability to reason i can declare that we have no rights except the ones we have constructed ourselves. Thus any code, ethos or economic system based on these rights is subjective, and at best a compromise, since consensus and "truth" (if there is such a thing) is not always the same thing,

How i know there are no moral absolutes? Since that would require a an unquestionable source that is above reproach, i e a God. The same applies to "natural" human rights.

 

[Human Shield]

@ HS: I'm not sure why you want to try to talk down to me or act as though I'm a utopian.

Most statists are :wink: .

For example, you could do me the courtesy of not writing: "You think we would be better off working with our hands on pre-industrial farms?"

That was in reply to biological needs and was a question.

You ask, "How could freedom in any way be more dehumanizing then following a rigid state system?" Well, the answer is that untrammeled freedom may not be "human nature," particularly when advances in technology have destroyed natural limits on human freedom.

Explain.

It seems to me that your definition of capitalism is anarchocapitalism, but perhaps I'm misreading you.

You would be correct.

In any event, when you say that capitalism doesn't "do" things, of course you're right, just as communism didn't "do" the gulags or the purges or the collectivization / starvation of the Ukraine (let alone the Great Leap Forward, etc.). Capitalism, like communism, is an idea.

But the communism idea allows for violence against property owners, often phrased as "uniting workers".

I won't permit you to claim that the profound social transformations that occured when the West went capitalist had nothing to do with "true capitalism." Let's be reasonable adults, not utopian zealots.

What social transformations? Charity and church was in very high demand, it starts dropping off the more the government grew in power, like during and after the Great Depression.

Where do you think the ideas of liberty came if not the a greater desire for spirtual/intellectual areas?

There are lot of ways in which humans aren't rational beings. That has been conclusively demonstrated by modern psychology and explained with recourse to evolution. There have been studies after studies showing that humans make bad choices all the time because, for evolutionary reasons, that form of decision-making was effective in the pleistocene (sp?) when we were doing most of our genetic sorting. Many of these bad choices can be avoided with deliberation -- either internally pondering an issue for a long time or discussing it among others.

Define "bad choices".

The trouble with capitalism is that it tends to favor undeliberative decisions over deliberative ones. For example, people buy things all the time that they can't afford, even though the longterm cost of doing so is ruinous. Unfettered capitalism permits them do this. By permitting them to do it, it reinforces the practice and diminishes the likelihood that there will be society-wide deliberation on the issue.

Incorrect. Capitalism disfavors that by its nature, those that do so end up suffering.

How can you argue that suffering increases the likelihood of it happening? Are you saying people make calculation errors? No one can predict the future.

Fractional reserve banking, inflation, credit expansion also creates rampant misinvestment and future gambles by presenting people with incorrect and unpredictable information that they must use.

An increase in the desire for bail-outs and "kind government" stepping in leads to an increase in such behavior. For example government problems to help fat people gives an incentive for more people to be fat. If such people believe the government will bail them out they will engage in such practices.

Having people suffer full for their own actions will create incentives to not do such.

The result is that we get *structures* that develop to support the idea of capitalism. Among these structures are the modern state and the rule of law. So when you quibble with what the rule of law does in America, you're quibbling with something produced, almost entirely, out of the capitalist ethos. Likewise, when you write about how charity declined when government expanded, you're confusing correlation for causation. I would charge that government expansion and charitable decline both have their roots in the capitalist enterprise.

So we disagree in what capitalism is. If you think greed is something that is part of capitalism and not human nature we have a larger disagreement. Of course people are going to want more political power.

Of course, neither of us can empirically prove our beliefs. So what we're left with is the inherent plausibility of our arguments and an examination of anncecdotal evidence. For myself, I've not found that objectivists and libertarians are particularly generous or charitable, either in the monetary sense or the social sense. They have tended to be judgmental and fiercely independent. Good people, but not the first I would come to if I needed a hand up. Conversely, if you look at a strongly un-economic arrangement, like the Church, you see extraordinarily high levels of charity. Put otherwise, poor church-goers give lots, rich capitalists give little, not in absolute terms, but in relative terms.

But was the Church more or less generous the more political power it had? You seem to forget that Churches would exist the same in a free market except they would have more money to use instead of paying taxes (I help with finances at my church).

I believe that people are inherently good but deeply flawed -- put religiously, made by God but tempted by Satan. Social structures that don't revolve around our short-term impulses reinforce, I think, our better selves (so long as they're the right structures). The absence of social structures or a structure shaped only by our bare impulses is one that erodes our better selves.

All social structures are made by men. Human nature doesn't change if you give some the power to tax and enforce laws. And I would say humans are inherently sinful.

But can I imagine that there are things that he has that I don't? Absolutely. My family -- like many in affluent societies -- is diminishing. My grandparents had like 15-20 siblings between the four of them. I have one brother. My wife has one brother. She has one cousin. I have two. We live scattered across the United States. I don't belong to a religious institution, I have no faith in my leaders, I have no one I trust to give me moral guidance, I am constantly beset with shame at the depths of my ignorance.

The state doesn't produce the family, if anything it has torn it up.

America has no lack of churches, freedom gives options for every faith on the planet to be exercised.

Family life is always going to vary from area to area that is a result of culture. You are free to go join the Amish community (they are getting by fine in the free market) or start your own large family.

And how would a state create better families? Most tampering they do has the opposite then intended effect.

(ignorance of which I would have been unaware were I a peasant). I'm halfway disgusted with our society's fascination with sex and material things and halfway enthralled by it. All I do all day is read on a monitor and clack on a keyboard. I feel like my body is forever withering and so I sustain it by artificial "exercise" -- running through my neighborhood, lifting weights -- rather than by anything a natural human being would do. I seldom am outdoors for more than an hour a day.

Seems like you are enthralled with the "noble savage" myth that most leftists embrace. The grass always looks greener. People having to work all day to live probably wouldn't understand that people living like the king would want to trade places. Time spent doing it would have most wanting to come back to their grocery store, if not they can live that way. Like I said people are still free to live that way if they choose to and the Amish do so.

And yet while I feel like that might be my natural self, the artificial desires of society have forever made it impossible for me to pursue it, because I *need* the comforts won for me by my brain and given out to me by the market. That's why I have my doubts about capitalism.

Is a society of free people can control you with "artificial desires" what could a state do?

If you have enough money take up camping or something. Or if you want a true purpose and guidance start a personal relationship with God through the Holy Spirit.

 

[Human Shield]

But that is a subjective right and not an objective one, there is no "basic human" right that is not based upon assumptions and consensus.

By nature of my ability to reason i can declare that we have no rights except the ones we have constructed ourselves. Thus any code, ethos or economic system based on these rights is subjective, and at best a compromise, since consensus and "truth" (if there is such a thing) is not always the same thing.

And using your own ability to reason has what consequences that follow? That the laws of human action and value come into play.

If you argue that everyone has their own reality running and everything is "constructed" (an argument impossible to make) then A = A becomes subjective.

"Constructed ourselves" can mean by nature of the human mind. If you think human nature varies then it can be subjective, but if it exists because of the human mind it is pretty objective in existing.

How i know there are no moral absolutes? Since that would require a an unquestionable source that is above reproach, i e a God. The same applies to "natural" human rights.

Then you have to place moral absolutes as unknown since you don't know that a unquestionable source doesn't exist.

 

[Sirbolt]

And using your own ability to reason has what consequences that follow? That the laws of human action and value come into play.

If you argue that everyone has their own reality running and everything is "constructed" (an argument impossible to make) then A = A becomes subjective.

"Constructed ourselves" can mean by nature of the human mind. If you think human nature varies then it can be subjective, but if it exists because of the human mind it is pretty objective in existing.

Then you have to place moral absolutes as unknown since you don't know that a unquestionable source doesn't exist.

In my opinion, the concept of basing everybodys truths about the world upon oneself died with Kant.

Everyone has their own perspective on things, yes, since everything is subjective by it's very nature, and thus every concept is constructed in an effort to make sense of the world we observe. Every "truth" that humankind holds dear is a result of the philosophizing of humans and is based upon the observations of the world we live in. Some of them seem more "truthful" than others, therefore consensus leads people to believe that they are indeed "THE Truth". I believe this to be false, since in a subjective world where everything is relative, there can be no "good" and no "bad", only difference of opinion.

I know an unquestionable source does not exist within man.

 

[Chefe]

Sounds like a stupid game to me.

 

[Human Shield]

In my opinion, the concept of basing everybodys truths about the world upon oneself died with Kant.

Everyone has their own perspective on things, yes, since everything is subjective by it's very nature, and thus every concept is constructed in an effort to make sense of the world we observe. Every "truth" that humankind holds dear is a result of the philosophizing of humans and is based upon the observations of the world we live in. Some of them seem more "truthful" than others, therefore consensus leads people to believe that they are indeed "THE Truth". I believe this to be false, since in a subjective world where everything is relative, there can be no "good" and no "bad", only difference of opinion.

I know an unquestionable source does not exist within man.

Then stop saying things aren't objective because such a view is only your subjective view.

Try to believe that a whole is not greater then its parts, or that gravity doesn't exist because it all is only subjective... I'd say you would just be dead wrong.

 

[Sirbolt]

Then stop saying things aren't objective because such a view is only your subjective view.

Try to believe that a whole is not greater then its parts, or that gravity doesn't exist because it all is only subjective... I'd say you would just be dead wrong.

And you mean to tell me that yours isn't? Of course i can only argue according to my own perspective on things. I did not think i would have to state that.

Gravity is a name for a phenomen that i can observe exists, yes. But that doesn't make any assumptions i make on what the word or concept entails any more accurate. The limitations on my view of "gravity" exist within the limitations of language and human communication, and the fact that noone understands it fully. Thus "gravity" and all that may or may not entail is no objective thruth to me, or any other human.

 

[Human Shield]

And you mean to tell me that yours isn't? Of course i can only argue according to my own perspective on things. I did not think i would have to state that.

Then is it possible for it be objective but that you don't see it?

Thus "gravity" and all that may or may not entail is no objective thruth to me, or any other human.

Then can some people fly if gravity is subjective?

 

[Drakron]

So we moved from human morality to science!

Nice way to change the subject ... fact is if I want to kill you then your "right" to live is completly based on the current human sociaty.

Gravity is a natural force, "the right to not be killed by menbers of your species" is a not.

And as I am at it, NOBODY is objective in their opinions, the effect of gravity is not a opinio.

 

[Sirbolt]

Then is it possible for it be objective but that you don't see it?

Then can some people fly if gravity is subjective?

There is a chance that a God, or the God has ordained rules of which to live by, yes. That would be the only way for me to convievably believe that they are objective though.

Did you not understand what i meant? My view of gravity is subjective and probably differs a lot from your view of gravity. Just as my colour purple may not be your colour purple. And yes, some people do fly, and i doubt it requires more than their subjective view on gravity to do so.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

@ HS:

I've actually thought through this a fair bit, so giving me trite lines like, "If you were poor for a day, you'd want to be rich again" isn't going to persuade me. If you read the substance of my post, rather than treating it as an argument you've heard a thousand times and ignoring everything that doesn't conform to that, I think we'd have a much more constructive conversation. Not that there's much point in doing that on a board, anyway, of course. Ad hominem arguing is so much more fun!

So, as a "leftist" and a "utopian" -- labels clearly deserved by my posts in this -- here's my response to your "rich man becomes poor" argument:

OBVIOUSLY anyone who has become accustomed to luxury would not give it up, and OBVIOUSLY anyone unacquainted by luxury will be seduced by it. Your argument basically runs like, "Would any heroin addict want to be without his heroin? Not *cured* of his *addiction*, but cut off from its supply?" Obviously not. "Would any person just getting a taste of heroin, without any knowledge of its consequences, want more?" Obviously so.

Luxury, knowledge, freedom, etc. are potent drugs. Not necessarily *harmful* drugs, but drugs all the same. (And I'm being metaphorical here, they obviously aren't pharmacological, although they do create dependencies.) Without a very, very hard (possibly unending) withdrawal, I couldn't leave behind this comfort any more than an addict can quit his heroin.

I'm struck by a depressing image of a friend of mine from high school, who became a drug addict, and while drunk and high was lecturing my brother on the fact that he -- my friend -- had experienced pleasures my brother would never know. I can't help but be certain my brother, who blew him off -- rudely, true -- was certainly in the better position.

You ask, "How could freedom in any way be more dehumanizing then following a rigid state system?" Well, the answer is that untrammeled freedom may not be "human nature," particularly when advances in technology have destroyed natural limits on human freedom.

Explain.

Well, suppose that human nature was such that we are incapable of empathizing with, and therefore behaving morally towards, more than a few hundred individuals. In a natural state, people seldom would encounter more than that many people in their lives. Of course, in the state of nature we have the capacity to do great wrong to each other. But that "freedom" was checked by our natural empathy. With the society that has risen up with capitalism, humans interact with infinitely more people, and thus have a failure of empathy. It may not hurt not to be empathetic to others (although I suspect it does), but it certainly hurts to have others not empathize with you. Thus, a society that permits huge cities, etc., although granting more freedom reduces our humanity.

Now, you may quibble with my factual premises, and in fact I doubt those particular ones are true. But that would be one example.

As an overall point, the problem you see to have boils down to "define bad choices." The studies that have been done show that people often simply make "wrong" choices -- for example, in sorting tasks -- that suggests that we process information not rationally but through the lens of what was most effective when we were evolving. It seems perfectly reasonable, and consistent with what we see every day, to imagine that people make similar bad choices all the time in our society. They make those choices irrespective of the consequences. Thus, people have always drunk away their money, regardless of whether there was a welfare net to catch them. I rather imagine that's in part because we didn't evolve with alcohol and thus didn't weed out that mistake back in the day.

To be sure, absent any safety net, over a few million years we might -- *might* -- get rid of those traits. Of course, it's not clear to me that the traits we systematically want to get rid of are those that fail in a free market. For example, extreme altruism may be market inefficient for a host of reasons, but moral all the same.

When I say that capitalism "favors" ill-conceived choices, I don't mean that it favors it in that those that make bad choices excel. It favors it because purveyors benefit from encouraging bad choices because it's often cheaper to convince someone to buy a bad product than it is to produce a good one.

You write that "[h]aving people suffer full for their own actions will create incentives to not do such." But that's only true if people are able to internalize future costs and risks, but that's not true, and that's painfully obvious to anyone who believes in the people he sees, rather than in homo economicus.

Moreover, people will only "suffer full for their own actions" if there is no charity in the world, which is why I continue to persist in my view that your vision of capitalism is a mean one and why I continue in my skepticism about objectivism. Decent people oughtn't to want others to suffer, in my opinion, regardless of whether it's their own damn fault or not. In a society where only altruistic people bear the cost of helping the suffering of others, you favor the selfish and thus increase society's selfishness. Or do you not get that, either?

Capitalism creates unintended incentives, just as all systems do. I don't see why you think capitalism alone is free of this.

But the communism idea allows for violence against property owners, often phrased as "uniting workers".

Does it? Marx allows for a temporary "tyranny of the proletariat," but that isn't *communism* any more than the capitalism that he saw as a necessary antecedent to the tyranny of the proletariat was communism. They were steps toward communism. The fact is, of course, that no state ever could get past the tyranny. Unsurprising, of course. That's what makes it utopian. Capitalism's utopia is assuming that everyone, given freedom to choose, will choose what is best for them. Statism's utopia is believing that a state could be created that would choose better than individuals.

Regardless, labeling as "communism" all forms of community owernship is a bit of a cheap shot. Certainly the kibbutzim in Israel aren't communist. Certainly Jesus's followers weren't pinkos.

But was the Church more or less generous the more political power it had? You seem to forget that Churches would exist the same in a free market except they would have more money to use instead of paying taxes (I help with finances at my church).

But this, it seems to me, is an argument for *anarchy* not an argument for *capitalism.* The two are definitely not the same, though they are of course linked in anarchocapitalism.

Frankly, I'm troubled that a Christian is so blase about the seductive power of capitalism. I direct you to:

1) Ecclesiastes 5:12 ("The sleep of a laborer is sweet, / whether he eats little or much, / but the abundance of a rich man / permits him no sleep.") -- those damn lefty Jews!

2) James 1:9-11 ("The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. / But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. / For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business.")

3) Luke 12:13-32 -- too long to quote here in full.

4) Acts 4:32-35 ("All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. / With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. / There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales / and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.); Acts 2:44-45 ("All the believers were together and had everything in common. / Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.").

5) Matthew 6:19-21, 24 ("Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. / But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. / For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. . . . / No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon [money].").

6) Mark 4:18-19 ("Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; / but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.").

I don't mean to preach at you, but since you enjoined me to commune with the Holy Spirit, it seemed only fair to quote the Word back at you. And I think it's fair to say that on this point, the Bible is squarely in my camp in the idea that the possession of *things* is at best a distraction and at worst all-consuming and sorrow-brining.

The state doesn't produce the family, if anything it has torn it up.

The *market* tore it up with the industrial revolution. The *state* has only helped the remnants to subsist.

America has no lack of churches, freedom gives options for every faith on the planet to be exercised.

But you don't understand, and I don't seem to be able to make you understand: when sailors could hear the sirens, they still had the freedom not to jump from the ship. But they would always choose to jump. That's why Odysseus had them stop their ears and why he tied himself to the mast. It seems to me that his sailors had the better; Odysseus, for the rest of his days, could but compare Penelope's voice to the siren's and find it wanting, compare her *exertions* to Circe's and find them inadequate. No?

In the same way, we can build all the churches we want to appease our guilt, but guilty we are all the same. The liberty of the market is libertinage.

Family life is always going to vary from area to area that is a result of culture. You are free to go join the Amish community (they are getting by fine in the free market) or start your own large family.

Haha. Apparently you haven't followed the drug crisis in the Amish community?

Moreover, you repeatedly -- willfully at this point, I suppose -- refuse to acknowledge my point, which is that having enjoyed the fruits of technology, we can't give them up easily.

And how would a state create better families? Most tampering they do has the opposite then intended effect.

What I don't understand is how you've come to equate capitalism with statelessness and not with any economic system. But, regardless, one way the state can encourage marriage is by providing economic incentives for it, by providing dispensations for married people (see, e.g., Deuteronomy 24:5), by protecting them from influences that tear at familial bonds (like, say, rampant sexualization), etc. I don't know that those are necessarily right or righteous, but it's just a *fact* that the state can protect marriage. Why do you think that theocratic / statist regimes have such stronger (albeit tainted) family structures than we do? Because they're capitalist at heart? (snicker)

Is a society of free people can control you with "artificial desires" what could a state do?

Destroy the things that satisfy those desires, the way the state can control drugs, pornography, etc. Is it that hard to imagine a state influencing desires?

What's funny to me is that you obviously have enormous fear of government repression, but you fail to believe that the government actually can repress anything. Strikes me as odd.

 

[iago]

Good point. Actually, strictly speaking it is beyond the state that we have to look at. Most Societal groups, regardlessly of how large or small they may be, engender forms of control by their mere existence. To explain, the thought of breaking away from or embracing the relative forms of power existing in society does so within the frameworks established by that very society. We cannot really think outside its framework.

To give a silly example, the mere fact that existing within this societal group makes us think of gravity makes the existence of gravity an extension of its power. Yet it is impossible not to accept it as truth. It cannot but be true. However give a society where gravity is not relevant, its existence may be consisted relativce. Also if you're simply talking abaout the causative effects of gravity rather than the theory itself...any theory is acceptable within the frameworks of truth of its system. Our framework of truth is loosely based on the scientific method. This wasn't the case since less than 300 years ago for the West, and still isn't the case for several non western societies.

Some thinkers speak of a tyranny of science, by which they mean that it can be counter-productive to disallow a statement I wish to assume true simply because it contradicts the scientrific paradigm. After all much of the scientific paradigm is etablished on rules that do not follow the rules of the scientific method.

Engenedering this Idea are several thinkers, I believe most effectively Gramsci, although without taking its full implication (he still believed a form of resistence was open, even though it assumed that it stemmed from a sort of understanding of the societal framework).

Further is Foucault, who takes it to its fullest extent. In his later age he started theorizing of a way to escape the thinking patterns and perceptions of freedom established by a society, or at least how to conceive of these constraints as relative freedoms, but unfortunately he died before completing his opus the history of sexuality (it's not what you may think)...

Not replying to any post in particular, just wish to bring some relativism to the discussion...

 

[Seboss]

What the heck ?! I thought this thread was about Bioshock, not metaphysical blaberish. I guess I was wrong.

<crawls back under his rock>