Choice & authority

20 Responses to Choice & authority

1. kurt9 says:

   February 10, 2009 at 1:53 pm

   Bacevich uses inflammatory language in criticizing what he refers to as “unchecked individual autonomy”, which offends the libertarian in me. Reading deeper, he certainly makes a good point in that many Americans have grossly mismanaged their personal finances. It is certain true that acceptance of responsibility for one’s choices is an implicit part of individual freedom. However, I cannot help to think that Bacevich’s criticism of “unchecked individual autonomy” extends beyond prudent personal life-management and transgresses into the cesspool of social engineering.

   This reminds me of an interview I saw of P.J. O’rourk when he said that even though many individuals make poor decisions, insitutions make decisions by committee and that we all know that the best decisions made by a committee are very often worse that the worse decisions made by an individual.

   It also strikes me that the conservatism promulgated by Bacevich contains the same systemic flaws as that inherent in the liberal-left. That is, any centralized system (either left or right) is more susceptible to system-level failure than a decentralized type system. Because if the people running the centralized institution screw up, their failure directly affects everyone else in the system. When individuals make bad choices in a decentralized system, their failure affects only themselves and the people immediate to them. It does not affect the people who have nothing to do with them. This is reason alone why Bacevich’s conservatism is just as susceptible to failure as the liberal-left.
2. Polichinello says:

   February 10, 2009 at 1:57 pm

   My heart is with Linker, but like you I think Bacevich’s vision is going to triumph in the end.
3. Polichinello says:

   February 10, 2009 at 1:59 pm

   …and that we all know that the best decisions made by a committee are very often worse that the worse decisions made by an individual.

   Uh, no, we don’t “know” that at all. In team endeavors, like engineering, team decisions usually turn out to be better than individual decisions.
4. Inductivist says:

   February 10, 2009 at 2:23 pm

   One theme of Bacevich’s really resonates: Our addiction to consumption and government-as-dope-dealer is really hurting us.
5. kurt9 says:

   February 10, 2009 at 2:40 pm

   “In team endeavors, like engineering, team decisions usually turn out to be better than individual decisions.”

   That’s because a) engineering teams are small and b) the members that make up the team share a single goal, which is to design and build a particular thing. General society, on the other hand, is composed of all kinds of people with all kinds of personal goals. Thus, the engineering team analogy is not appropriate to this discussion.

   Also, having worked in the MIC in the late 80’s, I can tell you that engineering teams screw things up as often (if not more) as they do things right.

   I can definitely tell you based on personal experience, Bacevich’s vision will not win in the end. Social conservatism is essentially the social equivalent to centralized banking. It advocates the creation of centralized social institutions just as some financial people advocate the existence of centralized banks.

   Having lived through Japan’s bust starting in ’92, S.E. Asia’s bust in ’98, and the current Wall Street bust; it is clear to me that centralized banking creates as many problems as it solves. Why should I believe that centralized social institutions will work any better than centralized banks?

   My life experience has been that ALL large human institutions are bureaucracies and that bureaucracy is inherently dysfunctional. This is due to human nature (what you people claim we libertarians are so ignorant of). Therefor, any philosophy, ideology, or religion that is based on the efficacy of any large human institution is, by definition, non-functional.

   This is NOT the libertarian in me saying this. This conclusion is based exclusively on my own life experiences over the past 15 years.
6. Polichinello says:

   February 10, 2009 at 2:51 pm

   kurt,

   You cited a “committee”, not general society.

   Social conservatism is essentially the social equivalent to centralized banking. It advocates the creation of centralized social institutions just as some financial people advocate the existence of centralized banks.

   No, that’s just wrong. Some do fit this description, but a lot more tend to favor pushing the decisions to smaller units, like states and localities. I grant that in the past 8 years, the GOP and their conservative allies have been hypocritical about federalism, but that’s rather the point: they’ve been hypocrites. The core philosophy favors smaller units.
7. The Kat says:

   February 10, 2009 at 10:18 pm

   Articles like Bacevich’s illustrate nicely what my main beef is with conservatism at its root. For all that conservatism in the last 30-40 years has claimed to ally itself with individualism and personal choice, that ultimately rings hollow.

   As for poor decision making, clearly there’s no shortage of it these days, on all sides. But in the long term, and often even in the short term, reality shows up to make you pay the piper; it is impossible to have choice without consequence, which is why a whim-based lifestyle is a bad idea. Because to a certain extent people’s life circumstances police themselves, societal proscriptions against personal choice, even stupid choice, are unnecessary in addition to being wrong. Only when another person’s rights are breached as a result of another’s actions should the law step in. Of course, each individual is still entitled to morally evaluate and condemn behavior they judge inappropriate, but beware the tempting and seductive mentality of “there oughtta be a law!”
8. Joshua says:

   February 11, 2009 at 5:08 am

   I’m with Linker myself; he nails it down well in his penultimate paragraph. Still I concur that Bacevich will end up carrying the day, at least among the right. As a few other right-leaning bloggers have pointed out, most human beings are likely psychologically hard-wired to favor collectivist solutions, a product of the hunter-gatherer mentality which evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. If that’s the case, then surely conservatives are no more immune to it than liberals; it just manifests itself in different ways.
9. mnuez says:

   February 11, 2009 at 5:47 am

   Conservatism is not Libertarianism. Why would anyone think that it would be? Conservatism is about “conserving” traditional mores, societal values, societal practices, communities and governments. There’s certainly a great deal of wiggle room in coming to define such broad and widely used (and misused) terms such as “conservatism” but anyone who thinks that it would include the right of groups of teenagers to smoke pot in the streets or to stand tall against an officer of the law in demanding your rights against unlawful search and seizure really hasn’t thought very seriously about the term and its historical usage.
10. The Kat says:

    February 11, 2009 at 7:15 am

    @mnuez
    I think you are absolutely right, it’s just that as far as how conservatism has been marketed, especially to my generation (recent college graduates/young professionals), that’s not how they necessarily portrayed it, so it almost comes off as a bait-and-switch (not that I particularly bought into that image too much, but perhaps others did). Moreover, mainstream thought typically relegates Libertarianism, Objectivism, Anarcho/minarchist capitalism, and hell, even classical liberalism sometimes, to the political right, which I don’t believe is accurate but many people view it that way.
11. kurt9 says:

    February 11, 2009 at 9:25 am

    Mnuez and The Kat,

    Perhaps we should drop the pretenses and start called conservatism what it really is” fascism or rightwing statism.

    The Kat is right. Conservatism is marketed as a form of libertarianism. If you start to call it really what it is, I don’t think you’ll get many takers. I certainly have no use for it.

    Joshua,

    If this is the case, then perhaps I should work on become more charismatic and start either a political movement or a new religion. I am libertarian because I like to be left alone to do my own thing. I can certainly get into the collectivist head game providing I figure out a way to be the guy at the top. I’m not about to suck up to anyone else.

    I told some religious prick once that if I was interested in religion, I would start my own. I mean, why the f**k would I join someone else’s religion when I can start my own?

    Personally, I prefer libertarianism. I suits my temperament and personality as well as my objectives in life.

    However, if libertarianism or just being left alone is not an option, I have no problem with doing the Hitler, Stalin, or Jesus Christ thing. It just a matter of crafting the ideology/religion that I can sell to people and developing the charisma to do the selling.
12. Caledonian says:

    February 11, 2009 at 10:06 am

    Small groups of engineers are likely to be highly intelligent, fairly competent, practically oriented, and have easy access to objective feedback. The same cannot be said of politicians.

    More important, I think, is the size of the group. Politics among a handful of humans is very different than politics among many; the former is far easier to control and rationally direct than the latter.

    I think there is a substantial portion of the population that (mostly delusionally) believes things would be just peachy under a fascist state — possibly up to a third. The vast majority of them would have a nasty surprise if the government they favored actually gained power… but those who lack insight the most usually don’t recognize their deficiency.
13. Thrasymachus says:

    February 12, 2009 at 8:22 am

    Bacevich’s piece was published on the New Republic. Why do we go to liberals to find out what they want us to be? Because it turns out they want us to be paleoconservatives, who have been irrelevant for over 200 years and for the last 5 have been the neutered toy poodles of liberals. I thought it was understood that in modern discourse “conservative” means classical liberal, not traditionalist eccentric. (I’m being polite here.)
14. kurt9 says:

    February 12, 2009 at 10:09 am

    What’s wrong with classical liberalism? It works just fine for me.
15. The Kat says:

    February 12, 2009 at 11:00 am

    Nothing’s wrong with classical liberalism. I think the problem is over defining what “conservatism”, or more broadly, “the right” consists of. As someone who is considered by many others to be a rightist (mostly as a function of my current environment) but does not apply that label to herself, I think this is a crucial question. My contention was that although modern conservatism is “marketed” as individualistic and personal-responsibility oriented in the face of a collectivist left, this is a false promise and authoritarianism is alive and well on the right, religious or otherwise.
16. Polichinello says:

    February 12, 2009 at 1:58 pm

    My contention was that although modern conservatism is “marketed” as individualistic and personal-responsibility oriented in the face of a collectivist left, this is a false promise and authoritarianism is alive and well on the right, religious or otherwise.

    How is this a “false promise”? You always have a few throne-and-altar types running around, but the bulk of modern conservatism aligns closely with classical liberalism. Even the religious right agrees in principle with the idea of democratic elections, free speech and free markets.
17. Caledonian says:

    February 13, 2009 at 7:20 am

    “but the bulk of modern conservatism aligns closely with classical liberalism.”

    No, it doesn’t. That’s obvious. ‘Conservative’ has taken on a meaning totally incompatible with classical liberalism.

    “Even the religious right agrees in principle with the idea of democratic elections, free speech and free markets.”

    But not in practice, which is the whole point.

    Leftists usually claim to favor free speech, which is to say, they believe they agree with it in principle. In actual practice, they want to establish speech codes and use the power of the State to punish those who violate it. The same holds for the Right.
18. The Kat says:

    February 13, 2009 at 8:43 am

    Yeah, what Caledonian said. That was how I figured out I wasn’t properly a liberal or conservative. I would say a lot of people in my generation are not properly liberal or conservative either…the problem is, they’re just apathetic, and they don’t pay attention to what’s going on regardless of what they think of it, and this is how someone can win an election with nothing but the words “Hope” and “Change”.

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20. kurt9 says:

    February 16, 2009 at 11:02 am

    One has to define “authority”. My definition of authority is someone who knows something that I do not. For example, say I got some investment capital from some guys in China to commercialize and sell IEC polywell fusion reactors. In this case, I would bring the guys at EMC2 in on this because they know far more than I do about plasma physics and fusion concepts. In other words, they are the “authority” in this field because they have specialized knowledge that I do not.

    Of course, this is unlikely to be Bacevich’s definition of authority. He believes that authority is based on something other than specialized knowledge and ability. I see no reason why I should buy into this.

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