Comments on: Doers vs. thinkers

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:41:00 +0000

MB – in the end it comes down to brute force. Always has and always will be. Physics trumps good ideas in the end.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:38:00 +0000

Man has a nature, but you aren’t lord of man’s nature, and your preferences for threatening to shoot people are not “naturally right”.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:39:00 +0000

What is the nature of homo sapiens? Beyond the need for food and shelter, I can’t really see how property rights and the institutions that protect capitalism derive from basic human nature. These are evolved concepts.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:34:00 +0000

“we can simply impose rights we label “natural” and shoot down every objection as “anti-Nature”"

There you go again, MB. One day you will identify the concepts, and come closer to reality. Man really does have a nature, and the more you contemplate your observations of man, the sooner you will recognize what that nature is, what rights are, and how rights necessarily derive from that nature.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Maybe Bentham’s Utilitarianism was less circumspect than later varieties, but this caricature is laughable. You’re right about one thing. It stays well within Readers’ Digest proportions.Your “natural” rights are not free of any collectivizing central authority. They’re just one more set of centrally authorized entitlements that you want to impose. Labeling these entitlements “natural” doesn’t make you less a collectivist, even if you repeat your mantra endlessly.We can call forcible impositions what they are and judge the consequences by some utilitarian standard, or we can simply impose rights we label “natural” and shoot down every objection as “anti-Nature”.

The most central authority is most suspect, and I can tell you why I think so in utilitarian terms. A utilitarian can conclude that a minimal state organized around classical property is most useful, but I’ll stick with Bentham on the general proposition. You aren’t actually Nature, and you don’t speak for Nature either, even if you think you do.