A quote from Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
The presence of hierarchy doesn't mean there can't be more or less hierarchy: comparing Cleopatra to Elon Musk -- I can say Elon Musk is an insufferable idiot whose opinions we all have to endure, but if I said that about Cleopatra in her time, being a living goddess, while I could say it the punishment could be harsher than when I say what I say about Elon Musk.
If that's so then we could make the economy better even if hierarchy is inevitable.
The term "democracy", "rule by the people", is in and of itself already nonsensical because in reality a country is always "ruled by the oligarchy".
This is a matter of simple geometry.
There is always a hierarchical top to society where all the political power accumulates, and therefore, also pretty much all the wealth.
Efforts to make the populace believe in the always-fake democracy are very bad for the people that they are supposed to serve. You are just bamboozling them a bit more.
It is simply not possible to prevent the concentration of political power and therefore of wealth.
The presence of hierarchy doesn't mean there can't be more or less hierarchy: comparing Cleopatra to Elon Musk -- I can say Elon Musk is an insufferable idiot whose opinions we all have to endure, but if I said that about Cleopatra in her time, being a living goddess, while I could say it the punishment could be harsher than when I say what I say about Elon Musk.
If that's so then we could make the economy better even if hierarchy is inevitable.
Comments (208)
Quoting Moliere
Alright, but him and other "idiots" like Trump owe several things everybody here uses and have accomplished much more than everybody here together. Who are the idiots after all? Judge a tree by its fruits.
Also, I can't deny, I enjoy going through drivel :D
In a capitalist society, wealth becomes concentrated, then redistributed by economic crisis. It's happened over and over, no matter who was in charge. The secret to the endurance of capitalism is that it's incredibly creative. In a sense, it created all of us.
The only part democracy plays is that it provides the freedom capitalism needs.
I will be honest with you and tell you I have no clue what this means.
As to the OP, for starters, 'democracy' isn't 'rule by the people'. Obviously the argument here is etymological, but then it would be 'power by the people'; 'rule by the people' would be 'demarchy', but that is already a word that means 'city hall' in Greek, though it was used once or twice in ancient times as a synonym of 'democracy'. Not an important detail, but just throwing it out there.
There is nothing "geometric" about the matter either. It is another episode of the individual abusing mathematical language to give appearances of credibility to drivel.
Though I include them because they seem to include the latter parts a bit. There's nothing "geometric" beyond asserting that hierarchy is inevitable. That's part of why I wanted to put this up here for discussion: I've often seen these sorts of claims with respect to hierarchy without really saying much more than "There will always be winners and losers, so stop talking about making it better"
It is quite accurate that nature organises itself with hierarchical complexity. That began right from the Big Bang. It is the natural pattern of all Nature. It is the logic of organised being that cant be escaped for reasons that hierarchy theory as a mathematical science makes clear.
So the thing when it comes to politics is to recognise the fact and use it to your best advantage. You dont want to waste time trying to erase hierarchical order. You want to understand it well enough to use it to achieve your goals.
In general, democracy embodies the ideal of some fruitful balance of local competition and global cooperation in a society. Fruitful can then be defined in various ways. And thats where choices start to get made.
If you want democracy that delivers eternalised 3% GDP growth, then that is a very simple thought that can indeed scale to organise a whole society. If you want that growth to be fairly distributed, then that becomes more complicated to ensure.
What even is fair if you, as a society, have decided to pursue growth over stasis (or even a well managed decline, as in Green politics)? Stasis would be have a Gaussian distribution of wealth as its ideal. Growth would be powerlaw.
Then how do you deal with oligarchy and other forms of wealth accumulation and corruption. Political power is going to accumulate in powerlaw fashion as well unless your economic system is run in a way that is independent from your political system.
So could you have a Gaussian constraint on wealth accumulation coupled to a powerlaw distribution of wealth? Getting tricky to manage. To do so would require having your society entrained to some kind of strong transcendent principle about billionaires returning their money to society in a counterbalancing generational fashion and not leaving it to their kids or self-agrandising but ineffective foundations.
So understand the naturalness of hierarchical order and you can start imagining the big picture choices that have to be made so as to tune the hierarchical order that is going to emerge no matter what social course you decide steer.
Always better to drive with a hand on the steering wheel. Make hierarchical complexity work for you.
You cannot make it better for everyone but you can certainly make it better for yourself, by going where you are treated best.
As a digital nomad slash nomad capitalist, I do not care if the ruling oligarchy increases taxes in a particular jurisdiction, for example, because it never affects me.
Most political decisions are irrelevant to me because I can just choose another jurisdiction where they made another political decision.
Freedom from harassment by the oligarchy is possible. It takes effort to achieve it, but in my opinion, it is definitely worth it.
Exactly!
Karl Marx did not erase hierarchical order. His communists merely created another one.
Any attempt at erasing inequalities will simply lead to other inequalities to the benefit of the small core demographic that has successfully managed to monopolize political power.
Political power itself cannot be abolished. It will always exist because that is simply human nature.
Wow. You realised you describe the age of Colonialism so well. Just the same model in todays world. Pack up your bags and settle in some land inhabited only by natives you fundamentally need not care about. Take it from there.
Perhaps you should consider not participating.
First of all, colonialism is about forcing your views onto the indigenous population. You are not in that position as a digital nomad or nomad capitalist. You just need a place where the ruling mafia will leave you alone. It is not about oppressing others but about avoiding getting oppressed yourself.
Secondly, there is nothing in the doctrine of zakaat (mandatory charity) or sadaqah (voluntary charity) that says anything about which nationality is supposed to be its beneficiary. Every nationality is suitable for charitable action.
In fact, the digital nomad lifestyle is considered eminently halal:
In the end, all morality emanates from the laws of the Almighty.
There is nothing in the digital nomad lifestyle that forces you to violate the laws of our beloved Lord.
This is normal because you are free to do as you please as long as you do not overstep the few guardrails with which our beloved Master has defined what behavior is forbidden onto you.
Marxism failed as communism. But it fared better as social democracy. Russia and China had to make big jumps just to become industrial powers within a single generation. Europe was already a bunch of wealthy industrial powers - due to their colonial systems and technological might. So the basic issue of what kind of societies they wanted to be was at least in play in that regard. They were various versions of constitutional monarchies and so pretty high tech as social hierarchies.
As @frank notes, even then it took world wars and depressions to break up the wealth accumulations and tip the balance back towards the ordinary folk. So not exactly a well planned approach to bringing the balance back towards a more Gaussian wealth distribution.
Quoting Tarskian
Hierarchy is simply nature. It is the pattern that self-organises to distribute anything in scaled fashion. Your circulation system is fractal so that all your cells can live each according to their ability/each according to their need.
Power is a vague term, but it can be more precisely defined. US dollars per barrel of oil is a good metric these days, just as horsepower was a while back, or bushels of wheat.
Political power perhaps ought to mean the ability to get good things done. To be able to command resources with capital. In practice, it has been corrupted by adding the rider of for me, and my gang.
So sure, we can have political power without also having its corruption. Or we can at least - pragmatically - minimise the corruption to some statistically tolerable level.
That is the way technocratic policy makers indeed think from long experience of trying to make political systems work. You cant catch all thieves, but you can run a business that puts on a customer friendly face and so profits even while having to manage its annual stock shrinkage number.
Most of what actually happens in power circles - in well-run social democracies or corporations at least - is so mundane and commonsense that there is no doctrinal debate. The small stuff takes care of itself. The big stuff? Well that can be left til tomorrow.
Exactly what the colonisers shipping out Europe said by the boat load. They looked forward to no longer tugging the forelock at home, enjoying the welcome of the free and noble savages in the lands without yet the corruptions of civilisation.
Of course, illusion collided with reality with often genocidal results. At least the digital nomad can feel they are not importing their disease and cannon. Just their Melbourne cafe culture and sleaze.
I perfectly understand the allure of being a digital nomad. My comment is that this nothing new. Pick up sticks and head for where your relative poverty becomes relative wealth. Plenty of pensioners do exactly the same thing.
The political question is what do we think about it if we extrapolate the trend - the trickle becoming the flood? Do we still think it such a wonderful thing? Does it successfully scale?
Get to that question and you have a political position to advance here. At the moment you are just describing running away from problems rather than fixing problems.
Quoting Tarskian
Well thats a point of view. But also the kind of appeal to transcendent principle that any hierarchical order is going to need to make to bring everyone under the one social system.
That is, religion has long served this precise social function. And sadly religious institutions are also famously corruptible. A constitutional society seems better. But the US is an example of how that can eventually go if it doesnt keep its power balancing mechanisms politically up to date.
The emerging hierarchy is influencers at the top, then the digital nomads, migrant workers and state-collapse refugees? Some travel by super yacht, others by rubber dinghy.
They have apparently reached the limit in Barcelona, Gran Canaria, Mallorca, and Venice. The bottom of Spanish and Italian income ladder are now chanting "Tourist go home!"
I agree. I already said that 10 years ago. These places were dangerous tourist traps back then already. There's little point in visiting a place where 80% of the people around you are just other visitors.
But then again, as a nomad you can go and live for a while in Ulaan Bator, Mongolia, or even better, in one of their provincial cities, and get everyone incessantly staring at you, including the prettiest of their females.
These people want to talk to me. I am apparently "interesting" to them, the reason being that they don't often see a specimen like me in their godforsaken outpost of the world. "Can we invite you over for dinner tonight? We have two daughters!"
Quoting apokrisis
Instead of trying to solve everyone else's problems, I am solving my own. It works like a charm. I am completely satisfied with the outcome.
Why should I be interested in everybody else's problems? Are they even interested in mine?
Quoting apokrisis
Welcome to the real world!
My own tactics consist in accepting the morality of the nomadic shepherds as my own moral standard. The first farmers were too degenerate already. I don't trust them.
If I could, I would reprogram myself around the morality of the original hunter-gatherers but these guys could not write. So, they did not transmit a copy of their moral rules to us. That is why I make do with the nomadic shepherds.
Quoting apokrisis
Power will predictably accumulate inside a small oligarchy. These people have now learned to game the system. It never stood a chance to begin with. Every system can be gamed. If it can be gamed, it will be gamed.
Sure, sure. One can always live on the fringe as an option. Or seek to flee it too.
Digital nomad or migrant worker? Individuals can always be individual. Hierarchy theory is about the larger balance of a system that has to be a scalable combination of its freedoms and constraints. That is where the political debate begins.
Quoting Tarskian
But we know quite a lot about hunter-gatherers. And what reliable sources are you using when it comes to nomadic shepherds? Any cites?
Quoting Tarskian
And every system can be policed. That is what hierarchies are supposed to be doing if they are properly organised.
Hierarchies are just how nature plumbs its entropy flows. They are essentially neutral. Humans have simply turned economic and social hierarchies into something we can consciously construct. Scale neutrality becomes something we thus also have to maintain by good political design.
That is why anti-oligarchy and anti-monopoly policies exist. Breaking up the blockages with a bit of vigorous intervention.
Or not, if a good system is becoming a failing one.
The Torah and the Quran emerged out of nomadic shepherds.
Quoting apokrisis
That is not the problem. The problem is:
And who exactly polices the police itself?
Quoting apokrisis
That is not the problem. The problem is:
Concerning the people who devise and carry out anti-oligarchy policies, they are an oligarchy themselves. So, who exactly will enforce anti-oligarchy policies against them?
The Romans already understood the problem very well:
The custodes custodorum problem is fraught with infinite regress and is therefore fundamentally unsolvable. All solutions proposed always amount to bamboozling the populace into believing that they work, while that is simply not possible.
This time, we solved the problem! No, you didn't.
Just happen to be reading a book about the early Iron Age, and the Israelites weren't nomadic. Arabs weren't either. I can see how you'd get that impression though.
Muhammad had a number of occupations. The Arabs weren't nomadic.
Oh wow. I wasnt expecting your ideology to be quite so narrowly based.
Quoting apokrisis
Imagine that I say that every claim is corrupt.
It won't work because in that case, the claim that claims that, is also corrupt.
Hence, there must exist truthful statements. The question is now: Where do we find them?
Well, not in our contemporary society. Everybody alive today has been corrupted from early childhood by our degenerate society. So, let's go back as far as we can to find a society with substantially less corruption. That is how I ended up at the nomadic shepherds. Going back earlier than that, is not possible, because the people who came before that, did not leave any written records.
I simply do not believe what modern people say on morality because their views were inculcated by the degenerate society in which we live.
Humans were originally nomadic because they followed migrating herds. They probably didn't have much corruption. There wasn't much to corrupt.
That's true. It's a consequence of freedom. Competition means winners and losers. Winners are in a stronger position to compete and tend to win more than losers, and vice versa.
Quoting Tarskian
That works the other way round, as well. It is simply not possible to prevent the concentration of wealth and therefore of political power.
However, those at the top of the hierarchy tend to succumb to wishful thinking and to deceive themselves into thinking they are not utterly dependent of the lower ranks for their position. Competition means that they can lose everything. Secretly, however, I think they are well aware of this and have to live in fear, while pretending to be utterly confident. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown". This may explain why philosophers, who are by definition rational, are seldom also kings.
Quoting Tarskian
People have been saying that forever - almost certainly since societies were formed. But the Golden Age of the past, on closer inspection, always turns out to be a nightmare. Why on earth would one want to become a nomadic shepherd in any earlier age?
The free market is the worst possible way of organizing an economy except for all the others. It is riddled with paradox. It is not in the interest of sellers, and not in the interest of buyers either. Sellers want higher prices and will always do their best to distort the market. Buyers want lower prices and will always do their best to distort the market.
However, it is not a case of one group of people against another. Every participant in the market is both a buyer and a seller. That's why free markets are an extremely fragile institutions and will always require heavy state regulation. But indeed. Especially as they are also players in the market.
I'm not sure if wealth necessarily leads to political power.
You would still need to make the connections with people who actually have the political power. Some wealthy people pull that off, but not all.
All politically powerful people get approached by wealthy people for political privileges, but not necessarily the other way around.
I think democracy is more of a levy to capitalism than an accelerator: democracy, thus far, has happened to help capitalism, but that's because democracies are overwhelmingly not democratic even in the representative sense. The people there come from money and so vote for things that help thems, like all humans do. (this is a big problem for representative democracy: since humans vote for themselves, by human nature, you can't build representative systems since the apes that get the office are no better than the apes at home, and will vote for themselves)
But if you build in more steps for scrutiny then this gets tampered as the individual decision becomes collective.
Quoting Tarskian
I think this is an individualistic response: if you can make it happen for you then do it.
Sure! If you're content then go be content all by yourself.
I'm thinking about everyone here while also thinking of myself.
Quoting apokrisis
Oh? I like to waste my time in exactly that pursuit.
That's true. But I was also thinking of the political influence wealth can have indirectly, not by influencing politicians. Where does that new factory go? Who going to be laid off? Where am I going to put my money? That sort of thing. Money talks. To put it another way, "it's all about economics, stupid"
I think you've slipped up there. Isn't the idea of representation that the apes that get the office should as like the apes as home as possible?
But your subtext is correct, of course. It is very hard to find democratic politicians who will vote for an unpopular policy.
The apes that get to office should be like the apes at home, insofar that's possible (and insofar that we're able to protect the wolves voting what to do with the sheep in some legal jujitsu)
My thought is that as soon as you're "the representative" then, in the material sense of being-able, you're no longer the same as whom you represent. (one of the mechanisms of syndicalism is that representatives cannot re-present, so a new person has to go up to say what the people they represent think every time, whatever that "time" happens to be designated as)
Quoting Ludwig V
I appreciate your grace, but I don't know what my subtext is (other than the usual drivel I say ;) ).
I'm thinking through these questions still, and posting in the hopes of hearing others' thoughts. In the old-skool forum way :D
Why not just go straight to monarchy? That's where ancient Greek democracies always ended up.
I guess I take that question more seriously than you do.
Can you lay out a case?
The case is basically what you've said, just with some Nietzsche added in. The outcome is the so called dark enlightenment philosophy. It says that democracy is not the pinnacle of social development for humans. It's just a tool, and it's now failing, so it's time to ditch it in favor of authoritarianism. Its fans include Peter Thiel (pronounced Teel) and JD Vance.
I look at it more in terms of where social currents are headed. Authoritarianism has become appealing for a reason, right? In spite of being the most comfortable humans in history, there's a loss of faith in democracy. It's been highjacked. That's how people all across the political spectrum feel. They point at each other as the highjackers. The question for me is: why is this happening now? What does it mean? Historically, democracies and republics tend to end in monarchy due to crises like war. I wonder if I'm watching how the stage is set for the transition prior to the crisis. People lose faith in themselves for whatever reason, and once the crisis happens, people close ranks around a powerful leader. That part is just human nature.
The idea of representative democracy is what differentiates modern democracies from the ancient Greek model. They were all run on the basis of citizen assemblies. No representatives. You had to turn up in person. But that can't work in a state much larger than a city.
There's a fundamental issue in the concept of representation, which seems to be completely neglected in what I've seen. (But I'm not a serious academic political philosopher. I'm more interested than what is than in what ought to be.) The left wing, on the whole, sees a representative as someone who is delegated to report to the assembly what the people think, not what they themselves think. Such representatives are, in the jargon, described as mandated. (This is usually based on some formal vote after debate in a local assembly.)
The syndicalist view you describe is an extreme version of mandating representatives. It seems to me to be a recipe for chaos, since each representative will have slightly different views and may differ radically from the previous one. On the whole, the left wing seems to prefer mandating representatives and/or making them bring their decisions back for a popular vote before it is finalized. (That's how the trade unions work, on the whole - at least in the UK.) The alternative view is that representatives are there to decide on behalf of the people, exercising their judgement and discretion. Of course, if the people don't like the decisions their representative makes, they can vote them out next time round. Such representatives are more like agents - acting for their people. That is more popular on the right wing.
The story about the UK Parliament 50 years ago was that electing an MP was about electing the right sort of person to make decisions on one's behalf. That seems to have almost completely disappeared in favour of the hopelessly impractical idea that one votes for a set of policies, which the representative is expected to do their best to implement. But implementation is not always possible or wise, and often results in changes of detail. Hence the popular idea that you can't trust a politician.
You can see a similar issue in the Electoral College for the US Presidency. It seems like an empty ceremony because the people elected to the Electoral College are elected on a mandate. But in the late 18th century, with communications being so much slower, it was more practical to send representatives to vote on behalf of their people, rather than a specified candidate. I don't know when that changed.
In general I would say your maths training leads you astray about the real world. More statistical theory might help you on how effective solutions are good enough. You dont need exact precision.
I covered that in my shrinkage example. Corruption only needs to be kept within tolerable bounds. Like all social problems. Same goes for the upright citizens. We only need people to be averagely virtuous in their conduct for things to work.
Im suitably impressed.
When something is working so relatively well, folk can just take it for granted. Then as things start to go wrong, it can take those who have become disconnected from the realities quite some time to understand why.
Quoting frank
Yep. People like to imagine all the things they could do if they were dictator for a day. But you try actually running a country. Think of all the fun Putin and Xi are having.
Could be. Or I was thinking it might be a problem with aggression during peacetime. We turn on each other.
Read Richard Wranghams The Goodness Paradox for an evolutionary perspective of how we are set up for social organisation. We shifted from the reactive aggression of apes to the proactive aggression of social groups.
So within the tribal structure, you are either in or you are out. And simply agreeing to kill the tribe mate that doesnt fit is a very human response. Wrangham argues this is how we became the self-domesticated ape. This capacity for blunt and bloody in/out group assessments.
Obviously a psychology that worked well in a world of a few million hunter/gatherers needed some rejigging to turn it into the world of agrarian empires, then colonial trading empires, and now a fossil-fuelled technocracy sustaining a population closing fast on 9 billion.
But the basic dynamic is plain to see. The village all gets along until it collectively decides someone is actually not one of us. We are evolved to make these sudden in-group/out-group determinations at the level of a general democratic choice.
Unlike apes, we can plan violence with cool heads. And that can be a good thing when that is channeled into justice systems and police forces.
And also unlike apes, we can be instinctively empathetic and inclusive. We have that complementary side which makes us seem so tame and domesticated in a group setting. We can be good citizens as well. The other side of the coin when it comes to constructing our social hierarchies founded on their balances of competition and cooperation.
And also still, like apes, we can just be reactively violent when lost and confused. That is a further natural response we retain.
So a bit of emotional complexity there. But it helps to explain why certain social structures seem to work. They take what worked as we were evolving as tribal foragers and developed it into social algorithms that could scale economically as we gained technological mastery over the world. As we moved from simple foraging to complex agrarianism and then industrialism, now consumerism as the purest expression of Natures entropic imperative.
Is the current state of the world a success? Well it is certainly remarkable that it even exists. A species able to change a planet in its own image. Approaching 9 billion people and with most of its ecology transformed into factory farming.
The democracy vs autocracy debate seems a little superficial as an analysis given the reality we have constructed here. The world is a fairly robust human system for converting natural capital into social capital. And now it is suffering the effects of its own success. Where once people wandered with rumbling bellies, they now sit stuffed on their sofas waiting for the next pizza delivery. That kind of thing.
Sure in the US we witness all the drama of woke vs MAGA. And yet going from Trump to Biden only saw the USs general economic and international policy continue on its logical self-interested course. The continuity of a direction is more impressive than the threat of an insurrection and civil war.
So my reply is that there is always aggression during peacetime. These are the basic things that a social hierarchy learns to juggle. And we humans are even adapted to be more binary about it. We exist to be in tune with a group mood, a group identity. And thus to be able to flip on a dime as a group.
Whatever you might call democracy or autocracy as a political system then has to operate in recognition that there is this natural dynamic in play. We can still design the world system. But we have to be clear about the realities that underpin it.
Yes, but most wealth is not seizure resistant.
If you do not fall in line, you may suddenly get an "audit" from the IRS, or from some other federal departments who will conveniently discover a host of worrisome "irregularities".
The wealth is your until the government decides that it isn't anymore.
The average strength of the wall of a besieged city does not matter. Only the weakest spot does.
The same holds true for protecting a computer system from a cyber attack. It simply does not matter that you have closed 99% of the open doors.
The same holds true for governments and their finances. It does not matter that corruption is under control in the department of education. It only means that the flood gates at the department of defense will go open even wider.
Statistics do not work against a living adversary.
You can indeed use statistical calculations to control the damage caused by hurricanes. You cannot do that, however, when it is about human adversaries.
And the weakest spot would be by definition the least average? Dude, plug your brain in.
Quoting Tarskian
Again, just stop and think a little deeper. This is why defence systems are hierarchically structured. You have a static frontline and then a mobile reserve. One just has to last until the other gets there.
Human attackers of course understand the principle from its other side. And that is what drives the hierarchical complexity. It has been the same ever since walls started getting built and attacked at the dawn of agrarian empire building.
Quoting apokrisis
You cannot protect a system from attackers who seek to exploit its vulnerabilities by means of statistically good enough solutions. It won't work.
Example: UNITED STATES v. KLYUSHIN (2022)
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dis-crt-d-mas/2129870.html
No amount of hierarchical complexity can seal off this kind of vulnerabilities from attack. Every complex system is replete with an endless number of exploitable vulnerabilities. In fact, it is enough that just one low-ranking bureaucrat, who is apparently just some seemingly unimportant cog in the system, leaks the wrong information to the adversary, for corruption to start snow balling. You can imagine the damage if people higher up the ladder decide to start making money from their power, and they routinely do.
It works all the time everywhere in life.
Of course if you think in only rigid absolutist terms, this will be hard to accept.
Quoting Tarskian
Who in everyday life even knows or cares about such a chickenfeed scam? Did the stockmarket needle even register a flicker at the news? Was some gapping breach in the walls of capitalism created from which it could never recover?
Just like supermarkets write off shrinkage so as to keep their staff and not chase away shoppers, so capitalism in general just has to bank a steady 3% per annum on capital and everyone will agree, good job done.
Quoting Tarskian
Driving your car causes inevitable wear and tear. Does that mean you put it in a glass box and never drive it?
Shit happens in the real world. The aim of a system designer is to constrain the unwanted to the point that it doesn't matter, not to where it doesn't even exist.
You are being a perfectionist in a world where averageness is quite good enough as a baseline for action. And indeed a world that can't escape being average anyway as that is just statistics for you.
A car is not a living adversary. If it is not alive, then you can use statistics. If it is alive, then statistics are often misleading.
Quoting apokrisis
In his book, "Black Swan. Impact of the highly improbable.", Nassim Taleb says that there are two situations to consider, mediocristan and extremistan.
In mediocristan, adding an individual to the sample, won't move the needle for the average. For example, if you have measured average height of a thousand people, adding one other person won't make any difference. You can happily model the situation according to a Gaussian bell curve.
In extremistan, adding an individual to the sample can drastically move the needle for the average. For example, adding Bill Gates to measure the average wealth of a thousand people, will completely change the situation. Bell curves do not work in that kind of situation.
According to Taleb, because of massive financialization of the economy and other reasons, we increasingly live in extremistan, where the Gaussian bell curve of averageness is misleading and is not good enough as a baseline for action. Taleb used to be a trader on capital markets. He made inordinate amounts of money by exploiting the fact that the calculation formulas used by his trading counterparts assumed mediocristan while in reality the situation was part of extremistan.
As far as I am concerned, the ruling mafia's bottom line is their problem and not mine. They are perfectly free to believe in fairy tales. However, they should never count on me to send the bill to.
Err yeah. Complex systems 101. The difference between normal and log distributions.
Quoting Tarskian
That's true.
Quoting Tarskian
Nonetheless, in practice, it seems to last a lot better than political power.
Seizure-prone wealth is protected by the flimsy promise by the government that they will respect your so-called "property rights".
Your house, your car, your business, your stocks, your bonds, the balance on your bank account are just promises not to confiscate them from you, for now.
Furthermore, whatever they demand from you, you will have to cave in. Otherwise, they will simply seize your seizure-prone wealth with a press of the button.
Seizure-prone wealth is a form of slavery. It is not true freedom.
I do not trust promises made by the local ruling mafia, and in fact, I don't have to.
The true value of Bitcoin wealth is its seizure resistance.
It's not just a press of the button to take your coins away from you.
It requires either bullying you into revealing your secret or else solving the intractable elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP).
Before solving the ECDLP, the adversary must first successfully carry out a preimage attack on the RIPEMD-160 hash function, known to be quantum resistant.
For the time being, the NSA and other intelligence agencies accept the fact that they simply cannot not pull it off by means of computational power.
Instead of a flimsy promise that they won't attack your wealth, we have something much better here. I vastly prefer to rely on the cryptographic intractability of successfully doing it.
Every time someone wakes up to the fact that the ruling mafia cannot be trusted, Bitcoin further increases in value.
I trust that ultimately the true consensus will be to distrust.
Quoting Tarskian
... unless you are a fraudster!
Quoting Tarskian
What is true freedom?
Quoting Tarskian
Total trust in everyone is idiotic. Total distrust of everyone makes life impossible. The trick is, to know how far you can trust each person. You seem to trust Bitcoin.
The anatomy of a Bitcoin heist typically falls into three categories:
- social engineering (80%). No solution.
- faulty implementation of hot server side wallet (15%). Not your keys, not your coins
- trusting client side wallet software that cannot be trusted (5%). https://walletscrutiny.com
Quoting Ludwig V
I define true (or maximum) freedom as keeping just the laws of God. This level of freedom is probably unattainable. At times, you will still have to cave in to the whims of the local ruling mafia. But then again, hopefully as little as possible.
Quoting Ludwig V
It's based on a collection of math/cryptographic theories, that I investigated -- starting in 2013 -- and that are not easy to refute. Well, I am still waiting for someone to successfully do that. If someone really can, he will probably become a trillionaire.
I definitely consider this impediment to confiscation to be more solid than a flimsy promise by the local ruling mafia. I consider so-called legal property rights to be mostly an illusion.
For example, I'd rather park my money in Bitcoin than in buying a house. I simply don't trust the house's deed. It's just a piece of paper that the local ruling mafia can revoke with the press of a button. They often do. Just forget to pay a parking fine and there you go.
Every inhabited place on earth is governed by a local ruling mafia. That is inevitable, simply, because that is human nature.
Fortunately, you can still choose which local ruling mafia that you are going to suffer.
Some are actually not that bad. They may even be quite welcoming. Some of them are even willing to issue a digital nomad visa, if you politely ask them, and if you pay the associated fee, of course.
The local ruling mafia is actually a quite manageable problem. I am certainly not complaining.
It's certainly a protection in a different league. So I'm not saying you are wrong to trust it. How does that square with your policy of distrust?
Quoting Tarskian
Some people regard those as very restricting.
Quoting Tarskian
I'm sure you're not. They might be watching. Anyway, that's the policy that most people go for, isn't it?
I would have to distrust the math/cryptography. In fact, mathematicians and cryptographers generally do. That is why they invariably demand proof and then scrutinize it thoroughly. The method itself is already one of systematic distrust.
Quoting Ludwig V
They are mostly a matter of self-discipline. If you happen to lapse -- shit happens -- then you can try to find the resolve to avoid that in the future. They are, in fact, not that restricting because they are supposed to reflect human nature. You can easily get used to it. Of course, you may have to unlearn some bad habits, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's like the habit of going to the gym. It's actually not that hard. People exaggerate that.
Quoting Ludwig V
Well, that would require one particular local ruling mafia in SE Asia to be interested in me, while I am not even there all the time, as I regularly end up in another ruling mafia's territory in SE Asia. Are they going to waste their time on that? I guess that they could. However, that is typically not what any local ruling mafia is interested in. They have other politically more interesting people on their radar as well as limited resources to watch them. For example, would the Vietnamese or Thai government be interested in me? Not a snowball's chance in hell.
I'm really sorry, but the fact is that I have had many firm reassurances that IT is absolutely, finally secure, only to discover that it isn't. So I'm not buying.
H'm. Perhaps self-discipline is freedom. An interesting thought.
Quoting Tarskian
So you know how far to trust them? Or do you just think you know? Put a foot wrong and you might become an object of great political interest.
What exactly is insecure?
It really depends on the software that you use.
The software needs to be reproducible-build compliant free and open source only, turtles all the way down to the operating system. Example: Debian Linux running the Electrum wallet.
Secondly, it is necessary to physically prevent the secret from being exposed to the network. The secret may only be available on a network-disconnected machine -- or virtual machine, if you know how to manage that carefully. You always need two machines, physical or virtual ones, to implement this security principle.
I have used these principles since 2013. I have never had any security problem related to Bitcoin.
The power of the local ruling mafia is continuously being challenged by other political clans who want to replace them. If you've got nothing to do with that, you are simply of no interest to them.
I have not used either. I had no protection whatever until 10 years ago. Now, I have a virus-checker (Norton). I have never had any security problem.
Quoting Tarskian
... apart from your ability to pay your taxes?
The truth is that the only real, inalienable wealth is your ability to deal with changes in fortune and, in the end, to walk away from everything you possess and start again, using whatever you have to hand. That's not entirely bullet-proof, but it's as near as one can get.
A well-structured operating system does not need a virus-checker. I don't have one installed, because it is irrelevant in my context. In fact, anti-virus software does not even exist for Linux because by design viruses cannot spread on Linux.
Quoting Ludwig V
In all practical terms, personal income tax is not even implemented outside the West.
They may theoretically have it on the books but almost no country outside the West has rolled it out in practice.
Instead, they have a final salary tax in the part of the economy that makes use of formal employment but that is just a (small) part of the economy. Normally, "small employers" are exempt. They usually also have a corporate income tax but "small businesses" are typically exempt.
There are many reasons for that, even just practical ones.
For a starters, half the population may be subsistence farmers who would not even be able to pay any personal income tax or who would be exempt anyway. They would also have serious trouble filling out the form. Secondly, they typically do not have a sufficiently complete population registry and address database, for them to send an income tax return to the entire population, let alone, to transient foreigners.
The ability to send out and process personal tax returns is in practice far beyond with most countries in the world can do.
And then you still have the problem of running after the masses of subsistence farmers and informal-economy traders such as street food vendors to get them to pay what they supposedly owe -- probably peanuts anyway.
Concerning foreigners, imagine that the local ruling mafia started harassing the foreign retirees here for personal income tax, or the digital nomads or the nomad capitalists? If just the rumor started spreading that they were about to do that, they would all jump on the plane to a neighboring country, be gone in no time, never to come back.
I do not have a TIN (Tax Identification Number) here and the vast majority of the locals do not have one either.
Yes. If I had my time again, I would probably adopt Linux long before now. But it would be a big project for me and I think I have more pressing things to attend to. I'll have to manage as I am.
Quoting Tarskian
Fair enough. I thought there might be an answer along those lines. What about VAT or sales tax? It is not politically clever to apply taxes that each citizen must individually pay. The best taxes are not visible to voters. But then there's the moral argument that, just as there should be no taxation without representation, there should be no representation without taxation. So it's not easy.
In politics and government the hierarchy is artificial and conventional, not natural. So this type of hierarchy is not inevitable or born of necessity, but the practical and logical consequence of synthetic political organization.
Again a question of company or retailer size. The large businesses pay it. The small businesses don't.
Quoting Ludwig V
Other taxes such as import duties are more important. Also, government expenditure as a percentage of GDP is much lower. The government simply spends less.
There was no personal income tax anywhere in the world until around the first world war.
Representation is an illusion anyway. Why pay for an illusion? Or give people the choice if they want to pay for that. I don't.
Income tax was levied in the UK from 1799 to 1802, and again from 1803 to 1816. It was brought back - on a strictly temporary basis - in 1842. Somehow, Parliament has never got round to abolishing it. In the USA personal income tax was imposed from 1872. A new income tax statute in 1894 was effectively struck down by the Supreme Court in 1895. The 16th Amendment reintroduced it on a firm legal basis in 1913. It's always been unpopular and bitter battles were fought over it in the 19th century. I can't quickly find information for other countries.
Quoting Tarskian
That makes sense. You get what you pay for. It will be interesting to see how things develop as their economies develop. Hint - The first welfare state in the world was initiated by Otto von Bismarck in 1883 as a remedial measure to appease the working class and undermine support for his political opponents. For clarity, he was a conservative politician, deeply opposed to socialism.
Quoting Tarskian
If one doesn't think it is an illusion, one might pay for it. Or even, perhaps, one might pay for it even it is an illusion because it is a useful illusion.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes. As cities got larger, new forms of social organization had to be developed. You could always go back to hunting and gathering. Not my choice, though.
They didnt have to. They just wanted to. Now we have to adhere to the hierarchy or risk being punished.
Yes, I expect that there were people who were keen to take advantage. But the question is, could cities have supported that many people in a hunter-gather life-style? It's a complicated question and I think that a definitive answer would be hard to impossible to get. So there may well have been an element of choice. In some way, cities must have offered something that was desirable to everyone. What could it have been. Agriculture arose around the same time, so that might have had something to do with it.
Quoting NOS4A2
Do you seriously think that hunter-gather bands were all sweetness and light, with everybody doing exactly what they wanted and no force or compulsion?
I dont know why people in a city would want to support a Hunter/gatherer lifestyle. All Im saying is groups of people living anywhere neednt impose a hierarchy on others.
No I dont think that. I havent even mentioned hunter/gatherers unless it was to say I wasnt speaking about hunter/gatherers. Im only saying if a hierarchy is unnatural, it isnt necessary. Political hierarchies are not natural but artificial and conventional.
Since most of the human race is dependent on them, I guess that makes us artificial. We made ourselves, with a lot of luck.
Evidence? Where in history is a human society not hierarchically ordered? I mean how could we even recognise it as a "society"?
Imagine pulling up in your colonial ship on the shores of Australia or America and finding just ... a crowd. Imagine the contents of Dubai or Singapore airport being dumped there as the native population. Everyone is just part of a sea of individuals with no structure of relations. And somehow that atomised existence has been the way this population has lived for centuries.
Wouldn't that just seem completely alien? Quite unnatural? Pretty much impossible?
So where is your evidence to support your assertion.
(And if you start talking about how networks beat hierarchies, hierarchies are just networks of networks networks with nested hierarchical scale. Networks that are actually optimised in terms of their freedom of connectivity. )
Perhaps Sam Bankman-Fried should call you as a character witness then?
You would obviously feel it an outrageous violation of the bitcoin bro code that a ruling mafia in the form of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York got him grabbed off his comfy couch in the Bahamas.
I mean bitcoin is just so secure. Who needs these exaggerated systems of security to secure the security of your securities once they have been adequately digitised and block chained?
It is not as if you could ever need the protection of the state when some gang ties you up in a chair and starts hacking your flesh until you give up the key to your digital wallet.
So sure, it is possible to live the transient life of a digital nomad. But it ain't some kind of alternative politics or superior moral order. It reflects the freedoms that are available in a world that has now growing equally complex and multifaceted in its hierarchical order.
For you to arbitrage the world in this fashion optimise your self-interest in terms of not paying taxes, finding the least regulated communities to work remotely from, gloat about the naive local women, etc
requires a world with that variety to arbitrage.
Got a passport? No ties? Fungible skills? Well you are good to go.
And big deal. The world only has to hang together slightly more than it falls apart. It's a simple statistical game after all. Although things do start to get slippy as your expectations of a return move from a no-interest stasis to an exponentialised no-limit growth.
How many hierarchies have you formed?
Yep. You really don't understand hierarchies in any theoretical sense. Hence the idiot response.
I'll just note how you failed to back up your claims with evidence. Case dismissed. :up:
I know what a hierarchy is. My contention is that political and power-based ones are not natural. But you have to bring up vague associations like human society, which I suppose you believe is a hierarchy, to make your case.
I wager the association between you and your friends, should you have them, is non-hierarchical, as is much of the association between you and the others you deal with throughout your life. I wager you dont apply hierarchies to the vast majority of the people you comes across in your human society. Am I wrong? Or is it hierarchies all the way down?
I could explain to you of course. But you don't want to be put in the position that would reverse the little hierarchical power dynamic you hope to construct here.
(How much did you wager? How soon can I expect payment? :razz: )
There is quite a bit of literature on the $5 wrench attack.
The reality is that there are no gangs that specialize in this crime, simply because other types of crime are much more profitable.
Seriously, how do you even find individuals who have substantial amounts of Bitcoin? There's no database where you can find how many coins I have. Such database simply does not exist.
It is much easier for criminals to target individuals with large bank balances. Criminals can get that information by hacking a banking server system or by corrupting bank staff or by intercepting mail or other communications, and they certainly do.
Quoting apokrisis
This life strategy acknowledges the very limited or even inexistent ability of the individual to improve his current political environment while emphasizing his very real ability to simply choose another one.
It is morally superior because it encourages the individual to do something about the problem instead of endlessly complaining about it.
Quoting apokrisis
They are not naive at all.
Supply and demand are simply different in their environment. Your personal SMV (Sexual Market Value) is very location dependent.
For example, a man who is 5 foot 6 inch is considered really short in North America and Western Europe, or even in China or South Korea.
This will act as a serious impediment to attract the kind of women that he would want to get with, even if he is technically still taller than them.
He could complain and lament his fate, develop all kinds of insecurities, and possibly even want to jump out of the window, but he could also consider the following information instead:
Some people are good at solving their own problems while others are clearly not.
Some people are even insidious.
Instead of congratulating this man for successfully solving his problem, they will argue that he is taking advantage of these naive Guatemalan women.
WTF !?
Furthermore, life is not only about discussing pie in the sky.
If you have a problem, then solve it, instead of running around in circles. Life is unfair only to people who refuse to do something about it. In fact, that is not even unfair.
Maybe you could give me an example of a structure of relations, then? Maybe a picture of one that is not atomized individuals? You cannot because all you have are abstractions.
Well, there's no-one forcing hierarchies on us. Unless you are positing that hierarchies are only ever formed because some individual decides to grab power. But, if that's what happens, why is it unnatural?
You may well be aware that Marx, in the 19th century, developed the ideas known as communism - there are many varieties of this. His theory was that we would, in the end, develop communist non-hierarchical societies.
In the 17th and 18th centuries it was popular to speculate about the origins of society. Various theories were developed on the basis of that society was created. See Hobbes' Leviathan 1651, Locke'sTwo Treatises of Government 1689 and Rousseau Social Contract 1762. There was much interest at the time in the "savages" discovered in the Americas who provided a model for this process. In the early years of the 20th century, it was realized that all "savage" societies were all working societies before Europeans arrived, so the idea of the state of nature has been abandoned for lack of empirical evidence. Nowadays, we are aware that many animals, fish and insects form societies naturally, so the idea that societies are a distinctively human idea has lapsed. It seems that we naturally form societies.
The question now is why societies have evolved, on the assumption that they must have some evolutionary advantage. Non-human societies have various structures; you can find details and examples on the internet. But I think you'll find that many, if not most, of them are hierarchical.
Quoting Tarskian
Yes. Many individuals have sought, willingly or not, to choose somewhere else to live. But colonization is over and many find it difficult to find another environment that will accept them. It helps to have a plenty of money. Without that, it is a very hard road even when you find somewhere else to settle.
Quoting Tarskian
Complaining about things doesn't necessarily mean that you want to move. There are often good reasons to stay put even if there are difficulties to put up with.
It is almost as if crime believed in the statistical utility of risk/reward equations.
Quoting Tarskian
Dignify it how you like. Arbitrage is arbitrage. The issue is the strength of the presumptions you use to motivate your life strategy model. The interesting social science question is "does it scale?".
In the end, individuals can make their free choices. And the world is that which emerges as a consequence. The consequences of some particular choice being scaled to the level where it is a general choice then begins the feedback response. The choice being made may come to be regretted once everyone seems to be trying to do the same thing as you,
Of course, then you are free to switch to another course to the degree other options remain unconstrained.
So there is no mystery or heroism here. It is just human civilisation evolving and learning. Until the wheels suddenly fall off as all the risk/reward calculations turn out to have been predicated on living in Mediocristan rather than Extremistan.
Quoting Tarskian
Ah. Moral superiority. How hierarchical. How heroic.
"Do something" meaning "escaping having to do something". What you leave behind is beyond redemption. You just give up on it. And this defeat is inverted by forming a network of the like-minded as some digital nomad tribal victory.
I mean I perfectly understand the self-interested rationale you give. I just don't see that it can be glorified in political science terms unless it truly scales.
And to scale would turn it into ... a hierarchy. The tribe would become large enough to have its own clout. It could start to change the world around it to better serve its needs. It would develop a political voice. It would get laws changed to suit its preferences.
Already, in waving the banner of a new tribe, you are playing the very game you seem to want to claim you are escaping.
So fine. Digital nomad. It's a way of life available to you. It will either mesh well or clash badly with the larger hierarchy of the civilised world. Lessons will be learnt. Adjustments made. Same old systems logic applies. At least until the wheels properly fall off.
Quoting Tarskian
It is clear that you hope to shock with this kind of bro-speak. But it has kind of lost that initial shock value it might have had. One dimensional thinking leads to a one dimensional life.
Anyway, imagine arriving on the shores of Australia to either be faced with the rich social complexity of its indigenous people or instead some actually random and atomistic collection of folk dumped out of the average international airport at a busy time.
Do you think you might notice a difference? Could you put a finger on what it was? In what sense would the critical distinction you might detect fail to meet a proper systems definition of hierarchical order?
These were the questions you were seeking to evade by pretending you hadn't been asked them.
But don't worry, I am not holding my breath for a coherent response. :up:
During colonial times, the colonizing powers strictly prohibited access from the motherland to the colonies, except for some colonies earmarked for settling purposes, such as North America, Australia, and New Zealand.
For example, you could not just settle in French Indochina from France or in Indonesia from the Netherlands. You needed permission based on a good reason to actually be there such as employment or an authorized business.
In fact, you were considered a liability by the colonial authorities, requiring expensive protection during local insurgencies or rebellions.
This problem no longer exists. The local population does not attack foreigners during an insurgency, because we are not politically associated with the local regime. The local powers also do not use us as a tool of oppression against the locals.
In fact, in my experience, every country where there is no serious excess of visitors -- think Barcelona and Venice -- tends to be welcoming, or even very welcoming to foreigners. They mostly treat you as a curiosum. They want to talk with you, go out with you, and so on.
There are so many places around the world where they are curious about foreigners and eager to get the opportunity to meet them.
These places are just not the ones where everybody goes to; exactly because everybody goes there already.
For example, in the Philippines, don't go to the Boracay island. Nobody is waiting there for you, because you will just be twelve in a dozen.
Go for example to Dumaguete on Negros island or Tacloban on Leyte island instead. There are lots of even more obscure islands in the Visayas that are even better for the purpose of being "popular" with the locals.
It has always been the policy of the government of the Philippines to allow you in all practical terms to stay in the country pretty much for as long as you want (if you don't cause trouble, of course).
Thanks for this. I'm glad I stuck to what I was sure of. Those countries were, of course, regarded as terra nullius because the societies there were not recognized as such. I'm not sure why. I'm pretty sure there was widespread settlement in Africa, though, as well. I forgot about that for some reason.
Quoting Tarskian
I'm sure that's true. Less so when there are many immigrants, though. But there is still ambivalence, as one can see in the USA and Europe, especially Britain.
I just wanted to point out that picking up one's traps and moving elsewhere is not always an easy option.
I guess it depends one what kind of societies were talking about. A common trick is to conflate a state or nation as a society. I just dont know how one consider such an aggregate of human beings a society, so Ill stick to the simpler ones.
A natural society, to me, is kinship. It consists of people we know: family, friends, those we trade with, or otherwise deal with on a consistent basis. The activity that operates here is premised on largely social and voluntary cooperation. The hierarchies developed in such a situation, should there be any, are honed by experience and necessity, for instance the hierarchy of the family. Kinship develops naturally through association and common enterprise. Authority here is legitimate. These kinds of relationships are available to anyone, are visible everywhere, and are not just the remnants of Hunter/gatherers and savages.
An artificial society, to me, is one defined purely by dictate, for instance by law. It consists largely of people we do not know, will never know, and never have to deal with. The activity that operates here is premised on involuntary and anti-social cooperation, enforced as it is by coercion and punishment. The hierarchies developed in such a situation are contrived, imposed, and enforced, for instance the hierarchy of the state. A artificial society doesnt develop out of association and mutual enterprise, but through conquest. Authority here is illegitimate.
Thats the only distinction between natural and artificial societies Ive been making.
Remember that Aristotle thought the relationships between master and slave were natural. Do you?
I am the only foreigner in my street, well, in the entire neighborhood, really. In fact, there are a few Chinese here, but they are not really counted as foreigners in Indochina. They are rather seen as something in between.
Unlike immigrants, digital nomads, nomad capitalists, and retirees are not looking for opportunities in the local economy. We are not interested in finding a job or setting up a business locally. In fact, we are mostly just spending money locally for a while before moving on.
If there are too many of us, it leads to gentrification, pricing the locals out of housing, and other local price inflation. The locals become less interested, less friendly, and in some cases even outright hostile. There are so many other places to choose from instead, that I do not understand why anybody would burden the local population by doing that. We can so easily avoid that. Just stay away from places that are too popular.
That makes sense. Though didn't I read earlier that you do take up some work or business opportunities from time to time? But I guess that's marginal.
It's a life-style choice. It doesn't happen to be mine.
Come to think of it, I have upped sticks and moved to somewhere new with no social links - apart from a job opportunity - a few times. So it isn't an all or nothing choice. There are options in between.
It seems to me, from the little I know about world history, that static societies do benefit from welcoming travellers and immigrant (and from their people travelling and sometimes moving out). On the other hand, travellers and immigrants do rely on ordered societies to move between.
One could discuss exceptions, like colonization of unoccupied land (though my guess is that has not occurred since pre-historic times) and imperialistic conquest. But they are exceptions.
So from the point of view of social philosophy, the best situation is for both patterns to co-exist.
OK. If you had explained this up front, it would have been clearer what you were saying.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, those words do get used in very sloppy ways. It's complicated and there are many different ways to live.
Quoting NOS4A2
Now, there's a tricky question. Let's stipulate that "master" and "slave" are social roles that are backed by law - i.e. backed by coercion. It would not be wrong to say, then, that if those roles are not backed by law, they cannot exist in that society.
But could master/slave-like relationships exist without the backing of the law? Of course they can. There are two kinds.
One is created when a group is formed to function in certain kinds of environment, like a ship's crew or an dangerous environment, like an dangerous journey or a war situation. (Civilian police and some other roles are also like this.) In those cases, one (normally) volunteers and, in so doing, accepts the discipline required. We could say that because it is (normally) temporary and one can leave, it is a temporary master/slave relationship, but I think that would be misleading.
The other is a certain kind of relationship that has come to prominence in recent years, known as "coercive control". It is not backed by law - indeed, it is banned by law in some countries. In many cases, it is virtually indistinguishable, apart from the lack of backing by law, from slavery.
You'll notice that I've avoided the question whether such relationships - particularly the second one - are natural or not. The reason is simple. If I say that they are natural, then the moral implication is that they are not immoral - that's why Aristotle said that master/slave relationships are natural. He was misled, of course, but he couldn't really be expected to know any better, since slavery, in his times, was more or less universally recognized and taken for granted by everyone whose opinion we know about. Nowadays, in most parts of the world, we think that slavery is immoral and consequently we would be very reluctant to say that it is natural.
However, many animal societies are structured by a dominance hierarchy (pecking order). These are not exactly slave societies, but they are dictated by coercion, or the threat of it. But it would be meaningless to try to apply our moral standards to them. However, I do think that we should not think that we can eliminate informal dominance relationships between individuals and within social groups. The trick will be to prevent them becoming slave-like relationships.
Quoting NOS4A2
Certainly, there are such social groups. There are also half-way houses in which volunteers sign up for a common purpose which, for one reason or another depends on cohesion. That requires an acceptance of discipline and usually, in practice, some kind of hierarchy whether formal or informal. (I'll mention these again below.)
I'm not at all sure what you mean by "the family hierarchy". Did you mean that we don't get to choose our at least our first parents and we are subject to control until we grow up? Certainly, relationships with our birth/childhood family (-ies) are rather different from our family relationships when we start our own families and both are different from our friendship relationships; all those are different from our work and business relationships. Perhaps social and voluntary co-operation dominate, but they are not the whole story. (I don't say that you are wrong)
Now, could a state or nation (or nation-state) be structured in that way, largely free of hierarchy. The issue here is that we need to consider social relationships that extend beyond "kith and kin" - people you know and people you are related to by birth or "marriage" (in its widest sense)?
It seems to me, that since you don't know these people, they cannot work in the same way as your kith and kin relationships. There needs to be a formal structure to enable the kind of cohesion that is suggested by "society" and I don't see how that would work if there were not some kind of hierarchy, no matter how benevolent and co-operative. In practice, I think you will find, there always has been some kind of hierarchy in states and nations and that is suggestive.
Yes, agreed, and not only amongst humans:
Primates live in gangs and follow the lead of a mafia boss. It's preprogrammed biology.
I'm not sure about "pre-programmed" biology. But even if it is pre-programmed biology, it doesn't show that it is pre-programmed in human beings.
"Some may arrive..." and "many dominant chimps..." suggests very strongly that not all arrive in that way and some do not behave like self-interest thugs when they get there. If it was pre-programmed, they would all behave that way and only self-interested thugs would get to be dominant.
One difference between alpha chimps and mafia bosses is that alpha chimps get there in the socially recognized way and when they get there, their behaviour is socially acceptable. But then, the mafia began amongst a socially oppressed group in Sicily and live in a sub-culture in what they do is socially acceptable.
A hierarchy is not necessarily a mafia, even though a mafia is a hierarchy.
Unionism is where I'm most familiar with syndicalism from (not that all unions run that way). I think that systems which reject representation are, on the whole, less chaotic because in order for measures to pass you have to build consent. That you have different perspectives with each brings about stability because it becomes less about what some individual person Represents to us, and more about what the collective wants. If you alienate less of the people in a collective, then it's more liable to be maintained by the people participating in it rather than torn down.
Quoting Ludwig V
Some kind, yes, though I tried to pick as an extreme a contrast as possible to demonstrate that "some kind" has meaningful differences between the various instantiations (and even their structures of hierarchy will differ, or not-count as hierarchical between one another) -- a living Goddess compared to a Billionaire Wonder Boy, both surely exhilarating tips of a hierarchy and yet I prefer to suffer the opinions of the latter to being forced to worship the former.
So I want to say that Quoting Ludwig V
This is pretty much my target in thinking through hierarchies: Aristotle's justification for slavery follows a common refrain of thought throughout societies of dominance: The barbarians are uncivilized, as can be heard from when they speak "Bar bar bar", saying basically nothing, and so need an enlightened human of knowledge to direct them towards the best that the inferior can hope to achieve (since they won't reach for it on their own) ((The same reasonings were applied to the Irish when they wanted to convert the Irish peasants into proletarian workers, or the Africans when they wanted to convert them into their chattel slaves))
But, due to human nature, whenever a civilizer comes along somehow the civilized end up worse off and helping the civilizer live an easier life :D
That's the bit of human nature I'm targeting I think we have lots of reasonings to excuse social dominance, but for the most part it's our chimpanzee side which gives rise to such reasonings rather than the purportedly enlightened side.
Human nature has this capacity to form hierarchies, but it also has the capacity to dither them -- so it's more a question of "ought" than the "is" of nature (since I'd agree that ought implies can -- but since we can....)
That's not ancient slavery.
Certainly, the ancient greeks regarded foreigners as lesser beings because they couldn't speak properly. But ancient greek colonies don't seem to have behaved like European colonies later on. They didn't, so far as I can see, take over ownership of the hinterland, never mind its inhabitants. On the contrary, they were there primarily to trade.
The account of slavery that you are outlining is the barbarous version of it cooked up by Europeans to justify maltreating people they chose to see as savages. Ancient slavery included anyone who could not pay their debts, prisoners of war, common criminals. Whether they were members of the society that enslaved them was irrelevant.
Quoting Moliere
I wouldn't disagree with you. It's probably slower than allowing representatives to make the decision, but the benefit in greater consensus is probably worth it. It certainly gives more power to the people. The desire of the establishment at the time of the Reform Act in 1832 not to undermine the representation system as it stood, rather than introducing mandating them, was undoubtedly reinforced by the fact mandating representatives gives more control to the voters.
Much as I respect the union practice, I'm not convinced that in our giant states mandating representatives would work at all well for the entire state. It's just too big and too complicated.
Quoting Moliere
I didn't mean to eradicate those important differences. Some hierarchies are more vicious than others. Whether any are not vicious at all, I wouldn't like to say.
Quoting Moliere
I see the point (but would be inclined to wonder whether chimpanzees are really as bad as human beings, for all their dominant ways). But I also think that in some situations, where decisions need to be made quickly or close co-ordination is required, there are practical reasons for choosing hierarchy. The ancient roman constitution had a provision that allowed the senate to elected a supreme commander, by-passing the political hierarchy (called "dictator") for a limited time to deal with an emergency - especially useful in time of war. It is high risk though and came unstuck in the civil wars that led to the establishment of the imperial system.
Nicely put, thank you.
I'm curious what this "structure" is, and more, what it really amounts to. I've been told of "tribal structures", "social structures", "formal structure", a "structure of relations", but I cannot translate its figurative use to its non-figurative application. There are no such "structures" or "connections" in any literal sense, since any connective tissue between human beings was removed along with the umbilical cord.
Hobbes mentions "artificial bonds", for example. "artificial chains" which are "civil laws". He describes the nature of these bonds as "weak", and given only their metaphorical reality, I'm inclined to agree. I'm wondering if "structure" as it is consistently used in this thread is one such artificial bond. You say that nations require "a formal structure to enable the kind of cohesion suggested by society", do you mean something like civil laws, and the hierarchy they necessarily impose?
I did mean something like laws - because they involve compulsion.
When people talk about structure in the context of a discussion about societies, states nations, they mean (so far as I know) some kind of social relationship. So friendship and love would also be regarded as social structure, though they are very different from laws. A family is a social structure, so is a corporation or a club, so is the army, navy, so is the government - most people (I think) would say that the government, or perhaps the constitution, is the structure that forms a state. It's one of those vague all-encompassing words that really ought to be specified whenever it is used. But its vagueness is also quite convenient sometimes.
So then your target isnt really hierarchical order but some notion of social injustice.
If we step back to understand hierarchical order as a pure form, we can see that it is a distribution system. It is a way to distribute power, information, entropy, whatever, in an evenly balanced fashion across a closed and cohesive network of relations.
So it is fundamentally about equality. But the complex kind of equality where the total flow of the system is divided up in a fractal or scalefree fashion that maximises its throughput.
A landscape is drained of water by forming a fractal network of trickles, streams, rivers and deltas. World aviation is organised into remote grass airstrips, small rural airports, large city airports, major international hubs. The mathematics of this is precise. A fractal distribution system has a log/log or powerlaw scale of size. That is how a geography can be efficiently covered so every drop of water or wannabe flyer gets an equal chance of participating in a well-organised network of flow.
There is no limit on free action even when all the actions are in competition. The network adapts so that statistically it services the available flows in an evenhanded fashion. If demand increases for the rural airstrip or drops for the global hub, then that node in the network can grow or shrink accordingly.
So in the pure form, the hierarchy is about a democracy of scale. A network composed of networks with any possible scale. Whatever works best to optimise flow for the entire system in question.
In a society, we would want everyone to have enough to eat, a bed to sleep, a voice in any decision making. These are goods to be distributed evenly. But then a real world civilisation is not going to end up giving everyone the same meal, the same bed, the same degree of being listened to.
A rural airstrip is not going to have a VIP lounge, or customs officers, or nonstop flights to international destinations. A global hub becomes its own vast hierarchy of terminal facilities and job functions. If you want a weather report at the grass strip, you look up at the clouds. At Dubai or Chicago, there are teams of meteorologists with hi tech radars, monitoring stations and computer models.
Is this difference in airport facilities intrinsically unfair? Even artificial rather than natural? If you want to fly, the whole world has become efficiently organised to allow anyone to hop on a plane from anywhere. But to do that basic thing, it also means that the nodes in the network have to themselves become hierarchically complex to the degree they fairly do their part in servicing this globalised flow of individuals.
If you are talking politics and decision making, the same applies. One can get all upset that democracy organises itself into interest groups and institutions. One can start bleating about the ruling mafia, the oppressive state. One can dream of a world where in effect everyone flies off their own grass airstrip and there are no giant planes taking off from their giant airports.
But there are perfectly natural reasons why societies, as human flow structures, will seem unequal as they seek to deliver equality. And if you dont understand that, you cant actually focus on where a hierarchy might be performing poorly in striking that optimal flow balance. You just want to pull the whole system down, or live outside its bounds. You have no proper theory of how it works and thus no real idea of how to fix it.
Interesting reference. A parabolic fractional distribution is a little obscure with the Wiki page getting only 7 views per day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Bejan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
It's Aristotle's justification or reasoning about slavery that I think is similar to the later justifications.; though even in slavery there are better and worse masters, the belief that there are those who are inferior by their very nature -- and so needing a guiding hand -- seems pretty similar here:
[quote=Politics, Chapter V]
But whether any person is such by nature, and whether it is advantageous and just for any one to be a slave or no, or whether all slavery is contrary to nature, shall be considered hereafter; not that it is difficult to determine it upon general principles, or to understand it from matters of fact; for that some should govern, and others be governed, is not only necessary but useful, and from the hour of their birth some are marked out for those purposes, and others for the other, and there are many species of both sorts.
And the better those are who are governed the better also is the government, as for instance of man, rather than the brute creation: for the more excellent the materials are with which the work is finished, the more excellent certainly is the work; and wherever there is a governor and a governed, there certainly is some work produced; for whatsoever is composed of many parts, which jointly become one, whether conjunct or separate, evidently show the marks of governing and governed; and this is true of every living thing in all nature; nay, even in some things which partake not of life, as in music; but this probably would be a disquisition too foreign to our present purpose.
Every living thing in the first place is composed of soul and body, of these the one is by nature the governor, the other the governed; now if we would know what is natural, we ought to search for it in those subjects in which nature appears most perfect, and not in those which are corrupted; we should therefore examine into a man who is most perfectly formed both in soul and body, in whom this is evident, for in the depraved and vicious the body seems [1254b] to rule rather than the soul, on account of their being corrupt and contrary to nature.
We may then, as we affirm, perceive in an animal the first principles of herile and political government; for the soul governs the body as the master governs his slave; the mind governs the appetite with a political or a kingly power, which shows that it is both natural and advantageous that the body should be governed by the soul, and the pathetic part by the mind, and that part which is possessed of reason; but to have no ruling power, or an improper one, is hurtful to all; and this holds true not only of man, but of other animals also, for tame animals are naturally better than wild ones, and it is advantageous that both should be under subjection to man; for this is productive of their common safety: so is it naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind.
Those men therefore who are as much inferior to others as the body is to the soul, are to be thus disposed of, as the proper use of them is their bodies, in which their excellence consists; and if what I have said be true, they are slaves by nature, and it is advantageous to them to be always under government.
He then is by nature formed a slave who is qualified to become the chattel of another person, and on that account is so, and who has just reason enough to know that there is such a faculty, without being indued with the use of it; for other animals have no perception of reason, but are entirely guided by appetite, and indeed they vary very little in their use from each other; for the advantage which we receive, both from slaves and tame animals, arises from their bodily strength administering to our necessities; for it is the intention of nature to make the bodies of slaves and freemen different from each other, that the one should be robust for their necessary purposes, the others erect, useless indeed for what slaves are employed in, but fit for civil life, which is divided into the duties of war and peace; though these rules do not always take place, for slaves have sometimes the bodies of freemen, sometimes the souls; if then it is evident that if some bodies are as much more excellent than others as the statues of the gods excel the human form, every one will allow that the inferior ought to be slaves to the superior; and if this is true with respect to the body, it is still juster to determine in the same manner, when we consider the soul; though it is not so easy to perceive the beauty of [1255a] the soul as it is of the body. Since then some men are slaves by nature, and others are freemen, it is clear that where slavery is advantageous to any one, then it is just to make him a slave.
[s]But whether any person is such by nature, and whether it is advantageous and just for any one to be a slave or no, or whether all slavery is contrary to nature, shall be considered hereafter; not that it is difficult to determine it upon general principles, or to understand it from matters of fact; for that some should govern, and others be governed, is not only necessary but useful, and from the hour of their birth some are marked out for those purposes, and others for the other, and there are many species of both sorts.
And the better those are who are governed the better also is the government, as for instance of man, rather than the brute creation: for the more excellent the materials are with which the work is finished, the more excellent certainly is the work; and wherever there is a governor and a governed, there certainly is some work produced; for whatsoever is composed of many parts, which jointly become one, whether conjunct or separate, evidently show the marks of governing and governed; and this is true of every living thing in all nature; nay, even in some things which partake not of life, as in music; but this probably would be a disquisition too foreign to our present purpose.
Every living thing in the first place is composed of soul and body, of these the one is by nature the governor, the other the governed; now if we would know what is natural, we ought to search for it in those subjects in which nature appears most perfect, and not in those which are corrupted; we should therefore examine into a man who is most perfectly formed both in soul and body, in whom this is evident, for in the depraved and vicious the body seems [1254b] to rule rather than the soul, on account of their being corrupt and contrary to nature.
We may then, as we affirm, perceive in an animal the first principles of herile and political government; for the soul governs the body as the master governs his slave; the mind governs the appetite with a political or a kingly power, which shows that it is both natural and advantageous that the body should be governed by the soul, and the pathetic part by the mind, and that part which is possessed of reason; but to have no ruling power, or an improper one, is hurtful to all; and this holds true not only of man, but of other animals also, for tame animals are naturally better than wild ones, and it is advantageous that both should be under subjection to man; for this is productive of their common safety: so is it naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind.
Those men therefore who are as much inferior to others as the body is to the soul, are to be thus disposed of, as the proper use of them is their bodies, in which their excellence consists; and if what I have said be true, they are slaves by nature, and it is advantageous to them to be always under government. He then is by nature formed a slave who is qualified to become the chattel of another person, and on that account is so, and who has just reason enough to know that there is such a faculty, without being indued with the use of it; for other animals have no perception of reason, but are entirely guided by appetite, and indeed they vary very little in their use from each other; for the advantage which we receive, both from slaves and tame animals, arises from their bodily strength administering to our necessities; for it is the intention of nature to make the bodies of slaves and freemen different from each other, that the one should be robust for their necessary purposes, the others erect, useless indeed for what slaves are employed in, but fit for civil life, which is divided into the duties of war and peace; though these rules do not always take place, for slaves have sometimes the bodies of freemen, sometimes the souls; if then it is evident that if some bodies are as much more excellent than others as the statues of the gods excel the human form, every one will allow that the inferior ought to be slaves to the superior; and if this is true with respect to the body, it is still juster to determine in the same manner, when we consider the soul; though it is not so easy to perceive the beauty of [1255a] the soul as it is of the body. Since then some men are slaves by nature, and others are freemen, it is clear that where slavery is advantageous to any one, then it is just to make him a slave.[/s]
[/quote]
Quoting Ludwig V
Cool. More a point for @Tarskian then, who's taken a more absolutist line in saying because you cannot eliminate it you might as well accept any version of it that works for you as an individual.
Quoting Ludwig V
Slower in some ways, faster in others -- and it's still a legal system of rules, so it's still "game-able", just with more inroads for participation; and like any implementation of democracy the specifics can make big differences even if the conceptual understanding of why we do these things around the specifics are roughly similar.
I'm not convinced that our present systems of government are really working too well with the bigness and complexity; part of my interest in this isn't just the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution, but also in the vein of modifying existing structures to better handle the problems we're presently failing at dealing with (such as global warming -- all the hierarchy in the world, and nary a solution beyond "Burn it all up" -- at least to hear the people who can set and push policy talk)
Quoting Ludwig V
I think the practical reasons for choosing hierarchy are habituated more than practical -- they're practical because very few people in an industrial society are taught how to work collectively. The people in charge have no reason to develop those skills because it would mean that the "decision makers" wouldn't be valuable anymore. (same sort of thing with Aristotle: I'll free my slaves when I'm done with them, but until then I have no reason to "develop" them such that they can live an autonomous life after I free them)
But then when you get a job it's all about "teamwork" and "collective" because that's what our actual strength as a species is -- it's just that there's been a messy business of figuring out how to make that strength an individual perk for some owners and thinkers.
My target is hierarchy. I know that much.
Quoting apokrisis
I think this is too general; at some point social systems are not abstract and do things according to what's up rather than because of patterns we've seen.
And, given enough leeway, we can always "see" any social system as "good" -- which is what "evenly balanced fashion across a closed and cohesive network of relations" is doing, at least as I read you: This is what hierarchies ought aim for?
I think what's being said is that, unless hijacked from without, this is what hierarchies do as a matter of course, rather htan an aim of them. It is their function. I - in a rough and ready sense - would agree. Though, it's a flimsy agreement LOL
So not good vs bad hierarchies, just hierarchy in general. Boo, hiss! Hierarchy, dude! It's baaad!
Quoting Moliere
If you could give a concrete example, it would help show if you might have a case.
Yeah!
I have reasons and all, but that's it -- though it seems, given your previous caveat, that we're thinking similarly while saying different words: You have a particular thought on hierarchy, but I'm not sure that I have a negative opinion on your notion of positive hierarchy because when I read your description of society -- as a flow -- it seems descriptive and descriptive only and I cannot tell what might even be the "good" hierarchy.
I'm generally opposed to hierarchy, but: What is the good hierarchy in your view?
Quoting apokrisis
Gonna quote the original post I was mulling over in saying that:
Quoting apokrisis
All the above is what I'd call general description: according to names, data, and narrative one can make sense of it.
However, I think we're going for something other than description. "ought" is the philosophy word, but I'm not sure it's the right word other than to convey a distinction on a philosophy forum.
I'm not arguing against the perfectly natural -- given that hierarchies are a part of nature (what else would what I'm criticizing be a part of?) they are perfectly natural.
I've been tempted a time or two to pull it all down, but no -- I care about more things than my anger or stupid moral commitments.
And I want to push against the notion of a real idea of how to fix it: No one has a proper theory of how to fix it, or a real idea about how it works. Getting everyone on board with that much -- the metaphor I like to invoke is the rocket we're all strapped to without any knowledge about where it's going, how to control it, or when it will end -- is a step in the right direction. If we all think we have the key to the door while failing at opening the door then maybe it ought be time to make another key.
An "ought" for an "is" ;)
Well I only got started on the first point. How nature is in general always organised into hierarchical or fractal flows.
Then would come how hierarchies evolve from the unthinking kind to the thinking kind. When the flow is that which sustains an organism able to make smart choices at every scale of its being.
Eventually we get to the political meat - like why the combo of a constitution and a president (or even law-bound monarch) seemed like a clever idea.
Just as our brains are intelligent because they can form both long term smart habits and make more instant smart choices, so this polarity is reflected in the design of a rational political architecture. We want a constitution as our stable long term memory, our accustomed and well adapted habit. And we also want a president who can mobilise society in the moment, react immediately to novel threats and opportunity as they present themselves.
So as our brains are organised for intelligent choice, so do we want our nations to be institutionally organised. Exactly the same need and so exactly the same cognitive architecture.
Quoting Moliere
If ought makes philosophers feel they have a USP, then lets see how much sense they make applying the concept. Systems science and natural philosophy have already shown is and ought to be all part of. the one pragmatic package. But if philosophy wants to slide over to romanticism as it feels the enlightenment has been giving it the cold shoulder lately
Quoting Moliere
So you say. So you find comforting to believe.
But I asked for concrete examples that might support your vaguely expressed sentiments. As usual, Im just getting more unsourced claims.
I think this is a "meat" question for scientists who wonder how it happens or want to know the facts about the human brain -- but it would be the same question in China as the United States and Europe.
It's an interesting question -- why did Europe like this clever idea? -- but it's not a political position.
Quoting apokrisis
Can you give me criteria for what a concrete example would need to fulfill?
I am actually not very or particularly demanding.
(1) Most importantly, as a government, do not interfere in my private family life concerning women and/or children. Whatever the problem may be, there is no problem in the world that the government won't make worse.
(2) In all practical terms, I do not pay personal income tax, wealth tax, or capital gains tax. It just won't happen.
The less I need to bend myself into corners to avoid paying that kind of things, the better.
It's not that I reject the entire notion of taxes.
However, don't come and ask me how much I make or how much I own because the answer will always be: "nothing".
I don't look at what laws they have on the books because that is largely irrelevant. I only look at what they really try to enforce.
If I happen to receive a tax return form from the local ruling mafia, I will be on the next plane out of there. Bye bye.
Most governments outside the West are acceptable to me and generally meet my requirements.
For goodness sakes. Read Fukuyama. All three volumes. :grin:
He analyses political structure across the world from the year dot. Read Debt as well for the economic story.
How Europe stumbled its way to its political arrangements is a fascinating tale of luck and experiment. But also of essential system-balancing structures needing to be found.
Quoting Moliere
Do you ask to hold someones hand every time you need to cross the road? Clearly Im wasting my time now.
I'm scratching my head a bit because I think I've given concrete examples before, like the IWW.
Among other sentiments about what I like.
What I'm asking is: What do you like?
Or, What's good?
You really are a low effort sort of guy. You can't even cut and paste your example, let alone explain it in terms that are relevant as any kind of counter to what I might have said.
But here you go. This is your starter.....
No, they don't. The majority of governments outside of the west violate either (1) via religious/sex-specific regulation or violates the underlying deception in your response to tax questions. For example, interest on capital is against Sharia - but if a Sharia country asked you to 'donate' you'd be doing the same thing as paying a tax. It should be clear though, that tax is not illegal under Sharia - it is just worded in esoteric terms (you can have a read here - pay attention to statements such as "The State achieves this by imposing taxes upon the Muslims such that these needs and interests are met without being exceeded. These taxes should only be taken from peoples surplus wealth." and its inferences.
The problem there, then, even if you are find with the interest-less tax system, is swallowing theocracy dedicated to a clearly illogical, unsubstantiated story about pedophile warlord.
If you don't sign any marriage-related government documents, these governments simply won't get involved.
I spent one whole year in Indonesia in the past.In what way do they regulate anything sex-specific? I certainly did not notice anything. In all practical terms, it is based on self-discipline. I also did several multi-month stints in Malaysia. Again, sexual regulations are based on self-discipline.
It all depends on the woman's self-discipline and on your own.
If she is completely lawless, she'll be willing to do pretty much whatever, especially for some money.
But then again, you can find this type of women everywhere in the world. Still, if your dealings with her do not disturb public order, the government won't lift a finger to do anything about it.
Quoting AmadeusD
Zakaat, i.e. mandatory charity, is usually not enforced by government. Some countries do it, but most don't.
The calculations are too complicated anyway.
Only you can know how much you have given in charity already during this fiscal year and how much you still owe to the poor and the needy.
Furthermore, there is absolutely no country in the world that would try to enforce mandatory charity on foreigners.
They generally don't even try to force the locals to pay it, and certainly not successfully. It's rather that the clergy will start preaching about zakaat at the end of Ramadan and exhort the believers not to forget about it.
If you pay zakaat to the government, you trust that they will correctly identify the poor and the needy and really provide your payment to them. I personally do not trust the local ruling mafia for that job.
Furthermore, your own relatives and in-laws have priority in the distribution of zakaat.
(Note that parents and other ascendants fall under a different support obligation. They are not legitimate recipients of zakaat.)
It is only the remainder that can go to complete strangers.
Patently false. But, even so, you've acknowledge that the form of government violates your (1) in those cases. I understand what you're trying to get at, but its simply not the case.
Quoting Tarskian
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/08/indonesia-new-criminal-code-disastrous-rights Do not get started on Indonesia. Being an atheist is theoretically punishable by death (not the dumbest law on the books, it seems). https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/10/1/2
https://scholarhub.ui.ac.id/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=ilrev
https://www6.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ELECD/2008/44.pdf
Quoting Tarskian
Is a complete contradiction. Smelling anything yet?
Quoting Tarskian
No. Regulations are there to curb lacks of self-discipline. And apparently, 'discipline' means doing what the law says. This is a nonsense response.
From your same link (Wikipedia no less!!):
Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen still legally enforce Zakat, and a couple others regulate it at a state level.. Further, your quoted extract simply puts Allah in the place of hte 'local mob overlords' as to motivating factors. To put it in 'wittier' terms, a 'Cosmic North Korea' which ensures you pay your fucking taxes. AND Allah doesn't exist. So this is many many times worse than an enforced taxation system. Can you imagine the mid-east without Oil? Nope. The 20th century would not have been kind.
Quoting Tarskian
What does this have to do with anything?
Quoting Tarskian
It sounds as if you would trust a Global Theocratic Hegemony tho?
In my Indonesian and Malaysian experience, it simply is.
Quoting AmadeusD
The law making consensual sex outside of marriage a criminal offense is a full-scale assault against the right to privacy, permitting intrusions into the most intimate decisions of individuals and families, Human Rights Watch said.
Even Afghanistan does not manage to enforce this. Again, what's on the books is irrelevant. The only thing that really matters, is what they truly enforce. The above is simply unenforceable.
Quoting AmadeusD
Impossible to enforce. It is just a populist political statement. If push comes to shove, your lawyer would simply argue that you are technically not an atheist but that you believe in something whatever. The prosecutor's office will routinely drop the case. Impossible to get a conviction. Not worth their time.
Quoting AmadeusD
Assisting the poor and the needy is a perfectly legitimate moral obligation. If your own wealth exceeds a particular threshold, the laws of the Almighty insist that you help others in need. It is, however, not the government's job to enforce this. It is your own conscience that is supposed to do that.
Quoting AmadeusD
I am a foreigner in these countries. Therefore, it matters to me. If they would never enforce a particular rule against me, this rule is obviously irrelevant to me.
Quoting AmadeusD
I do not believe that the clergy should be the ruling class.
In the UAE, for example, the emir of Dubai is not a cleric. In Islamic history, the ruling sultan was rarely a cleric. Instead, he was typically the supreme commander of the armed forces. I do not believe at all that clergy should be the head of the army.
The role of clergy in society is substantially different from the army, the police, or the security forces in general.
You seem to be confused as to the role of the Islamic clergy ("ulema") in society. They lead the prayers ("imam"). They give jurisprudential advice ("mufti"). They get appointed as judges in personal status or criminal law ("qadi") by the emir or the sultan.
That's why I asked for criteria of some kind.
I suspect that your notion of hierarchy, when descriptive, is not the same as what I'm targeting. The idea that a program or system has hierarchies, for example, isn't the same as social hierarchy.
Maybe I'm nit-picking, but I think "moral obligation" is a contradiction in terms. But the important question is whether the system achieves its objectives. What are the facts?
Quoting Tarskian
Ah, god and guns. That's all you need to be in control. Keep the two separate, and no-one's in control.
Quoting apokrisis
Are you referring to "The End of History"? I'm really sorry and I may be prejudiced, but given what has happened since then, I think I have other priorities.
Quoting apokrisis
That sounds like a good start. We aren't there yet. All suggestions considered.
Quoting apokrisis
Are you saying that power is equally distributed in a hierarchy? Had you thought to ask those at the bottom of the heap what they think? What happens if I'm at the top and don't want to distribute power in an evenly balanced fashion?
Quoting apokrisis
I can understand how the system applies in the case of water or air travel opportunities - though "equal chance" is not an entirely transparent description. But what grounds are there to supposed that power behaves in the same fashion? I have a nasty feeling that power attracts power, so has an inherent tendency to inequality - like money.
I don't know, that doesn't sound too wrong. This Aristotle guy was smart, wasn't he? Except when he disagrees with my enlightened 21st century politics, of course.
Quoting Moliere
There are multiple examples in history where that was not the case.
I'm not denying that. On the contrary, in the 18th century, a lot of the gentry would have read Aristotle. But Aristotle does not specify that speaking a foreign language or not being a Greek is evidence of being suitable for slavery.
He was!
Why target low hanging fruit when the articulation for slavery that Aristotle uses is much the same as later articulations, and has an entire philosophical oeuvre within which to interpret the argument?
Really it might not even be Aristotle Aristotle that's the target here, but rather English interpretations of Aristotle (it's not like I'm going back to the Greek here, nor could I): He's the foil through which I'm thinking about hierarchy rather than addressing him in his own time and place due to the argument being largely the same, and clearer than most slavers are willing to articulate.
Quoting Lionino
I'm skeptical of such claims because of how often they are made, and how often "better off" is measured by the civilizers' values.
What examples do you have in mind?
Quoting Ludwig V
Not specified, sure -- I'm reading into him. I don't think it unreasonable to think that Aristotle prefers Greeks of the upper echelon, though, when we read the politics in conjunction with the ethics and note that goodness is the exercise of virtues within the larger biopolitical world.
It's his mixture of biology with politics that is really close conceptually to the race-based reasonings for slavery: he doesn't explicitly put slavish souls into a biological category, but their essence differs from other members of the species giving a sub-species "kind" with essence; I take it that no one can actually perceive a slavish or masterful soul, that there must be markers for that, and things like being non-greek would work for that.
I don't deny that for a minute. I just think that we should acknowledge that his version wasn't based on race. In other words, the 18th century version not only attempted to justify slavery, but did not so racial grounds.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. That's not in itself wrong - we do the same thing when we classify certain people as incompetent. What matters is what happens next.
Quoting Moliere
One might suspect that. But does the actual practice reflect that? For now, I can produce:-
Quoting Wikipedia - Slavery in Ancient Greece
In the case of the first three sources, a ransom was often sought as the first resort. In the case of the last, the actual enslavement would have happened elsewhere. I think it's pretty clear that although barbaroi were not excluded from slavery, they were not specifically targeted - as they were in the 18th century.
It's curious, thought, that Aristotle's criteria don't seem to have figured in actual practice at all. Perhaps we should give him credit for trying to introduce some criterion other than brute force.
Quoting Moliere
I don't deny that for a minute, either. I'm sure he also preferred Athenians to Greeks from other Greek cities as well. They were treated as foreigners, weren't they?
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes I'm being anachronistic -- there are some differences that are worth noting: Aristotle didn't use 18th century racial categories, and the practices of slavery were different between the eras.
And I have some work to do on what counts as a proper theory of race in order to make this point -- I'm reading in-between the lines with a generic notion of race which seems to have a conceptual match.
The concepts that are similar enough (and since they're embedded in a larger philosophy they're more interesting that some plantation owner who makes the case):The way he talks about slaves in the passage I quoted. Going back to proletarinizing the Irish (so, not even a case of slavery, in the practices, but it's still the same kind of cruelty and reasoning I'm thinking through): The character of the Irish is that they are lazy and so must have their land taken from them so that English capitalists of better character force them to be productive for their own good.
I don't think that we make the same judgment of another person when we say they are incompetent because we're not judging whether their character is such that they are naturally incompetent: it leaves open the possibility of learning, as well as not making inferences about people who are of the same kind having such-and-such a character.
Roman Empire, Spanish Empire, Portuguese Empire, Macedonian Empire...
If you cant present this beetle in a box private theory of yours here, then there is nothing to discuss.
No. The Origins of Political Order, Political Order and Political Decay, and the postscript, Identity, are a really great trilogy.
Quoting Ludwig V
No. I am pointing out that hierarchies are the hallmark of nature. Flows are fractally distributed. Even earthquakes fall into this inevitable statistical pattern. So hierarchies dont need to be explained. It would be deviations from hierarchies that would seem immediately unnatural - in need of some further causal inquiry.
Then I made the point that this is also true of organisms - semiotically-organised systems. Systems which add encoded information to shaping of distributed flows. If a landscape offers society a river, society can start damming it, regulating it, turning it into a system of canals, ditches, sluice gates and water wheels.
But even this mechanical constraint of nature evolves towards the same natural logic of a hierarchical organisation. If water for irrigation or hydrogeneration is the social good to be dispensed, then the fair approach is to be able to do so over all scales. Every farmer ought to be able to turn on a tap and pay the same price. Every householder should have an electric socket and pay the same fee.
In a normal world, we just unthinkingly build infrastructure in this natural way. It is clearly logical once we have reached a level of civilisation where we think of ourselves as the larger collective that is a nation. We want to be part of a society that can act as if it is indeed a single giant organism with all the organ systems of such an organism. A nervous system, a circulation system, an energy system, an immune system, etc.
This doesnt seem overtly political. But organising a crowd into a nation is hugely political. That is what Fukuyama is good at showing. That is what political science is properly about.
Once you have this civilised framework in place, then you can start to get into the usual bunfights over the actual health of your national plumbing. Does everyone have an electric socket and a tap that works. Can everyone afford the electricity and water or has wealth become siphoned off at the top in a way that it too needs to be redistributed to the lower levels.
If the state paid for the waterworks and power stations, the accounting is pretty easy. Taxes can be used to ensure a nations assets flow freely in some lower bounded way. A top and bottom get - somewhat artificially now - placed on the hierarchical flows.
But once a states assets are privatised, the assets hocked off to predatory capitalists, then that thermostatic regulation - that wealth constraining feedback loop - is removed. You get the predictable consequences of that.
Of course there are always the arguments. Trickle down theory. The philanthropic instincts of the super wealthy. The innate inefficiencies of any state bureaucracy. One can make a case for just about anything one likes. Folk are easily bamboozled.
But if you step back like a political scientist or systems thinker, the basics are clear enough. Nature is hierarchical in its organisation for good reason. And organisms exist by echoing that in constructing their own logically coherent state of being. An organism is a distributed flow where life and mind is the good being dispersed with a scalefree fairness to all parts of the one collective body. All 30 trillion cells or so, not including the further 100 trillion cells of our gut biome.
So politics is about the building of hierarchically organised sovereign nations. Civilisation is the good that is meant to flow freely through them over all scales. A well plumbed society will have an optimised distribution of civilised life and mind.
It is just weird how hierarchy is a term of abuse in the anglophone world. Everyone wants to be free. No one want to be constrained. There is somehow an expectation that civilisation appears as some kind of magical good rather than as a good being delivered by a long term social investment in really smart social plumbing.
I have, though, provided you multiple academic legal opinions to the contrary - at least oen from within Indonesia. Malaysia, I am less ofay with.
Quoting Tarskian
Then you are talking into the ether, from the ether. Which is fine, but it makes your responses fairly empty. You're defining-out some of the most important pieces of data to support a view point - not always horrid, but in this case, it is quite unfortunate as it amounts to moving the goalposts. If your entire view rests on "I don't think they would do that...." in response to bad policies, we ahve not much to discuss as that's just an opinion.
Quoting Tarskian
Plainly untrue. This is entirely enforceable, i'm unsure why you would suggest otherwise. If a report is filed, and the police process the report, it can be prosecuted. End of discussion. Whether someone is convicted is neither here nor there, but given the general biases against women in the penal system there, it is not at all out of the realm of reasonable assumption that at least one woman will be charged and convicted. THe possibilitiy is enough to uphold hte objection I'm making.
Quoting Tarskian
This is not relevant to our discussion. If you're centering yourself, I don't know why you're talking to others about it.
Quoting Tarskian
No. It appears that you pick and choose theory and practical results when it suits. Muslim Clergy are the ruling class by proxy in almost all Muslim-majority nations. Sharia is hte law of hte land? Ok, then Clergy are the judges. That's how that works. Pretending it's not because the titles don't reflect it is like saying the USA is not, in any way, oligarchical. It's a farce.
Quoting Tarskian
They are all required in service of the faith and Islamic Law regulates how this is done (in all those cases). They are, all of them, theocratic outsources. If this were not the case, you could have a Catholic leader of the Iranian defense force (whatever it's named Properly).
See:
Quoting Aristotle's Defensible Defense of Slavery, by Peter L. P. Simpson
Quoting Moliere
What would it mean to "put slavish souls into a biological category"?
You really don't know Indonesia, do you?
Quoting AmadeusD
Concerning Indonesia, you don't know what you are talking about, do you? You simply have no clue whatsoever.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
By the way, I do not recommend the use of nightclubs to pick up local one-night stands, be it in Indonesia or elsewhere. I personally consider casual sex to be rather lawless behavior. But then again, I don't give a flying fart if other people want to do that. To each his own.
So when bar owners are paying off or intimidating the local police so as to be able to fleece the rich tourists, suddenly this becomes evidence for your narrative that some societies just have laws that they cant be bother policing. And yet the facts seem better suited to your other narrative that all the world is run by corrupt oligarchs.
Im confused. :razz:
You wouldn't know they're homosexual without knowing them personally.
(Not that it matters, but I'm heterosexual and married.)
Good thing they're quite intelligent and rational, and managed to make a living in a safer country.
Neighboring Brunei isn't exactly better.
Such is the reality on the ground.
I have no clue about how things are in Malaysia for homosexual people.
But then again, I am certainly aware of Malaysia's casual sex scene.
If I were homosexual myself, I would probably know much better what the gay scene is like. So, you are simply asking the wrong person.
He is almost surely exaggerating about "gay persecution":
He was most likely complaining about "persecution" by his own family who do not accept his sexual orientation. Traditional families expect you to marry a member from the opposite sex and to have children.
Quite a few laws are indeed just political statements with absolutely zero intention of setting up a specialized police department to hunt down cases to prosecute. The existing police are usually not even aware of the new law, and they simply don't care either.
Welcome to the real world!
I do, actually. It strikes me as quite odd that you'd assume a lack of knowledge when I;'ve provided the sources... Your link has absolutely nothing to do with anything under discussion, and I note you have not bothered to look at the sources provided.
Quoting Tarskian
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/malaysia-questions-18-people-arrested-lgbt-halloween-party-2022-10-31/
https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/growing-persecution-lgbtq-malaysia
https://www.article19.org/resources/malaysia-stop-the-criminalisation-of-lgbtqi-individuals/
https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/matty-healey-not-a-white-saviour-for-condemning-malaysian-homophobia/ (the article is somewhat irrelevant (as is Tatchell) but hte basis for it is what's interesting)
https://www.voanews.com/a/malaysian-authorities-raid-lgbt-halloween-party/6811548.html
https://www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/the-persecution-of-transgender-people-in-malaysia
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/malaysia-cannot-accept-same-sex-marriage-says-mahathir-idUSKCN1M10UW/
Yeah, totally exaggerating.
Quoting Tarskian
I, in fact, do. I take your continuous denial of the facts on board.
Quoting Tarskian
No, you don't.
Quoting Tarskian
This sentence is incoherent.
So back to the start, I guess:
Quoting Tarskian
Please, feel free to critique several reports from legal experts in the region.
You can see I did in fact reply to @Ludwig V on this. So I might as well expand on where I suspect you are going wrong.
You have this notion of "power" as the social good to be distribute. And you mean power in the restricted sense of the power to dominate (as opposed to the power to submit I guess). This everyday kind of ethological hierarchical organisation the one discussed in its genetic and evolutionary sense of the dominance-submission hierarchies found in social animals is then sort of hand-wavingly exported to the contests of nations, the contests between capital and labour, the contests between road-hogging cyclists and cycle-dominating road-ragers.
You praise "amiability" as that expresses your distaste for being dominated, and also as a way to bypass the issue of whether you thus have submitted. The good society on this view which seems where you are tracking would be the hierarchical order that could deliver this "amiability" across all scales of social being. Everywhere at every level in life, the question of who won and who lost could be considered moot. Politely unmentioned. Imagined never to have been a social dynamic in play.
Well you can see the issue if humans are social animals and have evolved some version of the dominance~submission behaviours that are the "how" of how non-linguistic social animals organise their adaptively hierarchical worlds. We can't help but tell a difference between a soft smile and a stern gaze. It is in our genes. And a natural conflict arises when we live all day pretending outwardly to be smiling while inwardly frowning because serving burgers at McDonalds is after all a pretty shit occupation.
The social game there becomes trading amiability with respect. You tack on the corporate welcome, they act with the respect suited to the financial occasion.
OK. But onwards to the political science of how modern society needs to be understood. What is the social good that is actually being plumbed to deliver? How can we define that in terms that are both personally meaningful and collectively measurable?
No one really talks of society as an amiability~respect distribution system. But that is not a bad kind of balancing act. And then those who think of it in wolf pack terms as a dominance~submission distribution system seem not to have noticed that we have collectively evolved way beyond that point. Sure those instinctive behaviours are still ever present as the fabric of our lives. But the point of the Enlightenment of a civilising and rational social philosophy was not to amplify this genetic trait but instead suppress it, or at least harness it to its best advantage, in a new scheme of civilised life.
So dominance (and submission) is not what is being hierarchically distributed, even if it might seem like it from a narrow genetic view of a social system as a hierarchy still organised by systems principles. I.e.: still organised as a system of top-down constraints in balance with their bottom-up degrees of freedom.
A better word than amiability could be agency. Western social democracy had this vision of self-actualisation as a cultural good to be distributed evenly to all. Creating a social safety net was what ensured that every person had the same opportunities, if not the same outcomes.
Obviously then along came neo-liberalism as a corruption of that approach. Agency became such a one-sided concept that the social safety net could just be abandoned. A cost to strike off the balance sheet and so leave "everyone richer".
Social democracy of course was a little short-sighted as it never quite expanded its hierarchical reach to include the wider environmental reality of a planet taking off towards 10 billion souls who all also hoped to enjoy their new civilised agency, with its social safety net.
And neo-liberalism very quickly decided that ecological and climate concerns were yet another kind of friction on their shiny entrepreneurial schemes. The quest to monetise, and even financialise, everything. Turn the social world into a pure capital world without any accounting line for "a work force" because fossil fuels were an infinite form of manpower and AI was coming to replace even the white collar back office.
If you had to still have some dark satanic mill of slave labour and stinking pollution, well as @Tarskian keeps reminding us, there are plenty of third world countries where you can just lose these things from sight. They can't even enforce their own laws on itinerant passport holders from developed nations. If they can't clean up their beach resort nightlife, there is no way they can say no to Foxconn or ExxonMobil.
But anyway, that is how to start thinking about hierarchies as the natural blueprint for any system of disspative flow. There will always seem to be some conflict going on as between the top-down contraints and the bottom-up freedoms. But this is just the dynamical balancing act by which the two things of stability and creativity can live together in a fruitful complementary fashion. Complexity can be constructed because it can be afforded.
The issue is to properly frame the dynamical balance that you want to apply evenly over all the levels of your hierarchy. For actual natural systems such as rivers or plate tectonics, the good is simply "maximum entropy". But for organismic systems, the good becomes some notion of "flourishing". The ability to repair and reproduce and so continue the journey towards some personal future.
Human civilisation has raised the game still higher as we now can aspire to delivering "civilisation" as the scalefree good. But then we have to start digging into that to discover what it really means to us.
Amiability sort of touches on it. Agency does too. Social capital is another term. Living as nature intends might be another slogan. We sort of know what we mean in terms of "the good life".
At least until someone comes along with another dumb one-note "good" such as happiness, or virtuousness, or being ethical, or whatever else tends to crop up in utopian fantasies of how a society ought to be run if only they were its dictator.
How is that compatible with the following?
But then again, I am not gay. So, I am not familiar with the specific details of what exactly is tolerated and what is not in Malaysia.
For example, homosexual behavior is tolerated in Russia but homosexual propaganda is absolutely not. Furthermore, any homosexual propaganda targeting children is rigorously prosecuted in Russia.
Is it just about any perceived Malaysian distaste for LGBTQ propaganda?
But it is perfectly clear how little idea you have about what that is. You are just babbling in the fashion expected of the standard crypto bro digital nomad. Not an original thought in your head apparently. Just going with the latest meme lifestyle. Fitting in with your chosen crowd. :up:
Unlike you, I have lived for some while in these countries. I still regularly visit them. I am talking as an eyewitness from personal experience.
Furthermore, I am clearly not the only person writing this on the internet. Public sources point out that there is an entire nightlife scene for gay patrons in Malaysia.
Unlike what you are doing, I am not even supposed to dream up original fantasies and then present them as facts.
Reality does not seem to fit with the ideological propaganda that you subscribe to.
That is a you-problem.
A fact is more important than the Lord Mayor of London.
Indulge your illusions if they give you comfort. :up:
Having lived there is about a fact.
It is not an illusion.
Unlike you, I have a truckload of immigration entry and exit stamps to show for.
I have spent months in a row on Langkawi Island, as well as in Port Dickson and Malacca on the west coast, in Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya in the larger capital metropolis, Johor Bahru on the southern tip of the peninsula across Singapore, and Teranganu on the east coast.
I still want to visit Georgetown on Penang island as well as the Sabah and Sarawak territories in East Malaysia, i.e. North Borneo.
That is the famous Malay archipelago that runs from southern Indochina all the way to the Sulu Sea, south of the Philippine islands, bordering their Mindanao island.
I spend proportionally much more time in Indochina proper but I do like Malaya too.
Instead of endlessly complaining about these places, I simply enjoy their natural beauty and their friendly people. Seriously, get a life!
No, I meant that you are delusional in claiming to be well travelled, unlike me.
I had lived in four countries and visited another twenty or so by 12. We used to visit a nice crab restaurant in Johor Bahru.
Quoting Tarskian
Well, no, that's exactly not the case here.
Missing family + friends isn't a perk.
Much like neighboring Brunei, and Saudi Arabia by the way, Malaysia is officially Sunnist.
And so Malaysia lost another smart, kind person for (religion-bound state-sanctioned) humanitarian reasons.
Quoting above
This is very helpful.
Quoting apokrisis
This is not helpful. In the first place "hierarchy" was invented to describe a human social structure. In the second place, it doesn't matter much where the term came from and what it meant in its original home, if the export proves helpful.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, that description of power is yours, and I'm not at all sure that it is appropriate.
Quoting apokrisis
Not all that weird. The term hierarchy most often encountered, as here, in the context of social hierarchies and, in that context, is very often associated with what one might call "one-way", "top-down" hierarchies. These posit one-way communication and control and that is, indeed, at least very often, tyrannical in a social hierarchy. When our leaders stop listening, they become ill-informed and make worse decisions. "Bottom up" communication and support is essential for such structures to work.
You are right that hierarchical structures can be found beyond the context of the social and indeed, the ethological. And its relevance should be evaluated in context. It is not difficult to see that a hierarchical structure might well be the most efficient and effective way of distributing or collecting goods, and so it would not be surprising to find structures like them outside the social context. But a structure that is an efficient and effective way of distributing or collecting things is not necessarily an appropriate way of organizing a society. In fact, the varieties of hierarchies once one starts looking round is positively dizzying; many of them are quite irrelevant to the issues of social hierarchies. I accept that they can work well and are even the best way for us to organize ourselves in certain situations. But in other situations, I very much doubt it.
Quoting apokrisis
I agree with that analysis. There does seem to have been a crisis in the 1970's, and I think the arrival of neo-liberalism hi-jacked the post-war arrangements. That deserves an account to, though I haven't got one. Perhaps one day. Not that the world is waiting for it.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes. I describe that as liberal over-reach. It is a painful echo of the rhetoric of the imperialist age and it's no wonder there has been a push-back, leading to the crisis that we are now living through.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes. Prescriptions for the good life should only ever be offered as recommendations. Modesty, and a genuine interest in the other guy's point of view and respect for it. That builds community, which builds peace, which gives at least the opportunity for people to work out what is the good life for them.
But I am talking about hierarchy theory as a branch of science and not in that everyday sense.
Yes, you said that before. "pure form".
[quote=your link]This paper compares the two known logical forms of hierarchy, both of which have been used in models of natural phenomena, including the biological. I contrast their general properties, internal formal relations, modes of growth (emergence) in applications to the natural world, criteria for applying them, the complexities that they embody, their dynamical relations in applied models, and their informational relations and semiotic aspects.[/quote]
Not being a mathematician, I'm not qualified to talk about that. But you seem to be talking about applying that pure form to social structures, though I notice that the article considers only applications to the "natural world". I think I'm qualified to talk about social structures, in a philosophical way. Is that not a basis for a conversation?
Quoting apokrisis
Well, a lot of people have had a go at this. The first person who tried it is probably Plato. It's called utopianism and it is very dangerous. Next thing you know, you will be telling us that it should be imposed on us for our own good. The fact (if it is a fact) that it is a structure that occurs in nature is not a good argument that it should be replicated in human societies. On the other hand, if it is inevitable, in some sense, then it is already here and we can all go home.
Yes. They used the same argument to justify enclosures in England as well. It's a case of finding a weapon, not the truth.
Quoting Moliere
"incompetence" is a legalistic term, but it includes permanent conditions like Down's syndrome as well.
The systems view is now moving from thermodynamics and biology to social science and human history. It claims to add mathematical rigour to the conversation. And I endorse this move.
See for example - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-0-387-47681-0
To say that slaves are essential different from masters due to the kind of creature they are. One could justify saying "this person has a slavish soul" by saying "this person has bad habits that could change", which would be a psychological rather than a biological category. But Aristotle justifies it by tying it to their essence as creatures: their whole teleology is to be bound to a master who directs them in physical labor.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes! Been reading a book covering some of that time period which is why the example is on my mind.
Quoting Ludwig V
Okiedoke.
Permanant conditions aren't the same thing as character, I'd say. "The Irish are lazy" is a judgment of a person's character on the basis of class-inclusion: All Irish are lazy. Shane is Irish. Shane is lazy.
"Shane has Down's Syndrome" is a medical classification which may entail various legal things depending on the legal system. Shane has to have various symptoms and a medical professional to prove such things for various legal entailments.
In the former you have policy-wizards dreaming up ways to change the bad character of a group of people. In the latter you have a person that needs to be recognized by a professional body in a different way.
(EDIT: At this point I've relied upon her so much I ought cite her -- https://www.amazon.com/Hijacked-Neoliberalism-against-Workers-Lectures/dp/1009275437)
Quoting Moliere
One of the things about using whole empires as an example is it will be terribly vague whom counts as a civilizer and whom counts as the civilized over the course of an Empire's life. The examples I've used are much smaller than these historical entities to a point that I don't think they're exactly comparable examples.
The history of empires always reads like World History to me.
I'd say my examples are more in the vein of social history.
Just to put some names out there for marking differences of approach -- I don't think we're being so grandiose as to actually be doing history here rather than talking and thinking out loud.
The first question that came to mind was: Were the Greeks better off when the Romans conquered them?
You make it sound like the weather. But what you mean is that systems theories are now trying to apply it to social science and human history. Judging by some people, they are more likely to try to impose it. There is always a danger with these projects that you will fit the data to the theory, rather than the other way about. If you start off by saying that only systems theory knows what a hierarchy is, you're in trouble already, because you have defined your data out of existence.
You might like to think about the history of economics. For a long time, it clung to mathematical rigour. But now the limitations are being recognized and different, more humanistic approaches are being developed. Mind you, economics has an inherent limitation, that its predictions are known to the actors and affect their behaviour. The same will apply here.
Mathematical rigour is all very well. In its place.
Mind you, I'm not opposed to systems approaches in principle. So I'm quite happy to await results.
In a way, yes. Their culture was maintained and cultivated. The once divided city-States unified completely and because of that managed to fight off Eastern invaders for centuries, when it barely managed to do so before that, in the Persian war. Basically, Greece was given a Mediterranean empire for free when, the only time it managed to do something like that, the whole thing collapsed before a single generation passed.
Were the people conquered by the Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Vandals and Huns better off? Absolutely not. It might be for the same reason that those were called barbarians so often in history.
But that was because economics lacked the larger constraint of a historical perspective on social order. It was concerned with the plumbing of markets in a pure sense and not with why trading and debt systems are characteristic of Homo sapiens since we got going with the hierarchical tribal structures that turned landscapes into customary narratives of foraging.
Economics too is being pulled into this new cross-disciplinary exercise of applying the lens of dissipative structure to an understanding of why our historical arc of development has been what it is.
I simply point out this is something that is happening in current academia. If you want examples, they are abundant.
No I don't mean this at all.
Power is not a dirty word. Power is important.
An Anarchist FAQ is a good resource for thinking about hierarchy in the sense I've said.
Anarchists care about power more than liberals -- though less than warlords, who want it all for themselves (in a hierarchy, one might say): anarchy is not opposed to power at all as much as wants it to be directed according to what human beings want, rather than a class of deciders.
I might as well point to the internet and say my answer lies there. You make zero effort.
I waited to respond to you last because I've been reading over your posts and thinking a lot, not out of disinterest.
Aristotle recognizes that the differences between the master and slave are generated by contingent factors. They are not somehow predetermined or immutable or necessary.
I'm guessing you're bound to a democratic/egalitarian argument where everyone is supposed to be equal, and any empirical inequalities must therefore be minor and superficial. But practically speaking this is a very difficult position to maintain, both because the empirical observations do not support it, and because when the democratic citizen votes they are required to discern good leaders from bad leaders. If there is no essential difference between one candidate and another, then why vote at all? And is it realistic to deny that there are at least two classes of adults: those who could make good leaders and those who could not?
I think what most trips up the modern democratic mind is that Aristotle holds that the natural slave prefers to be ruled by a natural master, in much the same way that the natural infantryman prefers to be ruled by a natural general. We have a notion that there are no natural slaves and that everyone is therefore fit to rule, and the consequences of this are nigh-comical. In that case, maybe the U.S. has received the presidential candidates it deserves.
For Aristotle the doctrine is eminently practical, and so to ignore the pragmatic reality on the ground while appealing to purely theoretical notions of "biological essences" is beside the point. What would a world with no natural slaves actually look like, and do we live in that world or not?
I will briefly note again why this is silly. Hierarchy theory in the systems science tradition is at pains to show how constraints are the reason there can even be freedoms.
Until you understand why this is, you just cant understand what it means to be a self-organising natural system. You are stuck in some mechanical paradigm and not talking about nature as we find it in the real world.
Then further...
And more generally...
Not to mention...
Or alternatively...
Continuing the theme....
And there freedom lies.
Ah, so pure form is not enough on its own, and that pesky unmathematical history turns out to be essential.
Quoting apokrisis
What do historians say about the usefulness of that lens in understanding a historical arc?
Well, that's very kind of it. But it's not very meaningful in the context of water or electricity systems. Both do whatever they do. They are not constrained or free (except metaphorically).
Yes, some philosophers are very keen on parts and wholes and dialectical relationships. But everything depends on what kind of part and what kind of whole. The relationships between the two are different in different contexts. For example, what are the parts of a rainbow? Of a number, say 3? Dialectical relationships in causal contexts are simply causal loops, but in Hegelian philosophy quasi-logical relatioships and in human beings conversations.
Well, it's perfectly true that if you lay out all the parts of a car on a work-bench, you don't have a car. If you have to add something, you didn't lay out all the parts. If you don't, what more do you add? Hint - what do you mean by "more" and what do you mean by "sum"?
I don't see many wholes about producing things or simplifying things? So where does all that activity take place? To put it another way, Before the whole is produced, it cannot create its parts (because it doesn't exist). So the whole cannot produce it's own parts.
Well, a beach is produced because the weather and the water erode rock into separate pieces, which then are eroded into small and smaller pieces (the action of wind and weather now includes causing them to physically erode each other) and are eventually collected together to form a beach, which is shaped mainly by the water in the adjacent lake or sea. What is "higher" about weather and water? There's no "higher" constraint. A school of sardines is formed in different ways, and a glacier in what that are different again. No "higher" constraint is involve. You are confusing the process by which human beings (and some animals) make things with the inanimate processes that make inanimate things. You seem determined to see hierarchies in everything, rather than considering whether each thing has a hierarchical structure or not.
Yes. There are circumstances when it makes sense for us to form a hierarchical social structure. Closely co-ordinated action and fast decision-making are obvious factors. An army needs its hierarchy in order to fulfil its purposes. What are the purposes of societies in general? There are different societies that exist for different purposes, and they will adopt the structure that suits their purpose; that may or may not require a hierarchical structure. Let's say that the purpose of Society is to provide "life, liberty and the opportunity to purse happiness". The key point is that it exists for the benefit of its members - (if it does not, then it is tyrannical, unless the members have volunteered and can leave - neither of which is true of a state). So who is in charge? The top of the hierarchy? Or the bottom?
This is the recent summary paper of their work - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn3517
I would have thought you could work out my interests by observing what I take in interest in. Equally, I would have thought that you could work out my expertise by reading what I say. Actually, my main interest is philosophy, which involves being interested in everything and having limited expertise in anything. Like many philosophers, I don't like being categorized.
This is much more interesting that hierarchy theory. The results are not very surprising, which leads me to give them considerable credence. Three comments:-
1. Statistics are of great value in suggesting where to look for the causal narratives that explain the observed correlations. They do not explain the associations they identify. So we should not go overboard about their value.
2 The proposition that this is an evolutionary process is interesting. It neatly avoids the need to consider what the agents involved were thinking when they act - as when they adopt agriculture or iron weapons. But nonethelss they were thinking something when they adopted agriculture and iron weapons. It is easy to imagine that they recognized the advantages of these new inventions and that's why they adopted them. There is a back-handed recognition of this in the last paragraph:-
3 (Added after posting) It's also worth pointing out that the data on which the project relies is not gathered in any of the ways familiar to us nowadays. It is deduced from the clues available to us. Very often this involves reconstructing the lives and habits of the people. So narrative history is still needed as a basis for the generalizations.
So thank you for drawing my attention to this. I did tell you that I am not in principle opposed to these approaches. This one is much better than the other one because it seems capable of dealing with the data without unduly distorting it.
Not sure that is how it works. Seems it ought to require being expert across all fields.
Quoting Ludwig V
But they are not different approaches.
The days when that was possible are long gone.
What are you an expert in?
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, they are. One respects the data and draws some worth-while conclusions. The other distorts the data by enforcing a single model on it.
A dynamical systems approach is an enormous elaboration of the simple notion of composition of functions in which there is a mechanism of feedback that can help direct the process level to level. But even this germ of a system can be complicated. Add a huge reservoir of data and progress depends upon interpreting what it all means.
And that is no different at the level of fundamental physics. Maths gives us the topological simplicity of particle physics as a SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) structure. And yet then we have to have all this other stuff going on to effectively break this symmetry.
Like strong force confinement to preserve some remnant of SU(3) from complete self-annihilation quarks bound up into protons and neutrons. And a Higgs field to break the SU(2) electroweak symmetry in a way that leaves three massive gauge bosons, plus a massless U(1) photon that could spend the rest of eternity radiating and redshifting the Universe towards its eventual heat death.
So we can have the pure forms from the mathematical arguments. But if the maths is just geometry and topology a mesh of spatial relations then it already explicitly leaves out its "other" in terms of the time/energy that breathes life into its equations. It is no surprise that something extra a little condensed matter physics has to be added to the brew.
Cosmology had its fundamental symmetry models straight from Sophus Lie. But it took a lot of effort to figure out exactly how those symmetries got broken in the real world by emergent topological effects such as the asymptotic freedom of the strong force, or the way the electroweak force was cracked by "eating" the Higgs field.
Time and energy the statistical thermodynamics of a cooling~expanding Big Bang needed to be added to the story so as to deal with "a huge reservoir of data and interpreting what it all meant".
Synthesising expertise.
Quoting Ludwig V
It seems you think you are the expert after all. And you have only just heard of Turchin's work. Probably not even read the paper yet. :up:
Observational studies are moderately useful for providing a working hypothesis but are absolutely unsuitable as a replacement for an experimental test report.
Merely staring at a phenomenon and then speculating about what's going on, does not yield knowledge.
That is why "data science" is not science.
I'm sorry you have decided to give up on our discussion. I thought there was a reasonable chance that we might end up with an understanding, if not an agreement. Still, it has been of interest, so thank you for your time and effort.
I think that is a bit unspecific. From a point of view, it seems unproblematic; from another point of view, it would then be puzzling why Aristotle said that Greeks are suited to rule the world and thus the strong savages to the North as well as the effeminate intellectuals to the South to be ruled, as we can't change our race immutable.
Quoting apokrisis
Circular innit?
Perhaps, but less unspecific than the original objection, which was my aim.
Quoting Lionino
Greeks are not immutably rulers. They need not have had the characteristics that made them good rulers, and they need not maintain those characteristics into the future. If there were something immutable or "biological" about Greeks being good rulers then none of this would be true.
Dialectic. Broad as opposed to narrow. Synthetic as opposed to analytic. Meta-theoretic as opposed to applied.
Well genetics are not immutable, but here is the crux of the matter:
Aristotle says that Greeks are fit to rule because they have x, y, and z characteristics. He does not say that Greeks are fit to rule because they are Greek.
Now "anti-racists" have a difficult time even with saying that Greeks are fit to rule because they have x, y, and z characteristics, and this is because the "anti-racist" holds to a dogma which says that no race or people has any characteristic which makes it better, in any way, than any other race or people. I think that's the long and short of it: an anti-racist dogma comes up against an empirical argument. I would say that, in principle, the dogma loses every time, and that the best arguments against racism are not dogmatic, a priori arguments. We can go further and say that when anti-racism becomes dogmatic it carries itself over into irrationality, even though it is politically incorrect to say so. I don't oppose morality, but this is one of the many examples of a moralistic position falling into irrationality.
Forgive my ignorance. I must have missed something. Did Aristotle say that Greeks are suited to rule the world? Reference?
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, that is indeed a bit sweeping. It may well be that people with a black or brown skin are better suited to living in a tropical country. Evolution would see to that, just as it has, no doubt, seen to the colour of people living in temperate countries. Do we think that is particularly relevant to the practice of enslaving them? I hope not.
But I'm not sure that's what anti-racists are/were on about. I think that they were on about the idea that people with a black, brown or yellow skins were suited to being dominated by people with white or pink skin. They may have suspected that people with black, brown or yellow skins were not dominated by people with white skins because of some inherent characteristic but because of the more effective technologies of the white people. But I think they were more bothered by the idea that it was morally acceptable to maltreat any human beings simply because of the colours of their skins. Doing that seemed incompatible with the mission of civilizing and Christianizing non-European and non-Christian countries - as indeed, it was.
Quoting Leontiskos
I suppose you understand that sentence is itself an example of a tendency much criticized by anti-racists and other people opposed to prejudicial discrimination - stereotyping. Some racists may have a problem with the idea that Greeks, as such, are fit to rule and yet be completely at ease with the idea that people with x, y, and z characteristics are fit to rule. If all Greeks turn out to have x, y, and z characteristics, so be it. But they will not be willing to assume that they do on such fragile grounds as the fact that they all speak Greek or live in Greece. There is no rational connection between speaking Greek or living in Greece and being fit to rule.
Quoting Leontiskos
Whenever I think about whether some group of people is better off or not due to a social action I think to myself: would I be willing to be on the receiving end?
I can say that as an individual I don't have deep ties to whether the Eastern invaders are defeated. If anything, these seem to be the things that are wrong with our societies: the desire to dominate will lead to endless suffering that need not be.
Greece may have been given a Mediterranean empire for free, but if I were greek I'd have preferred to not be dominated.
Though, of course, the Greeks had already accepted this sort of conquer-or-be-conquered ethos; in some sense it's deserved because it was the same thing they'd do to others.
My suspicion is that ethos still has reflections today which, rationally speaking, need not be the case.
I was recently recommended a podcast hosted by Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. So last night I listened to my first episode, which focused on the notion of "racial equity." It was interesting without going beyond the realm of easy listening, but the tag clip at the beginning of the video highlights the beginning of McWhorter's argument in favor of equality, namely that blacks are not intellectually inferior (timestamp). What's interesting is that he intentionally avoids appealing to the dogma, and it cannot be overstated how odd this move is in the American landscape. McWhorter substantiates this, "We're going to get into trouble for even discussing [the empirical case for equality], but anyone who thinks we can't discuss it is being religious and not logical."
Aristotle gave an empirical case for inequality qua ruling, and I don't see how serious-minded individuals can oppose Aristotle's arguments without making their own empirical case for equality. Although he is not opposing Aristotle, there is a parallel sense in which McWhorter is one of those serious-minded individuals, and his arguments are perfectly reasonable.
Quoting Leontiskos
You did indeed say that. Not quite oops! but nearly. Could you give me the reference?
It's a complicated question. The issue that provoked it was:-
Quoting Moliere
This was based on the standard narrative of the civilizing imperial missions of some of the European nations in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
But the question doesn't really apply to the conquest of Greece by Rome (between 146 and 31BCE).
During the Hellenistic period (between 323 BCE and 30 BCE) Greek cultural influence spread through the Mediterranean and beyond. There was a good deal of fighting during that time; I don't know how far that actually affected the Greeks. Yet it seems that prosperity and progress reigned. The Romans, therefore did not bring peace and prosperity - the Greeks were doing quite nicely on their own, thank you. In fact, there was a kind of reverse take-over. Greek culture dominated native Roman culture, to the point that there is very little left of what went before. How far that benefited the Greek in the street is hard to discern, but some Greeks did; Greek people were much in demand as tutors, doctors and administrators.
See my post <here> and the reference Simpson gives to the Politics.
That's a very good test. It's not perfect. Some people have very poor imaginations and worse memories. I remember, in the small town that I lived in a while ago, there was a recession and a number of people lost their jobs. They got very annoyed about the welfare system - not much money, ill-mannered and unhelpful staff. When they got jobs, they forgot all about it and reverted to moaning about high taxes and the idle poor.
Quoting Moliere
That seems reasonable. But I feel that they are rather weak on the role of co-operation in making life worth living.
Quoting Moliere
That's quite obvious. And yet people still try that way. They see themselves as the winners, but mostly end up as losers, because there's always a bigger dog round the corner. It's the same syndrome as the gamblers. They think about what they're going to win and never about what they're losing.
Quoting Moliere
I'm still trying to work out what that refers to. It doesn't reflect anything I know about and I can't find anything obvious in what the reference sites say.
Quoting Moliere
Well, everybody accepted that. The point of war was to get rich quick.
Quoting Moliere
Of course. Nothing changes, except the way people dress up what they're doing. Hope is all there is.
Talking Heads right? You might like McWhorter's book. A pretty good antidote the Kendi's, Crenshaw's and DiAngelo's of the world.
What you've posted is a popular article literally advertising specific bars in the area. It has nothing, whatsoever to do with the discussion. Either critique thos several legal reports but local legal experts, or move on. Posting a travel article which is sponsored is not credible. I think it's possible you're under the impression that the level of discussion on these things remains in the same place it does when one speaks from a theocratic position (i.e restrained by belief). This would apply to your beliefs that aren't directly related to your theology too. In this case, you simply 'believe' that things are OK for LGBT people in these places, perhaps because you need to, to reconcile your religious position, with the world around you and your apparently inherent moral code (i.e don't arbitrary criminalise same-sex relationships - yet Islam does, routinely, almost anywhere it gets the chance).
Quoting Tarskian
You haven't read the reports, so stop trying to have a conversation about htem. Read them and critique them, if you wish. Otherwise, please stop trying to talk about things you are plainly ignorant of from every conceivable angle.
I also note that you've just swallowed, without reflection, that the term "propaganda" is being used correctly. No. It is not. It is being used to label anything which is visible not heteronormative which is an strictly religious impulse in human history.
It would be better if you asked questions, clarified, and accepted sources and facts that go against your initial position. This should have been an opportunity to learn.
These gay bars, a multitude of them -- being openly advertised -- seem to be perfectly legal in Malaysia. How is that compatible with your gay-persecution hypothesis?
You haven't answered to what seems to be a glaring contradiction in your position on the matter.
Besides that, there is no need to read your sources of propaganda if you cannot even deal with the simple facts in front of you.
A fact is more important than the Lord Mayor of London.
You may want to re-read all the replies to this erroneous posting, and your ridiculous conclusions.
I also note that you are now relying on 'legality' instead of 'enforcement'. This is because if you read the reports, you'd realise prosecution is rife. You are cherry-picking, and changing your position based on what it supports in your retorts. This is extremely bad thinking, writing and argumentation. First-year critical thinking courses would tie you in knots.
Quoting Tarskian
You haven't presented one, so I'm not answering to one. This is a mistake on your part, not mine.
Deal with the legal reports, or don't.
Quoting Tarskian
Right, so you're a religious zealot who refuses to engage with criticism, 'fact's or evidence. Gotcha brother. Could have said this at the start and saved me the time. I was 100% right - you are under the impression that high-level discourse is the same as low-level discourse, but it isn't. You are floundering here my friend.
I present you with a simple fact, and you answer again with a useless word salad.
If you had made that claim about Afghanistan, I would have agreed that homosexual behavior is combated in that country by means of legal enforcement:
This is clearly not the case in Malaysia.
What's more, your meandering word salads won't make any difference whatsoever to the facts on the ground.
My position on the matter is otherwise perfectly clear. The government should not enforce matters deemed of moral self-discipline unless public order is at stake.
You did not. You posted a popular, sponsored article which has been removed from the 'credible' list by more than one poster. You're going to beat a dead horse now too?
Quoting Tarskian
You're an ignorant werido. I have provided several local reports from legal experts to the contrary. You literally refuse to read them. You're a joke, my friend.
Quoting Tarskian
That you cannot understand plain English is sufficiently clear. You did not need to be so mean to yourself.
Quoting Tarskian
You're now doing the non sequitur. A quaint dance. Once again, no one will be taking you seriously on the back of this. Was that the goal?
Another one:
Heterosexuals could actually also claim to be persecuted since prostitution is more or less illegal in Malaysia. But then again, prostitution is persecuted only when it is deemed a disturbance to public order.
If you cannot live with the Malaysian compromise on the matter, then don't visit the country. Simple, no?
Quoting Tarskian
I assume you got this from the legal reports about rates of prosecution? (btw, prosecution is the word you're looking for here).
If not, you'll need to provide those statistics (preferably vetted by an external HR-type source) for me to take this seriously.
You ahve also ignored hte direct challenges to your obvious hypocrisy and cherry-picking.
Are you going to address any of the objections you've received, or just continue to ignore them? I have asked specifically if you're going to beat a dead horse. Are you?
Thank you for the link. I think (hope) that we don't need to get into the weeds here. Simpson summarizes his argument at the end of the article and I think that may serve our purposes. I think it will help if I copy it here.
[quote=Simpson pp. 13,14]The natural masters are fundamentally the virtuous or those who have been or those who have been perfected in their development and the natural slaves are fundamentally the vicious, or those who have been damaged or corrupted in their development. Many barbarians are in this condition, to be sure, but there is no need to suppose that all of them are. More to the point, some Greeks will be in this condition, in particular the many and (sc. those) whom the many admire. These views fit in with, and may in fact be said to fall out of, the teaching of the Ethics (where the many are certainly characterized as slavish and bestial (references to the text omitted). They are not views peculiar to the ancient Greeks or to Aristotle. [/quote]
They are certainly not peculiar to Aristotle. The parallels with Plato's argument about the leadership of the ideal society are inescapable. The common theme is the central importance of reason. They share the view that the critical feature required to qualify one for leadership is reason. (Admittedly, Aristotle, unlike Plato, distinguishes between theoretical and practical reason, and that is an important distinction.)
Quoting Leontiskos
Aristotle says that most Greeks are not fit to rule. It is implied that some are. Nothing is said or implied about all Greeks - or barbarians. On the other hand, there is nothing to rule out the possibility that some random group of people may turn out (empirically) to share some characteristic which makes them all natural leaders or natural slaves. In fact, he proposes just such a group of people - "the many". One is inclined to think that "the few" must share the characteristic of being being leadership material.
Quoting Leontiskos
The first sentence of Simpson's summary makes it quite clear that Aristotle equates the natural with the moral. So Aristotle's empirical case is not what we would call an empirical case at all. It is built round his moral principle that the rational should rule over the irrational. I'm sure he would accept that that is not always the case in practice. He would say that when it is not the case, something unnatural is going on, meaning that something wrong is going on. So his claim is fundamentally a moral claim, not empirical at all.
:D -- Yeah. That seems a case if the fundamental attribution error -- those people are poor because they are lazy, whereas I am poor because of circumstances outside of my control: Character for thee and circumstances for me.
Quoting Ludwig V
For myself I was conceding the point to say how even if it's true I know that if I were one of the Greeks -- at least in the Veil of Ignorance type sense -- that it's pretty unlikely I'd think being dominated did me good.
Like you said here:
Quoting Ludwig V
More generally I'm skeptical that entire empires or cultures can take or give to one another in any sense other than a historian's narrative -- while I think there are social entities, and social ontology is one of the things I puzzle over, I'm uncertain that there really is such a thing as a whole Empire with its own properties as much as historical evidence can be arranged empire-wise. The story, in that case, has more to do with the storyteller than the events.
Though, at the same time, we can't do without this narrative aspect -- it's the sweeping, big narratives that I'm skeptical of here; so in some sense to concede that Greek Culture was given a Mediterranean empire for free because their culture was absorbed and spread across the Mediterranean after being dominated is to say, sure, we can put the story this way, but if I apply the Veil of Ignorance thought experiment in thinking about the being in the Greeks position I don't believe it matters too much if some historian later down the line comes along and synthesizes a big narrative which happens to include my culture as a character in it.
Basically the cost of being conquered isn't worth the prize of being a main character in a history later down the line, at least when I think through it from the position of the veil of ignorance.
Quoting Ludwig V
I'd say anarchists are more pro-cooperation than liberals tend to be, but I'd contrast this with liberalism's ability to build lasting social institutions.
Liberalism not only preaches individualism but reinforces it through its distribution of individual property rights.
Anarchists believe in individual needs and individuals, but that they are a part of a wider community -- rather than a bundle of self-interested individuals anarchists build collectives of cooperation which are intentionally built through collective decision-making and consensus building.
We cooperate for the same reason any human being cooperates -- because you can do more together than you can all by yourself. The anarchist only wants more freedom for everyone in building that "doing more together".
Quoting Ludwig V
Yeah. Still seems to be the case, though I like to think that we can work on moving beyond "Everybody accepted that"; in some sense to recognize that we don't have to accept some things which everyone has always accepted as the way things are.
Quoting Ludwig V
I do think things change, actually -- it's just not a sweeping Progressive narrative, per se. And they can change for the better. The only way I know of in which this happens is when regular people get together to demand change, though. It takes effort and planning, but it can be done.
Yes, and I might end up reading his book, but I'm guessing it will be a variant on things I already believe. I don't think an approach like Kendi's et al. has anything to recommend it. I thought McWhorter's analysis of Kendi's vantage point was insightful.
Did you enjoy McWhorter's book?
1. Yes;
2. Your earlier assumption is correct, it's just a good elucidation with great referencing.
I agree regarding Kendi et al. I guess this is just a great counterpoint as its two prominent, intelligent black men basically saying 'not my circus'. It's neat.
It might help your perspective on this to point out that the Greeks thought of themselves as Athenians or Spartans or Thebans. During the Persian Wars the opposition was never more than an alliance of city states, and some cities (Thebes) simply surrendered to them. That disunity continued until Philip of Macedon defeated them in battle and force a unification treaty on them. The story after than is very complicated, but a lasting unity was finally imposed by Rome in 30 BC. So although the culture was Greek, it was not the product of any single Greek political entity.
Quoting Moliere
Some things are better, that's true. It's just that so many important things are not.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. That would be better. And I guess it can work, but only at a relatively small scale. Roughly, up to the size of community that can function at a person-to-person level.
Quoting AmadeusD
For sure. It helps remind me that one is not insane to question this stuff and that plenty of other folk are also questioning it. Perhaps that would be another reason to read the book.
Seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. Schadenfreude - I have to say.
Right, "Aristotle says that Greeks are fit to rule," does not mean that Aristotle says that every Greek is fit to rule.
Quoting Ludwig V
Aristotle argues that the rational are more fit rulers than the irrational, and he thinks this is empirically demonstrable. He also argues that Greeks happen to possess the rational qualities most suited to ruling, which is also an empirical point.
But again:
Quoting Leontiskos
Empirical arguments can be offered for (1), but when I spoke of the empiric nature of Aristotle's argument I was pointing to (2). This is because the counterargument against Aristotle (or else his successors) is that there is no middle term and therefore no argument. It is the idea that Aristotle has nothing more than a blind predilection for Greeks. But this is false, and because he gives an argument of this kind, if it can be shown that barbarians possess x, y, and z characteristics to the same extent that Greeks do, then Aristotle can be shown to be wrong about favoring Greeks over barbarians. (2) is an empirical claim, and because of this the conclusion which utilizes it is also empirical. (1) is beside this point.
I am surprised to find these views among an undergraduate in Australia. Are you abnormal within your cohort, or is the rest of your generation on the same page?
Very abnormal, thought probably not so abnormal outside of the undergraduate cohort (remember, I'm a 'mature' learner and so not part of hte generation I'm studying with. It's been extremely obvious - even a couple of tutors are hopelessly ideological). My school just introduced a Bachelor of Social Justice Studies. I nearly threw up.
Well, I think it is ambiguous and I didn't recognize that. However, because he says the "the many" are not fit to rule and therefore implies that some, but not all, are fit to rule, I should have realized that your interpretation is correct. So you are right.
I'm in a bit of a quandary here. There are two conclusions in this argument. One is about leaders. I don't have any violent objection to that argument. I think it's false, but I'm not sure that I can be bothered to refute it. In practice, it wouldn't make any difference. The other is about slaves, and I cannot accept that it is right, or even all right, to enslave any human being. So I need to show that that conclusion does not follow from the argument. Briefly.
A. If we can identify characteristics that make someone fit to rule, then it follows that people who do not possess those characteristics are not fit to rule; it does not follow that they are slaves, or fit to be slaves. We could, instead, characterize them as natural followers or maybe natural independents (compare Simpson on tame and wild animals p.4)
B. You may be mistaken, however, to think that "the rational are more fit rulers than the irrational" is empirical. I may be wrong, but I think that, for Aristotle at least, reason is the faculty that enables us to get things right. A leader needs to decide the best thing to do and how to do it; so, by definition leaders need to be rational.
C.
So who is a natural slave and what is the index of being one?
1 Aristotle thinks the index is irrationality. Is there anyone whose life does not include some irrationality? And some rationality? This is not a clear criterion.
2 If slavery comes naturally to some people, why is it necessary to enslave them? One doesn't have to force a natural musician to play or a natural leader to lead. One only needs to enforce something that is against nature - irrational. A natural slave would accept slavery when it was offered. Voluntary slavery is a contradiction in terms.
D.
That's a most confusing sense of "nature". In the real world, disease is entirely natural. That's why we take many artificial measures to restore us to health.
We are in two minds about nature. Sometimes we consider that what is natural is good. Sometimes we consider that it is bad. It depends on the case. No general evaluation can stand up to the facts.
This notion was widespread among French, Italian, and Austrian economists and social theoreticians at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of these theoreticians (though not their fault) became popular among fascists, nazi, and communists, who took for grounded that societies always are hierarchical/patriarchal/dominated etc., and for this reason the solution is not to go against a natural trend/inclination of humanity (they thought democracy and liberalism were doing that), but to choose the last worst outcome through placing the group who deserves it the most at the head of these ("inevitable") societal hierarchies.
I don't know what's going on in Asia, or wherever Tarskian lives, but the USA seems to be more a chaotic kind of society, than a well-thought hierarchy.
We have a poor class in this country that may decide who will govern in 2025 and can hope in some money (through tax reforms) to be transferred from the rich to them. We have single mothers who have become Kamala Harris' primary target. We have the zionists who take every congressman to travel to Israel and "see" what perfect democracy Israel is. We have NRA which organizes gun festivals in evangelical churches, and at the same time is in big love with Israel and whoever pays well in the Middle East. We have SCOTUS. We have Elon Musk who takes money from Obama in order to save the US from carbon emissions and then gives Trump 45 million a month (though the latter wants more carbon emissions). We have media outlets, the Catholic Church of America, BLM and LGBT groups.
At this moment the zionists and NRA seem the strongest groups in Washington DC. But in other circumstances, you may see other groups to exercise more power. So, I am more eager to believe that this country tends to be chaotic (like most of the countries in this continent), more than hierarchical.
Okay, thanks for that.
Quoting Ludwig V
The two arguments come together insofar as masters/rulers and slaves/servants are two sides of the same coin. If one is fit to rule then they are not fit to be a slave, and if one is fit to be a slave then they are not fit to rule. This maps to a proficiency with the mind vs. a proficiency with the body, "Hence natural slaves will be those from whom the best work one can get is the use of the body" (Simpson, 5).
Quoting Ludwig V
For Aristotle a slave is a natural dependent in that they require the economia of a master to flourish. To take a bit of a contrived example, the worker on the early Ford assembly line requires Henry Ford's ingenuity in order to have a wage, and Henry Ford's ingenuity requires manual laborers in order to come to completion. The difference is that Henry Ford is capable of performing the manual laborer's job whereas the manual laborer is not capable of performing Henry Ford's job, and because of this the dependency is not entirely symmetrical.
Quoting Ludwig V
I see it as a truth that could be confirmed empirically, but need not be.
Quoting Ludwig V
Simpson's point in the quote you provide is that it is not necessary to enslave them (nor to not-enslave them).
Quoting Ludwig V
Voluntary slavery is not a contradiction if we attend to Aristotle's terms. Indeed, it is not clear that voluntary slavery of any kind is an analytical contradiction.
Quoting Ludwig V
A disease is contrary to human nature. That is the point. If it were not contrary to human nature then the human will and immune system would not oppose it. It is not being said that disease is contrary to Nature in some absolute sense.
My conclusion is rather that you can choose to go where you are treated best. That is the most efficient way of choosing the least worst outcome.
Ideology does not matter particularly much.
I am personally treated better in communist Vietnam than in supposedly democratic Denmark or Spain.
Quoting Eros1982
This is exactly what will never happen.
The ruling elite may transfer money from the middle class to the poor, only when it is sufficiently easy to do. However, they will never, ever transfer money from themselves to the poor. This does not happen in any country. The people in power will never use their power to confiscate money from themselves.
The real piggy bank is the excess income and excess wealth of the middle class. These people cannot protect themselves from confiscation. They have some money but do not have the political power to hang on to it. That is why they will gradually find themselves dispossessed of their money.
Quoting Eros1982
There are a lots of special interests, the most powerful of which collectively form the ruling elite.
Communist Vietnam has no hope nor reasonable ambition to forcibly extract money out of my pockets. That is why they are nice to me.
So, either you join the political elite of a country and try to extract money from other people, or else, you allow the competition to play between political elites of different countries as to prevent them from extracting funds from you. Otherwise, they will look at you as just another idiot to strip clean.
I'll abandon the example of disease and this point until and unless l can work out a better way of putting it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
You are right, Aristotle's slavery is not a sufficient condition of forcible enslavement. I was naive, then, to assume that all slaves are imprisoned by force and kept imprisoned by force as long as they are slaves. It should have been obvious, natural slaves are slaves whether anyone is forcing them to do things or not. (That's implicit in the discussion of the rules of war, where it is envisaged that the defeated army will be composed of a mixture of slaves and non-slaves.) Ordinary slavery, then, is a state quite different from Aristotle's slavery.
There's another difference which I might as well bring up here. [quote"Simpson - p 13"]The condition that makes the natural slave need not be permanent[/quote] Details are given on the same page. The natural slave might cease to be irrational. Presumably, one should release them at the point.
So a slave is just a servant. It seems that masters of tame animals are supposed to look to their welfare, and presumably the same applies to servant-slaves.
I left with just two questions. How do natural slaves who have no master live? How do natural rulers who have no people to rule live?
Quoting Leontiskos
Does the master not require the slave to flourish? Mutual dependency, common good. Positively inspiring!
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps. He may well not be. He probably doesn't have the time, what with running the whole show.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. Intellectuals do tend to down-grade physical work. They might have more respect for it if they did some for a week or two.
I understand that some people think that Aristotle's argument demonstrates that universal human equality is nonsense. It is indeed nonsense if it means that everyone is the same. But Aristotle's argument demonstrates what it does mean. For the motivating assumption of the argument is that everyone should be treated in the way that is appropriate to them. Irrelevant circumstances (such as Hecuba's birth - Simpson p. 12) should not come into play. The only issue is what is appropriate to who. That's what universal equality means.
Good, we are in agreement on this.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think Aristotle's answer to both would be, "Poorly." If humans are social animals, then flourishing will require society, and where society is lacking flourishing is lacking. A master or slave in isolation would be like a part disconnected from the whole, and in both cases the lack of cooperation or communion will make their lives worse than what they otherwise would be.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, the master does require the slave to flourish.
Quoting Ludwig V
Sure, but he is capable in a way that the slave is not. There may be some curious exceptions of masters who cannot function as slaves, such as Stephen Hawking, whose body was not capable of manual labor.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, I agree.
Quoting Ludwig V
It seems to me that universal equality means that the same things are appropriate to each. Or at least it often means this, or leans in this direction. A kind of classlessness.
Why do you assume that a natural leader with no people to lead and a slave without a master to serve will inevitably live in isolation. Why cannot they live in society?
Come to think of it, he divides Greek society into two groups "the many" and "the few", natural slave and natural leaders. Natural slavery is not necessarily legal slavery and vice versa, it would seem. So maybe that is what he is thinking. I'm finding this very confusing. I think this would all have been a lot clearer if we could just drop the bit about slavery and talk about leaders and followers. It is at least plausible that anyone who is not a leader is a follower. Then we could say, with a clear conscience that natural leaders with natural followers makes for a peaceful society and the people who are not natural leaders may become leaders, but they will be poor leaders, and vice versa for followers. There would still be arguments about it, but at least what is at stake would be clear and make sense.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm glad about that.
Quoting Leontiskos
But now I'm a bit confused. It is just obvious that there are some things that are in common between all human beings (whether by essence (definition) or by accident (empirically)) and other things that are not. So yes, everyone is equally entitled to vote and equally entitled to a fair trial.
So perhaps I should reformulate a principle of non-discrimination, which requires that people are not discriminated either in favour or against on irrelevant grounds. Aristotle specifically picks out the case of Helen of Troy claiming that the fact that her parents were divine meant that she had special privileges. Aristotle rejects that. So it looks as if he believed in that principle. Does that help?
I'm all for classlessness. But there's nothing wrong with distinguishing between classes of people when the criterion of membership is relevant. (People who are sick and people who are well).
You asked about slaves without masters and masters without slaves. If a master is not isolated from slaves then he is not without slaves, and vice versa.
Quoting Ludwig V
Isn't it just that "slave" and "servant" have become dirty words? But they were not dirty for Aristotle ("doúlos").
Quoting Ludwig V
Does not the substantive question come down to whether a distinction is relevant or real? When Aristotle argues for natural slavery he is arguing that the distinction between natural slaves and natural masters is both real and relevant. When someone opposes him they are arguing that such a distinction is either not real or not relevant. We could say that those who favor "universal equality" are those who see fewer real and relevant distinctions between humans.
That's true, but doesn't answer my question. What if a (natural) master is isolated from slaves and vice versa?
Quoting Leontiskos
But he does think that slaves are vicious and bestial and should be treated as animals. I think that's a pretty dirty, don't you?
The issues get very complicated. Simpson has made me realize that Aristotle's argument is not nearly as simple as I thought. But at the heart of this one is the question when it is moral to deprive another human being of liberty and to compel them to obey your wishes - for life? Closely related is the question is when we can morally treat another human being as (just) an animal?
Aristotle thinks (I think) that there is a fact of the matter that justifies that. In fact, as I showed last time, it is not altogether clear exactly what his argument proves, because he distinguishes between natural and legal slavery without explaining what the difference amounts to. So it isn't clear what the argument is about. It's certainly not about the actual practice of slavery. So we are left with a fog, only slightly illuminated by his comparison of slaves with tame animals.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, that's exactly what I think. Though I've qualified that below.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. As it happens, I think that his distinction is neither real nor relevant. But I've shelved the question whether it is real for the sake of the argument.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, I don't know how we would count them. But certainly the argument is about which distinctions are real and relevant.
But there are two different issues going on here. (This is slightly different from what I said in my last post). One issue is about the common elements that all human beings share - and there must be some if the classification as human or not is to work - and the rights that "follow" from those common elements. The other is about what differences among human beings allow or require different treatments of them in various situations.