Freedom and Virtue
Posted by JohnBrown 10 years, 8 months ago to Philosophy
Is a high degree of responsibility necessary for the people to live in freedom? Do the people have to be responsible, honest, and hard-working—in a word, virtuous—before they can handle freedom? It can be a chicken-and-egg argument, certainly. Do the people lose their virtue and then lose their liberty? Or, do they gradually lose their liberty and then lose their virtue, in proportion? The cause and effect is important, because it provides a clue about how best to restore freedom. If the former, then the people must be taught virtue again, presumably by the State. But this approach is hopeless and absurd. Or, the people might somehow be drawn again to religion and absorb the moral teachings therein.
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
—James Madison
In any case, if the people lose their virtue and then lose their freedom, there would need to be a moral revival before we could return to freedom. But if the people lose their liberty and then their virtue, the approach is more straightforward: set them free. When people are free to face the full consequences of making poor or immoral choices; when sloth, greed, envy, lying, cheating, stealing, unreliability, and broken promises have real social and economic consequences, they will be induced to become more virtuous. When the State penalizes saving and investment, when it taxes incomes and wealth away, and when it provides unearned benefits for free, it not only discourages positive, productive behavior, it rewards bad character at the same time. It subsidizes bad behavior.
To reward responsibility and penalize irresponsibility, we don't need a moral revival first. Just set everyone free. Let people make mistakes, let them live by their own choices. Let them learn, let them experiment, let them cooperate. Wards of the State are not self-reliant, competent, independent individuals. In freedom, individuals build good character. In freedom, relationships are strengthened; societies become more virtuous. Harry Browne wrote an article on this topic that addresses the issue quite well.
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
—James Madison
In any case, if the people lose their virtue and then lose their freedom, there would need to be a moral revival before we could return to freedom. But if the people lose their liberty and then their virtue, the approach is more straightforward: set them free. When people are free to face the full consequences of making poor or immoral choices; when sloth, greed, envy, lying, cheating, stealing, unreliability, and broken promises have real social and economic consequences, they will be induced to become more virtuous. When the State penalizes saving and investment, when it taxes incomes and wealth away, and when it provides unearned benefits for free, it not only discourages positive, productive behavior, it rewards bad character at the same time. It subsidizes bad behavior.
To reward responsibility and penalize irresponsibility, we don't need a moral revival first. Just set everyone free. Let people make mistakes, let them live by their own choices. Let them learn, let them experiment, let them cooperate. Wards of the State are not self-reliant, competent, independent individuals. In freedom, individuals build good character. In freedom, relationships are strengthened; societies become more virtuous. Harry Browne wrote an article on this topic that addresses the issue quite well.
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"Your comments are so full of assumptions and personal opinions that I don’t know where to begin. But let me try to deal with just a couple of them."
SHOW me do not LABEL me. I quoted Ayn Rand. You want to shunt me to a website. That's a bit propagandist. People come of their own free will to this site to learn more about Ayn Rand's ideas. You are using this site to springboard to push your propaganda. I'm challenging you to offer your OWN thoughts and and reasoning to the posts here or make your own. shunting people to a FB page continuously shows that you have no interest int eh ideas of AR
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...
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>> Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction; <<
Of course it is. Why? Because it is NOT a political concept. Anarchy is a state of nature. For something to be a political concept, it must be a concept of government, the absolute opposite of anarchy. So anarchy as a political concept is not only a floating abstraction, it is complete and utter nonsense.
>> a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along <<
You appear to be making a rather startling assumption. Where do you get the idea that in anarchy people will somehow remain unarmed and incapable of self defense, incapable of evolving market driven arbitration and dispute settlement mechanisms and more. What silly assumptions.
There is much more, but I just don’t have the time to regurgitate the same tired old minarchist platitudes. I have read ALL of Ayn Rand’s work and intensively studied much of it. Have you read even one chapter of “The Online Freedom Academy” found at http://www.tolfa.us? Or are you just making assumptions about its content? If you wish to argue specifics of the tolfa.us curriculum after studying it, I’ll be happy to oblige. Until then, “Ciao”.
"Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction: . . . a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare. But the possibility of human immorality is not the only objection to anarchy: even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government." AR, The Virtue of Selfishness
whatever anarchology means
anarchists come in all stripes. they come from a socialist point of view to a Rothbard point of view. How can they be for property rights, because they don't ultimately support enforcement. I know this well. I argue with them all the time about intellectual property rights.
people would beget a free society* is about 50%,,,
and that *a free people would beget a virtuous
society* is about 10%;;;;;
thus, we should value our virtue as we sustain freedom,
for freedom -- at any cost -- is an illusion like the utopia
sought by the left. -- j
I didn't expect this to happen. I think it's deleveraging, but I really don't get it.
Americans included.
With respect to JohnBrown's question, it may be a matter of custom rather than virtue. We have lost the custom of independence and the methods of coping with personal freedom (which our parents' generation had). This is what was has been wrong in Somalia (per DrZarkhov) - they have no custom of civilization. Obama's brother, Malik, wondered out loud (in "2016") if it would have been better for the British to have retained their Imperial Empires in Africa for a couple of generations longer - develop an expectation of civilization (as opposed to tribalization) in the people - before they left. (Though I will note that this did not work in Yugo.) As it is, many countries are trying to leap from the barely Neolithic to the 21st century in a generation...and they have not had time to develop the skills to cope with civilization.
Similarly, if Americans suddenly became free of restraints, they would not behave well. People (and companies) are not inherently benign and polite. It is only after seeing the repercussions of bad decisions that we develop internal guidelines. I would therefore expect a generation (or several) of opportunism (as in Russia) before we got back to the cultural customs of the first quarter of the 20th century.
This could probably be mitigated by making specific laws (Amendment?) that pointedly made an individual (corporation) responsible for the direct consequences of their actions (but not implausible - no Hot Coffee! - or collateral) before releasing all of the tens of thousands of burdensome regulations with which we are beset.
Jan
Historically, civilized societies grew from barbarian roots. A sense of ethical behavior developed that established rules by which everyone understood the bounds of freedom. The concept of freedom as we understand it is the result of a long evolution from the uncontrolled, no rules "freedom" of the wild to civilized society. Ethics have to evolve in order for freedom to have a firm existence.
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