Michael Shermer's Moral Arc
“Again, I am not arguing that reason alone will get us there; we need legislation and laws to enforce civil rights, and a strong police and military to back up the state’s claim to hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force to back up those laws. But those forces are themselves premised on being grounded in reason, and the legislation is backed by rational arguments.” (page 257)
That argument was developed and refined over the course of 150 years.
Your strawman is a peculiar interpretation, not one that I have read from a recognized source.
http://www.michaelshermer.com/2013/10...
http://www.michaelshermer.com/2013/05...
I did not see where he "argues that anti-gun control advocates were irrational." He said that as a libertarian, he long advocated for open ownership of guns, but changed his mind when he considered the facts.
He seems quite rational.
BTW:
From Ayn Rand Answers: the Best of Her Q&A, edited by Robert Mayhew © 2005 by The Estate of Ayn Rand.
Q: What is your opinion of gun control laws?
A: I do not know enough about it to have an opinion, except to say that it is not of primary importance. Forbidding guns or registering them is not going to stop criminals from having them; nor is it a great threat to the private, non-criminal citizen if he has to register the fact that he has a gun. It is not an important issue, unless you're ready to begin a private uprising right now, which isn't very practical. [Ford Hall Forum, 1971]
Q: What's your attitude toward gun control?
A: It is a complex, technical issue in the philosophy of law. Handguns are instruments for killing people -- they are not carried for hunting animals -- and you have no right to kill people. You do have the right to self-defense, however. I don't know how the issue is going to be resolved to protect you without giving you the privilege to kill people at whim.
[Ford Hall Forum, 1973]
He also says the the free market is just another set of traits like that, like the beliefs of a religion, that allow us to meet a stranger and interact with him without figuring everything out from scratch. I disagree with this. I think markets emerge naturally from respecting people's right to trade what they make.
I think Harari would read the line "trade breaks down the natural animosity between strangers while simultaneously elevating trust between them" and say trade just happens to be our system. If we did not believe in trade but believed in the same religion, it would work the same way.
I don't agree with that, but I still loved that book for its unrelated point of how their were many species in parallel to humankind around the the time anatomically modern humans appeared.
I think that you would enjoy Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber. Graeber is an anthropologist and he cites evidence from others in his field to show that trade did not begin with economic calculation. Trade began with gifting. Gifting creates a debt, if only a debt of gratitude. We see that even today when both parties across the counter say "thank you." As a left wing anarchist, Graeber is less sanguine about modern international central debt banking. (Except for his being a communist, he could be speaking for a large contingency here, though not for me.) Similarly, money did not begin with barter. No example of a barter economy evolving into a money economy is known. Better known is how barter replaces money when money is not available - hyperinflation, war, prison... As with your experience of Harari's work, I found a lot arguable, but a lot deeply valuable.
Harari does a good job spelling out modern banking. Someone has a good idea, he says, and investors give her money, which she puts in the bank. The bank can lend out the part she doesn't spend. She hires a supplier, and when he cashes her check, Harari invites us to image it goes into the same bank. The supplier pays his employees, who receive direct deposits in this same bank. So all these people are working to serve one another in mutual trades without using something of real value to trade. It's our believe that the fiat money that makes us able to use it without tying up real value as a medium of exchange. It seems like far-left and far-right people, whatever that means, don't like it. I think it's great. I don't even think it's a leap of faith as Harari suggests. There's some value of having a pile of something of value to trade, but there are also costs of protecting it and transporting it. I see use of fiat money as rational behavior, not akin to members of a religion agreeing to the same creed.
But conceptually, they allowed an explosion in trade and commerce since the 7th century BCE. And all the moreso even as the disastrous volumes of the Comstock Lode took the world off the silver standard. Silver still has a place in the money matrix.
But I agree that despite what hard money people claim, the stuff has no magical powers. Paper is just as good. America is proof positive of that. The Spanish conquered the Incas and Aztecs and looted millions of tons of precious metals. It did not make Spain rich. After independence, Mexico sold silver for gold to the merchants of Europe who trade with China. She did not become rich. Meanwhile the British colonies had no gold or silver. Massachusetts pioneered in paper money. And here we are today.
I collect common stock certificates. Both Adam Smith and Carl Menger disliked joint-stock corporations because their capital came from speculative borrowing. Obviously, that is not a problem, but a significant strength, perhaps the sine qua non of enterprise.
"But there's not much you can do with silver and gold. "
I think of it has having value in contacts. The oxide that forms on it is thin, conductive, and wipes with contact. This makes electrical contacts reliable. I think of its value as coming from that, but your comment suggests if it weren't for its status as a historical store of value, it would be a lot cheaper.
The paper that he cited by Joseph Henrich and collaborators testing "The Ultimatum Game" and other experiments on people around the world has been a topic on Objectivist Living and on Rebirth of Reason. I found the paper compelling, but I have been dismayed by how many people refuse to read 45 pages, but still feel knowledgeable enough to comment.