As Matt Damon was talking about "civil liberties vs. security" it resonated with essentially every second sentence DIRNSA was saying at his public appearance at BlackHat.
This is a false dichotomy, and definitely not about some sort of tradeoff to protect us from "terrorists amongst us" (which in itself is a dubious claim.)
All these programs are about the creation of a de-facto authoritarian state serving nobody else but the powerful corporations and the decision-makers that said corporations keep in place via their accumulated wealth.
This isn't some democratic debate about civil liberties at conflict. This is a fucking plutocracy.
1. To what degree do we actually have a security problem?
2. Once it's made transparent for us to see that/if there actually is a grave problem:
3. What causes the security problem? What are we doing/what have we been doing that is causing others to think it's worth the sacrifice to launch attacks, instead of living peaceful and happy lives?
Surveillance could never be more than a stupid patch to the real issue at stake. We have to get to the causes, now. Obviously, that means a lot of rich people will lose valuable contracts.
That's because those discussions usually hinge around changing the way we live in some way - be it more expensive consumer goods/utilities or what-have-you.
Either way, any increase in the cost of living (unless directly attached to 'creating jobs' whatever that is) is inherently evil and wrong. Therefore, a close-scrutiny of, in my case, US foreign policy leads down an evil and wrong road.
Beautiful, isn't it? We want increased transparency in public and private areas, we want less violence, we want less exploitation of third-world workers, we want, we want, we want. BUT, as a whole, we're not really willing to sacrifice much of anything.
Your comment finally made me realize why the difference in analysis of the problem leads to difference in solutions.
Some people think that corporations are the root of all evil. They accumulate wealth, then put people in power to protect that wealth. Others think that government is the root of all evil, while corporations are either forced to cooperate or willingly abuse this system, because if they don't, then competitors will surely do it. Thus the latter group believes that businesses simply respond to incentives.
Thus it is no surprise that the first group of people usually believes we need more elaborate regulations and a good government. The second group usually sees the solution in eliminating part or all of the government as an inherently corrupt institution.
Matt Damon probably belongs to the first group, although I'm not sure.
Somewhere in the Amazon jungle there's a tribesman, wearing a vine-fiber thong, who's taking a break to looking up at an airplane flying overhead, and then getting back to hording all the bone-hammers, and plotting how to sabotage that ascendant hunter who everyone is starting to like so much.
I am not sure why you comment was down voted. I never said they had the monopoly on it, simply that are are the very forefront of it in this country.
The Government is blatantly controlled by special interest groups. All one has to do is follow the money....
My main point was that it was the lax oversight and enforcement of rules meant to check large corporations that has led to our current predicament. There is nothing new to see here as we laws on the books to keep companies from getting to big or mixing certain types of activities, yet we/congress gutted most of those so here we are...
In most countries, bribes and abuse of power are illegal (and prosecuted), yet still happen at large scale. The problem is when the same people responsible for oversight (making sure that government doesn't get controlled by small powerful groups) and enforcing the rules are the ones that are most corrupt (in other words, if some corporation bribes a government official, then the latter's buddies help cover it up, is that the corporation's fault or the government's?)
One of the essential problems with libertarian philosophy is that it starts from the premise that there are two meaningful actors: the individual and the state. This makes it extremely hard to conceptualize and introduce a third actor, like corporations, which means corporations need to be lumped in with either the individual or the state.
Libertarians who are sympathetic with corporations will tend to lump them in with the individual, talking about the state imposing itself upon them. Those less sympathetic will tend to lump them in with the state, talking about their undue influence on political theater.
This is what you've been told. Libertarians don't start from this premise and that's not even the point. Yes some people are irrational, but most are not, otherwise it would be impossible to conduct business at all. Even if we assume that government fixes some of the things caused by irrational behavior, it inevitably screws many others, because actors in a government are no more rational than the general population.
But the point of the libertarianism is that governments have incentives in the wrong place. Expecting a politician not to lie and act in the interest of the public without ever looking back at those who actually pay him (corporate interests) is like locking a gentleman and a lady in an apartment for 4 years and expect nothing to happen.
Hold on. Why is the rationality of people even relevant here?
> But the point of the libertarianism is that governments have incentives in the wrong place.
Is not what smokeyj down there thinks. His claim, freely paraphrased, is that libertarianism is about minimizing violence in order to maximize human freedom. I don't think he would accept that there's a class of people called "politician" which you could make such sweeping generalizations about. That wouldn't be an individual-level evaluation. Or, for that matter, a class of people divided by gender.
Oh, my apologies, I misread. I thought you were bringin up that usual argument that libertarians think all people are rational...
But answering your question, no libertarians don't necessarily assume there's just a state and everyone else. However they emphasize state so much because of its violent and deceiving nature. Corporations are there to make money. It's explicit, everyone knows this. May not be pretty and corporations may be greedy from someone's standpoint of view (although, what is greed, really?), but they don't lie. And everyone also has the freedom to buy or not to buy certain things they offer.
State, on the other hand, pretends to serve public interests, but actually serves private interests. It also extracts taxes from people with a threat of force and then pretends it gives things for free! But who's gonna build the roads, they say! So, in a nutshell, this combination of force and deceit makes state a very undesirable institution.
See, I find this claim suspect. Yes, the reality is that corporations exist to make money. But I'd argue that it's bad corporations that exist to make money; corporations ought to exist in order to provide value.
But then again, that's what marketing is, no? It's about the corporations claiming to provide value without actually doing so. Isn't that as bad a deceit as that you claim for the state? No business fails to lie, even if their lies are no larger than those of their competitors and they have to do it to stay in business.
We all know it and accept it, but we also all know that public roads aren't free and are paid for by taxes. I don't think I've ever heard someone "pretend to give it for free".
> no libertarians don't necessarily assume there's just a state and everyone else. However they emphasize state so much because of its violent and deceiving nature.
Can you point me to a libertarian who doesn't focus on the state?
Take, for instance, feminism. Feminism is ridiculously multifarious, with hugely different groups going after hugely different instances of patriarchy. That's hard to deny, regardless of whether or not you agree with feminists. Libertarianism has existed longer than feminism has (depending on how you count), but I've never heard a libertarian discuss the implications of their philosophy on the conduct of something other than the state.
It's not as if there aren't a wealth of opportunities. Groupthink is a major problem, but libertarians don't concern themselves with that. They don't call it a moral failure. You don't see libertarians talk about bullies except as analogies. Is there any kind of libertarian movement trying to address schoolyard bullying? I haven't seen it.
Your words say that the state is just one problematic actor out of many. Your actions say that the state is the only actor that matters to you.
You may want to check out Stefan Molyneux, he's a libertarian (ancap, actually) and he addresses a lot of the things that are not directly related to state. He talks a lot about children and bullying too.
He's built his software business. Radio show started as a hobby, I suppose. The thing is, he's very talented at constructing arguments. The presentation may seem a bit eccentric, but get through this. If he can't convince, I don't know who can.
Well, his software business wasn't an outgrowth of his libertarian views on affairs unrelated to the state, I imagine. I'm not saying he's an indolent sloth; I'm just saying he hasn't put much action down next to his words, as recorded by Wikipedia.
I'm just sort of unsettled that a single radio-talk host is your entire hope for libertarianism as a philosophy larger than "government bad individual good".
> One of the essential problems with libertarian philosophy is that it starts from the premise that there are two meaningful actors: the individual and the state.
..you should really get a better grasp on libertarian philosophy before making statements like this.
If there were any two groups libertarians would lump people in, it's violent and non-violent actors. Libertarians don't recognize the rights of corporations, governments, dictators, despots, etc. Actions are evaluated at the individual level -- which is apparently a radical new concept. Libertarianism isn't a philosophy about government, it's a philosophy about human action in general, all of which is empirically evident. It's waaayyy more principled than a political philosophy, which seems to drive many people nuts.
> ..you should really get a better grasp on libertarian philosophy before making statements like this.
There are a lot of libertarians who disagree with other libertarians.
> Actions are evaluated at the individual level -- which is apparently a radical new concept.
If this were actually true, then libertarians couldn't say anything useful about groups of people. Which means you can't talk about governments and corporations at all.
So what's the incorrect statement here?
I get that you're proud of your philosophy, but why is it that every time someone represents it to me, they open gaping wide holes large enough to fly a planet through?
> There are a lot of libertarians who disagree with other libertarians.
Lots of scientists disagree with other scientists. I find science to still be valid.
> If this were actually true, then libertarians couldn't say anything useful about groups of people.
Obviously I'm here to argue the opposite :) Libertarian insight is more relevant because it's deduced using principled and empirically evident reasoning. This is like saying a microeconomics has nothing to contribute to macroeconomics, wherein reality macroeconomics is simply the resultant of microeconomic activity. Trying to understand economics from a strictly macro perspective leaves you with.. modern numerology.
> So what's the incorrect statement here?
False dichotomy ;)
> I get that you're proud of your philosophy, but why is it that every time someone represents it to me, they open gaping wide holes large enough to fly a planet through?
Many self-proclaimed libertarians don't understand the logical conclusion of the philosophy and do a poor job of representing it. With people like Glenn Beck claiming to be libertarian, I can see where you're coming from.
If I could try to convey the essence of what I, and many other self-proclaimed libertarians view the philosophy as -- it's a framework for analyzing human action. Much like game theory, it doesn't tell you what the game is or how to play. It's simply saying, here's a framework for analyzing human action, and here's what the outcomes will be.
> Lots of scientists disagree with other scientists. I find science to still be valid.
I wasn't saying libertarianism isn't valid. I was saying that making a claim about what libertarianism is is necessarily suspect, mine as much as yours.
> Libertarian insight is more relevant because it's deduced using principled and empirically evident reasoning.
Are the principles deduced from empirically evident reasoning, or is it as questionably axiomatic as any other system?
This isn't a "libertarianism makes sense" claim you're making; this is a "libertarians are so awesome" claim. Furthermore, neither this sentence nor your economics analogy actually refutes my essential claim that the inability to evaluate and reason at anything other than the individual level makes it impossible to speak usefully about groups of people. The empirical evidence is that groups have significant effects on people. It is quite clear that it is extremely rare, if at all extant, that people can be defined without relation to a group.
That leaves libertarianism and its radical individualism very suspect, from an empirical point of view.
> False dichotomy ;)
You have to present a third alternative to show it's a false dichotomy.
> It's simply saying, here's a framework for analyzing human action, and here's what the outcomes will be.
To be frank, that's not a philosophy at all. That's a model. These are two hugely different things, not least because philosophies are normative.
Libertarianism, as I understand it, is founded on the claim that the word "liberty" has an esteemed place in the structure of the world. That isn't a "framework for analyzing human action"; that's an assertion that "freedom is important and we should not impinge on it". This is a really significant deviation from your claims.
Or I guess you could disagree with all this. Are you sure you're a libertarian? You haven't brought up freedom or liberty at all. You kinda sound like an economist.
> making a claim about what libertarianism is is necessarily suspect
You're right, libertarianism is really an umbrella term for many schools of economic, political and other philosophical thought. I'm simply representing what I found to be the most established and logically consistent tenants of said philosophy.
> Are the principles deduced from empirically evident reasoning, or is it as questionably axiomatic as any other system?
I'm speaking to the works of Ludwig Von Mises (along with Murray Rothbard) and his work on Human Action, specifically the development of Praxeology and Catallactics -- which are derived from the Action Axiom. I would say the core tenants of Austrian Economics are very much observable and repeatable, much like game theory.
> Furthermore, neither this sentence nor your economics analogy actually refutes my essential claim that the inability to evaluate and reason at anything other than the individual level makes it impossible to speak usefully about groups of people.
Sure I did. Microeconomics is a counter-example. There's also game theory and personal psychology. I guess it depends on what you consider useful.
> The empirical evidence is that groups have significant effects on people. It is quite clear that it is extremely rare, if at all extant, that people can be defined without relation to a group.
I guess I concern myself with the the largest of these groups, the human species. While cultures and economic landscapes change, the basic tenants of Praxeology and value-theory do not. Preference and desire is present in all acting humans, and I think these realities can be best used to explain why actions are taken.
> That leaves libertarianism and its radical individualism very suspect, from an empirical point of view.
I'm not claiming individuals don't act differently based on their setting and peers, just that these phenomenas can be observed at the individual level in an empirical fashion. If it isn't, then your group knowledge is limited.
> To be frank, that's not a philosophy at all. That's a model.
Yeah, it's a big tent..
> You have to present a third alternative to show it's a false dichotomy.
That I didn't make an incorrect statement?
> Libertarianism, as I understand it, is founded on the claim that the word "liberty" has an esteemed place in the structure of the world.
I would argue that libertarians believe in the antithesis of authoritarianism, and that they have economic and philosophical principles for believing so. While governments and corporations are groups of people, the fruits of their actions can be better analyzed by the actions they take and not what they call themselves.
>I would say the core tenants of Austrian Economics are very much observable and repeatable, much like game theory.
Neal Stephenson made the analogy that math is more than just a 'physics of bottlecaps'. In the same sense, even if you have a set of sound testable principles, It is a fundamental mistake to blindly assume that the dominant forces on the scale at which you can test and reason about are the dominant forces on the scale of e.g. the global market. Given that the behavior of markets on a global scale is [a] chaotic, and [b] driven by group behavior, it is not clear to me that useful conclusions can be drawn from the behavior of markets, or the study of the individual. Consider as an analogy the behavior of gas particles both severally and in totum.
In any case, you are verging on falsehood by implying any scientific basis to libertarianism. Whether you consider it a philosophy or an economic theory or a religion, these things all merely ape the trappings of science. I don't merely mean to imply that libertarianism is a useless philosophy: like intelligent design, it is an actively harmful memetic virus.
> Microeconomics is a counter-example. There's also game theory and personal psychology. I guess it depends on what you consider useful.
I won't get bothered over the term "useful". I mean "non-trivial", basically. It's true that microeconomics, game theory, and personal psychology discuss individual-level actions quite a bit. What they don't do, because they generally know better, is discuss group-level actions.
And that's my point.
Unless you have an actual example of a discussion of a group entity, such as a government, in any of these fields? Surely personal psychology doesn't discuss how a high school clique acts in response to another high school clique?
> I guess I concern myself with the the largest of these groups, the human species. While cultures and economic landscapes change, the basic tenants of Praxeology and value-theory do not. Preference and desire is present in all acting humans, and I think these realities can be best used to explain why actions are taken.
But this is not real.
We have families. We have congregations. We have teams. We have armies. We have governments. We have mafias. We have corporations. We have meetups. We have discussion groups. We have social networks.
Pretending that these do not exist is not empiricism. It's confirmation bias. It's walking along a river and throwing frogs over to the other side because your hypothesis said they wouldn't be on this side.
> I'm not claiming individuals don't act differently based on their setting and peers, just that these phenomenas can be observed at the individual level in an empirical fashion. If it isn't, then your group knowledge is limited.
Show me. You're claiming to have a lot of empirical evidence. Show me.
> That I didn't make an incorrect statement?
You claimed that I made a false dichotomy when I said you could either evaluate only at the individual level OR have the capacity to talk about group-level effects.
To prove that this is a false dichotomy, you have to present a third alternative. That's what makes a false dichotomy false. You haven't done this.
> I would argue that libertarians believe in the antithesis of authoritarianism, and that they have economic and philosophical principles for believing so.
So what is it? Is libertarianism about some vague antithesis of authoritarianism, or is libertarianism a framework for analyzing human action? Those aren't the same thing.
You're the one who came in here with guns blazing saying that I didn't have a sufficient grasp on libertarian philosophy. Now every time I bring up another dimension of libertarianism, you change what you claim it is. How about starting from some of your axioms and principles and just flat-out explaining it like I'm five?
> What they don't do, because they generally know better, is discuss group-level actions.
I'll happily google for you, but I feel like you're not even trying. If you would just look over the wiki for game-theory you'd see economics is one of it's main applications.
As for economics, there's an entire field called behavioral economics. It's about the impact of the individual psyche on the market place, which also incorporates many aspects of game theory.
Value isn't real? Preference isn't real? Drive isn't real? Help me out here.
> Pretending that these do not exist is not empiricism. It's confirmation bias.
I don't know why you think I don't believe social groups. I only claimed that libertarians don't recognize the "rights" of groups, which is completely different.
>> I'm not claiming individuals don't act differently based on their setting and peers, just that these phenomenas can be observed at the individual level in an empirical fashion.
> Show me. You're claiming to have a lot of empirical evidence. Show me.
> To prove that this is a false dichotomy, you have to present a third alternative.
The alternative to "So what's the incorrect statement here" is that I didn't make an incorrect statement. The burden on proof is on you to show that "If this were actually true, then libertarians couldn't say anything useful about groups of people". I've provided numerous examples of how actions can be evaluated at the individual level to predict the outcome of a group in the wikis I've linked to. Even the study of market failure is well in the domain of the micro economist.
> So what is it? Is libertarianism about some vague antithesis of authoritarianism, or is libertarianism a framework for analyzing human action?
I claimed it's a philosophy about human action. This entails a framework for analyzing action, that also concludes authoritarianism is not compatible with maximizing the satisfaction of the individual's preference -- which would lead to the next topic of discussion which is value theory.
> How about starting from some of your axioms and principles
Don't take other people's things that don't belong to you, because you wouldn't want your stuff taken from you. Don't start fights with the other kids, because you wouldn't want them to start a fight with you. If you do start a fight, expect conflict and escalation. If you're bullied, feel free to defend yourself because you're not obligated to be bullied.
I agree with the popular fictional character. Power is a shadow cast on the wall. It is more about what people perceive than it is about any real measurable force of 'power'. This is why revolutions are determined by key personalities staying loyal or defecting, because they command loyalty themselves in peoples _perceptions_ of power.
The military hold 'real' power, but so do corporations. Both can lose power with a change in perceptions. Sure weapons and dollars generally do a pretty good job of indicating who has power (bullets and currency do wonders to change peoples behaviors), but they can also be ignored as power-indicators given a properly motivated population (think the groups that followed Ghandi or MLK, as dead-horse examples.)
Does having 8 more declared aircraft carriers than the known world and numerous forward operating bases help cast big shadows? well, sure. Having the ability to reach out and touch much of the world with a full-fledged military operation in very short time-windows does portray a very powerful aura.
Despite this, 1 out of 5mil civilian contractors also shrank this shadow quickly by outing a secret program, then (the more important part) taking advantage of extradition laws to publicly "get away with it" [Snowden]. A different civilian shrank this shadow a few years ago by building a technology to publicize (as in "to make public") any and all secrets of powerful entities [Assange & WikiLeaks; I say powerful entities & not gov't, as they seem happy to out corporate secrets. How powerful the corps that they have chosen to out secrets of actually are, I have my own doubts].
I like to think of power as the active ability to change a given reality. The greater (measurably larger in quantity or quality) the reality you can change, the greater the power. In these terms, it's easy to see how power is fleeting, and perception-based. If they are in fear, monetarily in your pocket, or loyal to your cause, you are powerful. But, how fast do these things change?
There definitely is a tradeoff between civil liberties and security. Each action of the police, warranted or not, is an invasion of privacy (civil liberty) while still being aimed at solving a (planned or alleged) crime (security). A state monopoly on firearms is another example.
The problem with the argument that DIRNSA and similar circle make is that the current invasion of civil liberties brings negligible or no improvement of security. They're exaggerating the security gains and downplay the erosion of rights. That's the dishonesty in the current debate.
I think Damon is very well on the mark here - a decision to give up civil liberties for security should not be made by the government/powers to be but rather by a well informed public. There's a major problem with that approach though: How do we educate the public in such a way, that they can make well-informed choices. That's a pretty tough nut to crack.
Maybe in your mind. Maybe you want to think that these innocuous debates on the internet means something.
Don't be fooled by empty words by either politicians or pundits on tv or the net. Watch what the government does - at federal, state and local, the security budget keeps slowly going up. Never coming down. The supreme court rulings slowly move in one way, never another. The number of laws slowly keep going up, never coming down.
But since you are allowed to debate it to death, which none of the decision makers take note of, there is this illusion of debate.
Damon is talking a good game, but it's still within the parameters of the talking points that the pols and talking heads put out on tv.
When the budgets for security go down, When the number of prisoners in jail go down, when the number of laws go down,
when the number of people working for police, fbi, cia, nsa, military go down, when the number of supreme court decisions go left, then let's talk about civil liberties.
Till then it's nothing more than an empty, peurile phrase.
See, all I'm trying to point out is that there's a flaw in your argument that can easily be exploited to undermine your line of reasoning. I'm all on your side and agree with your assertion, but the argument cannot be "There is no balance between security and liberty" since the most secure state would be where every one of us is locked in a high security cell. No more murders, no theft, no rape, no crime, perfect security. What a beautiful world.
The right question to ask is "How should the world we want to live in look like?" and I'm certain that most people would prefer to security budgets to go down, to see the TSA disappear, see elemental rights reinstated. It's a hard argument to make since people cling to security, but you can't substitute it by denying that security and liberty are at least partially on a trade-off scale.
i think you're missing the point. the benefit to 'security' as a result of the NSA surveillance is without evidence. as a result, comparisons of an imaginary 'trade off' between security and privacy are premature. we don't know the benefit to security, so how can we possibly make an informed decision about trading some of our privacy away for it?
also, even your hypothetical example falls pretty flat on its face. your world of everyone in a cell might actually have more theft, rape, crime etc. who is guarding the cells? who is doing the feeding? would they exchange favours for additional food?
the point is that a 'trade-off' is superfluous until you have evidence that it's even beneficial.
You're repeating my argument from the GP post, so I'll summarise it again: Security and Liberty are to a significant extend tradeoffs. [1] However, currently we're so far out on the side of security that the security gains of the measures are nil. The current measures just have costs in liberty while providing no security benefit.
> also, even your hypothetical example falls pretty flat on its face. your world of everyone in a cell might actually have more theft, rape, crime etc. who is guarding the cells? who is doing the feeding? would they exchange favours for additional food?
Robots ;)
[1] The relationship is somewhat more complicated, for example at least a certain extend of security is required for liberty and there's more factors in play, but that's a different case to make.
Whatever the relationship is between security and liberty is not known at this time. Any talk of 'sacrificing privacy for security' is complete bullshit because there is no data on the effectiveness of such measures. The trade off is not known, therefore you can't attach an imaginary relationship between the two.
> The current measures just have costs in liberty while providing no security benefit.
I think we can just both agree on this point and leave it here.
This is a false dichotomy, and definitely not about some sort of tradeoff to protect us from "terrorists amongst us" (which in itself is a dubious claim.)
All these programs are about the creation of a de-facto authoritarian state serving nobody else but the powerful corporations and the decision-makers that said corporations keep in place via their accumulated wealth.
This isn't some democratic debate about civil liberties at conflict. This is a fucking plutocracy.