Mini-Me
Member
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2008
- Messages
- 6,514
Overfishing? Public property and tragedy of the commons.
Pollution? Public property, government itself (government is the biggest polluter), depleted uranium, regulations that set "acceptable" limits regardless of damage to properties or health, and the abject corruption and lack of accountability for "big dogs" that goes hand-in-hand with the centralization of power.
Global climate change? This isn't the government's fault, but neither is it a market failure. The sun is the driving factor, as it has been for billions of years. You do know that Greenland used to be green, right? The Vikings wrote about the new ice caps in their records. We've found old Viking settlements under melted glaciers, old mature forests, and silver mines with tools left there, like miners left when winter came suddenly and expected to return later...but never could. The subject is far too big to cover in a footnote on a post about utilitarianism and limited government, but this is one of my favorite quotes on the issue:
NASA Administrator Dr. Michael Griffin said:
Intellectual property? I think you might want to ask someone who actually believes in "intellectual property." I used to believe in copyright and patents, but I've never bought into "intellectual property," a term coined by powerful copyright lobbies in recent decades to conflate copyright, patents, and trademarks and cover up the true history and purpose behind the former two. I'll tell you something though: Government sure isn't setting any limitations on itself or sparing any efforts in its fight against "piracy." YARRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!
Absolutely, it would be. I edited my above post after you read it, but I'll copy something here which I think might help you see where I'm coming from on this:
Believing in government intervention isn't just about believing it's the best course of action. That's not sufficient; to believe in government intervention, you must necessarily believe so strongly (so arrogantly) that it's the right course of action that the minority opinion should be disregarded, and even people who disagree should be forced to pay for both the execution of the plan and for the consequences.
Whenever I hear about an attempt at government intervention, I run it through my mental model of the economy, and I generally come up with a laundry list of unintended side consequences or even ways that the policy will backfire and make the targeted problem worse. Every once in a while, a non-precedent-setting interventionary measure arises where I wonder, "Could this really be that bad?" There are certain programs, like the Interstate highway program, that actually turned out very well, but every action comes with its opportunity costs, and I always wonder what other solutions might have emerged. For instance, in the case of rural electrification, forgoing that would have accelerated the adoption of decentralized power like solar power, energy independence, etc. At the most, I can concede that the government has done a decent job on a few things, but I can also envision ways the same problems could have been solved without government. For every program I consider "a wash," there are too many abysmal failures to count.
With the government's track record, the obvious reality of the slippery slope*, and the debatability of even the most innocuous-sounding interventions, I could almost never in good conscience say, "Do this, and coerce everyone else to pay for it, and make everyone else suffer the consequences if I'm wrong." The cost of being wrong is too high (and others will pay it), and the likelihood of being wrong is similarly too high. To me, having that kind of confidence is unreasonable, dangerous, and...extreme. Whereas most would consider me an "extreme libertarian," I consider libertarianism the epitome of moderation, whereas the use of force is the true mark of extremism.
To me, only the most dire of situations could possibly be so important as to justify systematically steamrolling over the free will of others in this way. For instance, if I thought we were facing some genuine extinction-level threat, I'd do what I had to do, and to hell with principles...but that's a big if, and "global warming" doesn't qualify.
However, if I found out some crazy asshole next-door had a nuke, I would absolutely consider it a gun pointed at my head and act as almost anyone else would in such a situation. Another libertarian once called me a tyrant for that, so I guess I'm not THAT overly principled. It's just that in the vast majority of situations, I find sticking to principles to be far more...pragmatic. 
* Many dismiss slippery slope arguments, but gradualism has brought us farther down it every year. It's just easier to notice the pattern once we've already gone way farther down it than you personally want to be. The question, "When will enough be enough?" is less about, "Things could be bad someday," and more about, "We've already slid past what I'm comfortable with, and I see continued movement toward the centralization of power. What makes you think you can stop the momentum once things get to your personal limits?"
What you call dogma, I call principle and moral foundation, without which all hell breaks loose.
Even in the absence of emotion, utilitarianism still has to contend with limited brainpower, an overwhelming number of utility-affecting variables, and an overwhelming amount of information floating around, of which any one person is only aware of a small portion. I know where you're coming from, because I used to think the same way. I even used to believe in universal healthcare and higher education, believe it or not...and before that, I believed in the Iraq War. I've just come to the conclusion (aside from believing that using force is too arrogant) that all of these attempts at "improvement" are only doing harm. They're essentially attempts at someone else's idea of perfection or utopia, whereas cutting our losses and sticking to reasonable laws that everyone can agree on would result in a much saner, more harmonious, more prosperous world.
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